The Magic Plumbers

Happy Saturday Morning – it’s another busy one after the frenetic days of last weekend – thanks for joining in with today’s Ramblings. Happy Saturday. Now a second cup of coffee. Finish up The Ramblings, post it all, and head for The Open.

Whoops. First I best get the laundry started.

The Open – This afternoon I’ll begin my 2026 Cincinnati Open volunteer gig.
Again, this year I’ll be part of the Hospitality Suites team. I’ll be one tiny (very, very tiny) cog in a lineup of over 1,600 volunteers, spread through 30 unique committees – such as Marshals, ushers, guest hospitality, transportation, and tournament operations. I am absolutely psyched!

Condo life – parts one and two, both on the same day. The day after both the winds and the rains came and more than 130,000 of my fellow citizens lost power.

Part one, our bathroom ceiling had started dripping. No visible leak upstairs I was told. Nevertheless, they called a plumber who checked things out and arranged for a two-man team to come this past Wednesday morning. Upon arrival it took about an hour before they discovered that their tub’s drain toggle switch had been installed upside down. All this is ‘magic’ to me.

Apparently, there is a large plumbing supply house somewhere in town which still carried components for 45-year-old plumbing fixtures. By noon they were done.

Now the opening they carved into our ceiling will stay open for a couple of weeks to ensure that the repair is total.

Which leads to part two.

That previous day, Tuesday afternoon, I required something from our furnace/water heater room. Stepping in it quickly became apparent that my feet were immediately quite wet. Sopping around with towels I took note that the stack pipe where our AC condensation drains was plugged up and overflowing. I shut our AC off, but the units above ours still had their running and everything goes into the same pipe. Grrrr!

It didn’t take long before I figured out that a basin I was able to work under the drain’s ‘gooseneck’ needed to be emptied about every 20 minutes.

I remembered that I had about seven feet of rubber fuel line. By placing the fuel line into the stack and a bucket on the floor next to it, and applying a little suction – voila – I now only required a water dump every hour and a half.

And that is how I went to bed Tuesday night. Every hour and twenty minutes I got up to empty a bucket of water.

I should point out that my scheme was very tiresome on multiple fronts.

When the two plumbers arrived at 8:30 on Wednesday morning it was a bleary, red-eyed, Dirk who hit them up before they even started heading upstairs.

After their upstairs repair, it was my turn and they ended up trying to snake the pipe from the top and from the basement back up. No success.

Eventually they cut the copper pipe adjacent to the ‘gooseneck’, cleaned the blockage, and placed a cuff in case it ever blocked again. Then blew hot water straight from the water heater through it all – this worked beautifully.

What a royal pain! Today I am almost back to normal.

Without Capitalism? – Of late the media’s push appears to highlight a new prominence of folk who have sprung up from nowhere and are doing it with fervor and glee. Had you heard of people such as Zohran Kwame Mamdani, or Abdul El-Sayed who are now being touted as masterfully “progressive” but in fact are far out Socialist?

While that is where the headlines are, people such as Thomas Sowell and Steve Forbes get an inch on page 13 (using old newspaper parlance).

While ‘singing’ the Progressive songbook pushing a heavy handed government, there is no mention of the absolute failure wherever Socialism and Communism is being implemented.

Probably the clearest counterpoint of all comes from a Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973, economist and historian) wrote and published a paper in 1920. Even then it was little noticed, in fact it took decades before it resurfaced. Here is a small piece referencing Mises’ writing, it’s not mine and I do not have the author’s name, but it is about the most precise piece rebutting all of today’s claptrap that I have seen:

“The argument was precise. Mises showed that without private ownership of the means of production, there are no real prices for capital goods. Without prices, you cannot calculate profit and loss. Without profit and loss, economic planners have no way of knowing whether they are creating value or destroying it. They are flying blind, spending real resources with no feedback mechanism telling them whether the factory, the railway, or the grain depot was worth building. Every allocation becomes a guess dressed up as a decree. “

Quotation – “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” ? Gabriel García Márquez (1927 – 2014) Colombian, novelist & Nobel Laureate.

This week’s Interlude – Today’s singer turned 79 earlier this week and a founding member of a band founded in England in the mid-sixties. Starting with one instrument he changed over to another musical instrument. That changeover established the defining sound of the band. Your challenge is to name the artist, the instrument played, and if you can – the name of the song.

If I go on with another line or two this will stop being a contest but become a gift. Okay, one tip then – the ‘defining’ instrument is heard at the end of this clip – a clip with a very unusual start. Have a listen to these few bars and then check the answer below so you can congratulate yourself with your musical knowledge and brilliance.

Remember, no cheating on the answer.

Enjoy!

Life is AMAZING!

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

Worried about the possibility of an Iranian drone attempt on Air Force One as the President was leaving Turkey, a subterfuge plan was set into motion. Boarding Air Force One in full view, and staff and journalists kept unaware, the President was spirited off the plane in a catering delivery vehicle. He then departed on a military plane. Both flights landed in the UK for a refuel stop and President Trump reboarded the big baby-blue Boeing 747.

The question this week is to select the correct other year such a subterfuge plan was put into play:

1. 2000
2. 2011
3. 1986
4. 1995
5. 2021
6. 1964
7. 1946

Last week Bonus Points answer – # 4 & 5
Answer, this week’s Interlude: Ian Anderson, with the band, Jethro Tull: “Thick as a Brick”