eBay—

Recently I joined 40 plus folks in a 30 person-size room at the Lexington Library for a formal peek at this phenomenon of on-line buying and selling in an auction format.

Ponder this: The company was founded in 1995 and finished the year 2006 with 13 billion (yes, billion) dollars in sales.

At any given time there are likely more than 100 million items available for sale, world-wide of course.

They sell a digital camera every minute.

A fork lift usually goes in about 4 hours.

In August 2006 they sold their two millionth passenger vehicle on line.

The most expensive item ever sold there—a Gulfstream II corporate airplane that went for 4.9 million bucks in August 2001.

They make their money with listing and sales fees—fairly modest ones at that. For example; say you want to sell a digital camera for a $60 asking price. Your “Insertion Fee” to place your ad would be $2.40.

If the item sells, you are charged a final value fee. Using an example from their web site; this camera sells for say, $153. Your final sales fee would be $5.47. Add that to your listing fee of 2.40 and you have a cost of $7.87 to sell your $153 dollar item.

And, the buyer pays shipping fees which are not included in the above sample.

To smooth the flow of dollars from buyer to seller, most folks use a firm called Pay Pal (also owned by eBay). Once registered there, buyers and sellers have a cashless society where transactions are near instant and secure.

I don’t know if they included the Pay Pal fees in the above example but in another sample they indicated a Pay Pal fee of $2.04 on a $52 sale.

Even the US Postal Service has gotten into the action. Recognizing the huge benefit in business from eBay they offer sellers free shipping boxes and, you can purchase and print postage and labels on your home computer.

I feel inspired to go poke around in the attic. But, alas, I do not have one of those.

Just my luck.

George Kmet, left and brother Ted on the Bridge of Dreams, Brinkhaven, OH

ON THE MOHICAN VALLEY TRAIL--

I thought I heard Ted Kmet say something about a goat while he was bicycling ahead of his brother George and me on a back road into Brinkhaven.

Sure enough, around a little bend in the road there was Ted taking pictures of—a goat tethered in the weeds. It seemed like an obliging critter so I stopped for a picture as well only to have my attention diverted by the prompt arrival of a domesticated turkey.

The turkey squawked a lot but I quickly concluded it was just trying to hustle us out of a snack as it applied a huge dose of turkey curiosity to my reclining mountain bike. I hoped there was not some questionable fondness developing.

It was one of those delightful days for a bike ride. It looked like God spilled deep blue paint on the sky when we launched earlier in Danville and rode the crushed gravel, Mohican Valley Trail about 5 mostly wooded miles to Brinkhaven.

Mountain bikes were the correct choice with their wide knobby tires.

As you approach the Mohican River crossing at Brinkhaven a delightful covered bridge comes into view; The Bridge of Dreams, which, at 370 feet is the longest covered bridge in Ohio.

Its name came from it just being a “dream” when it was conceived in 1990 by an energetic bunch of local volunteers. It was dedicated in 1999.

This trail connects the very nice Kokosing Gap Trail which has 14 miles of smooth pavement from Mt. Vernon to Danville with the Holmes County Trail which is under construction.

We were working our way between those trails when our “zoo” visit broke out.

Eventually, folks will be able to ride from Mt. Vernon to Millersburg.

While Amish buggies do not use the paved Kokosing trail there is ample evidence of their use between Danville and Brinkhaven. I noticed the hoof prints and buggy tracks and could imagine a scratchy clip-clop as a family of that timeless culture made their way through this bucolic setting.

Thanks God for a delightful venue and good friends to share it with.

BOOK REPORT and more—

The Great Depression by Lee Cavin

Close friend Nancy Kulka loaned me her autographed copy of this delightful little book and I devoured it—with pleasure. It is about a young man’s life growing up in downtown Mansfield at the height of the depression in the early 1930s.

I grew up near downtown through the 40’s and 50’s so the read was a serious dose of warm nostalgia. I knew about virtually every place he mentioned. I caught crawdads in some of the same creeks he did.

When I finished the read I didn’t want to put the book down. Somehow that would break the spell.

Then, I noticed on one of the cover pages it had a copyright in 1997 and was published in Loudonville. I checked the phone book and—there he was.

Shortly I was treated to a marvelous conversation with an 86 year old fellow whose gravelly voice, with a smile at every punctuation mark, swiftly turned my read into a glowing personal experience.

We reminisced at length at our boyhood experiences which failed to overlap by just a decade or so.

Turns out he writes a column to this day in the Loudonville Times called “Conversations”. The most recent was number 1,119; all this the result of a temporary job he took there years ago which included a three year stint as editor.

Somehow I feel a visit to Loudonville coming soon. Do it forthwith he implied with that voice wrapped in a smile.

I think he has lots of other things to tell me.

GIVE IT UP SENATOR CRAIG—

US Senator Larry Craig (R) Idaho now wants to withdraw his guilty plea in a wretched effort to salvage his political career.

Recently he was caught in a police sting operation involving deviant behavior in a restroom at the Minneapolis airport.

He now says he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him.

Frankly Senator, I’ve watched and listened to your explanations. I’ve also paid careful attention to published and broadcast remarks by the officer involved in your arrest.

Frankly, I believe the police officer.

And, I can understand your guilty plea. You were caught with your pants down. It happened far from the spotlight of the national media. With a quick, quiet guilty plea you hoped to slither on down the road while this sordid event dissolved into history.

Except it didn’t work that way.

Word got out and your Senate colleagues stripped you of all your prestigious committee assignments. A formal investigation by a Senate ethics panel is pending.

No doubt, with an eye on preserving your golden parachute of Senate retirement benefits, you resigned.

That was the correct decision. Leave it alone—and leave.

KINGWOOD CENTER—

This 47 acre horticultural estate continues to be one of the Mansfield area’s premier attractions. The mansion, pictured above, was built in 1926 for Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kelly King.

King was hired as the Ohio Brass Company’s first electrical engineer in 1893. He led the company to being a leader in the manufacturing of electrical fittings for railroads and trolleys, finally serving as the company’s president and chairman of the board.

The estate was opened as a public garden in 1953, one year after Mr. King’s death.

In addition to the wide variety of outdoor gardens punctuated by a delightful collection of water features the facility does many programs. Recent examples include; Botanical Illustration, Heiretzu—the Japanese one-row style, Butterfly Gardening, Incredible, Edible Flowers and, Harvesting and Drying Flowers and Foliages.

All annual plants used on the grounds are cultivated in the facility’s expansive greenhouses.

Further, Kingwood contains an 8,500 volume library; known as one of the best gardening libraries in Ohio. And, it is a lending library with its catalog integrated with that of the Mansfield-Richland County Public Library.

Spend a few hours there from time to time. It’s like giving yourself a present.

They are on the web here: http://www.kingwoodcenter.org/

Photography Note: The intense blue sky was achieved with the use of a polarizing filter. Two large trees in front of the mansion now mostly block the building from view far enough south to include some of the lawn and gardens in the foreground. This photo was done close under one of those trees with a wide angle lens then the skew function of Photoshop was used to correct the vertical distortion.

QUIRKS OF GEOGRAPHY—

When you are in Texarkana, TX you are closer to Chicago than El Paso. It’s 679 miles to Chicago and 733 to El Paso. Texas truly is a big state.

California is west of Nevada. Yet, Carson City, Nevada’s capital, is west of Los Angeles.

When you leave downtown Detroit to the south, what is the next political subdivision you will enter? Yup, Canada—even though everyone knows Canada is our neighbor to the north.

Jacksonville, FL is on the east coast, yet, it is actually west of Pittsburg, PA which itself is 315 miles west of New York City which also is on the east coast. Hmmm.

And, one of my favorites: The Panama Canal is in the country of Panama. The canal connects the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The ocean is to Panama’s west and the sea to its east. When you are traveling through the canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean, then, what direction are you headed? East you say? Nope, you are actually headed northwest.

Goodnight.

WEBWORMS cont.—

After I posted Friday’s blog Max and I took our usual morning hike. First we were treated to the visual candy of the sunrise in the southwest woods (top).

Then, in the larger picture the sun is just piercing the top of this walnut tree below the dam. The infestation of webworms is made readily apparent by their silvery cocoons.

Clearly, they also have nearly defoliated the top of this tree.

Fortunately, the percentage of infestation is much less in the lower 2/3 of the canopy. Besides, the walnut trees already are beginning to shed their leaves in the natural, annual cycle so I believe it is unlikely there is any lasting damage.

As you also can see, we are expecting a good crop of walnuts this year.

One 15 minute walk in the woods—two dramatically different views; both, tiny parts of nature’s natural splendor.