Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

May 062012
 
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Sense about cents! 

Finally!

Large amount of pennies

Large amount of pennies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s another bad week for news. I don’t mean that there isn’t any. There are plenty of news stories but nothing you really need to know. If you wait ‘tll the end of the post, I’ll share Bob’s stories. You don’t need to know them either but, they may provide some diversion.

This week only one story has news you can use. It’s another example of why Canada is eating our lunch these days. Quietly and in small increments, our neighbor to the north is making tweaks that improve their economy. Today’s tweak is the elimination of the penny. It’s a small thing but imagine the many ways this will simplify life for Canadians (and save money to boot).

Do you love pennies? 

In the US, pennies have been nothing but a nuisance for years. People throw them away or stick them in big jars at home because they are such a nuisance. Sixty years ago, we had mills (plastic coins representing one half a cent and one tenth of a cent). Those disappeared after the War as irrelevant. With sixty years of inflation, the cent is worth less than the mill when it disappeard and yet we still are stuck with it. How long before our leaders in Washington show the sense of the powers in Ottowa?

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Apr 292012
 
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Originally posted 2010-07-19 08:25:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Don’t hurt Bambi

In the Northern California foothills, the varmint most discussed is deer. Bambi love on the part of the 99 percent of Americans who never see a wild animal means that those of us who live where they do are powerless to stop them from eating their landscaping. Deer are not the problem in my patch of suburbia dropped in to the mountain wilderness. Too many fences and dogs to make it worth their while. No, the big problem in my environs is voles.

What the heck is a vole?

Those were my exact words upon moving to Nocal and chatting with the local nursery man. It turns out I had seen them but had thought they were mice. Voles are related to lemmings and muskrats, I learn and are omnivores but as I am also learning this year, they love plants especially mine.

Population explosion

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Apr 292012
 
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It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature! 

waters on the Adams river thick with Sockeye s...

waters on the Adams river thick with Sockeye salmon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again it’s time for our Cantankerous Old Coots news report. I don’t know if Bob is getting to me but all of the stories today are about government. Now that I think about it, these days it is hard to find any aspect of life where the government hasn’t gotten itself involved. And as soon as the government starts messing with something, they find unintended consequences that they have to fix which cause other unintended consequences and soon enough we have a whole government bureaucracy to manage something that took care of itself for millions of years at no cost. Once you intervene into Mother Nature’s affairs, there is just no getting out. As they are finding out it Oregon. It’s not so easy to do something nice for the beleaguered salmon. First you have to say ‘May I’.

Oregon asks to kill salmon-eating birds

In California, lawmakers discover that loveable sea otters just can’t play nice with fisherman and don’t believe in the rule of law.  Bill would keep Southern California’s controversial ‘no-otter zone’ in place

Bill would keep Southern California’s controversial ‘no-otter zone’ in place

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Apr 252012
 
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Time flies

even when you are home plugging through all the old stuff. Two months since we left our idyllic foothill home for the delights of exotic Venice. Wonderful as Venice is and delightful as the Italian lifestyle my appear, Italy is a foreign country, full of foreigners with strange habits and strange devices. Even when you begin to feel that Italians aren’t so different after all you get a slap in the face. Something that looks ordinary and familiar turns weird and strange. Like our stay in the Courtyard Marriott at the Venice Airport.

We checked in at the Venice Airport Hotel winding down after ten days in Venice and preparing for an early flight back to the states. And then the lights went out.

 

Getting ready for the trip to Venice where we would be staying in an apartment instead of a hotel and getting close to the normal lifestyle of real Venetians, we wondered if there would be surprises. The biggest surprise to us was that we weren’t really surprised. We were prepared for having no automobiles and water based rapid transit. We anticipated daily food shopping and climbing stairs. What surprised us was he local supermarket which managed to cram most everything we needed into a convenience store sized space, We found pretty much everything we needed and even more surprising many familiar brand names.

 

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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