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Dear Shareholder:
High-Tech, Low-Tech: This is being written from the front porch of our farm, a place we call The Close, situated in a loop of the Rockcastle River in eastern Pulaski County. We have owned the place about thirty years and have given most of it to the Episcopal Church to be used as a small retreat center. The property boundary, in all directions, borders with the Boone National Forest. On two of the three sides, surrounded by a two hundred foot deep river gorge, there are white water rapids, which are roaring with the spring runoff. The temperature is about 65 degrees and rising, birds are working busily at the feeder with a nuthatch winning most of the arguments, a breeze is blowing the forsythia, which is in glorious full bloom, and in the last hour the Dow is down, bonds are almost unchanged and the NASDAQ is up, up, up! The NASDAQ is up thanks to tech stocks, of course. I'm getting pretty sick of tech stocks, what with my constantly warning people that price multiples of a thousand divided by zero are insane, and still the darn things keep right on going up. It's frustrating.
So Clara and I have come down here to get away from high-tech! And this is the place to do it. When we bought this farm there was no electricity service, no water and no telephone. Somehow, we had to figure how to provide the basic comforts without public utilities. It wasn't easy. To get water you have to have electricity to run a pump. Of course, I guess you could carry it up from the river, but who wants to do that?
So we bought a generator to pump water. Then we had to hang a submersible pump. Tricky, but an engineer for a plumbing supply outfit had the patience to sit down with me and show me how to do it. My brother, a mining engineer by degree, explained how to wire the generator for both 110 and 220 volts. With the pump submerged, the tank elevated and the generator wired we were in business, all without needing services from any utility. Strictly low-tech country living.
Oh yes, we heat water and run cooking stoves with LP gas. But the slickest trick of all is we also refrigerate with LP gas. That's right, a gas flame cools a refrigerator and does it very efficiently. Makes ice, does it all. These new things are much better than the old gas refrigerators of the 1960's.
But one of the biggest surprises for us is how much more sophisticated the small generators are that can be bought today. We have a small 1000-watt model that will run all the lights in the house for nine hours on a half gallon of gas. And it has a neat little cutoff device if oil gets low. But perhaps most amazing is a 5000-watt generator, big enough to run the house and an air conditioner, and the thing can be turned on and off remotely from the house. No more going out to the tool house to turn the thing on or off on cold winter evenings! No sir! We just sit here, warm and comfy, in our low-tech country place and enjoy the world the same way the cave man did ten thousand years ago. High-tech is not all its cracked up to be.
Speaking of warm, did you know they now have wood stoves with thermostats and catalytic converters that get almost 80% of the BTU's out of wood and into the room, and it will burn all night? Who needs a high-tech gas furnace or electric heat with all those finicky thermostats? This is a lot simpler life. Good old woodstove heat.
And how about TV? Do you think we are going to fool with TV down here in these woods? Heck no! TV is just another great big high-tech bother. We listen to the radio, just like folks did in the good old days; back when the stock market acted normal. They've got some good radios these days. Ours is a SONY ICF-2003 AM, FM, LW, MW, SW computerized receiver. You can pull in the whole world, preset twenty stations, and scan the whole thing automatically to find something interesting. Who needs all that TV high-tech? Not us!
Everybody has gone hog-wild crazy about our high-tech future and I'm just sitting here going low-tech and having fun. Speaking of fun, my Springer Spaniel "Babe" likes to lie out under the shade tree next to where we park our 4x SUV. (Just a farm truck, really.) Well, we have one of those key flippers that honks the horn when you push it, even if you are fairly far away. You have never seen anything quite as startled as that old dog when I honk that horn at him, and I'm sittin' on the front porch. You talk about good old country low-tech fun; that's it.
It's great to be away from the office and that complicated phone system that blinks at you, has "voice mail" as well as "hold", "transfer" and "hands free" buttons. The market quotes I gave you a little earlier are courtesy of my cell phone; just a little hand held thing that's simple as pie to use.
Well, I guess I'll shut down this little Toshiba Tecra 550CDT laptop and say goodnight. The Peepers are peeping, hoot owls are hollerin' and I'm sleepy. It's just like nothing has changed for a hundred years down here. High-tech? Bah! (Wonder if the office needs me to Email this letter in?)
Looks like the Fed/Stock Market Shootout is about to get serious: Chairman Greenspan seems to be indicating he is going to keep raising rates until "irrational exuberance" in the stock markets goes away. The question for all of us is "who is going to get hurt the most in this impending shoot-out?" The "new agers" say rising interest rates don't bother them. The Dow companies are bothered though. And I would guess the bond market may have a few bad days before it's over, but then maybe not. The bond market has actually been up since the last Fed Raise. My advice is to buy Dow stocks and quality bonds on the down ticks, and if you can't leave tech stocks alone, at least be prepared to run when you hear the fire alarm!
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