Rosalie heard:

A strange story about Amelia Earhart. Someone who actually knows X told me that during the Vietnam War X found Amelia Earhart's journal, written during her last 1937 flight, kept right up until the day she died several years after being captured. He took it to the Department of Justice, which is where he determined it belonged. He had read the journal so he knew that Earhart was taking photos (thus, spying) for the U.S. government. They crashed, but she and her co-pilot were captured. He was later beheaded. She suffered a great deal of physical harm, and eventually died of her injuries. Days after turning in the journal, X checked back with the DOJ. No such journal existed, he was told.

Has anyone ever heard of this particular version of the "secret mission" stories? Would the FOIA help uncover her journal? I can't stand the thought of information of this much general interest being kept secret.

Rants

Dear Family,

In what can only be seen as a symptom of severe mental illness, I went to the sheep auction at Gowrie on Friday and bought more sheep.

What did Freud call it when someone already has too many sheep, and then they go get more sheep? Wasn't it penis envy? No, no. That's something completely different. Was it masochism? Yeah, that's the ticket. Masochism.

I was reminded of Dad when I backed up to the loading chute to collect the sheep. I think the blue paint from Dad's tailgate was still embossed on the wooden posts, where many a time he happily slammed the truck into those posts upon picking up his sheep.

Everyone there knew Dad--many were his patients. The others didn't have very many teeth left. You could tell them apart when they smiled.

I went to that auction so many times with Dad, and maybe Matt or PT and once I think with Mary. Many times we performed double duty by road hunting on the way to and fro. The color of Matt's face comes to the fore, and yea verily, the car-sicknesses.

The sheep auction is excessively casual. It is one of the few places where they call me "Doc," and I wonder if they think I am Dad, or Matt, or maybe PT. Or a veterinarian. Well, it's better than some of my 18-year-old students who call me "Mark" in class. They do not fear me sufficiently.

As an economist, I remain fascinated with the "open outcry auction," an institution that developed in an organic and evolutionary way (in our tradition) from England und Germany. It is one of the last vestiges of pure free market capitalism. Its emergence can be seen in the demise of the pure feudal state, where there were only serfs (non-land-owning peasants, and thus no auction would work) and the early growth of market capitalism, where small land-holders (like me) could buy or sell in the hopes of making a profit on their own accounts, not for Prince Charles or some other horse-faced royal.

In agriculture, neither government nor big corporations like the open outrcy system. Big corporations want to put written contracts in place to ensure steady supplies and known prices and quantities. However, since the big corporations are also in a superior negotiating position, they oftentimes manage to screw the farmer in that process, whereas in the auction everyone (with money) is an equal.

Government tries from time to time to shut the auctions down; they say they spread disease, and that they are financially dangerous for us ignorant little people; and that they are hard to audit and tax completely and effectively. Right now it is a classic case of government overload: there are so many regulations and so few bureaucrats, and what bureaucrats there are, are having donuts in Des Moines (they have a scheduling conflict), so that no bureaucrat ever shows up at places like the Gowrie auction. We are essentially left to our own devices--a free market!

I did not bid on these sheep. By the time they were in the sale ring, I had not been able to figure out who the seller was, and I needed to ask questions like are they already pregnant (I think they are, and after bringing them home, my ram agrees with me). Well, before I could find the seller, the Chicago Mutton Butcher bought them! Yikes! Pregnant sheep going to butcher! Bad bad baaaad. It defies the old-farmer maxim that you never slaughter a pregnant animal as it is both economically and morally repugnant. In addition, these sheep were well taken care of by an old retired farmer who over-fed them, and they were nice and fat and they had beautiful fleece indicating no parasites, and their hooves were nice, no foot rot. So I wanted them.

This was easily accomplished by signaling the Chicago Mutton Butcher and meeting him under the bleachers; I slipped him a twenty, and he skulked away. So I bought the sheep at just above slaughter price, which is a very good bargain. They'll never miss these sheep in Chicago!

Your correspondent, Mark

...............

Mary responds to an e-mail about the healthcare bill:

To explain the current health bill I believe that reticence and unionization undermine effective rehearsal of the unknown: apathetic predecessors. But they, too, indict reactionary Le Sacre du Printempus patrons. The critics of the health bill, still dazed by the mystifying complexity of dry post-Webern serialism, can rarely muster the cogency to suffuse their obfuscating verbiage with any genuine perspicuity.

It can be said, without fear of premature optimism, that a few people are taking positive steps to bridge the chasms separating the various functions taking place. Most conspicuously dismaying in this respect is the remarkable prominence beneficial according to Boulez, Stockhausen, Dahl, and Foss. An associate conduction was purportedly consanguineous to the unfated spectrum progressive.

And finally, political emails make me sullenly pronouce, "I'd rather be at home driving splints under my fingernails."



Mark responds to a lazy person's guesstimate that 60% of the people don't know anything.

If you are interested in those 60% of the public who don't know ANYthing, I know where they are. Most of them (about 75%) seem to congregate right in front of me when I am driving on one-lane highways. Since they don't know ANYthing, one cannot really blame them for driving 40 MPH with their turn signal on for 15 miles straight while eating, drinking, and talking on their phone.

The other 25% of them seem to enjoy "negotiating" for their groceries in the check-out lanes, right in front of me. Many of the negotiated deals involve expired coupon disputes, gambling, LOTTO, BLOTTO, and POWERBALLS (not testicles) ticket purchase or redemption disputes, Marlboro cigarette disputes ("no, the shorter one, no, the box, no, the NASCAR discount one, no, the one with more tar, no, the one with less nicotine, no, the one on the top shelf, no, the one in the 3-pack-for-$19-plastic-beer-holder, no, the one that looks like Marlboro but really isn't"). Lastly, I have identified the negotiated deal at the check-out related to the person's stolen debit card.

"Sorry, your debit card isn't working. It came back saying 'Stolen Card, Please Retain Card.'" "What does that mean? Somebody else stole it, or did I steal it? How come my name isn't on it, I mean, my name is on it. Give me back the card, and I'll give you cash." "No, we have to keep the card." "Well, if I give you these cigarettes, can I have my stolen card back?"

Remember the video of the universe and somebody made the usual comment about there being intelligent life elsewhere?

What do you mean, elsewhere? Where have you seen intelligent life? Please let me know, as I would like to see it sometime before my time is up.

Be specific, include directions, if possible. Mark