Trudging

Things are happening and changing, but it seems like there isn't much news right now. Yes, it's significant that Donald Trump may meet with Kim Jong-Un, but it doesn't mean much until it happens. It took a while longer, but we're starting to move past the Parkland school shooting. Not surprising, really -- outrage is difficult to sustain, even for the perpetual motion machine that is our MSM. The economy is humming along. No one really cares about Stormy Daniels, because there's nothing particularly interesting about the story -- everyone has known Trump is a cad for 30 years.

We were off to Galesburg again this weekend. The Benster is home for the week, his final spring break before graduation. Fearless Maria is gone for the week, still on her band trip to Greece. We keep trudging through the snow piles, which are slowly disappearing as March unfolds. We've never been busier as a family, but we're moving so quickly that there's little time available to analyze the larger meaning of it all. In about six weeks we'll have clarity on any number of issues, but for now we put one foot in front of the other.

Come out of the cold, Muffy

When I was in college, back in the 1980s, I had a classmate nicknamed Muffy (it was the 80s, after all) who would cut your hair for $5, about the same price as one would pay for a haircut in those days. Muffy did an outstanding job. She would cut your hair in the lounge in her dorm and she had a steady stream of customers, because she was outstanding and coincidentally drop-dead gorgeous.

Muffy got plenty of business, all word of mouth, from her classmates. One could argue that she was costing the barber shops of Beloit some business, but I don't recall any of them going out of business while she was on campus. She was breaking the law, though, because you are not supposed to cut hair for money unless you have a cosmetology license. She was from the San Diego area. It's possible she had a cosmetology license from California, but I never asked her and I doubt she did. Had someone reported her activities, she likely would have been in trouble. I am confident that the statute of limitations has run on her tonsorial crime wave, so I can tell the story.

Now, more than 30 years later, it appears that Wisconsin is looking at whether many licensing requirements are even necessary:

A new council would be created to review the necessity of every occupational licensing requirement in Wisconsin under a bill being circulated for co-sponsors.

The measure unveiled Wednesday would require the submission of a report by the end of 2018 that recommends elimination of licenses and other changes rules and requirements. The Legislature in 2019 would then consider approving the recommendations.

As Walter Russell Mead notes, these requirements are often less about professional standards and more about protecting a guild:

There is a virtual consensus among economists that state-enforced training requirements for a variety of low to mid-skill jobs, from catering to hair-braiding to interior decorating, have grown excessive, exerting a major drag on economic growth and employment—especially for people who don’t have the time or money to take thousands of hours of costly courses to practice a basic trade that isn’t particularly dangerous and whose skills can easily be judged by consumers.

Licensing requirements for low-skilled work have exploded over the past decades for no other reason than that professional guilds have been able to capture state legislatures and used them to help entrench their market positions. 

I don't object to paying extra for the services of someone with demonstrated expertise, but for most of us, the licensing requirements aren't relevant. Muffy wasn't running a full-fledged salon; she wasn't giving perms or doing complicated makeovers. She was just giving haircuts to her vaguely dissolute classmates and saving them a trip to town. I haven't seen Muffy in 30 years and have no idea what she's doing now, but I trust her life of crime is done.

Still

Events remain in the saddle around here. Better days are ahead.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 
Memory and desire, stirring 
Dull roots with spring rain. 

There will be children with robins and flowers
Sunshine caresses each new waking hour
Seems to me that the people keep seeing
More and more each day gotta say lead the way

Light posting for the next few days

Events are in the saddle in our world right now. We may circle back to the reasons eventually.

Post 5000

This is the 5000th post on Mr. Dilettante's Neighborhood. We've been at this for over ten years. It's a lot of blogging.

My original tagline for the feature was "a befuddled suburban dad tries to make sense of the world." Ten years on, the world makes even less sense. I've made my peace with befuddlement.

It's easy, too easy, to fret, to live the words of a certain musician I fancy, recorded way back in 1971:

Hang ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
Natural fact is
I can't pay my taxes
Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Yea, it makes me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where we're heading

God does know. And while this feature has been, from time to time, an exercise in hollering, and while the issues that Marvin Gaye sang about some 45 years ago persist, we can't throw up our hands.

Ten years ago, I was in the process of losing my job. I had two young children and we weren't quite sure what would come next. Now I know. A commenter wrote something back then:

Better things are in store for you. Stay encouraged.

And indeed, better things were in store. And yes, better things will come. Stay encouraged.

Home at last

We got home from Ohio last night. We'll get back to the usual fare in a day or so, but I wanted to say something about the interstate highway system. It's easy and generally appropriate to bash the federal government for its overreach and malfeasance, but one thing is clear -- the interstate highway system is a marvelous creation. Our route to Ohio included:

35W
94
90/94
39/90/94
39/90
39
55
74
74/465
465
70
75

While in Ohio we used 675 as we were bopping around Dayton

Our return trip included:

75
70
465
865
65
80/94
80
294
90
39/90
39/90/94
94
35W

We also used US Highway 35, US Highway 6, US Highway 30 and a few other state roads. It's really an amazing thing that we take for granted. We shared these roads with untold thousands of people and, except for the annoying toll roads in Illinois, our only expense was the gasoline and wear/tear on our vehicle. Yes, we all pay taxes for the roads, but it's a great value.

A Great Season

The final results from WGI:

A great season

Hundreds of high schools compete in drumline. Sixty were good enough to come to WGI this year. We'll take that result for sure. Our kids worked exceptionally hard for months; winning a state championship and finishing 7th at the national competition is a great result. We're proud of all of them. And in about three weeks, marching band season starts.

Irondale Drumline -- 3rd Place after prelims

The top five schools:

Victor J. Andrew High School (IL)               92.900
Oak Grove High School (MS)                       91.125
Irondale High School (MN)                          90.925
Zionsville Community High School (IN)     90.888
Norton High School (OH)                             90.650

Long and the short of it -- we are doing great! We will perform again tomorrow afternoon and if we make the finals, we'll perform late on Friday night as well. Our outstanding season continues.

World Tour

Well, at least to Ohio. We're off to the WGI Percussion World Championship today. Our beloved Irondale Winter Drumline will compete in the preliminaries tomorrow at Wright State University in Dayton, with additional competition on Friday. As a result, posting will be a little light over the next few days.

Give the drummers some!

We are state champions, but we'd like to bring home some bigger hardware.

One big trophy hardly seems enough

Meanwhile, a whole lotta windshield time. More soon!

Song of the day

The Joy of Lakeville

It's the city vs. suburb thing again, this time in the pages of the Star Tribune:

I’m always disappointed that my urban acquaintances know very little of the suburbs surrounding their city. But I’m never more disappointed than when urbanites spout clichéd opinions about suburban living.

Not long ago a Facebook friend posted her feelings on the blandness of the suburbs, positing on the beige-ness of every house, the only difference in color being “beige, taupe, buff, butter, mushroom, ecru, linen and bone.” And she pronounced all of them ugly. I must admit, the statement really hurt. I happen to live in a beige house.

So forgive me if I sound defensive when I say that I live in the suburbs and I love my community, cream-colored houses and all.

The writer of this piece lives in Lakeville, a big outer ring suburb. I live in the suburbs as well, but am inside the 494/694 loop. And I can see it both ways.

There's no question that there's a lot of sameness in suburbia -- if you drive down France Avenue in Edina one day and Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park, Kansas, the next, you'd not notice any significant differences. I lived in the Chicago area years ago and keeping track of the suburbs there was a chore. Were you in Oak Park, Forest Park, Park Forest, River Forest, Riverside, Oak Brook, Oakbrook Terrace, Lake Forest? Hard to know without a GPS.

At the same time, there's nothing especially unique about Grand Avenue in St. Paul, either -- you can find similar districts in a lot of cities. Gentrification inevitably brings Restoration Hardware to the area.

I couldn't wait to get out of my hometown, Appleton, Wisconsin, when I was a kid. Nowadays the west side of Appleton might as well be Roseville. Do you enjoy where you live? I hope you do. Enjoy your town and your tribe.

Priorities

The United Nations, always with their eyes on the ball:

It’s a good thing all the world’s serious human rights issues have been resolved. With more pressing problems out of the way, the UN Human Rights Committee appears now to have the leisure time to attend to a few loose ends here and there. The committee—which includes representatives from human rights bastions such as Uganda, Algeria, and Egypt—has released a report recommending that Britain fully outlaw the smacking of children at home. 

Nothing else to worry about in the world, of course. No, nothing at all should concern us.