On Giving -- Charity -- December 7, 2024

From a reader on giving:

Today's note to my extended family....

---

Greetings from the Western Front.

Hi all.  It is that time of the year when I'm inclined to focus on matters financial.  In this instance, inheritances and such things.

Take a close read of this link:  https://www.boldin.com/retirement/average-inheritance-how-much-are-retirees-leaving-to-heirs/

Forget about the "average" and focus on the "median".  Then reflect upon the current value of ***, Inc. and the cash each of us has been fortunate to have received over the last several years. 

Obviously each of us has been unbelievably blessed and, with any luck at all, will continue to exceed the median.  You are all "winners" in the lottery of life.

However, this brings with it an unwritten obligation.  Being far more fortunate than the "average bear", it is incumbent upon each of us to support those less fortunate.

In this Christmas season of sharing, I'm asking each of you to look deeply into your soul, count your blessings and do the right thing~

Merry Christmas.

*******************
My reply:  "Indeed."

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The reader's reply:Indeed!

I'm pretty sure this notion isn't exactly in sync with your earlier postings stating, (in effect)  "the best charity is to family".

While I agree with the objective, I wonder at what point it is no longer pertinent.

My guess is that your extended family should, could, and probably does, contribute to the unwashed masses far more than you'll ever confess to!

That's what I'm thinking about the goodness of mankind!

**********************

My reply:

That's a great question ... when does it become no longer pertinent?

Forever and ever folks have talked about "saving for retirement."

I have always hated that concept. I never want to retire. I want to stay active until "the end."

My son-in-law engaged his two adult daughters and me into taking a course on personal finance, and again, the theme was "saving (or investing) for retirement."

I had an epiphany during that home-made course (based on the BYU course in personal finance).

An aside: the BYU course on personal finance is centered on giving, tithing. And the BYU course is the course used by the Harvard Business School as a requirement for all first year students.

The epiphany: for me, the goal is not "saving (investing) for retirement." The goal is to become financially independent -- have enough passive income / mailbox money -- to do the things one wants to do and not have to worry about money.

In a roundabout way, in which I cannot articulate, it's the same thing when it comes to answering your question, "at what point does limiting one's charity to one's extended family" becomes no longer pertinent?

"My extended family" extends well beyond blood relatives and in-laws. The number of folks I remember with gifts (not always money -- because some are not allowed to accept money as gifts) continues to expand.

Recently I sent a check to a friend of the family going to college whose father gives him little/no financial support. Long story how I met him. The first time ever I got a note from the bank that the check seemed suspicious when the individual came into to cash the cash, and wanted to verify if I wrote the check. I had, and the check cleared. First time it ever happened, and it was because the check was significantly larger than what I regularly write.

I give -- in cash -- a significant amount of money every month to an elementary school teacher -- another long story -- she is incredibly thankful for the money, and neither of us really understand why or how this happened. But I've been doing this for two or three years now and my plan is to increase the amount that teacher gets and to continue it as long as I live. I may include in her in "instructions to to the executor of my will." She's not "family" in the true sense of the word but she is certainly "family" to me.

My "giving" is year-round, the season does not make a big difference -- in fact, I have come to dislike the emphasis on celebrities serving one dinner a year to the homeless (which we see every Thanksgiving).

The biggest impediment to giving money by check to large, well-known, charities (including political parties, PETA, etc) is the "mailing list" phenomenon. I would like to donate to Wikipedia but I don't want to end up on their "mailing list." 

My father, RIP, was an incredible philanthropist, but incredibly gullible. He gave enough money -- and this is a true story -- he was told there is a girl's dormitory in some African country that has name on the dormitory. One of my sisters had to actually threaten Lutheran Services with a court order to "cease and desist" meeting with our dad for continued contributions. Had she not stepped in -- no one in the family he was doing this -- he would have bankrupted the family.

The amount of "good work" that can be done by the billionaires in this country is a much bigger story. I recently pointed that out on the blog. Buffett says he plans to give away 90%+ of his wealth.

From November 26, 2024, on the blog:

Philanthropy: at this rate, Buffett will be 150 years old before he gives away his billions. 

Yesterday, it was announced Buffett gave $1.5 billion in BRK stock to his family's charitable foundations. As of October, 2024, Buffett's estimated net worth was $149.7 billion. I guess, like "regular" Americans, it's emotionally difficult to give up one's legacy.

My wife gives a significant amount of money to a family in California that is really, really, really distantly related to us. Another long story. Makes all the difference to them -- last year they wrote to tell us they were able to afford a Christmas present the 9-year-old really, really wanted because of my wife's generosity.

I wouldn't expect to get that kind of feedback from Wiki. I would expect to get put on a "mailing list."

So many stories I could tell about "giving." But I've rambled long enough.

Oh, which reminds me, if one really wants to talk about annual giving, one should see what US Air Force members do when it comes to charity. I assume their method is used by the entire DOD, but I only know about the USAF. That's another huge (positive) story about giving, in which I fully participated.

But, as noted, charity begins at home. My home is getting larger and larger -- see next two examples ...

One last note: I do bring in boxes of yogurt to my dentist and his staff on a regular basis (not quite weekly but at least monthly) -- they don't accept my dental insurance (from my Air Force medical / dental insurance plan) and dental work can be incredibly expensive without insurance -- but they helped me when I had a dental emergency -- and I needed a dentist quickly -- and like the mouse that removed the thorn from the lion's paw, I've become their mouse, bringing them yogurt. LOL. And, yes, the bill was incredibly expensive -- but worth every penny. 

On, and I bring in donuts on a regular basis to the Firestone service center who takes care of our cars. Trivia, but it all adds up.

Bruce

This note not read/re-read for typographical or content errors.

 

Poetry -- From A Reader -- January 28, 2023

From a reader.

Mary had a little Ford
In it she used to frisk
I thought she was a silly girl
Her little *

Hoecakes = Griddle Cakes -- September 11, 2022

From a reader:

Now that I've hit the big time (;>)  Thanks for the blog mention.

...........

We would have cornbread for supper occasionally during the winter.  Breakfast was always a big meal.  Dinner was bigger.  So, by the time supper came around, we were occasionally at wit's end.  When we did cornbread it was always in a 9 x 12 pan.  We served it with whatever ... sausage, bacon, ham, eggs and lots of hot syrup.  The men loved it.  

But, we referred to it as Johnny cake - and never made it to accompany any other meal.

So, when I moved to New Mexico, I discovered cornbread as a more common offering.  Furr's Cafeterias have individual loaves of Jalapeno Cornbread.  You can select that instead of a dinner roll.  It is delicious.  So, the hunt was on and I discovered a recipe in a small booklet previously offered by the local version of MDU.  It was the best cornbread I'd ever eaten.  It has a cup of creamed corn in it and as many chopped jalapenos as you hanker.  I made it for years and then one day some dinner guests (she's from old countryesque Florida, he's a Georgia boy) suggested I melt a stick of butter in my cast iron skillet before adding the batter.  The heavens shone brightly!  Sometimes I just add half a stick - ha!  But you want the skillet preheated and everything mixed and handy.  That butter browns quickly and you have to add the batter instantly before it turns from brown to black.

Felt pretty confident that that was the best cornbread in the world and I can make it in my sleep....

Pride goeth before a fall.

 

------- set up a barbecue place for a [local] family.  This was well underway when I moved here.  He ended up without a share of the restaurant, and they had his recipe.  Grrr.  Anyway - great pork ribs, slabby steak fries.  Best pork ribs I've ever had.  The beef wasn't.

So, after his ouster, he'd opened a little joint in the South Valley - looked like it must have been an old Tastee Freez.  I'd go down there and get meat to go.  There was no place to sit inside.  One day he asked if I'd like a few hoecakes to go with that.  He wasn't chatty - it was a one-man operation, so he was normally busy.  I had no idea what he'd even asked me, but I said "Sure" - because his food was fabulous, so there was no risk.  He just poured 6 or 8 batter circles about the size of a hamburger patty, flipped them and threw them in a sack that normally would have held fries.  To die for.  Not on the menu.

The next time I went down I waited til there was an interval between customers and asked what that magic cornbread was.  Hoecakes like his Mom used to make out in the field was the answer.  I doubt a hoe was involved, but it was probably just some old heavy metal over a wood fire.  The Mexicans have had quite a bit of publicity making tacos/fajitas on old plow discs - same publicist.

He wouldn't have wanted a choregirl, but had he lived longer I would have made myself useful just to watch him and pick up a few pointers

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

I tried various hoecake recipes/techniques years ago and gave up.  Just went back to my big skillet of jalapeno cornbread.  

If you were going to make hoecakes for more than 1 person, you really need a good-sized griddle so I normally just make cornbread for company and freeze a slice for little old me.  A little butter and my trusty black cast iron pan warms it up good as new.  I love cornbread with smoked beef brisket.  

I buy some cheap white cornmeal in a big cardboard box at Smith's (a/k/a Kroger).  It's the best I've found.  Don't know the brand, because I decant it into a sealed container.  It's in an orange and navy blue rectangular box.  About the size of an old cereal box before they got so huge.

1 Cup All Purpose flour

1 Cup Cornmeal

1/4 Cup table sugar

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

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

Stir together:

 2 beaten eggs

1 cup milk 

8 ounces canned creamed corn

2 Tablespoons or more chopped, pickled jalapenos

1/4 Cup shortening, melted

Put dry ingredients in a big bowl.  Have wet ingredients -except melted shortening- stirred together and handy.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

When ready to cook, Heat a 10 inch or larger cast iron skillet on top of the range.  After the pan is hot, melt the shortening and dump it in the wet ingredients. Then add to dry ingreadients in big bowl.  Stir all together.  

Add a stick of butter to the pan and let it get brown and fragrant.  Immediately add the batter.  The butter will bubble up around the edges.  Pop the skillet in the oven and bake about 15 minutes.

...........

Don't substitute oil for the shortening.  Don't bother with any pan other than a cast iron skillet.  Buttermilk is fine instead of milk. Don't use skim milk. I give all the wet ingredients a quick stir into the dry.  You don't want the shortening solidified.  Then I plop the butter in the skillet and finish stirring the batter.  You don't want to overwork the batter - just get it barely combined.  

I've done this outside numerous times.  Just have one side of the grill a little cooler and throw a lid on the skillet.    Actually easier inside, but there's times when you just don't want to crank the oven on - and other times when everybody wants to cook everything outside, whether or not it makes particular sense.

Summer Salad Recipes From A Reader -- May 28, 2022

From a reader:

If you ever do that salad - it's 2 big Delicious apples, one small ripe banana, a generous handful of mini marshmallows, 1/2 cup of chopped pecans or walnuts, and heavy whipped cream just slightly sweetened with powdered sugar and that dash of vanilla.

Only Delicious apples work - and our stores have had every couture apple known to man - Fuji, Gala, etc. etc., and lots of tart green apples - but no Delicious apples.  So, when I saw D's I bought them immediately.  That "salad" was a staple for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  Garnish with a stemmed maraschino cherry to the eternal delight of children and the young at heart.

Anyway, the powdered sugar has a little cornstarch in it, and if you use heavy cream, the salad won't weep.  It's best made no more than a couple hours before eating.  Don't peel the apples.  But if you have it for a noon meal, it'll be perfectly fine for supper.  It tastes great the next day, too, but may look a little glum.

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

Anyway, years ago I was talking to a fellow banker who later became a great friend.  She said she didn't like Waldorf salad.  We were talking about holiday meals.  ND's always had a huge relish tray.  Watermelon pickles, pickled crabapples, pickled beets, a plethora of olives, pickles etc.  She was raised in Florida and that wasn't a thing there.  Well, some years later, she and her husband were guests for Tgiving or Xmas.  She raved about the salad and asked what it was.  I said "Waldorf salad and you don't like it".  We howled.  There is another Waldorf salad made with mayonnaise ... no wonder!  

We're both good cooks and have eaten lots of meals together.  Her Dad had a country store, meat market, gas pump in rural Florida.  Lots of similarities in country cooking even 1800 miles apart.  The difference seems to be that all vegetables there met one of 2 fates.  They were either dredged in cornmeal and fried, or they were thrown in a pot with a ham hock and boiled to smithereens.  In ND, we just creamed everything.  I had told her that we worshipped the first baby lettuce from the garden and made a dressing with cream.... The first time she had that was an epiphanical moment for her.  She had never had creamed green beans nor creamed new potatoes and baby peas until she met me.

So, we creamed everything green.  They either fried it or dissolved it in "pot likker".

Oh - I'm also making calabacitas.  I made the 3 bean salad and went to put it in the fridge - spied the zucchini, and realized I had planned another side dish.  Grill the corn cobs, halve the zucchini and grill that.  Grill onion slices and of course, the green chile is already charred.  Anyway, that stuff all just gets a good char.  I strip the corn from the cob, chop the zukes and onion and actually finish cooking everything in a skillet on the grill.  In the winter I may occasionally skip the grill manuever, but it's a much better dish if each component has been charred. A dear friend of mine's Mom is from a family who's been in NM all 300 years.  She adds a little finely diced carrot and that's lovely.  What a treasure to get to know her.  She's been dead for several years now, but just folded me into her family and let me help in the kitchen.  I was honored and her 3 daughters (4 sons) told me that it was nearly unheard of to be allowed to cook with her.  She taught me lots about traditional NM food.  Guess I'll go buy a carrot - ha!  Not for holiday meals, but at other times, she would garnish the top of the bowl with a small amount of grated white cheese.  I would have happily have made a meal of her calabicitas and a tortilla... or her pinto beans and a tortilla.  They always had a full complement of holiday dishes - ham, turkey, dressing, potatoes, gravy, etc. - but she also added the NM dishes.

Rambling Response To A Reader Regarding The Bakken Blog -- March 24, 2022

A reader commented on my Bakken blog. 

I replied but the reply was too long as a comment. 

So, I have moved that comment here:

The blog started simply because I grew up in Williston, saw several "boom and bust" cycles but was never involved in oil. The closest I ever came to energy was working as a "gopher" one summer with MDU, helping to build and maintain utility lines (think: Glenn Campbell's "Lineman for the County." LOL).

In 2007, I would retire from the USAF; I was aware of the Bakken in Montana and maybe (I forget) some activity in North Dakota). I sensed that somehow this "boom and bust" cycle would be different. I have no idea why I thought that.

But I was really, really curious. I really, really wanted to learn about "oil" was all about. I was going to follow the Bakken but it was going to be with a word document and hyperlinks when I realized doing it in HTML was made for this.

The USAF taught me how "to do" HTML and how to establish a website -- well, actually, a middle-aged civil servant in one of the IT departments gave me a book to read and told me to figure it out myself -- she said it was insanely easy.

And, so with nothing more than a lot of time, the internet, and a website, I started following the Bakken. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about oil, conventional or otherwise, although I had read "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin some years earlier.

Two things happened, which confirmed that I made the correct decision.

One, a few readers started sending me comments anonymously and through direct e-mail which steered me in the right direction. I learned a lot from my readers and still do.

Two, I realized that a lot of mom-and-pop mineral owners probably had no clue what was going on and I wanted to help explain the Bakken at that level. I've said many times on the blog that my level of "reporting" has not improved much since I began. I don't have the resources to do better, but, in fact, that's good: I've tried to keep the writing at a level average mom-and-pop mineral owners can understand.

Since I've began blogging, I've become a much better investor but almost entirely outside of companies drilling in the Bakken. I made some huge investing mistakes early on but was quick enough to get out or move in another direction.

Sometimes one thinks they know too much about their subject which can lead to bad investment decisions. That's the same reason, I have almost no investments in the health care arena even though I spent 30+ years in medicine.

My energy holdings were almost all acquired between 1984 and 1990, well before the Bakken. And if any did well, it was purely serendipity.

So, any "monetary" (investing) interest I might have in the Bakken has absolutely nothing to do with blogging but does have something to do with the altruistic (?) joy I have sharing what I think I know about the Bakken.

Two things:

I am truly humbled when many folks who know this subject much better than I do, actually write me and don't call me an idiot.

Second, I am often embarrassed with regard to what I write that does not pertain to the Bakken and my political views which should not be on the blog. But it's impossible for me not to write some of these things. Having said that, I feel I am much more fair and balanced in my comments; I hope I have grown a bit over the years.

Before I started blogging, I was part of a "Bakken discussion group." I had no minerals, no experience, nothing, and I was pretty much told to leave the discussion group since I was clearly an outsider. I learned a lot from that discussion group but was eventually banned ("kicked off the island" as they said at that time).

Much, much more could be said. My biggest worry now is (not) stepping on the toes of my readers so I'm sure I disappoint others with my wishy-washy comments; or my flip-flopping, but it is what it is.

That's why I have no subscription fee. I don't want to feel I have any conflicts of interests. It's bad enough as it is trying not to step on toes of regular readers.

Much more could be said.

Laundromats -- January 8, 2022

Laundromats were recently in the news.

A reader did some internet searching on laundromats in Mt Vernon, NY, yesterday, and sent me what was found.

My reply:

My dad was going to open a laundromat years ago. Had he done it, it would have been a super-duper laundromat. He never went halfway on his projects. He was the "Harold Hamm" of little projects. LOL.

Except "Hooterville" in Williston. Dad ought an entire block of houses that should have been condemned, but rented them out as is, and did very, very well (based on how long he held that property). The rent was in the range of $50 - $150 / month (in today's money -- LOL --probably a bit of hyperbole but not much).

The city was constantly on his back to bulldoze the entire block and do something else --- anything else --- with that lot, even a big parking lot.

Our family was very, very embarrassed every time they drove by but I don't think anyone in Williston -- except the tax department, city council, and a few real estate agents -- knew who owned it.

Interestingly, he was a very good landlord. A lot of folks had difficulty making even those very small rental payments, and he never evicted anyone and never went after missed rent payments, as far as I know. If so, he wasn't very aggressive.

My hunch: he took a huge tax loss to lower his income tax. I don't know. But he was certainly appreciated by any folks over the years who really had no place to go.

With the boom, the area has been re-built.

Back to the laundromat: had he built that laundromat (that was before the boom) he would have become the Harold Hamm of laundromats in Williston. I don't know if folks recall but during the early days of the boom, "everyone" needed a laundromat.

Dickinson folks recalled Williston as one "big ball of dust."

Ten Best Performing Commodites Of 2021

Link to Alex Kimani. Commodity, 52-week change (2021), in order starting with best performing:

• lithium, 477%
• ethanol, 125%
• coal, 111%
• oat, 90%
• coffee, 78%
• gasoline, 62%
• naphtha, 62%
• propane, 61%
• heating oil, 60%
• crude oil, 58%