Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!
This week I am going to share the origin story of my bed and breakfast (The Abbey), one of my video lectures on comparative advantage, and another Longfellow poem.
Origin Story
In 2017, my wife and I spent about six weeks of the summer at a cabin in Colorado at an elevation of just over 10,000 feet. We and our two children had a wonderful time hiking and exploring the area. The cabin didn’t have internet service and it was a couple miles down a gravel road. It took about ten minutes to get back to the highway in one direction and about five minutes to get to the top of the ridge with miles and miles of open space and hiking in the other direction. You can imagine which way we went most of the time...
It’s hard to describe just how beautiful the place was.
Finding The Abbey
Needless to say, we decided we wanted to spend future summers like this. However, the cabin was a little pricey to rent for six weeks. So we began to think about whether we could buy a cabin as a vacation home and rent it out the rest of the year.
But something else important to the story happened that summer too. I read a book that was part of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series called Retire Young, Retire Rich. If I hadn’t, I don’t think we would have found and bought The Abbey.
What stood out to me from the book was that most people don’t pursue significant wealth because they do not believe it is possible for them to achieve. Once you overcome that mindset, though, all kinds of possibilities open up.
The author points out that most people spend time looking for coupons and discounts (or working credit card rewards). But wealthy people spend time looking at investment opportunities. If you want to be rich, he said, you should consider a deal a day. You obviously don’t act on every deal, or even on the vast majority of them, but wealthy people are always looking at investment possibilities so that when they find the right opportunity, they can take it.
I took his advice that summer. We began picking up real estate booklets and listings through that region of Colorado. Many nights Kathryn and I would talk about this possibility or that possibility: How much does it cost and how would we finance it? How would we rent it out? What kind of maintenance might it need? How much would we use it ourselves?
We looked at over a hundred listings and talked about a couple dozen. Ultimately a small nondescript listing with a terrible picture caught our eye. The listing had 6+ bedrooms (which was unusual) and much cheaper than almost everything else we had seen. There was not much other information on the listing, so we decided to check it out ourselves.
Another important element to this story is that Kathryn and I had long hoped to have a property someday where we could host many people at once and also for long periods of time. A place with 6+ bedrooms could allow us to do that.
Buying The Abbey
I won’t bore you with an elaborate story of our investigation, negotiation, and completion of the deal. Here are a few other salient details:
Originally, the building was a Convent. Although it had a few other uses over the years, it had long been empty when we found it.
The building had no running water because the main supply from the street had come apart in the crawlspace under the building.
The electricity was also disconnected when we first looked at it.
There had been a significant leak in the roof with some mold in the ceiling insulation. It turns out that someone else had wanted to buy this place six months before us but the problem with the roof couldn’t be fixed while it was covered in several feet of snow and so that buyer walked away.
But most important of all, we were able to make this particular deal work even though we had just bought our primary residence in March because the owner of the property was willing to finance the deal himself. We worked out an agreement with him regarding the down payment and the terms of the loan. Borrowing via a private note rather than with a traditional bank mortgage meant we could finish the deal in weeks rather than months.
By September 2017, we were the proud owners of a former convent without water or heat and in great need of renovation (including replacing the roof). We didn’t know everything that would be in store for us in bringing this building back to life (I might not have gone through with it if we had known) but that is an adventure I will leave for a future edition of The Mueller Report.
Video Lectures
The global pandemic forced teachers to deliver classes remotely. Although the end of spring 2020 was basically triage, I spent some time thinking about how to leverage the hybrid teaching structure King’s would have in the fall and probably in the spring. So I decided to flip the classroom.
Right before the fall semester I bought a nice camera, lighting equipment, screens, microphones, and other assorted gadgets and set up a small video studio. If I was going to make a bunch of videos for my classes, I wanted them to be good enough to reuse. Maybe I will write about my video editing experience another time, but I want to share one of the later videos I made after I knew more about what I was doing.
In this video I explain the idea of comparative advantage with examples and a numerical illustration. Watching just a minute or two will give you a sense of what my video lectures are like.
Poetry
I have often read Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” at the start of the semester, especially with my freshman courses. Perhaps it resonates with me because I tend to throw myself into solving problems or pursuing opportunities in much the way he describes.
I also find the subtitle intriguing, “what the heart of the young man said to the Psalmist.” Was it to contradict the Psalmist (presumably referring to a Biblical Psalmist)? Or perhaps just to express the sentiments of the hearts of the young after reading the Psalms?
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The poem nicely draws out the tension between courageously living in the present while also recognizing that our hearts are “beating funeral marches to the grave.” Longfellow rallies us to fight passivity - to make choices and to work hard - but can his exhortation really persuade us if we can trust in no future however pleasant and put our stock in making our lives “sublime”?
Longfellow recognizes God overhead, but does he recognize God within and among us?