Delighted and Dismayed

Delightful and dismaying things are happening.

Starting with delightful, the same day I posted “Plastic Bags,” a gift bag appeared at the door. It was from my friend and neighbor Laurie and it contained a “Plastic Bag and Bottle Dryer.”

Oh, this is great! Now I have a place to dry smaller freezer and storage bags that I use again and again until they spring leaks. Laurie is a plastic bag saver, too, and she has one of these in her kitchen. She said she had purchased my dryer some time ago and was waiting for the right occasion to give it to me. When she read “Plastic Bags,” she thought the time was right.

Then I heard on the evening news that Apple will build a $100 million manufacturing plant in the United States. Oh, boy, that made me so happy. I worry a lot about people who lost jobs to outsourcing and I’ve been down on Apple because all their devices are made in China. Now American workers would be making them. A little research, though, left me disappointed. In the new plant robots will make Macintosh computers! The only jobs for American workers will be the health care of robots. So that was dismaying, although I already knew that new manufacturing plants employ far more robots than human beings.

More encouraging, though, is an article in the December issue of the Atlantic, titled “The Insourcing Boom.” Most of the article is about General Electric, which is moving more and more of its manufacturing back to its Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, after many years of off-shore production. Several trends account for this reversal, including the cost of shipping, rising Chinese wages, and the natural gas boom that makes running a factory in the United States more affordable. The bottom line is more jobs for unemployed Americans.

Another delight was using the last of the late Thanksgiving turkey in soup. We were growing tired of left-overs, but this soup tastes nothing like a left-over. In addition to turkey and turkey broth, I used onions, celery, carrots, turnips, kale and the almost pesto I make and freeze every summer. (Almost pesto is fresh basil, garlic and olive oil whirled in the food processor.)

All in all, things are looking good and I’m grateful.

Copyright 2012 by Shirley Domer