The War Horse

Does the house in the picture look fairly comfortable to you? It looks like the fellow at the entrance is happy enough. The house is also well situated with plenty of shade and nice scenery. Well, this is a replica of Henry David Thoreau's house at Walden Pond. In his book he describes it as being "tight shingled and plastered,ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight foot posts, with a garret(attic) and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite." There's no mention of a bathroom, but it looks to me like Henry probably did things "wild bear style".
Henry goes on to say that he built the house himself (free labor), and the total cost was $28.12. Based on the size at 150 square feet, he paid a little under nineteen cents per square foot. You may have seen my recent post on Bill Gates' house in Seattle. I did a little research and found that the estimated value of Bill's house today is 97 million dollars, but to be fair let's use the 1997 tax value of $53,392,200 and square footage of about 66,000 . Bill's cost per square foot is a tad higher than Henry's 19 cents--- more like $808.97 or 4,257 times higher. Granted that inflation must be considered, but if Jimmy Carter had been president every year since Thoreau, it still wouldn't come close to being on a par.
The statistic that would really be the eye opener though is that we could build 1,898,726 houses like Henry's for the same amount of money that Bill spent. I will never forget a friend of mine, commenting on pretentious houses, saying that "you can only live in one room at a time." Henry may have been a little extreme, but what about Bill?! In looking at population figures for 2004, for what Bill spent we could build a house like Henry's for every resident of Philadelphia plus Atlanta and still have money left over for 20,547 more houses!( Or you could say that inflation differences on materials would balance this out to zero)
OK- here's the action plan. I have a friend whose daughter is just starting work at Microsoft in Seattle. We can get her to present these numbers to Bill, and then he can call Jimmy Carter (I mentioned him before, didn't I?) who is very active in Habitat for Humanity to get a project started on this. Since my friend's daughter is a recruiter in the HR department, she can either be a hero or will have great contacts in her new job search!
Well, let's just be happy that the rest of us are somewhere in between. Hey honey, is there any newspaper left in the backyard facilities?

We have had Lucy the WonderDog for a number of months and figure that she is about two years old. I'm sure that she wandered around for months before ending up at the animal shelter, then the adoption folks, and finally us. Well, today she had her first real bath. My wife had me to hold her in the bathtub in our hall bath. (That's a bathroom that I'm not allowed to use). The WonderDog looked at us like we were crazy to be putting her in a slippery enclosed area and dousing her with water. My wife later commented that the runoff water did not even look that dirty. (That's because this dog is a great licker!) Maybe the rest of us should get away from these baths every day, and try different frequencies until we find the best combination of cleanliness and water savings. Since I went to college in the 60's, I think I've already tried once every four years. Let me know what your best frequency turns out to be. Has anyone seen the Right Guard?

Maybe I should do more things to simplify life like Thoreau tried to do. Too bad that can't include elimination of tax filing which he never had to do and would try a little Civil Disobedience with I suspect! Uncle Sam needs to do something new to cut back on all this hassle. I would like to really understand the pros and cons of a flat tax--- sorry, that would be way too simple, and rich folks would have a fit! Oh well, as the great Southern philosophers tend to conclude---- Love it or leave it!

"Things do not change; we change."
--- Henry David Thoreau

See you later.

Tim