Living in the Past

 A funny think happened. Tim needed to buy a slide hammer to work on his car. We don't buy from Amazon if we can avoid it, but we found it on E-bay, and ordered it. What I didn't realize is that a while back, when I was looking for books for the Amish Christmas, I'd seen a copy of 'Charlie the Lonesome Cougar' on e-bay. I had that book when I was a kid, and I loved it. 

I must have put it in my 'shopping cart' at some point. When Tim ordered his tool, he didn't notice he was ordering two things instead of one, and that old book arrived today. 

It was a scholastic book. Does anyone remember those? A newspaper arrived in the class room and was handed out to each child. I would take mine home and pore over the selections. I usually had a bit of money from doing chores. I don't remember a regular allowance, but we'd have the chance to make a quarter or two, and that was a big deal to us, having our own money, and it was not spent foolishly. I agonized over those books, and it took forever for me to figure out what book I was going to buy. 

All these years later, I held this copy of 'Charlie' in my hands. It made me smile to see that it cost a whole 45 cents back in 1968. I would have been 11 years old. 

As stupid as it sounds, I sat myself right down and read it and remembered what it was like to be 11. We lived a very isolated life, with no nearby kids. While we had a television, we lived in a valley, and reception was very poor. When we did have reception, it was two channels, in black and white. I seem to remember that the horizontal hold on our television gave us great problems, which made the picture roll. All this to say, books played a really big part of my childhood. 

So...that was a sweet hour, this afternoon, reading and remembering. 

I almost hated to bring myself back to the present. 

Tariffs take effect tomorrow against Canada and Mexico, and that's going to bite us. Heck. It's biting us already. The stock market has been dropping steadily at the mere thought of it. But a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China. Except that most of our fentanyl originates in China. Mexico is second.  Less than 1% is brought in through Canada. Why we're slapping a 25% tariff on Canada and only 10% on China, I couldn't tell you, but it seems to be our goal to piss off as many countries as possible. (Late edit: It seems that the 10% number on China is an increase. I'm not sure what's going on there. I've seen numbers indicating they'll be pay a 33% increase on most things. If you can clarify, don't hesitate to leave a comment.)

https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf

Consumers will be paying for those tariffs of course, but it seems as if people are sitting up and taking notice of the warnings. For the first time, I heard about 'No Buy 2025'. That's probably not a good thing for the economy, but hey, I'm sure the president will take care of those hurting billionaires when we consumers can't afford to consume. 

Us mere mortals will simply have to take care of ourselves and each other as best we can. 

Crazy times, and they are going to get crazier. But, you know, people have been living in crazy times throughout history. In the end, all we can do is prepare for them, and have confidence in our abilities to do what needs to be done.