Frozen

January 13, 2025

Good morning! When I went outside to shovel I wasn’t anticipating more than a dusting of snow, but as it turned out, about five inches. On the drive back from Minneapolis on Saturday night we encountered 25 miles of that god-awful freezing rain, an apparent oxymoron, but deadly.

The bear is smart to fatten-up in late autumn in preparation for a long slumber during the cold days of winter.

We humans on the other hand, fatten-up (some of us!) foolishly while knowing we must go back to work harder than ever in January, notwithstanding the darkness and the cold.

Does that make us smarter than the bear?

• At high noon one week from today we will get a new President of the United States.
  • This transition from one president to the next was planned back in 1787 — 238 years ago — and has served us well, not perfectly, but well.
  • May this tradition continue without worry or interference or trepidation.
• Depending upon how and when you travel it could cost you an extra $9 to arrive by private vehicle to Manhattan during certain hours of the day — in addition to the  usual bridge and tunnel tolls.
• You thought air conditioning was a big energy user?
  • The ten new so-called data megacenters coming soon just to this area are projected to use more electricity than ALL current Minnesota homes combined.  (Minnesota Tribune, 2025)
• Can you watch or participate in a State funeral such as the one for Jimmy Carter without shedding a tear?
  • I hope not.
  • I thought his grandson, Jason, might have given the best of the five eulogies.
• For sushi and/or sashimi lovers who are among my readers:
  • A restaurant in Japan recently purchased a behemoth 608# tuna for $1,300,000 at auction.
  • Presumably it was fresh, very fresh.
  • Allow for 50% shrinkage; e.g., skin, bones, head, fins, gills, eyes, lips, dehydration, Etc.
  • ~$4,276 per pound for the finest Blue Fin tuna
    • (Please, let’s not have bacon get that expensive!)
  • Which would be approximately $143 per 1/2 ounce serving — which might not be the correct assumption for a serving size
  • Assume no waste after the 50% discount for hanging weight at the fish monger’s vs. yield for customers in 1/2 ounce servings
  • And, the restaurant has to make a profit, so given 35% cost-of-goods in an upscale joint, that tasty morsel is going to cost you right around $400 retail…
  • … plus tax and tip… call it $500 for a bite of that oceanic beast.
  • But, here’s the bad news:  It’s all gone, because this is old news and in order for those morsels to have been fresh, they had to have been consumed last week already.
  • Profit to the restaurant, assuming 8% on the bottom line:  $104,000
  • Risk:  Hyuuuge.
  • Reward:  Medium — but, a nice chunk of change for just one fish.
• I and about 50 others listened late last week to local economists King Banaian and Mana Komai Molle shed light on the local economy.
  • Perhaps most concerning were data indicating a sharp drop dating back to about 2009 in the number of people employed in this fair city (region).
  • And, there is a new trend line based on 15 years of longitudinal data; i.e. no apparent recovery to the previous trend line.
  • What comes first, the chicken or the egg?  The loss of workers, the loss of jobs, or the loss of people and organizations needing and wanting workers?
  • Comparing just two recent data points:  Employment in this region has dropped from a projection of ~134,000 workers on the pre-2009 trend line to…
  • … ~93,000 people employed as of Q3 of 2024.
  • (By the old math, that’s a ~30% decline in the number of projected workers over a ~15-year period.)
  • The post-2009 trend line would have had employment at ~103,000 in Q3 of 2024.  (YT observations, not Banaian/ Molle — and I could easily be wrong)
  • On the macro scale, we just learned 256,000 new jobs were created in December 2024 nationally.  (U.S. Bureau of Labor, 2025)
• I’ve known this HR expert for more than 50 years, though he’s not a client (yet) and I don’t think he’s a reader.
  • I will have to get him signed-up.
  • He retired from his work about a year ago and recently published these thoughts:
    • “What I miss about work…”
      • “Tackling the challenge (of) really complicated, thorny issues…”
      • “The people who really made me smile…”
      • “I miss those moments where I witness team members making new connections… or discovering deeper truths about themselves.”
    • “What I don’t miss about work…”
      • “Exhaustion…”
      • “The people at work who made me sour…”
      • “The tyranny of Outlook… the best part of retirement has been the freedom of time.”  (Kalkman, 2025)
    • Enjoy it, Joe… and you’re still so young.
• What do you suppose is going through the brain — or lack thereof — of the person who uses two or more parking spaces — if even by just a little bit?
  • Or, (_______insert your own personal annoyance(s) here______).