Of woolly bears, property, wood and clothes

With the temperatures dropping and the snow
birds flying south, I thought I’d review Mother Nature’s prognosticators . . . the woolly bear caterpillar, the beaver, the goose and the muskrat.
Don’t scoff! The people on the tube, airways and print can’t be totally trusted either. Maybe you should just read on and make notes.
Caterpillar: Wide band, mild winter; narrow band, hard winter.
Beaver: Thick pelt, laying down a lot, colder weather.
Goose: Heavier down, colder winter.
Muskrat: Size of house predicts the type of winter that’s coming.
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So, our Gov. Jennifer recommended and approved the sale of 640 acres down by Ann Arbor to a Japanese auto company for $6.6 million. She turned down a bid of $25,000,000 from a private developer, who, it is my guess, would have sold it to the company from Japan for something over that figure.
As they say, ‘location, location, location? and what’s a few million for the right location?
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The Tongass National Forest in Alaska has 17 million acres. 600,000 of its acres have been identified as holding valuable timber.
Yet, Rollo Pool, executive director of the Southeast Conference, a timber lobbying group, points out that most of the timber used in Alaska’s building industry is imported from the Lower 48 or Canada.
I suppose our Forest Service will justify their spending $36 million in 2002 preparing timber sales that generated only $1.2 million in revenue, that without the $36 million all the timber used in Alaska’s building industry would have been imported from the lower 48 and Canada.
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One has to be a longtime reader to remember my writing of being a salesman at Kaufman’s Men’s Clothing Store in Owosso in 1943. It was there I thought
I’d found my future. I loved selling shoes.
We’d get out our length/width measuring tool, have the customer step on it, and presto, ‘Would you like that in black or brown??
For the rest of my adult life, until a few weeks ago, every time I’ve gone to buy a pair of shoes the clerk has asked, ‘What size are you??
At The Shoe Store in Waterford they don’t ask your size. After a greeting they say, ‘Please sit down and let me measure your feet.?
Dr. Arsen had recommended I wear running shoes 80 percent of the time. So I bought a pair of size 12 running shoes. They hurt my toes.
Bill Hall at The Shoe Store determined I needed size 12 and a half. Alas, no more sore toes. Seems what I call tennis shoes are different sizes and flex more (or less depending on the make) than running shoes.
Of course they are different in price, too.
The other thing Hall said that stuck in my mind was that size twelves (and others) are different from different countries, but a half size is a sixth of an inch the world over.
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Did you change your mind about who you were going to vote for after Thursday’s presidential debate? Neither did anybody else.
It was more of what Will Rogers said: ‘Promise everything, deliver nothing.?
Of course, some politicians do deliver something. The residents of Iowa obtained the money for a rain forest through Washington’s back patters.
‘Twas these who financed a freeway to nowhere in West Virginia and airport runways in a state that has no airlines.
I’m sure they did it diplomatically, of which Rogers said: ‘Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie? until you can find a rock.?

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