And we're back

I think that I shall never see A windmill lovely as a tree

Perhaps, unless the windmills fall,’ I’ll never see a tree at all

(with apologies to Ogden Nash)

Nothing particularly exciting going on in the Land of The Greens, but I did notice a two things, one specific to Vermont, the other a social/economic phenomenon occurring, from what I read and hear, in every state in our once-great nation.

Vermont first: the inn we stayed at had only and old, faded sign set way back from the road and barely noticeable (we drove by it, the first time) announcing its presence. I was told by the owners that they’d like to move it closer to the road, or at least redo the 20-year-old paint job on the existing one, but the regulatory hurdles they’d have had to surmount made the effort just not worth it. Vermont seems to be run for tourists, now, and for wealthy transplants from “away”. I feel sorry for the business owners trying to make a living, but it’s not really my problem; I do wish we could disenfranchise its citizens, however, and bar them from voting in our national elections.

And then there’s the shortage of willing workers.

We stopped for lunch at a very nice restaurant and were met at the door by the owner, who explained that he had no help, so he could only offer sandwiches and salads. We stayed for sandwiches — very good — and speaking with him as we were leaving he told us that he and his wife (who ran the gift store attached to the restaurant) had tried hiring a cook at $29 per hour, plus benefits: the hiree showed up for three days, and then was a no-show for the next five. When the owner fired him, the sap was outraged: “aren’t you going to give me a chance?” he demanded.

The other person he’d hired was supposed to be a part-time waitress at $180 a week, but after two weeks of working at that rate she’d quit, explaining that she’d learned that $180 a week would put her over the limit for allowable earnings, and so her taxpayer-funded $220 weekly rent payment would be cut off. Even the owner understood that you could’t expect someone to work and pay $40 a week for the privilege, but he did ask, “what is this country coming to?’Beats me, but I’m not optimistic.

Our Vermont hotel owners told us the same story: they were running the place entirely by themselves, because they could entice no one in the local area to work there. Friends of mine in other states and other parts of the country tell me that the local labor pool is either too drugged-up or too comfortable on sky-high welfare benefits, or both, to be stirred from their leisure and go forth to make a living on their own. It’d be great if we could round up these sponges and exchange them on-for-one with carefully screened “newcomers”, but who’d take them?