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Did You Celebrate it?

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Unfortunately I missed it!  We did go see the Mad Ants (Win!) play yesterday in Fort Wayne and in honor of that, stopped for supper at Mad Anthony’s in Warsaw.  It was late, so we just did some appetizers and tried a beer each.  Everything we had was good and there were enough interesting things on the menu that we will probably be making a trip back there in the near future.  I would recommend the Mad Ants and Mad Anthony’s, separately or in combination.  Becky and I enjoyed both.  Go Ants!

Image Source:  @thefloridakeys via Twitter

Investments

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At an investment advisory meeting this week, an analogy was made for staying the course with your investments just as you would with your marriage.  Somehow I don’t think my wife will go along with that analogy and the good investment strategies of diversification and laddering of maturities…

State of the Union

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Kevin D. Williams on State of the Union 1-28-14I’ve always thought the State of the Union address was a fairly worthless endeavor and actually, as an American, somewhat embarrassing to watch.  Kevin Williamson put it pretty well in an article he wrote last year for the National Review titled Great Caesar’s Ghost.  If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked it here.  The first paragraph is in the box to the right to whet your appetite.

The whole idea of a State of the Union address rises from Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution describing the powers of the President which says:  “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

From what I have gleaned, George Washington did meet with the Congress in what was the first State of the Union “report”, but when Thomas Jefferson became President, he deemed the practice of addressing Congress too “kingly” and began the practice of sending written reports.  This proved satisfactory for 112 years until President Woodrow Wilson changed the tradition to a formal address to Congress.  This has morphed into the political spectacle we’ll be subjected to tonight.

Lest this be considered just Obama or democrat bashing, let me heap some of the blame on President Reagan for making things worse.  He is responsible for the odious new tradition of placing “guests” in the audience which serve as props for the political messages in the speech.   And as Mr. Williamson says in his article, “The next Republican president should remember why his party is called the Republican party and put a stop to this.”  Hear, Hear!

Consider the Sources:  Almost totally Internet; some from Mr. Williamson’s article and some from other searches.

Happy New Year!

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Well, here we are heading into 2015.  Happy New Year!

Will & Kathy's Last Day
Will & Kathy’s Last Day

It’s going to be interesting starting the new year here with Will and Kathy‘s retirement.  We wish them the best.  We also lost several friends who passed away, including former employee Dave Epley, and two long time clients, Don Neidig and Richard Ford.  They will be missed.  Dave was a carpenter with Easterday Construction who was responsible for a lot of detailed work of which we’re quite proud.  A fair amount of Dave’s work was performed for Don and Richard, both of whom appreciated fine craftsmanship.

There’s no doubt that the new year will bring new challenges.  We can only hope they are ones that intrigue us and help us grow.  2014 brought us a mixed group of clients.  Some of these were repeat customers that we consider friends and some of them new clients where we hope we have created friendships.  Some of our work has been fairly mundane but necessary like replacing roofs, while others will be memorable such as the new Veterans Memorial at Fletcher Cemetery and the bowling alley we helped install in Yei-Yei’s Game Room.  For all of it, we thank our clients for their trust and confidence in us.

On the lighter side (hopefully), I ran across this article from Dorkly about all the things we should expect in 2015 per past science fiction movies.  None of the films they cite show rosey pictures for 2015, but at least we’ll finally get flying cars from Blade Runner and that cool hoverboard from Back to the Future II!  Then again, Arnold Schwarzenegger cloning himself is a bit scary.

Best Wishes for a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous 2015 to all our friends and clients!

Kevin

 

Image Source:  Will & Kathy by Julie Heise

Image Source:  Terminator Arnold borrowed from giphy.com