Houma home sold

Unless something unforeseen occurs between now and final sale, which, at this moment, appears to be highly unlikely, we have sold our home in Houma.  The home will have a new owner on April 8.  We asked for a two-week extension on the time we need to vacate the home, which the new owner has agreed to.  This gives us a little extra breathing room on the other side.  Our new home in Tracy City, Tennessee has been "nearly finished" since Labor Day last year, and is still not quite ready to be occupied.  The home itself has been finished for some time, but the holdup has been the building of the carport and a small storage building inside the carport.  We are given to understand that the carport is essentially finished, and it's the storage building that awaits completion.  Once completed, we then have to wait an additional 10 days before we are allowed to occupy our new home, or put a single item inside of it.  Once we move our belongings to the new home, Judy will move.  I will need to stay a little longer, since I am obligated to give a minimum of three months notice to the USDA before retiring.  We are looking forward to turning the page to a new chapter in our lives.

The cost of driving a car...more than you may think

Everybody knows that gas prices have gone up sharply as of late...40 cents just in the last month.  My favorite website for tracking gas prices on a nationwide basis is at GasBuddy.  Click on 'Gas Price Maps' at the GasBuddy website and you can get a quick visual of gas prices by county across the nation.  Notwithstanding, fuel costs still represent a small fraction of the total cost of driving a car.  AAA recently published the 2010 Edition of their annual "Your Driving Costs," which considers typical operating costs (gas, maintenance, tires) and ownership costs (insurance, license, registration, vehicle depreciation, and finance charge) for three sizes of sedans (small, medium, large) driven for 10K, 15K, or 20K miles per year.

With rising gas prices, AAA's chart is quickly becoming dated.  Since the price of gas has gone up from the $2.60 per gallon that their chart (pdf file) was based on, to nearly $3.50 per gallon, I adjusted the cost of gas per mile in the AAA chart accordingly and posted the revised numbers in this blog entry (click on chart).  After going through this exercise, I was surprised by four realities: 1) cars are much more expensive to drive than I appreciated, 2) small cars are far cheaper to drive than large cars, and not just because they are more fuel efficient, 3) sharp increases in gas prices do not change the total cost of driving a car, even on a per-mile basis nearly as much as I imagined, and 4) the person driving a car 20K miles per year is paying considerably less per mile than the person driving a similar car only 10K per year.

Biomass meeting and tour in Tennessee

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a biomass meeting in Tennessee last month (February 15-17).  On the third day (Thursday, Feb 17), after two days of meetings in Knoxville, the group had a chance to visit a switchgrass farm and a cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant, both in Vonore, TN, which is about 45 min south of Knoxville.  We were informed that there are just over 5,000 acres of agriculture land now planted to switchgrass in Tennessee.  The nearby ethanol plant is capable of producing 250,000 gallons per year of ethanol from switchgrass, corn cobs, and other cellulosic sources.  More details are available at this link.  There is still a gap (locals called it the "valley of death") between the State and Federal funding of switchgrass production and conversion to ethanol versus actually having a viable, self-sustaining cellulosic ethanol industry.  Further improvements in efficiency are being worked on in several key areas, both on the farms and at the plant.  As a side note, I got a kick out of asking one of the locals how to say the name of the town we were in.  I asked, "Is it Vonore, like 'manure'?"  He replied, "You have to emphasize the first syllable...VON-ore.  It's just like the word, McDonalds.  Here, we say MAC-donalds."

Government shutdown looming

It is looking more and more likely that there will be a Federal Government shutdown early next month, meaning that non-essential government employees, myself included, will be instructed to not show up at work.  The Federal Government is currently funded through a continuing resolution that expires March 4. If Congress fails to either approve the longer-term spending bill or pass another stopgap by the expiration date, most government operations will cease until more funding is approved.  In 1995, Republicans in Congress reached an impasse with President Clinton over elements of the fiscal year 1996 budget which resulted in a government shutdown in November that year.  Threatening a government shutdown is a risky game for Republicans to play.  In 1995, public opinion largely sided with Clinton.  You can be sure that Obama is well aware of that fact.

Here are a couple of articles that popped up on the shutdown: "Government Shutdown: What's at stake" by CNN; Battle over Budget Cuts Raises Specter of Federal Government Shutdown by Fox News.

Here are possible 2012 presidential candidates who favor a shutdown.  Sarah Palin: "A shutdown would force President Barack Obama to work with Republicans."    Tim Pawlenty: "In Minnesota we survived it OK. You don't want to be reckless or irresponsible about it, but there's going to have to be some lines in the sand."  Ron Paul: "I don't think it would hurt one bit."   Newt Gingrich: hearkening back to the 1995 shutdown, ""Everybody in Washington thinks that was a big mistake. They're exactly wrong."

Here are those who do not favor a shutdown.  Mike Huckabee: "I think it is not a good thing.  It means the disruption of a lot of things. It just creates a nightmare. The ideal solution is for people to act like adults...do the jobs they were sent to do."   Michelle Bachmann: among Tea Party politicians, a minority opinion, "That's not going to happen because that won't serve anyone's interest."  Haley Barbour: stated that Republicans should learn the lessons of 1995.  Mitt Romney: could not find any statement where Mitt was quoted on the subject, but assume that he would not favor a government shutdown.

USA Today's analysis of 2010 Census at state level features Louisiana first

USA Today has begun to present local data from the 2010 Census.  Data on population trends and ethnic makeup will be released for each state during the months of February and March, beginning with Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and New Jersey; Louisiana demographics being on display first.

As shown in the 2010 Census, Louisiana's population has had some interesting shifts, heavily driven by natural and man-made disasters.  New Orleans' population has gone from 485,000 (2000) to 343,830 (2010), a 29% drop, thanks largely to Katrina.  The estimated population drop was not this great, so the census was rather revealing.  Relative to its size, the parish (county) most impacted by Katrina was St. Bernard Parish, on the east side of New Orleans, which sustained a 47% drop in population.  All in all, seven parishes lost populations at double-digit rates, while ten parishes gained population at rates above the national average of 4%. Parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans gained the most, with Ascension and Livingston Parishes gaining 40% and 39%, respectively.  While Baton Rouge and surrounding areas gained considerably, and New Orleans shrunk, New Orleans remains the largest city in the State. Terrebonne Parish, where we live, increased by 7%.

Tropical Cyclone Yasi slams into Queensland, Australia

What is being called the "Cyclone of the Century," Yasi is now coursing its way through Queensland. It was reported to be a Category 5 storm as it approached landfall.  In its wake, it dealt a powerful "blow" to the midsection of the Australia sugarcane industry, causing world sugar futures prices to reach 30-year-high levels.  Australia is the 3rd largest exporter of sugar in the world.  I have had the good fortune of visiting Queensland twice during my career.  Between the two trips, I have been lucky enough to have traveled by road from Cape Tribulation near the top of Queensland, all the way south to Mackay, then by air to Bundaberg and eventually to Brisbane. Queensland is indeed a very large state.  So to see the size of Cyclone Yasi relative to the size of Queensland, for me, was amazing.  Yasi came on shore just south of Cairns where Dr. Anna Hale and I recently visited (see blog entry "Trip to Australia," dated 30 Aug 2009).  The life cycle of sugarcane in Australia in early February, would be equivalent to our sugarcane in early August.  Like our sugarcane, the greatest damage from a storm like this will probably be more from the water than from the wind, water that sugarcane farmers in Australia certainly didn't need, considering the extensive flooding that they have already experienced.  Something to remember when looking at the path of a cyclone south of the equator, is that the south side is the "bad" side, as it travels from east to west.  Intuitively, we would think of it as being on the north side,  but a southern cyclone spins clockwise, causing the surge of water to be on the opposite side from what we normally expect.  The last word I heard is that Cairns came through this major storm better than most expected.  Residents of Cairns and surrounding communities were benefited by being on the "good" side of the storm.  Further south at Mission Beach, which took the most direct hit, the devastation has been described as "apocalyptic."  The coastal town of Cardwell, a few kilometers south of Mission Beach, was described as having been "wiped off the map."

Tew's Life on the Bayou - a retrospective view

It has been nearly three years since I began this blog.  This is my 191st entry in 35 months, meaning that, from the beginning, I have averaged a little over five blogs a month (≈1/wk).  My output has gone down some from year one.  My goal this year and beyond is to level off at about one entry per week. With my anemic start this year, I'm going to have to step it up a bit, just to meet this goal.

One question that I have thought about (and I'm sure I'm not alone as a blogger in asking this), "Now that Facebook has become such a universal phenomenon, what role does a blog serve that social networking doesn't presently serve?"  To me, this is a valid question, but I think there is an obvious answer.  And it has to do with the intended permanence of each entry.  Facebook is a place for spontaneous expression of feelings and thoughts (perhaps like a fleeting telephone conversation), whereas, a blog entry is generally much more thought out (like a carefully drafted letter to a friend you haven't written to in some time).

I believe my blogs have inevitably given some insight into my life and interests.  This may be largely beneficial only to my own posterity, but that is as it should be.  Occasionally, it has been self instructive.  For example, I was taken aback by revisiting my 5 Jan 2009, "50 things I would like to do" entry.  I quickly realized that, even if I only accomplished 1/10 of what is on this list, I would be doing well.

It's interesting to me that my work-related blog entries have come in handy on several occasions.  For example, the freeze we had a year ago was rather harsh, and now there is some evidence that the severe winter we had one year ago may have had a greater adverse impact on USDA-bred sugarcane varieties as a whole, than on LSU-bred varieties (that must pass through early selection stages in a more northerly environment).  To illustrate the severity of the freezing conditions a year ago, I have referred back to the graph I put together for the 12 Jan 2010 (Freezing on the Bayou) entry.  Being in the blogosphere, the graph is readily available, even when I am away from my own personal computer.

I anticipate using my blog more for documentation purposes in the future.  Certainly, my previous blog to this one, dated 8 Jan 2011, "Excess sugarcane bagasse -- what to do with it," was done with documentation in mind.  I'm not going to be sitting up in the middle of the night, wondering why I am blogging when I am aware that only a tiny handful of people are going to be reading my blogs anyway.  I know a few faithful followers, probably mostly family, will keep reading my blogs, and I genuinely do appreciate your responses.  Feedback is always welcomed.  I will try to keep my blogs varied, and will likely shift them toward being more family oriented in the future. 

I wish this had been my first blog of the year, but I can't reverse the order now...so we move forward.  If this one seems a bit scatter shot, remember that I am recovering from a pretty severe cold, and my head isn't fully clear yet.