The Magic of the Free Market

Legalizing pot means lowering the barriers to entry and creating a more open market.  The result, as Kevin Drum links, is lower prices.  With producers' energies now focused on more efficient production, rather than evading law enforcement in distribution, I predict this trend will continue, at some point driving the least efficient startups out of business.

Using Racism as an Argument

Kevin Drum has a good post entitled: "Racism Is Not the Explanation for Everything the Republicans Do".

His point is very true.  I'd add another point: using "racism" to attack your opponent is dangerous to yourself.  It's like saying the opposing team won because they played dirty, cheated, and paid off the umpires.  All of that may be true, particularly if you're talking about the Patriots and the Red Sox :-), but it teaches the wrong lessons and removes the burden on you to improve your game.  It also makes the opponent the "other".

Race, Gender and Ethnicity Data Collection

USDA has its request for comment on its collection of data on its customers race, gender and ethnicity published here.  Deadline is September 21.  So far there have been no comments.  As an exercise in willpower I'm withholding comment on that.

From the notice, an explanation of why:

Summary of Collection: Section 14006 and 14007 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, 7 U.S.C. 8701 (referred to as the 2008 Farm Bill) establishes a requirement for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to annually compile application and participation rate data regarding socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers by computing for each program of the USDA that serves agriculture producers and landowners (a) raw numbers of applicants and participants by race, ethnicity, and gender, subject to appropriate privacy protection, as determined by the Secretary; and (b) the application and participation rate, by race, ethnicity and gender as a percentage of the total participation rate of all agricultural producers and landowners for each county and State in the United States.

Correcting Tocqueville

This Post Monkey Cage piece claiming Americans get more involved in politics than others includes this:

As Alexis de Tocqueville put it, “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. … Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.”

That makes it sound as if our associations come from the grassroots while in Europe they come from the top.  I think that exaggerates a bit.  I've looked at some of the early associations promoting agriculture in the U.S.  The pattern seems to be we had our  "rainmakers"  back then.  "Rainmaker" here meaning an illustrious personage, in these cases often a veteran of the Revolution and/or Founding Father, whose prestige attracts other members.

Trouble with Homophone: Significant?

I'm noticing more and more I've trouble with homophones (i.e, for those who have forgotten high school English, words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning, like "its" and "it's", "knew" and "new") and with completing words correctly (i.e., by writing "ful" at the end of "meaning" rather than the "less" I intended, or, as just now, typing "the" when I meant "than").

A quick google brings up this research but doesn't confirm my layman's belief that such a decline in functioning is significant, at least of old age if not of dementia.  But whatever.

I bring this up because our illustrious President has caught some flak over a tweet in which he spelled "heal" as "heel".  I don't know whether he can't spell, whether he's getting old, or showing early signs of dementia.  None of the alternatives are correctable at this point.

The Big Sick

Saw the movie the other day and enjoyed it, although I really do need to get a hearing aid. 

The plot rests on the well-established phenomena (which I remember from my college days)--it's not knowledge of the "other" which reduces prejudice, it's cooperation and suffering together in quest of a goal.  I'm reminded of that truth when I see this report on Houston Muslims and the flooding.

The Dilemma Will Hurd Poses

Run across the Republican Congressman from Texas Will Hurd a few times in the media.  He seems impressive, human, ex-CIA, not too partisan (he was half of the two Congressmen driving from TX to DC and recording it on social media).  But he's a Republican, and vulnerable.  His district is the Rio Grande area of TX, heavily Hispanic (opposes Trump's wall despite having the longest section of US-Mexican border of any Congressman).

So, on the one hand I want the Republican party to have more such representatives, rather than the Cruzes and the Gowdys, the wing nut.  On the other hand, I want the Democrats to take control of the House in 2018, and Hurd's seat is a good target.  Unfortunately I can't donate to the DCCC and specify--don't fund Hurd's opponent. 

So I'm torn.

Special Envoys and Monuments

Secretary Tillerson is looking to eliminate dozens of "special envoys"; liberals are looking to eliminate dozens of memorials and monuments to flawed people of the past.

What's the similiarity?  For me, I'm assuming many of the envoys are more symbolic than functional.  There can be an advantage to appointing a coordinator-type person to try to break down some bureaucratic silos.  But often they have the weakness of their position--outside the chain of command where "real work" (real at least in the eyes of the bureaucrats in the organization) gets done.  So their ideas are not invented here, and they just serve as a symbol for the outside organizations which sponsored the creation of the post, a sort of flag of attempted conquest planted on the foreign continent of the bureaucracy.

Memorials and monuments are also symbols, more important to a small group than most people going about their business.

Prediction: Classic Logroll--Harvey Aid Plus the Wall

A politico piece rehashing the NY/NJ grievances with TX Congress people, especially Sen. Cruz.  Since Harvey relief will be must-pass legislation, many people (i.e. me) predict that money for Trump's wall will be folded in with it, and Dems will vote for it.

The Uses of Violence?,

Josh Marshall has a post discussing violence against the alt-right.  He's against it, arguing that it's works to the benefit of the far right and undermines the rule of law.

While I'm with him on that, he doesn't pay enough attention to the seduction of violence, although he does admit he enjoys seeing a Nazi punched.  Most any football fan will say they enjoy a "good hit" on the opposing quarterback, running back, or receiver.  That's human--we like violence against our opponents (though we'll be sure to call for a flag if our quarterback, running back, or receiver is on the receiving end of a "vicious, illegal hit").

The antifa types seem to be much the same demographic as the alt-right: young males, though perhaps with a few more females and a sprinkling of people of color you wouldn't see in the alt-right.  But extremism attracts the similar people on both ends, although the left perhaps has a more intellectual gloss to their actions.  I suspect if you could do a brain scan of either group in the midst of an action, a march or a counter-demonstration, you'd see the same areas of the brain activated, areas which have little to do with rational thought.

Memory and Action

One of the problems we old geezers have is memory.  Not only are we losing it, particularly the short-term variety, but to the extent we retain some, we can be immobilized by it.

Maybe that's the problem with the controversies over memorials.  Memorials are signs, and important. but devote too much concern to the past and the future evades your grasp.  Much better in my mind to err on the side of focusing on the future, than the past.  (Yet, and yet, I tried to be a historian once--how does that fit?  Don't know.)

Bad News for Organic Farmers

Now that Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods has been approved, Bezos' first step was to cut the prices of some organic produce, probably signalling an emphasis on lower prices in the future.  IMHO that's bad news for organic farmers, who will face pressure to take lower prices, also meaning they will face their own pressure to enlarge their operations and/or cut corners in order to survive.  So the long summer  of years when organic farmers could ask for and get a sizable premium for purity is drawing to a close, and they face a turbulent fall and then: "Winter is Coming".

Wind River

Saw the movie today and liked it. Written by the same guy who did Hell or High Water and Sicario, both of which we liked.  Atmosphere a bit like Longmire, a Netflix series we also like (i.e., rural area, Native Americans and whites).

Lesson for the Week

"Always remember: driverless cars don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be better than cars driven by humans. As anyone who drives is aware, that’s sort of a low bar these days."

From Kevin Drum

My Dilemma With Game of Thrones

I follow a lot of blog feeds.  Have done since the days of Google Reader.  Many of my feeds include good pieces on Game of Thrones.  For example, here's a New Yorker piece.

Now since I'm getting a little deaf, not quite as deaf as my wife thinks but a little, I often like to follow British shows through DVD's, because that way I can get the subtitles.  (I know, there's probably a way to get subtitles on cable, but I'm too lazy to explore it.)  And because I'm getting a little senile, there's another benefit: I can watch episodes back to back, without straining my memory to track from one week to another what happened.  And a third benefit: I can go to bed earlier, without having to watch from 10 pm to 11 or whatever.

All of this means a dilemma: if I read the blog posts on the episodes as they come out, I inevitably get a lot of spoilers.  If I don't, there's no way, no easy way, to go back and pick them up when the DVD's are released and I'm watching them.  Life's not fair, sometimes.

Changes in Culture: Swearing

This New REpublic piece discusses research into the frequency of swearing in America, specifically the use of the seven words in American books.  The research found a vast increase (28 times) between the early 50's and the late oughts.

The article is dismissive of the research, claiming it's not good social science.  That may be, but as  someone has lived over those years, the prevalence of swearing is to me just a sign of the changing culture.

I'm tempted to say "standards are falling" but I'll just say changing.

Virginia as Multi-Cutural

Tyler Cowen has a post on that theme at Bloomberg.

An anecdote: a relative recently attended the high school graduation of a grandson in North Andover, MA.  She commented to me she was surprised by how diverse the area had become (she was a girl in Andover during the 1940's).  I looked up on wikipedia and found North Andover was, in 2010, about 6 percent minority.  Currently the  school's site says 18+ percent are minority.

According to Cowen Charlottesville is 9 percent minority.   Fairfax county is about 50 percent.

I'm the sort of soft-headed bleeding heart liberal who enjoys this.  

Death Panels Exist: For Strawberries

A NewYorker article: (Varieties are made obsolete based on the decisions of an internal group called the Dead Variety Society.)

Bad Logic in the Fifth Circuit

For some reason, this decision voiding a fine on Exxon-Mobil for a pipeline spill gets my goat.

Imagine a similar decision on airline accidents:

"“The fact that the [accident] occurred, while regrettable, does not necessarily mean that [Boeing/United Airlines/the pilot] failed to abide by the [rules for building and operating airplanes] pipeline integrity regulations in considering the appropriate risk factors,” the court wrote. “The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, despite adherence to safety guidelines and regulations, [airplanes] still do occur.” [brackets indicate where I've changed the terms]

Because we have a zero tolerance for planes falling out of the sky they don't.  Why not the same zero tolerance for pipeline spills?

The Good Old Days

Am I a total reactionary by mourning the good old days of the early civil rights movement, where non-violence was a successful tactic and there weren't competing marches? 

I don't like what seems to be the anti-fa tactic of counter-marching on the same day.  To me it would be a better appeal to public opinion to allow the alt-right marches to occur without an opponent, mocking them with a next-day march that is bigger and more orderly. 

It's interesting, though, that wikipedia is struggling to deal with anti-fa, calling it
"antifa".

Blast from the Past: Guadalcanal Diary

Guadalcanal Diary was one of the books on my family's shelves,

Mention it because the invasion occurred this month, as noted at the AmericanStudies blog.

My Hypocrisy: Coal Versus Corn

There are reports that the Republican governor of WV is looking for government subsidies for coal production.  My gut reaction is to immediately oppose them.

However, what's my logical basis? Am I being a hypocrite?  I assume the idea is to keep coal mines going through a bad spell, perhaps a bad century, providing jobs for coal miners, at worse easing the transition to a non-coal future.  (Actually Gov. Justice has a "national security" rationale, perhaps somewhat like the old subsidies for wool and mohair.) Compare that with my rationale for some farm programs: keeping farms going to ease the transition to a future with fewer farmers.  (Full disclosure: that's one of two rationales I mostly buy, at least with respect to historical farm programs, the other rationale being the production adjustment one.)

So can I come up with a way to distinguish between farmers and coal miners as worthy recipients of government subsidies?

One difference is clear: farm subsidies go to farmers, coal subsidies would go to coal mining companies. Is that sufficient?

How Bureaucracy Works

Jonathan Bernstein has good observations on the bureaucracy:

Or, to put it another way: Normal presidencies have a process in place in which important policy questions are brought to the president -- not just security briefings, but domestic problems as well. Just the need to present the president with serious briefings forces the White House staff and various agencies and departments to figure out what's important and what's not, to find potentially viable courses of action for the president to consider, and to be prepared in case the president asks tough questions in either an initial briefing or down the road. Good presidents won't just passively absorb briefings; they'll challenge the information and the options they're being presented with, reinforcing the need for everyone up and down the line to do their best work.

Sometimes the stimulus for action is from the top, sometimes it comes up from the bottom.  Either way the bureaucracy can't be much better than the person at the top.

Detroit

Just saw Ms. Bigelow's new movie: Detroit.

It's similar to her previous three movies: K-19, the Widowmaker, Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty, in that it's based on facts and avoids many movie cliches.  Our verdict on it: "interesting".  I think that means, it's worth seeing, just as it's worth seeing your dentist, assuming your dentist is very capable and you've got some dental problems.

In Defense of Bureaucracy

The Post has a new history blog, with one of its posts defending bureaucracy.  I think it's a sign of the popularity of the subject that it has no comments.

The Hostas and Caladiums With No Leaves

There's always a tradeoff.

What's the trade off for viewing deer from your living room window?

Having hostas and caladiums with no leaves. :-(

Interesting the way different groups of hostas have been more or less attractive to the deer.  While the deer got most of the hosta leaves in June, they just got the caladium leaves last night.

What Next: Numbered Eggs

This NYTimes article is on a problem with tainted eggs in Europe (pesticide contaminated egg-washing solution).  Among the steps taken:

The Dutch consumer safety authority has published a guide on identifying the tainted eggs through a 10-digit serial number stamped on the shells.

 Unfortunately I was never much good at languages so I can't read the Dutch.  I can sort of see how, if we have machinery which can roll a sticker onto an orange or apple we could also develop machinery which might print a number on the egg with ink that wouldn't penetrate the shell.  Presumably the number is a farm number, not the number of the hen.

The Foxes From My Window

Blogged earlier about the deer from my living room window. We also have foxes, as of today. We've seen single foxes occasionally during the past few years, but today is the first time I've seen three. A rainy day, explaining the drops on the window.

New Tech Shorts Panhandlers

The move to the cashless society means it's a harder life for panhandlers, according to a Post article.

Unfortunately, the people earliest to adopt new tech and move to cashless apps are the people who were most likely in the past to give to panhandlers.  (That's me, not the Post, but it's true, at least in the sense that panhandlers are most likely in urban office areas, reflecting the density of traffic not necessarily the generosity of the individuals.)

An interesting note--sometimes giver and panhandler form social bonds, that's the Post.

Dairy in NZ and US

That Forbes article I referenced earlier? Turns out it's wrong--NZ has experienced a significant decline in farm numbers under their current free-market regime.  See this graph.

I hasten to add that the decline in the U.S. has been more severe over a longer time.  As this Congressional Research Service report summarizes:

"Increased dairy cow output and advances in dairy farm technology and management have led to a sharp reduction in the number of dairy farms (Figure 3). Annual losses averaged 96,000 operations in the late 1960s and 37,000 in the 1970s. In recent years, the annual drop in dairy farm operations has slowed to about 2,000 to 5,000 farms per year. Operations totaled 65,000 on December 31, 2009."

I've not really looked at the comparative size of the dairy farms in the two countries.  In both there's been consolidation, but I don't have the data on how much and the productivity of cows.  It's worth noting that in NZ the total number of cows has increased slightly; in the U.S. the number has decreased by a lot. The dairy industry in the U.S. sells in the domestic market while in NZ they export. I'm sure that makes a difference in discussing dairy support programs, but I don't know how.

8 Years for Adoption of New Technologies

From a review on H-Net:  "After noting the first military use of aircraft in the Italian-Turkish War of 1911..."

Americans Won't Do This Work?

That's the common refrain among business owners and farmers, ranging from Trump's Mar-a-Lago operation to a medium size dairy operation.  Liberals like me tend to buy the statement, because we're usually in favor of immigration, so the statement operates as justification. 

When you think about it, though, it's unusual for liberals to trust Trump or other business owners.  :-)

Why should we think the statement is true, why are immigrants willing to work off-hours and the worst jobs?  I think one reason is found in reference group theory, which is the sociologist's jargon for saying "everything is relative".  Immigrants compare their work and working conditions in the U.S. with what they faced in their home country and find it not so bad.  The American-born compare the same jobs with other jobs, and know they're the worst. 

There's also the relativity of compensation: immigrants will find that the salary and possibly fringe benefits far exceed that of their origin country.  I suspect there's a human tendency to focus on the rewards and not the cost of living.  The American-born will find the salary toward the bottom of the scale. 

There's also the standard of living: an immigrant can see  crowded living conditions in a less-desirable neighborhood as still being a step up from home.  The American-born would likely find the conditions among which some immigrants live as not desirable.

And finally there's the time frame:  the American-born looks at the less desirable job as a dead-ender. The immigrant can view it as a step up for the future, whether it's moving from dishwasher to prep work to sous-chef or simply saving money to buy goods to take back home (see Sam Quinones "Dreamland").

Among those who want to reduce immigration the standard reply to the statement is: "raise your pay."
I think that's wrong, pay being only one of the factors which makes a bad job acceptable to an immigrant.  My advice to those who would reduce immigration is this: look to the military.

The military is a case where they offer bad jobs (I'm talking basic training, which is likely worse than any normal "bad job") and attract people to them.  An E-1 gets about $17,000 a year, before taxes.  How do they attract people?  Basically it's the promotion and the fringe benefits, the retirement and education benefits.  So immigration restrictionists should come up with a program where the government provides good benefits and the possibility of advancement to the crap jobs.  Tell the high school drop out, spend x months doing this job and you'll earn tuition for college, have health insurance, etc. etc.    Is that proposal naive?  Perhaps, but I'd like to see it tried.

USDA Statistics Suck

You'd think having spent my career in USDA I'd have a good grasp of how to navigate the USDA statistics.

You'd be wrong.  Perhaps the problem is increasing senility.  I prefer to believe the problem is that USDA's statistical apparatus is stuck in the middle of the last century, pre-computer.

What's most recently teed me off is dairy (see my previous post).  I'm looking for a relatively simple set of figures: the historical number of dairy farms, 190xx to present; the number of cows, and total production for the same period.  Then I could match trends to the New Zealand figures.

USDA has two main statistical agencies: NASS (National Agricultural Statistics Service) and ERS (Economic Research Service).  In addition, if you're looking for figures on foreign ag, FAS (Foreign Agricultural Service) might come into play.  If you're looking for some figures on farm programs, FSA comes into play.

Problem is I've yet to figure out how to get these figures.  The NASS data seems tied to censuses. The best I've done is this ERS document

I think the basic problem is the statistical series have developed in close conjunction with users in the colleges and industry, so satisfying the needs of John Doe Public was a low priority.  Back in the days of paper, before the internet, people wouldn't be coming to the agencies just to satisfy their curiosity.

Sharecropping and Sharemilking

I read a Forbes article suggesting the end to farm programs, pointing to New Zealand as an example of that policy.  One of the effects was the claim: "The effects? New Zealand retained 99 percent of its farms."  That raised my contrarian hackles.  In trying to find substantiation I ran across this interesting concept: "sharemilking".  The farmer owns and milks the cows, and moves them from one farm to another on "Gypsy Day".

I assume by separating land ownership and cow ownership the capital requirements are lowered.  I haven't heard of this before, but I suspect there may be such arrangements in the U.S., particularly as part of a succession plan.

As for the Forbes article, while it claims support from an "academic study", in fact the article, while by an academic, is more of a blog post; itself supported by only one article.  I'm suspending judgment on the issue--perhaps I'll get the ambition to do more research.

Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus

From a piece on the prohibition movement:

"Prohibition was not solely an evangelical movement, but rather an economic, political and cultural coalition of Marx, Jefferson and Jesus."

 Read the whole thing.

The Deer from My Window

I'm not the photographer Kevin Drum is, but I do have wildlife I can see from my living room window, much to the detriment of our hostas.

Clovis Piece

Politico has a piece on Sam Clovis, which is surprisingly positive.

Improper Payments and Election Fraud

GovExec has a piece on a proposed commission to look at steps to reduce improper payments.  It's good, but I'd like to make a connection to another issue: election fraud.

The piece includes this sentence: "The example he recommended is easing the current restriction in the Social Security Act that prevents the Treasury Department’s Fiscal Bureau from readily accessing the Death Master File for privacy reasons."  It goes on to note that IRS uses its databases to vet 87 percent of all federal payments.

A major problem in improper payments is knowing when your intended payee is dead. Perhaps the payment should go to the estate  (usual in the case of farm programs) or should not be paid at all.

A major problem in keeping voter eligibility files current is knowing when the previously registered voter has died.

By improving the IRS process by allowing access to the Death Master File (as opposed, IIRC, to using less accurate data from SSA) and using that process for both payments and voter eligibility we kill two birds with one stone.

Electric Cars Don't Need More Generating Capacity?

From a Technology Review piece skeptical of Elon Musk's ambitions:

A 2007 study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that without adding a new plant or transmission line, the U.S. grid could reliably charge 84 percent of the nation’s cars, pickups, and SUVs.

Without reading the study I understand the logic: lots of 24-hour generating capacity goes unused at night.  The cost would be for the fuel, coal or natural gas, to run it, but not the capital expense of building new generators.  (Though a 10-year old study might be somewhat out of date.)

Administrative Procedures and Trump

This ThinkProgress post represents one of the hurdles for the Trump revolution:  simply put, once a regulation is in place, the bureaucracy has to use the Administrative Procedure Act to revise/change/revoke it, including cost/benefit analysis and consideration of public comment.  (There are exceptions to this, of course, and I'm specifying "the bureaucracy" since Congress can change the game, but it's a good general rule.)  In the case of the Clean Water Rule, a judge has found EPA and Corps of Engineers to be rushing too fast (because it's not a simple case, other court cases involved) in their analysis.

How the Brits Do Government IT

The blog.Gov.uk site is the blog for the UK government, as you might guess.  It's interesting to follow the posts, seeing some of the differences and some of the similarities between British IT and US IT.  The British government is a lot more centralized than the US, both at the national level with its civil service setup which uses more cross-department transfers than the US (SES was supposed to incorporate that, but doesn't really), and in the structure of local government--no federalism.

Even though their IT efforts seems to follow the same pattern, with more basic applications being shared across departments, they still have silos.  An excerpt:

"We transitioned 300+ websites onto one platform in 15 months. That meant we didn’t have the time or the opportunity to look properly at how that content fitted together.
And because each organisation’s website moved on to GOV.UK separately, that content came onto the site siloed and has remained siloed. And there are now more than 300,000 individual items on GOV.UK."

Clovis Redux

The appointment of Sam Clovis might be in trouble, as he had an interview in 2014 in which he was critical of crop insurance, which has become the basic safety net program for crop farmers.

Interesting times ahead. (I predict he'll backtrack and the Senate will confirm.)

Opposition to Clovis

From the Yonder, a letter opposing the appointment of Sam Clovis as Undersecretary, USDA, for research.  His background (mainly conservative talk show host) doesn't seem to fit the legal requirement for the position.  The major farm groups say, in effect, to hell with the law, we want someone who has clout with the President.

Actuaries Don't Risk in Marriage

Flowing Data has an interesting post showing divorce rates by occupation.  Lots of data, but a couple highlights:  the military and farmers both have rates below average.  Generally the high paid professions have the lowest rates. The lowest of all: actuaries.

Technology and Dairy

Dairy Carrie reports spending $20,000 on necklaces for their dairy cows.  These are high-tech jobs, which provide indicators when the cow is in heat (high activity) and is sick (not chewing cud). In a dairy above a certain size, and I'm not sure how large this dairy is but not humongous, the dairyman needs help to keep track of these two critical factors.  (Miss a heat, and the cow is going to lose production, effectively 1/12 of annual production.  That's money, that's the difference between profit and loss.)

Regard for the Career Staff I

President Trump has been slow to fill the slots for political appointees in the executive branch, and Dems have been slow to confirm those he's appointed.  That means the various Secretaries have found themselves dealing with career executives a lot, or working without support.  I've wondered what the effect will be.

In the case of HUD apparently the result has been to raise the civil service in Carson's eyes: GovExec reports that Secretary Carson is praising the career employees at HUD.

Chicken Feed (Sack) Dresses

Slate has a post on a 2009 scholarly article about the use of chicken feed sacks to make clothing back in the day, my day as it happens.  (It's even a thing on Etsy.)

I remember our getting feed in 100 pound bags.  Usually the bags were burlap and were returned back to GLF (the co-op we patronized and my dad was a board member of) for re-use.  But in my earliest memories (1945 or so) there are some cloth bags with patterns.  My sister remembered mom sewing her dresses from them.  The article says such clothes were a sign of poverty, and they certainly were to my sister.

But the times were such that people did re-use things.  I remember scavenging old nails from boards and trying to straighten them so they could be used again.  Mom had a rag bag where the unwearable old clothes went, someday to be pulled from the bag and cut into pieces, possibly for use in a rag rug, or in a quilt.  The innards of the quilt would be another example of re-use: milk strainer flannels. Much to my surprise, a similar thing is still available--description says "gauze" where my memory is of flannel squares.  When pouring a pail of milk into the milk can, you used a large metal funnel with a filter square at the bottom, the filter intended to filter out foreign materials (i.e., manure and bedding) which could have gotten into the milk pail.  (It's not only sausage-making that the layperson wants to remain ignorant of. :-)  Mom would wash the filters, which by regulation could only be used once, and use them for various purposes.  Stitched together they'd be a towel for drying dishes; stacked four or five thick, they'd become the basis for a quilt.

While I think I've adapted pretty well to changes in our culture over the last 70 years, except for pop music, the change in attitude towards material things still bothers me.  What I mean is the way people, perhaps mostly kids, will leave pieces of clothing out--presumably they've lost track of their shoe(s), or socks, or shirt and don't care to spend the time to search them out and retrieve them, and their parents are willing to buy new.  It bothers.