September - The North Star Monthly

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4 September 2012 The North Star Monthly David Toll, M.D. Pediatrics 1394 Main Street St. Johnsbury, VT 05819 (802) 748-2348 Building & Remodeling Painting & Wallpapering Butter’s Restaurant new hours: Wed & Thurs 7am-8pm Fri & Sat 7am-9pm Sunday Brunch 9am-1pm JAMES F. EMMONS CONSTRUCTION Call Jim (802) 684-3856 1154 Bruce Badger Memorial Hwy, Danville, VT 05828 Fine Art, Fashion & Contemporary Craft by Vermont Artists Miller’s Thumb Gallery Cutting Edge: Art in Fiber, Wood, & Glass Opening Party Sat, Sept 1 from 3 - 5 pm Exhibit runs Sat, Sept 1 - Sun, Sept 23 A gathering of innovative & traditional art created with cutting. With Jason Boyd, Carolyn Buttolph, Vanessa Compton, Judy B. Dales, Sandy Ducharme, Chris Esten, Susan Goodby, Carolyn Guest & Terry Zigmund Open Daily 11 - 4 14 Breezy Ave, Greensboro, VT (802) 533-2045 millersthumbgallery.com When you think insurance... 663 Old Center Road, St. Johnsbury, Vermont 05819 (802) 748-8797 Fax (802) 748-8609 soft serve ice cream coming soon Homecooked meals at affordable prices Family atmosphere that’s community oriented Now open for breakfast 5 days a week! (802) 563-2422 Main Street • Cabot, VT Memory loss? By Isobel P. Swartz On our vacation on Cape Cod this summer, Bob and I noticed how beautifully healthy were the large star-gazer type Lilies, so different from mine in Vermont that had long succumbed to the infamous red lily beetles. These gorgeous flowers, multiple blooms per stem, with a seductive perfume, seemed to be in almost every garden. One garden in particular had a row of tall white lilies that were in full bloom. One day, while beach-combing and enjoying the ocean, Bob suddenly said, “Do you remember what comes after, ’Have you seen a white lily grow…’?” This somewhat off the wall question struck a chord in my memory that took me way back in time to the high school madrigal choir of which I was a member. I did remember some of Ben Johnson’s lovely lyric poem because we sang it, and I remembered some of the interesting words that were new to me at that time — smutch, nard — and I always liked it. Of course I also remembered that Bob had left out a word in the line he quoted that gave it a special emphasis! So all this led to a lot of attempted recollection, discussion and argument, until we could find a copy of the poem. It also led to a walk down memory lane back to that time of my life in a different place and time. This is the exciting part of memory for me, not just facts, but the enhancing details that crowd in when we call those facts to light. I can still remember the early efforts of learning cursive writing, or my multiplication tables, fondly described by my teacher as “mental arithmetic.” What crowds around those events are the smells of our classroom, wooden desks, wax polish, ink (this was before ballpoint pens), pencils and the breath of the boy who sat next to me and chewed erasers all day! Who would wish to deny these bonus gifts? In an article in the New York Times of Aug. 5, 2012 entitled “Don’t Fear the Cybermind,” Harvard Professor of Psychology, Daniel Wegner, wrote about the current movement away from amassing facts in our personal memories to increasing dependence on electronic media. He claimed that knowing where to find information, rather than learning what the information is, is actually expanding our mental reach rather than, what some people fear, making us more stupid. I have to disagree, and in doing so I may be labeled a neo- Luddite, unappreciative of, or rejecting, new technology! This is not true as I see the benefits of modern technology as well as the next nerd, but this is not just about facts. In all the experiments that Dr. Wegner has done, and cites to bolster his theory, he never mentions two things that I think are so fulfilling: the feeling of personal accomplishment in remembering not only facts, formulae and equations, but also the joy of knowing lines of poetry, quotes of Shakespeare and other writers, Bible verses, song lyrics and musical phrases. Secondly, he never mentions the background enrichment that comes with using human memory to access facts as I described above. I am not willing to trade this for Google and Wikipedia. I want it all! I remember how much I disliked having to learn many things by rote in school. Famous speeches from Shakespeare were staple for any British school child, and besides that, I also enjoyed poetry of many kinds and often learned poems by heart just because I liked them. This would be considered taboo in today’s educational systems but studies have shown that memorization can actually improve mental activity with lasting positive effects. I am so glad that I have this fund of information in my head that is the “real” me. I wonder sometimes what fund of quotes my children and grandchildren will have to fall back on when they are older. Some of them will surely remember, “It’s a grand old flag, It’s a high flying flag…,” thanks to Eleanor Belding’s 2nd Grade Flag day celebrations at North Danville School, and the joy of that event. The last paragraph in Daniel Wegner’s article is I think the saddest commentary on his view of memory: “We have all become a great cybermind. As long as we are connected to our machines through talk and keystrokes, we can all be part of the biggest, smartest mind ever. It is only when we are trapped for a moment without our Internet link that we return to our own humble little personal minds, tumbling back to earth from our flotation devices in the cloud.” All I can say is that I am so glad that I was the one who answered Bob’s question about the lilies and not Dr. Wegner, because the discussion that followed, though not smart and final, was rich, worthwhile and lasting. I am also thankful for my “humble little personal mind” that treats me daily to memories that the Internet will never comprehend. Isobel Swartz is an archivist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium. Her columns are a reflection of her interests, concerns and personal history. Life changes. Make sure your insurance keeps up. The road from “single with no worries” to “married with three kids, two cars, a house and a growing business” is shorter than you think. With each of life’s milestones comes new responsibilities, and Sawyer & Ritchie can help make sure your insurance meets your changing needs. From home to auto, life, commercial and more, we’ll be there with the coverage you need. No matter what life brings you. John Blackmore George Coppenrath Sam Kempton This is the exciting part of memory for me, not just facts, but the enhancing details that crowd in when we call those facts to light. INSURANCE 198 Route 2 W. Danville, VT P.O. Box 196 802-684-3411 nwjinsurance.com A DIVISION OF NOYLE W. JOHNSON, INC.
Follow the Money Money Methadone by Rachel Siegel In the 1930s, the bottom fell out of modern capitalism, and the thing that saved us from relentless unemployment was not domestic fiscal policy programs, but the massive spending on defense production during the war that followed. But a common belief in the power of fiscal policy was born, and proved unshakeable for decades. In the 1970s, we had our first prolonged slowing of growth since we emerged victoriously productive from that war. It was accompanied by inflation and extreme, high interest rates. Until then, inflation was thought to be an unfortunate but temporary by-product of demand increasing faster than supply, prompting growth but raising prices. When supply caught up by expanding production and wages, prices would temper and growth continue. But in the 1970s there was inflation without growth, when prices rose but wages did not. In fact, that inflation, caused not by growth but by increases in commodity prices, mainly oil, was keeping the economy from growing. As the price of money rose, high interest rates dampened business investment, while increasing the cost of borrowing for consumption and the return on saving, further discouraging demand, from whence all growth is born. In 1979, the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy, increasing interest rates until the economy slowed, and interest rates and prices began to fall, and eventually inflation stopped. We began a pretty steady couple of decades of growth, albeit after a pretty tough couple of years of recession. The common knowledge evolved that monetary policy had a credible effect on the economy, that the policy of raising interest rates had stopped inflation, that Fed policy was a kind of homeopathic remedy that cured the ailing economy. Now we are again in a prolonged period of slowed growth, but we have no inflation. Prices are not rising, and interest rates are at extreme lows. Central banks all over the world, not just our own, have been trying to use monetary policy to pull us out of global recession. They have been expanding their money supplies through “quantitative easing” and by lowering interest rates. This time, the medicine is not working. It may be that an expansionary monetary policy of a larger money supply and lower interest rates works in theory, but not in practice, because nominal interest rates can only go so low — to zero. Interest rates can be raised infinitely, in theory, so a contractionary monetary policy, as was used in the 1970s, can be applied in a large enough dose, but it can’t work the other way. Or it may be that the effectiveness of monetary policy is a myth. Maybe other factors of the 1980s ended the inflationary spiral and sparked the era’s growth. It may have been the geo-political maneuvering that eventually brought down the price of oil, or the increased productivity from the desktop computer, or the deregulation of the banking industry that opened up new ideas of savings, such as CDs and IRAs, www.northstarmonthly.com September 2012 5 and of debt, such as leveraged buyouts and home equity loans. Or it may have been the large increase in fiscal spending on defense that continued past our victory in the Cold War. Maybe our economic growth really had very little to do with monetary policy at all, and maybe it still doesn’t. Maybe our current recession cannot be cured by low interest rates, a policy that has not worked for years now. In fact, those low rates are causing other problems, which are beginning to surface, like a lack of return on savings. What if our problem, really, was debt — personal, government, and business — and those low interest rates, rather than a “hair of the dog” homeopathy, are acting more like methadone for us debt addicts, easing the pain of withdrawal, but never curing the addiction. Fiscal policy was credited with turning around the depression of the 1930s, only to be discredited years later. Monetary policy has been credited with ending inflation GOODRIDGE LUMBER, INC. White Cedar Log Homes & Log Siding Rough and Finished White Cedar Lumber Decking ● T+V Groove ● Shiplap ● Square Edge Perma-Chink Products for Log Homes www.goodridgelumber.com Bailey-Hazen Road • Route 14 Albany, Vermont 802-755-6298 Superior Cedar Products & Services since 1974 in the 1970s and stimulating growth in the 1980s. But it is not working now, and perhaps it didn’t work even then. If fiscal policy is ineffective, and monetary policy is ineffective, except for the few instances when we coincidentally get lucky with one or the other, which then leads us to misplace faith, then we are back to relying on the greater power of market equilibria, tempered by law or regulation to a range of fortune and misfortune that we can live with. History is written by the victors, and revised by the outliers, who then become mainstream. The rest of us muddle through, somewhat better or worse for the slings and arrows of economic policies. Rachel S. Siegel, CFA, consults on investment portfolio performance and strategy. She is on the faculty of Lyndon State College. Her textbook Personal Finance was recently published by Flatworld Knowledge, Inc., www.flatworldknowledge.com. White cedar from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom! From the time cedar logs enter the sawmill yard until they leave as finished products, the Goodridge family are all actively involved in the manufacturing process and look forward to assisting you with your white cedar project. Goodridge Lumberquality lumber and service since 1974. Bottle Redemption - Daily Lunch Specials - Lottery Tickets The leaves are beginning to fall, but don’t let your septic system fall behind. CALL TODAY 748-9858
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September - The North Star Monthly

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