I kinda sorta want to do this.
Canoelover
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Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca -
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older drivel
On the horns of a dilemma.
I believe in capitalism. Not the Gordon Gecko, how much can we extract, squeeze the workers capitalism…but the more simple Adam Smith dream world where the Invisible Hand makes everything correct itself. In my dream world, there are no Boeskis, no AIG executives, no Madoffs.
In case you didn’t catch it, I know it’s a fiction…that real capitalism is a great concept, just as real socialism is a great concept.
The one place I think capitalism works best is in the micro form, where we all choose, every day, where we decide to put resources (time and money). We try to influence the world by reinforcing good behavior by giving business to local, well-run businesses that are sustainable, and we avoid reinforcing bad behavior by not giving business to poorly-run, nonsustainable businesses (i.e., Walmart).
The dilemma comes when there is a single source for a product that is very desirable, but is so small a niche that there is a virtual monopoly, and the business that produces this product is poorly run and customer-hostile. Such is the case for Steger Mukluks in Ely, Minnesota.
I have owned five or six pair of these fine, fine footwear. They are well-made, and work better for snow and cold than any other footwear I have ever owned. The picture of the mukluks above are NOT Stegers, but you can get the idea.
So I have a pair of their Arctic expedition mukluks that I have had for years, replaced the uppers cause I wore them out, and generally have worn them every day all winter until yesterday, when I finally wore through the heel. These are well-made, mind you. Excellent product.
The trouble is that I don’t want to give Patti Steger another dime of my money. She is customer-hostile. She knows she is a monopoly, and knows it.
The story is that she mis-shipped a pair of mukluks to a friend. Wrong size. Friend called her and said that she sent the wrong size, and would she send the right size, free shipping, and he’d keep the wrong pair and pay for them too, as they were his mother’s size. Patti said “No, we don’t do that.”
So let me get this straight — her mistake lead to a potential sale of an additional pair of boots. She was going to have to pay for return shipping anyway, then pay shipping to send out the right pair of boots. Instead, she pissed off a customer, who made her send a call tag, and cancelled his order. TWO pairs of Steger Mukluks…and she got zero and lost $20 for a call tag.
From my discussions with friends from northern Minnesota, this is not an isolated incident.
Someone tell me why she is still in business.
I have temporarily solved my dilemma. Aquaseal and some small leather patches have allowed me to postpone ordering another pair for the rest of the season, Lord willing.
Anyone want to start a mukluk business? The customer service bar has been set pretty low, we should be able to dominate that market by just being cordial.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
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Non-serif fonts always make things look more menacing…
Ahem.
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI 618 PM CST WED JAN 14 2009 THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR PORTIONS OF EAST CENTRAL WISCONSIN...SOUTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN AND SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN. DAY ONE...TONIGHT BRISK NORTHWEST WINDS IN THE WAKE OF A DEPARTING LOW WILL PRODUCE DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS TONIGHT. WIND CHILLS WILL DROP TO 30 BELOW TO 40 BELOW ZERO LATER THIS EVENING AND OVERNIGHT. A WIND CHILL WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR TONIGHT.
Words don’t suffice.
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Bread again…but this time…
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I love strange signs…
This made me laugh out loud. Of course, agile people should use the stairs, right?
Does anyone else find these sorts of things amusing?
Canoelover
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Whit and Em eat sticky rice and mangos
Whit and Em are two of my favorite young women. Whitney because she is my daughter and is really cool, and Em because she is my friend’s daughter and is really cool. They are quite a pair.
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The Staff of Life
I love bread.
Living in Italy for a couple of years can really sour one on the soft, gooey tasteless loaves that like the shelves of the grocery store. Roman Meal? Any self-suspecting gladiator would fall on their own gladius before eating it. Wonder Bread? Yea, verily. A wonder that anyone would eat it. Pepperidge Farm? They’re growing bread on a farm? I picture a bucolic scene of cement truck-sized mixers making thousands of loaves at a time, with endless ovens that churn out uniform bricks of boredom. Q.E.D.
So we make most of our own bread. Good stuff, freshly ground wheat and all. This loaf I made a few days ago with a recipe given to us by our friend Gennaro.
My bread’s ingredients are:
Flour, water, yeast, and salt.
The ingredients in Wonder Bread are:
Whole wheat flour, water, wheat gluten,
high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil,
salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides,
exthoxylated mono and diglycerides,
sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate,
calcium dioxide, datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar,
yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate),
extracts of malted barley and corn,
dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate,
calcium propionate (to retain freshness).
Simplicity is becoming more and more important to me as I get older. I would submit that somewhere along the line we lost what it means to be a loaf of bread, and we ended up with a cube of chemicals that tastes like nothing. Note the fourth ingredient in Wonder Bread is HFCS. And we wonder why our population is obese…we need to put sweetners in bread to disguise the fact that it contains diammonium phosphate. Ammonia and phosphate? Aren’t those fertilizers?
Maybe, just maybe, we should take out the stuff that isn’t bread. Flour, salt, yeast, and water is all it takes. Everything else just confuses the issue.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
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Recommended reading…
It’s that time again, boys and girls, when I attempt to explain to my non-arctic extended family why I like ice fishing. Simple answer: because if you sit on a bucket out on the ice without a pole in your hand, people know you’re crazy. If you have a pole in your hand, they can’t prove it.
Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It, by Greg Breining and Layne Kennedy. Greg wrote the prose, and Layne the excellent photography. Greg was the guest on Larry Meiller just before me when I did the snowshoeing interview. Excellent Minnesota accent, don’cha know.
From Minnesota Historical Society Press, one of my favorite indy presses in the universe. By direct and feed the dollars to them. They’re a good cause and Amazon doesn’t need the money, I don’t think.
I’m trying to get my rep buddies at PembaServes to go in with me to build an ice shanty since their office is just a block from the lake. They’re a pretty aerobic bunch, but I think I could convince them if I can just get the basics done. I’ll design this fall, build over the Christmas break, and run it out on skids after the New Year. And leave it there until March. It’ll need a heater, generator, and a small B&W TV (requisite). And a well-stocked bar of schnapps. Not for me, but you gotta have it for some reason in an ice shanty. It’s the law.
Respectfully and somewhat frigidly submitted,
Canoelover
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Something tells me…
…my children are still trying to figure out the central tenet of nordic skiing.
Central Tenet: Skis go down.
We’re working on “up” and “down” next.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
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Sledding
We got a new pair of Zipfy sleds. They are marketed as “personal luges.” Machine mortelle is a better description. They are really, really fun. Only two small injuries … my left cheekbone got whacked, and Whitney probably bruised her bum.
We raced, and Whitney veered off into the guardrail while I drove my sled straight and true toward my wife, the camera operator.
Do not try this at home.
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