Bennions 1991

Visiting the Bennion family in Utah - 1991 from Super Acht on Vimeo.

Erich and Robert came to see us soon after we moved to Springville. In 1997 we visited them in Mainz. As Dave says, it's a treasure.

Plenty of Blame to Go Round

Sometimes I wonder if I don't like people's political opinions solely because they write so well [extreme examples here: feminist and libertarian--beware of random bad language]. Matt Taibbi, writer for Rolling Stone and a sort of left-libertarian critic, seems to me to have a handle on the housing bubble in his latest blog post:

...what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

And...

My own personal feeling is that our recent bubbles weren’t much different than pyramid scams and lotteries; they’re the handiwork of an essentially regressive and deeply cynical political organization that systematically hoovers up taxes and investment money mainly from middle-class suckers, where it eventually gets eaten in short-term cashouts and mostly blown on sports cars and tropical vacations and eye jobs for the trophy wives of Wall Street executives. Crackonomics: take literally all the spare money from four square city blocks and turn it into one tricked-out Escalade.

....To me all of these people were equally guilty of making bad decisions to benefit themselves in the here and now at the expense of the whole in the future. When it comes to bubbles, It Takes a Village, and blaming the whole mess on the “socialist” aims of a pair of government agencies seems off base — particularly since the Randian protocapitalists running the banks benefited every bit as much from this socialism as actual homeowners, and perhaps even more, when one considers that homeowners get foreclosed upon, while bonuses are forever.

What do you think?

Me on The Internets...

Here. And here is the cat.

Holiday Party on the Farm

Because Tena and Pesi are moving to Houston next week, we had the party at J.Lynn's house, starting in the garage. Milinda did the decorations. Then we had a birthday cake and photos for Grandma E's 73rd:
Colette and Johnathan are eager to help blow out the candles:
We did the standard gift swap. As usual, nobody wanted the present I brought (maybe they remembered The Brick).
Points if you can identify everybody (hint: the only ones missing were A&J, Michael, Justin, Kelli & Elias):
Johnathan and Colette opened their presents first:


It was a lot of fun. Tena had been hosting it for over 20 years. Not sure what we'll do next year.

Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we went to Rob and Nicolle's house and then down to Temple Square to see the lights. It was very cold, and our trip didn't last long.
On Christmas Day we waited for Rob and family to come after Rob was off work, and we waited for Brett, Betsy, and Ethan to come after spending the morning with Brett's family. We didn't open presents until after 3 pm. How things change when the youngest at home is 16 years old.

Ethan and Brett:
What a stack of loot!
We were so glad to have Dave and Devon here for Christmas:
Grandpa and Johnathan cuddle Babar from Grandma Gene:
Watchers Rob, Colette, Nicolle, and Nicolle's sister Michelle (on couch), Betsy as photographer:
Johnathan Elephant and Colette Pony. Nicolle invented the elephant mask.

Winter in Zion Canyon

On the way back from Las Vegas we stopped overnight at Springdale, and visited Zion National Park. Weeping Rock (above) looks very different in the winter. The deer seemed not to worry about us tourists.
Chris, Niels, and John at the bottom of the Narrows.
The vertical hikes were inches deep in packed ice, and we weren't dressed for winter walking. We drove through the tunnels on the way out. I remember parking at the big bay windows and looking out on the canyon from the side of the cliff when I was a little girl.

Drivers Ed Trip to Las Vegas

So Chris drove to Las Vegas before Christmas with his friend Niels, John, and me. It was originally planned to get Chris all the day- and night-driving hours required for his license, but he ended up with all 40 hours before we left. And it was originally going to be a trip to Los Angeles to visit Boyd & Co. on their way to Utah from Anchorage, but in the end SoCal seemed just too far to drive in the short time we had.

We visited the new City Center,
drove along the Strip,
watched the dancing fountain at the Bellagio,
ate at buffets and In N Out Burger, watched Avatar 3D, slept in, and went Christmas shopping at the outlets. John lost $5 in the slots while waiting for me to come out of the restroom (the $5 was a voucher from the buffet where we ate lunch). After two nights in our $35 Circus Circus hotel rooms we'd had enough Vegas for the decade, and Chris drove us home again. Sweet little trip. It's really not that far away.