The Cost of Living

     In 1974 you could buy a Quarter Pounder with Cheese at McDonalds for 70 cents. The national minimum wage in the United States in 1974 was $2.00 an hour.

    In 2023 you can buy a Quarter Pounder with Cheese for $4.29 up to $7.09 (give or take, depending on what State you live in). The average price is $5.34. In 2023 the national minimum wage is $7.25.

    Using the average Quarter Pounder with Cheese price, that means the price of the sandwich increased 664% between 1974 and 2003. (The full range is between 512% to 912%). 

The National Minimum Wage increase from $2.00 to $7.25 is only a rise of 262%.

    This bare bones in a nutshell example gives us a good insight into the cost-of-living crisis. It is not a new crisis. It is not a recent thing. It has been going on all of our lives, we were just too distracted to see it. 

The Long Weekend

     A major storm blew through Louisville on Friday. Our Governor here in Kentucky declared a Statewide Emergency even before the storm hit town. It knocked out the electricity at our apartment complex for hours. It also killed the Internet and Cable for the area. 

    We were lucky in that we didn't lose power for days like some people did. All we did was suffer from Internet withdrawal, Netflix Cold Turkey, and the loss of the Cable news channels. It was truly eye opening for me to realize just how much a part of our lives television and the Internet have become. 

    No Internet means that you cannot surf the web, look up recipes, find game walk-thrus, check the weather, check for status updates, or update people on what is going on. No Wi-Fi either. If you have a VOIP home phone, you can't use it, because it needs the Internet to work. Unless you have the Internet on your smartphone, you are completely cut off. 

    Not having cable television means that you can't watch broadcast TV at all. The days are gone when we could bring out the trusty Rabbit Ears Antenna to *try* and get a local broadcast station to come in on the tube. I don't believe that many people these days even have those old antennas. Heck, I'd be surprised if most of you have aluminum foil in your kitchen since that can't be used in a Microwave. 😏

Those services are *finally* back on after being down since Friday afternoon. 

    For us, it was a long weekend of watching DVDs and playing Klondike Solitaire on my computer. Most of the games I like to play are online. A lot of things I assumed that I could do on my computer while the Internet was down, well, it turned out I could not do those things without an Internet connection; Programs, apps, documents, spreadsheets, most are on the web and stored on the cloud. I had no idea that some of my programs would not run without an Internet connection. I thought that they would load and run because they are installed on my computer. It turns out that isn't always the way it works.

    It is just me and my 89-year-old here at our apartment. We don't have any family around, and no social friends anymore. The pandemic, and age, distance, change of lifestyle, and most of our lifelong friends have left the world, these are all part of why we are much more isolated than we ever were in our younger lives. Things change, people change, and lifestyle changes. It happens to everyone. When you have people around, you can talk, do things, play boardgames, go outside and throw a frisbee. When you are older, you are not going outside to throw a frisbee. 

    Dad and I, we are not the type of people to sit and play a game of Monopoly with just the two of us. Not that we'd ever play it even if 20 people were here, but you understand my meaning; Not everyone who lives together can play together. 

    I sat down and read books until my eyes were too tired to read. I played Solitaire on my computer, cleaned the house, cooked, ate, and stared at my Internet Router trying to make the light turn from red to blue. It finally did 48 hours after I began staring at it.

    The Internet and cable television are now a part of who we are and what we do. I realized that fully over this long weekend. We are addicts of a type. We allowed those things to integrated into our psyche and lifestyle so completely that we didn't expect the outage to cause us that much angst and boredom. It did, surprising so. I am not sure how to get ourselves back to the mindset of the past when we didn't have all that. We could easily live and dream and breath without the Internet or Cable TV. It is not so simple anymore for us to do that.

    Strange how we let that happen to ourselves. But it did, and here we are. Thankfully it is all back on again. Now we can sit down and stare at the television and computer monitor happily, without a care in the world. 

Life is funny, isn't it.

Best to you all,

M.W. Van Dyke

Spare the Rod — Or Maybe Just Use It on Adults Instead?

Some very loud adults are calling for the return of corporal punishment in schools. The funny thing? It never really left in some states. And for those of us who lived through it, well… let’s just say, it wasn’t exactly a golden age of discipline.

The Era of Community-Wide Spanking

I grew up in a time when corporal punishment was part of everyday life — not just in schools, but anywhere people felt it was necessary. Parents would spank their kids in public, and strangers could step in to deliver discipline too. Yep, you read that right — random adults, including those with no children of their own, could and did hit other people’s kids. It was the Wild West of child discipline.

A Tale of Unjust Punishment

I endured a lot of corporal punishment at school. And when I say a lot, I mean way more than the average kid. Most students never got paddled, and those who did maybe experienced it once or twice. Me? Let’s just say I was above the curve — but nowhere near the top. Some kids had it way worse.

One punishment stands out vividly. A girl in my class thought she heard me say a dirty word. She told the teacher, who told the principal, who then marched in with two other adults, demanding I follow them. I was innocent — I hadn’t said a bad word. But they didn’t care. They never let me confront my accuser. They just took her word for it.

I refused to "assume the position." The school called my mother, telling her I’d be expelled if I didn’t submit. My mom stood by me, thankfully, and pulled me out of that school. The next day, I was enrolled at St. Vincent’s Episcopal School. During my years there, I was only spanked once. Thank God there were no nuns—otherwise, I’d have had a much harder time. Catholic-Lite, as I call Episcopalians: no nuns, no confession, and, amusingly enough, the priests could have Playboy magazines in their offices, and nobody batted an eye.

My Stance on Corporal Punishment

You might think this would make me vehemently opposed to corporal punishment. Not exactly. I do think it should be allowed in certain cases. But here’s my caveat: If we allow it for children, we should also enforce it for adults.

If a kid acts up so badly that spanking is necessary, their parents should be called in and punished too. After all, if they failed at raising their child, why should only the kid suffer?

And why stop there? If corporal punishment is good enough for kids, why isn’t it part of the legal system? I’m not saying we should bring back scourging or implement full-blown caning — but a paddling or a well-placed hickory switch? Adults might straighten up real fast.

Selective Endorsements?

It’s easy to say, “We need to bring back corporal punishment!” when you’ve aged out of it and it no longer applies to you. That’s not support — it’s just passing the punishment down to the next generation.

Spare the rod, spoil the child? Well, considering most adults these days are acting like children… maybe the rod shouldn’t be spared just because someone hit 18.

Of course, some people enjoy being spanked, so for them, the real punishment should be watching The Cat in the Hat (2003) with Mike Myers — while transcribing every terrible line for 12 straight hours. Now that would be justice.

Have a good day!

M. W. Van Dyke