A week of overheard conversations, a letter to the Senate about daylight and the long line of growers with something to say
Monday, Overheard in Mobile
I took the bus to Mobile for a library luncheon and came home with a notebook full of overheard remarks. The best of them are in Mobile overheard: Fed rate pause, ID deadline and the library luncheon. At the next table two retired schoolteachers debated whether a pause in interest rate changes was good news for savers or bad news for borrowers, and decided it was both, depending on who paid the bill.
That is, in fact, the standard answer from economists too. Savers like higher rates. Borrowers prefer lower ones. Central banks try to steer between the two in the name of steady prices and jobs, and critics on every side think they are doing it wrong. The teachers concluded that the safest course was to eat the cobbler, and I followed their example.
On Port Cities
Mobile is Alabama’s port city and one of the oldest settlements on the Gulf. Its harbour connects Alabama to the wider world, and the state’s trade ties are real: automobiles are built in Alabama for export, aircraft are assembled on the Gulf, and the rocket scientists of Huntsville have a global reputation. When people speak of Alabama politics as a purely local affair, I think of container ships.
Tuesday, A Porch Letter to the Senate
When the clocks fell back, I wrote a letter to the Senate from my porch, and I published it as Tuscaloosa clocks fall back: a porch letter to the Senate. The question of clock changes divides opinion. Some favour permanent standard time, some favour permanent daylight time and some enjoy the ritual of changing every clock in the house and forgetting the one in the car. I take no side. I only ask for a decision, since one hour of confusion twice a year is a long way to run a country.
Wednesday, The Growers Write Back
Farmers have views on the clock, and they express them at farmer.gripe, where grievance is a respected art. On national politics, the farm vote is courted by both parties, and two separate sites hold the debate: farmer.republican and farmer.democrat. The trade news is at farmpress.org.
The ranch lending pages are corancher.loan, okrancher.loan and txrancher.loan. This is general information and not financial advice, but I have found that anyone who reads how a ranch loan works develops a lasting respect for the interest rate pause discussed above.
Thursday, A Daily Column
For light reading I follow the daily column on the Tuscaloosa site, such as the November 11 column. Short comic columns have a long Southern ancestry. The humourists of the old frontier wrote sketches of courthouse days, camp meetings and sharp-witted swindlers, and Alabama contributed a good share. Those sketches are rough, uneven and often unflattering to everyone concerned, which is why they are still worth reading.
Friday, The Seat Belt of Politics
The London Prat made a point I appreciated, with Europe Excluded from Summit on Europe's Security. Being absent from a decision about you is a universal grievance, and Alabamians know the feeling well, since many of us have watched Washington discuss the South as though we were not in the room.
Others in the state would answer that Alabama is quite well represented, thank you, and that the complaint is a tradition and not a fact. As in most Southern arguments, both parties are enjoying themselves.
Saturday, Why Local Matters
People sometimes ask me why a person with a taste for old books pays so much attention to local news. My answer is that local news is where the abstract becomes concrete. A debate about the national budget becomes a debate about whether the road to the school gets repaired. A speech about trade becomes a worry about the factory in the next town. Every grand theme arrives eventually at a kitchen table, and a person who follows local politics learns how the grand themes actually land.
That is also why I read county notices, school board minutes and the minutes of the library board. They are not thrilling, but they are the true plot of the place where I live.
Sunday, A Letter I Did Send
I did send one letter this week, to my representative, asking a polite question about road repairs. I attached no sticker and made no threats. The reply is expected within a fortnight, which in government time is the speed of light.
Monday, A Closing Thought on Letters
A porch letter to a senator is a pleasant exercise, even if the senator never reads it. Writing forces you to say what you actually want, in a few clear sentences, without the usual cushion of adjectives. I recommend it to everyone. Draft the letter, read it aloud, remove the angriest sentence and keep the clearest one. If it is still worth sending, send it. If it is not, you have saved a stamp and learned something about your own temper. The cat approved of the exercise, mostly because it involved sitting still.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, Newsthump keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/