The whole situation calls for crying reforms and much sooner than later. If Biden gets elected and if the Democrats regain a majority in the Senate, will will act on it? I’m not so sure.
Like most Americans who pay plenty of taxes to make up for these (mostly) tax-dodgers, I’m pissed off, but that the best I can do.
Of course, this additional revelations show that the Emperor Trump has no clothes, but this we had already figured out!
Yesterday, we focused on positive influences, but we can’t avoid negative one and today will see how both can mesh into the course of one’s life.
Personally, I’ve also received my share of influences, both good and bad and their confluence have made me who I am today.
If we start with the positive ones, they stack up as follows:
My love for the outdoors and for sport oriented activities. My love for the mountains and my deliberate choice of living in Park City, Utah. Some friends and business associates, four of them in total, my elementary school teacher, my schooling in Cluses, working at my parents restaurant, working at many other jobs to try them out and discard them, my stint teaching skiing at Avoriaz and in Australia, traveling the world over, my work with Look ski bindings and running my own business with Koflach as well as my retirement years. One book about the power positive thinking also made a huge impression on me.
On the negative side of the ledger, I would list:
My catholic upbringing in general, my whole time attending middle school, serving my time with the French air force, my employment with Look ski bindings (a mixed bag) and working for Pre skis.
The question is quite simple, but seldom asked: Who and what exerted the biggest influences upon your life?
For me, it’s been mostly a handful of people and perhaps some events, but for a lot of people, culture, religion, education, work experience also plays a big role in making them what they’ve become.
Again, a few people, mostly friends, have had more positive impact upon my life than my parents have. To a lesser degree, my work and life experience as well as my extensive travel have also positively contributed to my understanding and my view of the world.
And you, what was or were the positives influences that made you who your are today? (to be continued...)
If you love the mountains, nature, expansive vistas, are on a budget and have to get married, Park City offers a unique venue, called the Church of Dirt.
It’s perfect for hikers, mountain bikers, and dirt lovers of any origin or persuasion. The Church of Dirt is an appropriate setting for a fun, unpretentious, high-altitude and long lasting wedding.
Located at 8,960 feet, just 200 years away form the top of Empire Pass overlooking Park City, this makeshift chapel made of pieces of wood held by twine, is the perfect place for outdoor-oriented lovers to tie the knot.
In spite of the strong winds that blow up there, it has help up well, proving if it were needed, that there’s a God.
The reservation system is quite unique; just write the date of the wedding on a slate or a piece of wood and drop it there for others to see.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
I’m a very bad Catholic, but a staunch supporter of the religion’s new leader, Pope Francis.
He’s unpretentious, pragmatic and has much to worry about in dealing with the established Roman Curia and staying alive by not getting poisoned or back-stabbed.
This said, a lot of folks, including me, have said that Trump was the Devil incarnate, in other words the equivalent of Satan. Something like Trump is as bad as the Prince of Darkness.
Then I objected: “Still, Satan is a fallen angel...” Pope Francis replied tersely: “Trump’s deeds falls like a giant, stinky pile of manure spreading its horror all over our fragile planet.”
Thank you for clarifying, Holly Father!
To all of us, Jean-Pierre or JP as we liked to call him, was what I'd call a “ski coach extraordinaire”, because of his unique way of looking at people and circumstances, and of his incredibly diverse experience, as well as his unorthodox approach to anything skiing.
Since he preferred 250 days of sunshine over 250 days of precipitation per year, he made his home in Colorado. Most importantly, he was also a very good and special friend of mine. He passed away on September 22, after a long fight against cancer at his Chimney Rock home, near Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
We taught skiing together in Australia in the early 70s and have remained friends ever since. We we were together like two peas in a pod. In a way he was my other brother, better yet, a newly found twin, much younger than my older brother, and together we could relate fully.
Fearless and iconoclast, he got me out of my shell and took me into his world of "anything is possible", filled with wild adventures, innovative ideas and creative solutions. We began in Genoa, Italy, where we first met, and circumnavigated half of the world on an Italian liner, the Galileo Galilei.
We both were insanely crazy to begin with, and found ways to further synergize our respective behaviors. They took us into a whirlwind of events and experiences. Sure, we also had our moments and our disagreements.
We both were hard-headed "Hauts Savoyards". I remember the time we had JP and Brigitte, his wife, stay with us in Park City, in our brand new home, before a ski trip to Chile. My wife kindly asked Jean-Pierre to please take off his trademark cowboy boots, as we had a delicate, clear maple hardwood floor. He stubbornly refused saying: “My boots are too hard to get out of and back in...”
The next morning our nice floor was black-marked by the rubber from his damned boots. My wife never forgave him for that. Since we were like brothers, we always made up though.
He was also the one who helped get me out of the ski instruction business and secure a full time job in the ski industry. I’ll never thank him enough for it.
We’ll miss him dearly. Godspeed, Jean Pierre!
Unless you have been living under a rock or you just don’t have it together, are gullible or terribly racist, it’s impossible to ignore the bad faith, the hypocrisy and all the lying displayed by the GOP or its Republican Party members, including of course, Trump.
Obviously, the question is why? Quite simply because these current years are the last ones in which a white majority can still claim a numeric supremacy over the United States. The Associated Press recently reported that in 2019, for the first time, nonwhites and Hispanics were a majority of the population under the age 16.
This continued demographic shift will keep on growing over the coming decades, according to the US Census Bureau that released that information this past June. Since 2010, the number of whites that aren’t Hispanic had dropped by more than 16,600 people.
But the decline has been escalating in the past three years, with the number of non-Hispanic whites dropping by more than a half million people from 2016 to 2019. In 2019, a little under 40% of the total US population was either nonwhite or Hispanic. Non-Hispanic whites are expected to be a minority of the population in about 25 years.
Over the past decade, Asians have seen the biggest growth rate of any demographic group, increasing by almost 30%. As for Hispanics, their population grew by 20% since 2010. Finally, Blacks grew by almost 12% over the decade.
Generally speaking, patriotism is defined as the feeling of love, devotion and sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment.
This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or historical aspects.
Now, who are my brothers? Mankind, no matter the color, the language, the religion or the customs.
What’s my homeland? France? The United States of America? Not really. My homeland is the planet upon which I stand.
No flag, no borders, no nationalism, no war.
Can’t beat that!
Now that we know the rules for social distancing when we are going to ski this winter, we are getting a clearer picture of the challenges awaiting us.
Namely, while people living in the same household will be able to ride together, individuals won’t be so lucky, and will have to ride alone on double or triple chair, with another skier on four person chair or even a six person chair with the exception of two double on opposite ends of the latter, and just two singles on opposite sides of an eight passenger gondola cabin.
Human nature however knows how to circumvent hurdles like these and, very soon, lots of skiers will become part of the same family our household, or will suddenly become sisters, brothers, lovers, husband, wives or grand-parents, in order to bend the Covid rules, socialize a bit and stay warmer on the lift as it goes up.
The lifties will just have to roll their eyes in view of that newfound compliance that will literally and magically “melt” the most elongated lift lines!
This lady was a fabulous trailblazer for gender equality and deserves our utmost admiration. A lot has been written about her accomplishments, so there’s nothing that I could add to that. Her presence at the highest court on the land wll be terribly missed.
Without being disrespectful, she was to Justice was Mick Jager is to rock and roll and that brings me to the sticky issue of staying too long and being too old in critical roles. Had Supreme Court Ruth Bader-Ginsburg decided to resign early into Obama’s second term, say in 2015, she would have been 82, plenty old for retiring and yet, would have secured a historical legacy on the US Supreme Court.
Today, we would feel much more secure, having her replacement as a Liberal Judge. She choose not to, even though she was plenty smart to know otherwise. Still, she’d been plagued with health issues since 1999, six years after her appointment to the Supreme Court.
I think it’s more than time to admit that old is old, and that at some point, it’s time to call it a day, only to give upcoming generations a shot at leadership. This kind of reluctance to leave a top job is sickening. Pelosi, Sanders, Biden, Trump, or Warren are all old enough to elegantly exit, but their big egos won’t let them.
The Democrats should have been smarter, more prescient as well as pragmatic, and pressurized her to leave her post while it was still time, just as the Republicans did when they presumably convinced Kennedy to retire and be replaced by a much younger Kavanaugh...
Now, and because of Bader-Ginsburg gross miscalculation and delight for her Rock Star status with movies, book and public worship, not only will many of her past accomplishments be erased, but America has a Judicial Branch of Government that will be akin of the times of the Spanish Inquisition and will last for a very long time!
I have written a bunch of blogs on the subject starting in 2010, and I see our reluctance to go Metric as a “declining economic indicator”. Supporters of the status quo claim that it would cost too much money. I tend to come from the opposite side, saying: “It might in fact save us a whole bunch of money!”
Recently, I stumbled upon a comprehensive study on this very subject by Pat Naughtin that gave me plenty of ammunition to make that point. In it, he admitted that the saving aspect of going Metric could be considerable.
Mixing the two system creates confusion and errors too, like the one that plagued NASA scientists and designers who got mixed up in their different approaches to measurements that lead to the Mars Climate Orbiter loss at a cost of about125 million dollars!
Long before that and back in 1915, a mathematician by the name of Joseph Victor Collins, estimated the cost of not going Metric could cost the US the equivalent to more than $8 billion a year in today’s dollars.
In fact, based on Naughtin’s figures and various points, the cost of of non-metrication, based on a $21.43 trillion 2019 GDP, would be almost $2 trillion! Ignoring Metric is a bit like remaining racist; it doesn’t have a bright future.
A smarter, perhaps contrite America will eventually see the light and metrication will happen; we all might be gone or very old at that point, but it’s ineluctable!
So the first question he had for me as we talked after the mess, was : “Why in the world don’t we bury power lines?” Good and logical question for sure. The response I keep hearing is that there would be a huge cost and some potential problems, should we decide to bury underground power cables in older residence like his.
Yet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that underground distribution would be less subject to damage from severe weather and other accidents both natural and man-made. There are also other benefits like getting rid of unsightly wires, or freeing more land under power lines, and a decreased risk of danger to wildlife, or flying objects.
Obviously, the high cost of burying power lines is estimated at roughly $750 per foot, compared with $70 per foot in aerial installations. The problem is that no one seems capable of estimating the economic cost of these outings and that of its repair.
Of course, we are talking about short-term expenses vs. long-term investment, the later sounding woefully un-American these days.
Still, buried power lines are protected from wind, ice, and tree damage that are common causes of outages, and suffer fewer weather or vegetation-related outages, but some naysayer claim that buried lines are more vulnerable to flooding and earthquake, while still able to fail due to equipment issues or lightning…
So when there is little will, there won’t be a way, and expect to see more and very expensive outages caused by wind and fallen trees as global warming heats up and natural disasters multiply!
Yesterday was the deadline for purchasing a season ski pass at one of the many Vail Resort operations, which include Park City. Rob Katz is the CEO of Vail Resorts since March 2006.
I had never seen him on a video before and was eager to find out how he came out, as he attempted to explain his resorts confusing reservation system. This was the purpose of the clip, allegedly shot from his house that looked quite sterile and modest for a high-roller boss like him. Thanks God, he didn’t shot it with a bookcase as background!
Smiling, if not smirking the all way, he was not clear at all in his attempt to explain that seemingly unexplainable topic. My take away is that the system will vary a lot based on yet-to-be-met circumstances.
After that unconvincing trial to communicate via a screen, Mr. Katz should revert to text; this is a proven tool that might work better as he would have had a chance to read what he meant and check if it made any sense, before distribution.
The bottom line is that I’m still in the dark on the Vail reservation system, but given the bizarre way its chief explains it, I now understand better why Vail Resorts bought so many ski areas at some exorbitant prices, as climate change was looming and how that reality will inexorably be chipping away at its portfolio.
Evidently, Rob Katz might not be the sharpest tool in the shed!
I went all the way to Australia, at Mt. Buller, to teach skiing during the winters of 1971 and 1972 and have kept fond memories of that place.
At that time, they were two lift operators on the mountain; the Blue and the Orange Lifts. The former had the French ski school, the latter the Austrian ski school. Both companies eventually merged in 1985 when the owner of the Blue Lifts, purchased half of the Orange Lifts and formed the Bourke Street Ski Lift Company.
The resort counts over 22 lifts, serving 300 ha (740 acre) of terrain and boasts 80 km of trails. In terms of skier-days, count on 300 to 400,000 depending on the season. Australia claims 1 million skiers and around 2 million skier-days, which says a lot about frequency…
The Ski Club of Victoria (SCV) is at the origin of the resort and envisioned the development of the village while developing lifts, ski school and ski patrol. The Club, founded in 1924, built its hut near Boggy Creek in 1933, and a rope tow on Bourke Street in 1949. Last year, a brand new detachable 6-pack was added to more than other 20 lifts on the mountain.
Hilton-Wood, who passed away at age 90, in 2016, eventually developed more lifts and formed Bull Run Enterprises, with their blue lift towers, installed a lift on Skyline run and brought over French instructors to teach Aussies the proper way to ski.
This past season was terrible, as snow never seemed to make it, and the resort got shut down for good on August 8 because of a resurgence of Covid-19 around Melbourne, Mt. Buller’s feeder market. Hopefully 2021 will be much better in order to keep the ski resort alive.
Between 2000 and 2005, I teleworked a lot, as I had one foot in Park City, Utah, and the other one in Vail, Colorado. With the main office so far away from home, I ended up working fifty per cent of my time from my home office and found that it was alright, as I was a true workaholic and a highly motivated individual.
Neither my craving for skiing, family disruptions or any social media addiction got in the way of my work. What I was missing though, was the daily interaction with my office colleagues and also the isolation and the nagging feeling that I wasn’t fully included in the business process as well as I could miss on bunch of decisions that could have some impact on my career. “Out of sight, out of mind”, you get the rift!
As a result, the institution is likely to ask more workers to return to their offices over the coming weeks. JPMorgan’s findings indicate that employees don’t perform as well at the kitchen table as they do in their office, suggesting that remote work for extended periods of time may not be all what it was cracked up to be.
Still studies before the pandemic asserted that remote workers were just as efficient as those in offices, but that begs the question of their performance in the long term.
If someone asked me today if I believe in working from home as a magic prescription for everyone, I’d answer: “Not really, it might work for ten percent of the labor force, some need to be constantly prodded, and it’s unsustainable for the rest...”
While we enjoy, look for, and only want pleasure in our lives, we must accept that due to the cyclical nature of the world we live in, our reality will also be populated with our share of pain.
Buddhism largely acknowledges that fact in part of its doctrine known as the First Truth, which says that suffering, pain and misery are part of our lives. This doesn’t sound too exciting, but apparently, suffering can actually empower us, as we can change in the way we respond to it. In fact, the more we accept life’s imperfections, the less stressful our existence becomes.
Buddhism suggests that suppressing those emotions can only make matters worse and force us to act out in unhealthy and destructive ways. Always smarter than the rest of us, Buddha says that all forms of suffering, whether physical or emotional can be attributed to one factor; the impermanence of life, where everything changes all the time.
In these days of pandemic when we would feel much better if we had a sense of predictability, we all tend to deny the simple truth that nothing stays the same. That’s when instead of surrendering to change, we push against it. We want to keep things exactly the same; our job, our partners, our friends and our lifestyles. That’s when the world around us changes, that it eventually causes us to feel anger, sadness, and frustration.
I’m no Buddhist, but I like his advice and will strive to follow it to the letter!
According to the dictionary, that’s how they officially compare:
Effective: “Adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.”
Efficient: “Performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort.”
A simpler way to put it is to say that the difference between effectiveness and efficiency goes like this: Being effective is doing the right things, while being efficient is doing things right. A graphic way to look at that difference is through the above table used to illustrate it.
The place where we want to be is the top right box. In other words, we want to go after the right objectives, or doing what really counts and being efficient, by making use of the best available tools, without wasting time, and doing everything as perfectly as possible.
We tend to be repulsed by difficult or boring steps and get distracted or enthralled by what seems to us as a more attractive and pleasurable activity. I’m not even talking about the temptation of doing several things at once (like multitasking) to lessen the boredom of repulsive actions.
Again, the secret is to paint attractiveness all over everything dull, and learning how to fall in love with it. On paper that sure isn’t enticing, but trust me, I’ve done it before and it is part of a guaranteed path to success.
Once I’ve decided to do it, it’s fairly easy to follow-through, but I should get it deeper into my head, as I always tend to forget it!
We all have one life, but many options in the ways we choose to conduct it. The majority of people on this planet, have no other choice, but try to survive by every which possible way.
This is in that latter category that some people focus on making our world a much better place for the rest of humanity. This truly is a lofty goal that quite a few deliberately chose to miss, mostly because greed gets in the way of thinking beyond one’s egoistical needs.
Of course, these options are generally discovered when one is well engaged into their own personal lives and it would require a massive and painful turn-around to embrace them after the fact, which is why this seldom happens in real life.
In other words, we should have been given the rules of the “game of life” along with an overview of these basic choices long before we picked a school and a career. Can we dare say “Sorry, but too late”?
This past Tuesday morning, after an unseasonable heat-wave, temperatures suddenly dropped over northern Utah and 100 mph hurricane-force winds began to hit the Salt Lake Valley, killing one resident, toppling hundreds of huge trees, closing schools and knocking out power for more than 170,000 homes and businesses.
Our son and his family weren’t spared when two huge trees fell on their property and shut down their electrical service as well. Luckily, no one was hurt and a friend lend him a generator to get some power where needed most in the house.
The storm created a mess that will take many days to sort out and bring back some normalcy to the region. Since Park City was totally spared by the mayhem, Finn’s parent organized remote school learning for him and dropped him at our house that same night, so he didn’t have to endure the momentary discomfort and disruption at his home.
We’re delighted to have him with us for a few days, as he bring us a youthful presence that enjoyably disrupt our daily routine.
Bad things always have their silver lining!
Sixteen months ago, I wasn’t too optimistic about the future of Boeing, and yet, as of now, the challenges faced by the company continue to add-up. Not just with the 737 Max, but also with the manufacturing of its 787 Dreamliner that is slowing deliveries and cash-flow.
Recertifying the 737 Max won’t be a walk in the park and whatever the FAA decides will still be open to public review.
So far the FAA investigation has involved more than 40 engineers, inspectors, pilots, and staff adding to a total of 60,000 expensive hours of review, testing, and evaluation of the so-called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the corrective software that has caused two deadly crashes. Boeing will still have to update, inspect, and recertify each 737 Max, but that’s not all.
All airlines will have to undergo updated training and we’re only talking about what is going to happen in the United States. This time around, airline safety organizations in other countries will be a bit more skeptical of the FAA and may insist on conducting their own comprehensive safety reviews.
To be continued…
During the 2016 Republican Primary, Trump made a splashy entry on the US political scene. At first, we found his little show quite entertaining, but soon our amusement turned into nightmare, as he got into the White House.
Back in those days, I had told my wife: “Trump is the American version of France’s Bernard Tapie!” I think I was right, and between Trump, Tapie and Berlusconi, the three men shares a lot in terms of being swindlers, politicians, sport team owners and entertainers.
Typically, in those days he would buy a company for one token franc (about 15 cents), purchase the debt, generally owned by a state-controlled bank for pennies on the dollar, then recast the original debt amount as receivable owned to him, rig the accounting and find a sucker to buy the company later for a huge amount of money.
It worked like that:
All along, Tapie was in cahoots with then French president, François Mitterand who used taxpayers money to forgive the discounted bank debt.
This of course was just the beginning of Tapie’s checkered career that involved being a TV personality, a sport team owner, the heister of Adidas, a politician, a jail prisoner and even a stint as a comedian.
To this day, Tapie’s populist flair still enjoys a fair amount of favorable opinions in France in spite of his highly questionable path to fame.
As you can see, Trump has some way to go before he catches up with my (infamous) countryman!
How old are you?
Most of the time, we answer in term of our chronological age, that is the number of years we’ve been on the planet. This a marker we can’t escape no matter how rich, poor, smart or dumb we are.
Now, if I’m lucky enough to have the physical condition of a 40 year-old man in very good shape, we could say that my biological age is only 40. What a cool adjustment!
So here you go, the chronological age is a no-brainer, whereas the biological age depends on a bunch of variables that keep on changing. According to biological aging, we’re growing older as we gradually accumulate damage to various cells and tissues in the body.
Of course, it goes both way; either our biological age will go up or down.
This said, we want to keep it down. Sure, I don’t wish to live till I’m 120 and I don’t think bungee jumping at 95 when we only feel 85 is such a good idea, but there are many steps we can take to keep our biological age lower, much longer and enjoy a better quality of life.
For the past ten to fifteen years, the term “Passive-Aggressive” has been used a lot to describe a host of behavior that sometime have little to do with this particular definition. I’ve even been accused, on occasions, of being guilty of that trait.
It seems like a convenient label to affix when people are a loss to appreciate or identify the response they’re getting to their questions or demeanor. In fact, a passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication.
Such behavior may be an expression of difficulty in dealing with one's negative emotions. From an occasional act when it’s exceptionally occurs and does not substantially interfere with communication, it can quickly evolve into a habit if it’s used persistently.
Yet, far too many unusual and strange behaviors are categorized as “Passive-Aggressive” when they’re in fact behaviors can be, for instance, described as catty, that is, when they takes the appearance of deliberately hurtful or spiteful remarks, or even when they originate from people with peculiar personalities that don’t mean at all what’s being attributed to them.
So like anything in life there’s a gradation or a spectrum of intensity, as well as personality types or specific body-languages which can qualify or disqualify such behavior.
Just be careful before you fall for the catch-all “Passive-Aggressive” determination and, as usual, remember that in life, nothing is ever totally black or white…
In more than four decades of married life in America, we’ve always managed to sleep in a Queen size bed (60 inches wide and 80 inches long) and were quite happy, until our children and some friends suggested that we we missing big and ought to finally upgrade to a wider King size bed (76 inches wide that is a nice 16 inches extra space).
Interestingly, both sizes were created and put on the market at about the same time. While not extremely spacious, our bedroom size could easily handle a larger bed, and yet we were still both skeptical and hesitant.
We’ve now been sleeping for more than two weeks in that new set up and can attest that our quality of sleep as markedly improved. We now enjoy the pleasant option of sharing a larger bed without disturbing our sleeping mate as we move around in the bed or have to get up while the other is still asleep.
We simply love it and are gratified by our good choice and especially by the sound advice that came to us from folks who knew better. It always pays to listen and experiment!
If, as I discussed in my previous, some folk minds are hopelessly “obsolete”, they might still be nostalgic for the 50s era America, large sedans with fins, a 24 cents per gallon gasoline, Walter Cronkite at the news-desk, one nation under God or Jim Crow’s South, with all of its implication.
Let them stay inside their burrow and wait for the world to implode, especially if they ever can’t get their eyes off Fox News.
Trump hasn’t been able to bring all these goodies and oldies back to life this term, and he sure won’t bring them in the next one, because there won’t be one and he’ll be history...
I believe it’s fair to say that our way of thinking is based on the culture and the environment in which we were educated.
Just like a house built in 1947 would be woefully obsolete today, if it had not been regularly maintained, updated, or massively remodeled in an attempt to catching up with the state of the art. The same would happen to a 70 year old person who has not evolved along the way.
Yet, it’s absolutely true that some of us change a lot while others don’t or hardly modify their views of the world and their way of thinking. It’s obviously a matter a gradation and the more we’re exposed to radically different situations, cultures, methods and way of thinking, the more we’ll be able to keep up with our changing civilization and remain pretty much up-to-date.
At least that’s the way I see that reality.
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