Save money by spending?

I just received a message from AbeBooks about saving money by buying now.  Um!  Sorry, but I don't see how buying books now will save me money when I already have several unread books.  The best way to save money is to not spend it.

That makes me think of Menard's slogan, "Save Big Money".  Same argument about spending.  The next question is saving from what.  If all the retailers of building supplies and hardware are large corporations, how can I "save big money" from what the now-mostly-gone local building suppliers and hardware stores would have had to charge to stay in business?

We as communities probably lost a lot of money by saving big money.  We have to drive further to the store.  We have lost the taxes that the small retailers would have paid.  We have lost control of how our communities function, their having been made "all the same" by corporate interests, interests who consider any restrictions as "anti-business" and "job-killers".  These interests forget how they themselves have destroyed businesses and jobs.

We have lost communication with the owners; the big box folks may be friendly and helpful, but how many of our suggestions will go up sufficient corporate levels to bring about change?

There is no maul at the mall

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to whack something with our splitting maul. I don't know if it was to dislodge something or to split some wood. I couldn't find it. It wasn't in the wood shed. It wasn't in the tool shed. It wasn't in the cabin. I repeated the search again. It had to be somewhere.

Then it dawned on me. It wasn't at the cabin at all. I had split the handle and the head was in the other car. See "Gang aft agley in the North Woods".

As the title implies, there is no maul at the mall. Well, there might be at Sears, but I haven't gone to Sears for years, another big box avoidance of mine. Hardware, drug, and grocery stores, the really important types of stores are just not found in malls. I think I vaguely remember one mall having a hardware store other than Sears. Well, maybe it was only a small mall.

I used to have three favorite hardware stores within ten minutes of my house, now it's down to one and it was the smallest of the three. Denny's Ace Hardware may be small, but the staff is knowledgable. I asked a roving clerk where handles were and she took me right to a reasonable selection. We selected a hickory handle the fit the head.

When I got to the cabin, I pounded the head onto the handle and inserted the wedge. Now I have a working maul again, but I won't be using it for a while. Watch for the blog entry "I'm not left-handed".