Guns and Budgets

‎”If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt.
They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt,
reduced to a level that we can understand.” – Dave Ramsey

What Dave Ramsey, who is a conservative, does not mention is that this hypothetical family would be spending 52% of its budget on guns. That’s right, around $39,ooo of its $58000 income on guns, and an additional $145,ooo in credit card debt on guns.

How frigging crazy is that?

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Cumulus

The climate in eastern Ohio, where I live, is not much different from that of Michigan; indeed, we usually have the same weather patterns, with Michigan getting what is heading our way around 12 hours earlier, and about 5 degrees cooler.

What is different are the clouds.

Ohio is marginally sunnier, but still grey a lot in fall and winter, though cloudy days tend to be more or less overcast. Dramatic cumulus clouds are not unknown, but not common, either.

In Michigan, because the prevailing westerly winds pick up moisture when they move over Lake Michigan, big puffy clouds are common, especially in the summer: dramatic white castles moving across azure skies are typical on a summer day.

That is what it has been like since I came here last weekend. It takes you back, a sky like this, to childhood, to lying on your back in a green field looking up, finding elaborate shapes and creatures in the white clouds.

My wedding day in 1996 in Ohio was like that, cool and breezy with sharply defined cumulus clouds moving across a deep blue sky. I took it as a sign, this heavenly Michigan day in Ohio, that I was making a good move, and whenever such a day occurs at home in Ohio- rarely- I am reminded of this.

And whenever I come to Michigan in the summer I am treated to many such reminders.

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