ILLUSIONS

Tuesday, 8:45 AM.  11 degrees F, wind WSW, light.  The sky is mostly overcast but low clouds are moving and it will probably clear later, although the sun is presently hidden.  The humidity is 78%, the barometer steady at 39.26 in.
    Yesterday was pretty much another cold, stay-indoors day, but driving to the IGA in Washburn at about 3:30 PM we had a surprise encounter with four deer in the middle of Hwy. 13, about eight miles south of Bayfield.  I can think of no good reason for them to have been out and about at that time of day, at this time of the year, unless they were being chased by something, which did not seem to be the case.  Go figure.
    Buddy keeps bringing home frozen loaves of French bread which he is evidently digging out of a snow bank somewhere nearby.  He is quite distressed when I won’t let him bring them in the house.  I suppose a neighbor is feeding the birds and squirrels with stale bread.  Or, maybe a bakery truck turned over…no evidence of that, however.  Perhaps Buddy is really a French, not an English pointer, and we should get him a beret. 
    I see that the government has decided not to mint trillion dollar platinum coins to finance the public debt.  That’s a good thing.  Now if they would stop printing worthless paper money that would be even better.  Go to “The Ticker” web site for an erudite if fantastical discussion of monetary theory, which sloughs off the whole controversy of the national debt with the statement that “money is nothing more than a shared illusion.” That may well be, but I fear that illusory dollars will soon buy only illusory food, fuel and clothing.