Friday, 7:45 AM. –4 degrees, wind SW, calm. Skies mostly clear, and the barometer predicts sunny weather.The typical mid-winter weather pattern is…warmer, snow, cold; warmer, snow, cold… A vehicle is speeding across the ice road toward La Pointe, raising a huge white trail of last night’s snow behind it. By my reckoning we got 7-8 inches of fresh snow. I went to the Chamber after hours last night at the mall on First and Washington, hosted by the Bayfield Regional Conservancy, Superior Body Massage and Spa, Lake Superior Kitchen and Bath, and the Mad-Island Weaver. It was an uncommonly nice reception, food, drink and conversation in abundance. Joan declined to brave the blizzard.
To understand a small town like Bayfield, one must understand its small business climate. Communities like Bayfield, and indeed the entire national economy, rely on small businesses for underlying economic health. Small businesses are a microcosm of the economic and cultural diversity of our society, and provide an opportunity for everyone to succeed (and fail) and so learn business and to follow their dreams, whatever they may be. The small business owner is not waiting for a bailout or a handout or a weekly dole. Our government and big businesses, on the other hand are staffed by graduates of Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Chicago…obviously smart, mostly younger people who are obviously often out of their depth because they have no real experience in the enterprises they oversee. How many auto executives have worked on an assembly line or could design a vehicle; how many agricultural gurus could raise a crop; how many economists have ever negotiated a mortgage; how many bureaucrats have ever had to meet a payroll; our confederacy of dunces is exceedingly great. Most of them should be relegated to standing in the corner until they learn their lessons.
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