The teacher that understood me…

When I walked to school for the first time in 1954, I was ready to discover a totally new learning universe, albeit in very dire and limited conditions.

We might have been 20 to 25 boys in one classroom, spread over 8 different grades and ranging in age from 7 to 14, so that was extremely tough for the teacher who had to juggle subject matters that could somehow get most of the kids involved and yet assume that close to a third of the students would fall through the cracks.

I was lucky to make the best out of bad situation, because I was naturally curious and already had a passion for doodling which might have showed some potential. My teacher, Monsieur Losserand, picked on that and encouraged that trait, whereas before my parents tended to dismiss it as totally “useless”.

He trusted me, took a chance on me and it worked! In my family, only the “useful” made the grade, not any artsy figment of talent! My teacher made me feel good and provided me with an alternative view to a world of hard work, discipline and totally devoid of fun.

Thank you Monsieur Losserand for mentoring me out of drudgery!

Who can annihilate Trump ?

It’s with focused interest and anticipation that we followed both Democrat debates on TV this past Wednesday and Thursday.

We specifically looked for three elements:

• First, combativeness. This was by far our number one criteria, because it will be the essential quality required to annihilating Trump. 
• Second was knowledge and intelligence, qualities that are pretty much self-evident but are relegated to a second role when the urgency is to first and foremost block Trump from being re-elected. 
• Third and finally, charisma, because, after all, politics is the ultimate sales job and candidates have to sell themselves well. 

Now, with these factors in mind, here is our ranking so far:

1. Kamala Harris 
2. Pete Buttigieg 
3. Julián Castro 
4. Elizabeth 
5. Warren Bernie Sanders 

We’re now excited that we have real talent this time, and quite hopeful that Trump will finally be shown the exit door in less than 18 months.

This shingle vaccine will rock you!

If you live in America, you probably have seen, a few years ago, some gruesome ads depicting someone suffering from shingles, that were downright scary.

The advertised vaccine was, I believe, for Zostavax. Along with our physician’s recommendations, that ad has some effect on us, since we got vaccinated in July of 2014. The shots were just normal, painless and we soon forgot about them.

That was until our good family doctor revisited the issue, telling us last year, that our immunization would only be 65% effective and that a “new and improved” vaccine called Shingrix, said to be 97% effective, would be a good idea to replace our limited protection.

Gullible, we said “yes”, and ordered the new vaccine that, in short supply, had been quite difficult to get, making it even more desirable. Our pharmacy finally received it mid-April and we got our shots. After the injection, my wife suffered from terrible pain in the arm while I was nauseated and feeling flue-like symptoms all over my body.

The torture lasted the day following the procedure. This week, we were summoned to receive our booster shots. Filled with apprehension, we got there on Wednesday and at first everything seemed to be alright.

That was until the night that followed the injection and the next morning, when we found that we were close to dying. Same terrible symptoms for an expensive series of shots that were not even covered by our insurance. We eventually survived but wondered if that suffering was worth the alleged protection.

We’re not convinced yet and will probably never know...

Judgment without experience

I’ve long been fascinated by the intricate relationship that exists between judgment and experience and I’m not finished yet.

The essence of that relationship is found in Nasreddin’s expression, that 13th century Sufi: “Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.”

This time, I just wanted to cover what happens when we make decisions based only on the best experience we have and when the circumstances are such that they create brand new situations that are simply bad or for which we’re totally unprepared.

When this happens, we don’t have any experience to pull from and we must literally think on our feet to come up with a plan good enough that it will get us out of a pickle, assure our survival and enable us to add one more terrible experience to our existing tool-box and further enhance the quality of our judgment.

It's never pleasant, certainly not comfortable, but it wakes us up, forces us to stretch a bit further out than we were ready or willing to, and in the end, make us much stronger.

Giving credit where it’s due

Lives are not built in a vacuum and events as well as people have a crucial impact on their courses. Mine certainly did, and my current stage in life is the sum of all the circumstances, accidents and before all, individuals that crossed my sometimes tortuous path and brought me where I am today. In my case, all for the better.

In retrospect, I must say that more folks have helped me than have hindered me in that life-building process. So I will forget the few that have erected some hurdles across my way and salute the ones that have helped me create or bring out the greatest opportunities I’ve ever seized.

It began with my primary school teacher who saw potential in me, his son who motivated me to go attend the Cluses boarding school, a dear friend at that school that validated my passion for skiing, my own brother who urged me to ask the Avoriaz ski school director for a job, a Chamonix ENSA professor who took me with his Australia-bound team.

Also, a colleague from that same team that facilitated my transition from ski instructor into the industry, an American ski industry executive who thought it’d be great to have me come to the USA, the Lange CEO that gave me a job on a flight between New York and Munich, that same previous American ski exec that handed me a great business opportunity that would cap my little career.

Of course, on top of it all, there’s my wife that always got me going and kept me under control. That’s it. You might be able to read some of these exciting details down the road... Bottom line: I wasn’t self-made, the others took care of that for me!

Crossing paths?

This past weekend, I went hiking with my 11 year old grandson and we both had a wonderful time.

My little companion didn’t hold me up and climbed without a problem. It certainly helped that he now trains regularly at a climbing gym and that finding a solid footing has almost become second nature to him.

While I still might have a little more endurance than he does, we’re almost now at a similar physical level. Him growing and improving, me slowly going down in my abilities. So, it’s tempting to look at charting either one of us physical performance and comparing how these will intersect.

Even though I’m the one who made it up, the picture tells a lot about our compatibility for hiking and climbing over the next three to five years, without having one of us limping or huffing and puffing behind (that would be me!), and continue to have tons of fun together.

A welcome good news!

What do we have to prove?

This can be a recurring question to many of us. Its answer is often found in a profound need for acceptance that we seek all along our interesting lives.

Depending on how we were raised, that search for approval could have been vital during our formative years, and we often let it accompany us too late into our adult lives. Breaking up with that need isn’t necessarily a devil-may-care attitude, but an independent streak that still properly blends with social conventions.

If individuals can free themselves from that obsessive need for approval, they’ll also free new energies that can be channeled for the good of others and society at large.

Facebook dependency is an excellent example of that situation, and those folks who have broken ties with this addictive forum can liberate themselves from the grips of that pathological thirst for approval and narcissism.

There’s hope for freeing ourselves from societal ills or demands and become our truly own selves!

Turning frustration into challenge

Any well-lived existence is paved with frustration. The difference between happiness and despair is mostly in the way we’re capable to dealing with frustration.

For too long, I have fallen victim from obstacles thrown in my way, thinking life was unfair, and wondering why all these bad things just happened to me, and who specifically, seemed to be inflicting me so much pain.

As time went by, I started to install that transforming tool that – like a magic wand – is enough to motivate me in thinking aggressively, positively and in finding a challenge into the smallest, unpleasant and repulsive tasks.

This, of course isn’t a natural response, but one that need to be cultivated over time.

If you’re not doing it yet, try it!

Booking rental cars for Europe

This is something I’ve done for years and I’m still having to “re-invent the wheel” every time I’m trying to get the best possible value for my euro.

I used to rely on Sixt, the well-known German rental company, but I found that their rates can vary wildly from one day to the next.

So, in order to unearth the best deal, the savvy traveler needs to research a lot, have plenty of time available and be ready to becoming fully educated on the mysteries of rental car pricing.

Sometime, the computer seems to freeze, you wait and wait, just to discover that the price that enticed you to begin booking, was just changed on you.

Like everywhere, starting over, being determined and keeping smiling are the hallmarks of the successful shopper!

Deer Valley’s new concert venue

This past Wednesday night we attended the first, free Deer Valley concert with a lot of excitement. We love these summer outdoor events!

The weather and temperature were just perfect and as we arrived, we realized that the venue wasn’t the usual grass covered natural amphitheater that we were used to.

Instead, we were directed to the ski resort parking lot where the band was staged and set up our chairs and picnic, right on the freshly asphalted surface. Thank God, the weather was cool and the ground temperature bearable.

Since we didn’t know whether this would be the new “normal” or not, we were a bit surprised, and then we thought that after all, we had enjoyed Deer Valley’s hospitality for so long that we should be overjoyed it lasted so long.

All great things always come to an end, right?

We certainly weren’t looking forward to attend more concert on the parking lot asphalt, but what the hell!

Well, we were all wrong! This was just a false alert as the grass was still too wet from the recent rainstorms and that it had to momentarily dry up a bit!

“Prime” mystery solved!

Earlier this month, I explained that Prime, the new Amazon delivery service, missed a delivery at my house.

A few days ago, as I was walking in my neighborhood, I notice a house number very close to mine except for one digit, to the point that it was almost too easy to confuse.

Then, my eyes moved on to the entry door and it reminded me the photo that Amazon had sent me to prove the delivery of its parcel. While the shipment wasn’t delivered to my door, that one looked just like the one appearing on Amazon’s photo.

When I got home, I checked to make sure and, bingo! That was unmistakably the door in question.

Next, I could only assume that this neighbor picked the package, opened it up, glance at it and, as he couldn’t use it, plus realized it was addressed to me, didn’t want to face the embarrassment and explaining he would have to face had he return the goods to its legitimate owner, that instead, he tossed it in the garbage.

What a neighborly thing to do!

My friend the garter snake

In my garden, like anywhere in and around Park City, we’ve got a familiar snake, called the western terrestrial garter snake (Thamnophis elegans).

It’s not venomous, so that’s already a good thing.

My wife noticed one sunning on the rocks surrounding our backyard sitting area a few days ago, and I had seen one on a few occasions last year next to our veggie garden.

More than 20 years ago, as I was driving my daughter to school, I saw a small one coiled on the door-opening lever of the passenger side door, just where she was sitting, and discreetly stopped the car, got the snake out before she would discover it herself and scream hysterically.

The little critter had sneaked into the car as I was loading some firewood.

This said, I’ve never ever been comfortable in the presence of snake and I hope that I’ll get used to them, if not, something will need to change. Me or the snake!

Conspiracy theories in the Strait of Hormuz?

According to the U.S. State Department, the Iranian are the obvious suspects behind the tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet, is the United States government that credible with Pinocchio Trump at its head? Not really; they have an ax to grind with Iran anyways.

It could in fact be a bunch of dubious parties, starting with the Saudis, the UEA, Israel’s mossad or even our own CIA; they’ve done similar things in the not so distant past.

So before we replicate our ill-advised Iraq invasion on Iranian soil, to please the other Middle East crazies we call allies, and fund the adventure with taxpayer money we don’t even have, I’d like to know for sure...

For comparison’s sake…

June 16 is a special day for me and if you’ve regularly read my blogs for the past 12 years, you’ll easily understand why.

Today, I wanted to piggyback on that date and show you two pictures of Jupiter Peak, the hill that towers over Park City.

The one on top was taken yesterday and the one below was snapped after the record breaking snow year, and was taken on June 15, 2011. It’s amazing how our memories of certain times have a tendency to wander away from reality.
We thought this past winter was a “biggie”...
Let the photos speak for themselves; 2011 indeed was a truly record year!

My chart for belief systems

As I was looking for a visual chart of the various belief systems known to man, I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to build my own chart in a simple, easy to understand and linear way. It ranks beliefs from nothing all the way to… absurdity.

I’ve listed some of the beliefs or philosophy I was most familiar with and forgotten to list some big ones like “humanism” for instance.

Please, excuse me for the partial listing, the chart would have gotten enormous if I had mentioned every belief known under the sun, but I’ll update that visual if I can…

I deliver that concise visual here for what it’s worth, I call it “Gullibometer” and I really hope, hope and pray (!) that I’ll get your reactions. So please, speak up!

Delta Air Lines’ phone service

Recently, I was booking some rather complicated air travel with our main air carrier, Delta Air Lines. I was doing this online and when I got close to the end of that rather arduous work, the airline wouldn’t accept my frequent flier account number.

This was an old recurring story that began after 9/11, when air travel security measures where tightened up; prior to that, I used the initials of my first name (as it appeared on my SkyMiles number) and after repeated attempts to correct it with the air carrier, their records never reflected the change.

So I was rather upset as I had secured good seats, just by the aircraft bulkhead, as we like them to be and was one more time rebuffed. Since I couldn’t do anything on line, I had to call and was told that my waiting time would be half an hour, so I postponed till the following morning.

At that point, when I called again, I had no choice but wait, and wait a very long time before I could speak with a human being. All told, it took me 45 minutes to get through. The agent got my problem partially resolved and I shared my frustration with her about having to wait for so long.

She simply replied “It’s the summer season and we’re extremely busy”. My answer was: “This not the first summer Delta is in operation, the airline knows that summer is busier than other times of the year, therefore it should staff its phone lines accordingly”

I asked her to pass my comments along to her management. She invited me instead to use Delta website for this. I guess you never win with the airlines!

Park City’s “Life Elevated”

When one looks at the crazy prices of real estate It would be fair to say that billionaires are quietly in the process of pushing millionaires out of Park City. With that, too many assume that “Parkites” are “loaded” with money and can afford almost anything.

This is something we have experienced for a long time already, and even more this year, when the ophthalmologist I had picked a year earlier began to charge us for unnecessary extras and a periodontist offered us his services for more than five time the going rate in Salt Lake City.

Needless to say that with that “dear” reality in mind we are de-escalating our professional help down to the large city nearby.

The Utah tagline, “Life Elevated” carries a cost a tad too high for those us stuck up in Park City!

How to unearth (good) information

As consumers, we see objects from the outside and in the precise way, or under the exacting light marketers want us to see them.

In order to get a much truer view of reality, including pros and cons, one has to reach over to the other side in order to gain the insider’s perspective and learn what consultants are telling manufacturers or service providers what to do in order to sell their wares or services and sell many more of them.

Only trade publications, on-line or in print carry that information, and when you can access it, you become a much savvier consumer and are one good step closer to the truth.

The challenge is to find where that information is hiding, and like for anything we’re searching, it takes time, creativity, intelligence and patience.

Good luck!

It’s all about carbon footprint!

I’m still debating the pro and cons of owning a Tesla electric car, and the more I dig into the subject, the more I discover, and the less I’m able to reach a decision I’m comfortable with.

At first, I was focusing solely on the “great American road trip” that my wife and I occasionally take and, with an electric car, the added difficulty of planning an itinerary around refueling at some kind of public charging station along the way, including the extra time this might take when a fast charge isn’t an option.

Then, the debate moved into issues like the kind of vehicle we’d really need. In Park City, it has to be an all-wheel drive (AWD) version, with decent ground clearance and a hatchback so I can conveniently load our ski gear and sit on the sill while we put on our boots.

Of course, all along, the cost has always been a factor. I’d rather not fork the price asked for a brand new model S or X, but would be more willing to buy down the line and go for the upcoming model Y, if and when it comes out, unless I’d consider a used Model S.

That was until the other night when I ran into a neighbor who had just done that, and complained that the car was too low (old fellows like me would agree!) and that, in spite of being AWD, it wasn’t great in snow. Now, I was confused and that younger neighbor was hinting for me to look into a used Model X, that in his view would be more appropriate, but is rated very low by Consumer Reports…

Today, I’m realizing that first and foremost, I should have begun by figuring how big a dent the switch to an e-car would have made into our overall carbon footprint. My wife and I drive no more than 10,000 miles a year, which for our two cars represents 4 metric tons of CO2. A Tesla would cut that by two-third, down to just 1.3 ton.

At the same time if my wife and I take a round-trip flight between Salt Lake and Geneva to visit friends and family, it sets us back 6.6 tons, which is huge and 2.5 times what we’d save by driving an electric car. I ended up my introspective carbon footprint tour at the EPA website.

There, I figured out that our total household carbon footprint including home, car and recycling, put us at 11 metric tons per year vs. 13 tons for the average American two-people household, so I felt a tiny bit better, but my good mood was soon eclipsed when

I saw that, as a nation, America’s per-capita footprint was a whopping 16.5 T compared to 8.9 T in Germany and a remarkable 4.6T in France! As for my car decision, I was still incapable of saying if Tesla is yet the right choice for us...

Dentistry’s gold digging techniques

We have a nice dentist, but like everyone, he’s under intense pressure to extract more money from his patients to feed his small organization. We’ve seen him trying to sell us more services, but unlike many of his patients, we can see through his tactics and resist the pressure to buy.

Just like we’re all wary of our car repairman or of our plumber, we should even be more worried when we’re laying down, helpless on a dentist chair and are getting advice from him. That person has us literally as a hostage, with a business to run, some expensive equipment to amortize and a staff to keep busy, not to mention the cost of office space whether rented or owned.

Even if our dentist is the world’s most honest individual, there is the relentless pressure to increase revenue, something that can’t be just done by reducing expenses, but essentially by increasing revenue, thus profits. To accomplish that, dentists are given a “tool-box” of ways to induce patients to spend more.

For instance, they must sell patients to accept extra treatment instead of letting them walk out their door without it. To achieve this, they must make compelling case presentations, using their "team” to build up the dentist’s credibility so the patient is “educated” or “inspired” to want the needed treatment.

People will always find a way to pay for what they want, but not necessarily for what they need. Patients decide to do dental treatment based on emotion, not education. Dentists are asked to offer more services, like adding another treatment room, another hygiene room, adding more staff, or another dentist or hygienist.

That’s another good way for them to increase revenue. At the same time, they’re encouraged to get the education – if needed – so they can recommend high profit procedures, like porcelain veneers, implants, periodontics, endodontics, crowns and bridges, as well as plenty of x-rays, all examples of procedures that typically have a higher profit margin.

They’re also told that a higher fee does not necessarily mean more profits. A root canal, for instance, that takes three hours to complete isn’t a profitable procedure. This is all good and well, but for those of us who see healthcare as a human right, patient beware!

Still it’s disheartening to see that an essential health service like dentistry fall into the rut of mercantile manipulation.

America’s unsustainable upward spiral

Money is everything in America. You need a lot of it, if you’re committed to the American Dream.
This means you’ll work harder, longer hours and will try to become good at what to do, in order to make more money.

When you make more money, you’re able to buy more possessions, stretch your purchasing power a bit more, and of course will need to borrow even more, which adds pressure on working a bit harder in order to still make more money.

That way, you’ll better be able to keep up with Joneses or reach out for the lofty goals you’ve set for yourself and that have now become a moving target. This sets a never-ending pursuit and places you on an endless and unsustainable upward spiral.

The spiral gets all your attention, generates more stress than you can handle and life passes you by...

An end to “robocalls”?

It happens daily to all of us. If we still use a landline, it gets inundated from unwanted telephone calls and no one, in government, seems to be motivated to put an end to it. Sure, we are hearing from time to time that Congress will look into it, but I’ve no expectations coming from that branch of government.

So, like the rest of you, I had plenty of frustration, but no solution. My only line of defense was refusing to pick up the phone every time it rang and didn’t show a number I was familiar with. That was until I stumbled on the possibility of transferring my Google Voice account onto our existing landline.

Obihai is a California company that makes Analog Telephone Adapters (ATA). ; these devices convert regular landline phones into VoIP phones, the system we’ve been using at home for the past 15 years. Google Voice is a “softphone” that lets Google users make free telephone calls from their computer.

This is how Obihai realized that they could leverage that technology and developed a device letting users make phone calls using their own analog telephones. That device can be purchased from around $55 at Amazon. Google Voice offers you limited options in terms of numbers and it can be hard to find a number that corresponds to your area.

But you’re pretty much on your own, Google does not offer tech support for this service. Porting your landline number, if you insist on keeping it, is a bit complicated and will cost you $20, but if you can jump through a few hoops, you’ll get no-cost phone service free of robocalls. You can also receive texts on your line and call internationally for cheap.

I did it successfully, I’m sure you can too!

Trump seen from Europe…

The recent commemorations of D-Day gave the European media another chance at analyzing Donald Trump.

Most of them got it totally wrong in assuming that the president of the United States had a Plan behind his most bizarre and unpredictable behaviors, when in fact there’s nothing, just a bunch of short-term, erratic tactics that come to his brains like isolated bubbles out of a glass of Perrier, hours after the water was poured in.

The man has no strategy, just a few knee-jerk reactions that can send financial markets tumbling down for a day or two, before they catch up when the world realizes that it’s only random banter.
In fact, his only consistent strategy is "Me," "Me," and "Me."

What's clear is that in the absence of some Grand Scheme, our emperor in diapers has less and less clothes on him and one can only hope that he’ll fully naked come November 2020.

Prime’s “subprime” delivery service...

For a while, Amazon has been contemplating to launch its own delivery service, and now, its blue vans can be seen all over American neighborhoods.

Even though the company has used Fedex, UPS and the postal service for years, it would love to reduce its huge shipping bill and that’s one reason why it’s bringing that activity in house. That way can make even more money, following the typical American greed scenario.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, can’t help but look at UPS huge quarterly profits and salivate in thinking that even a piece of that pie would be a big boost to its bottom line. Also, by handling deliveries itself, Amazon can speed up delivery times and attract more customers to buy its Prime memberships. Finally, it can also track deliveries on its own, and not be caught in the middle when customers complain that they’ve never received their order.

All this sounds good in theory, but the devil is in the details, as shipping and delivering is yet another set of skills that must be mastered before it becomes fully operational and competitive. To get off and running quickly, Amazon created its “Delivery Service Partners”, a new program aimed at entrepreneurs willing to invest into their own Amazon delivery service for as low as a $10,000. If successful, owners are told they can expect to earn between $75,000 and $300,000 in annual profits. Recently, I experimented twice with that brand new “Prime” delivery system.

On June 3, I had ordered a communication device and never received it. We weren’t home as the parcel should have been delivered, but obviously wasn’t to be found. Sure, the order confirmation showed a photo of the parcel next to an entry door, except that it wasn’t mine. I had to spend 30 minutes chatting with an Amazon associate to explain the situation, hear his side of the story, and get the transaction credited back to me.

I immediately re-ordered the part and on June 5 was expecting it again. This time, I was cautious and followed the interactive map that popped up on my computer, so when the delivery van was just 300 yards from my home, I stepped outside and waited for the van to arrive.

Arrived it did, but seemingly without any intention of stopping at my place. I had to get in the middle of the road, wave the lady behind the wheel until she stopped and gave me my parcel. She seemed totally clueless and obviously not up to the task.

All this to say that Mr. Bezos will have a few improvements to make if he wants to stay in the package delivery business and not drive his customers away…

Picking flowers

Here is another interesting job I also had when I was a kid.

Our family restaurant was only open in the summer in those days and it was named “Les Rhodos”, an abbreviation for rhododendron, a flowering shrubs found in the Alps and blooming in late June, early July.

During this time period, we used to decorate the dining room with their freshly picked red flowers and my parents would send me in the morning to pick a supply of fresh flowers.

I eagerly looked forward to that job, as it would free me to do what I loved: Roaming free in the mountains, climbing rocks, talking to myself and feeling the immense pleasure of having no pressure and no one to take order from.

This was a priceless moment at a time when these were few and far between...

Daily Bonus

After 70, things don’t generally improve and change, as it will certainly happens, often brings bad news, deterioration or illness hampering our bodies, faculties and other kinds of ability.

So, it should be logical to see each days without an aggravating situation as a blessed one, or as I would say a welcome bonus!

As we ascend in age and begin the descent into decrepitude, each day that passes while most of what we still have seems to remain the same must be deeply appreciated and enjoyed.

At the very least this is what I’m trying really hard to do…

Herding pigs

One of my first jobs, as a kid, was to shepherd pigs. Yes, my dad was keeping a dozen of pigs during the year.

He bought piglets in the spring and we moved them up to the pasture, way above our winter home from early June till September 30. During summer, they would grow and be fattened, mostly with buttermilk – the byproduct of my dad’s cheese and butter production, as well as other household scraps.

They were all tightly contained into a, very smelly small den and I had been asked, on a few occasion, to take them out into the surrounding nature in order to give them a break from their dreary prison. I would also clean their tiny space from waste and other unpleasant and stinky items.

Would it be overkill to say that I didn’t enjoy that chore at all. On the rare occasions when I took the pigs out, I would take them too far away, in the sun and in spots like “La cache do rousi” under the hot summer sun, and when my small group of pig returned, they had baked under the sun, looked all red and exhausted.

I didn’t care much, except that I didn’t want to be scolded by my father, but it was a subtle pay-back for having to do something I really abhorred. Things since then have change for the better and I’m so grateful!

Is immigration payback for colonialism?

As I was listening to the radio this morning, I noticed a book review discussing, “This land is our land” by Suketu Mehta, born in India, but today a New York-based author and literary prize winner.

In his new book, Mehta tries to untangle the controversy that any discussion about immigration never fails to ignite and based on his experience as a teenager growing up in America and years of reporting around the world, he examines closely the current anti-immigrant discourse.

He asserts that the West isn’t threatened by immigrants, but by its fear of people moving in and disturbing the status quo. He points out that that years of colonialism have left entire continent much poorer and have enable huge multi-national companies to set foot all over the developing world and continue that exploitation, long after the whites have moved on and returned back home.

So when today’s immigrants are asked, “Why are you coming here?” they can appropriately respond, “We are here because YOU were in our countries before.”

The author takes on the today’s false narrative of our populist ideologues and turn them on their heads with the testimony of all the menial workers like janitors, cleaning ladies, nannies, and others coming from the four corners of the world, as he explains why there are more people are on the move today than ever before.

As political unrest and climate change are reshaping large swaths of our planet, it’s not surprising that borders can no longer contain the pressures caused by world-wide inequality.

This is a book I want to read, because it connects with the idea that the world belongs to everyone, that borders are arbitrary and that free circulation of humans can be regulated to become orderly, but at the end of the day, can’t be prevented…

The Presidential Tesla

I’m quite disappointed that our “cool” President hasn’t picked Tesla for the United States presidential state car (aka "The Beast"), in other words, the official state car of the president of the United States.

The current model is a unique Cadillac. Why didn’t Donald pick Tesla? First and foremost because he doesn’t believe in global warming, it may also be that since he’s afraid of a bunch of things, fear of electrocution might be high on his list, or because Tesla’s Elon Musk is no fan of his and never thought the celebrity businessman was the right man for the job.

So Trump who neither forgives nor forget, picked General Motors and Cadillac instead, ordering three limos for the “modest” cost of more of $5 million a piece in their special Cadillac versions that look like the CT6.

That new model, that weighs more than 15,000 pounds, was first used for a presidential trip to New York City on September 24, 2018, and – yes – it’s a bit dated (like the man it’s supposed to move around) and is neither hybrid nor electric!

Where are the animals?

Yesterday morning, on my way to ski Snowbird, I drove under the $5 million wildlife bridge that was open to wildlife traffic last December.

I almost go through the area two or three times a month and have yet to see some activity involving any deer or elk crossing. I was told there were cameras installed to observe the animal traffic that seems to be few and far between.

Well, by my book it’s quite simple: The first large animal that crossed that path (if it ever did) would have cost $5 million to us, the taxpayers and our cost would decrease as traffic volume picks up. One thousand beasts crossing it would bring the cost per critter down to $5,000 a passage, which still seems quite expensive to me.

John Gleason, a spokesman with the Utah Department of Transportation, said that it took a few years for animals to begin using a similar crossing in Southern Utah, but, he asserts that now it’s second nature to them. “It will probably take some relearning,” he said. “There is a good chance we won’t know how effective this crossing is for a while. It will really be about determining if it’s cutting down on those collisions between vehicle and animal.”

I still think that the decor leaves to be desired when compared to the huge realistic-looking, wildlife overpasses near Banff, Canada, and if it were more wooded and vegetated, it would attract more animals, but who am I to judge. I’m not a moose !