Hardly any lilac in Park City this year!

Park City lilacs usually bloom during the month of June. It may vary from the early part to the end of the month, but this year it simply didn’t happen. 

Where we live, perhaps no more than five percent of the lilacs bore flowers. There could be plenty of reasons for that, like poor pruning technique, lack of sun, poor soil conditions, bad fertilizing, drought-related stress and of course, frost. 

May was so cold that unseasonable and frequent late frosts prevented flowering. We had so many frosty mornings in the past two months that the flowers failed to come out; the blooms turned just brown and couldn’t display any flowers. 

This might seem counter-intuitive as lilacs are very cold hardy, but the emerging blooms can be critically sensitive to the cold and frost harm the shrubs ability to bloom. 

Well, there’s always next year!

Courage in a banana republic

The surprise-sixth January 6 hearing showed us yesterday what I would call a lot of courage that I don’t quite know I’d be able to produce.

I’m talking of Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to President Donald J. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who gave what might be a game-changing testimony. 

In what I call “Trump pre-trial hearings” that we all watched from beginning to end, we are chocked by Trump’s mafioso behavior and by the GOP’s “omerta.” Thanks to the rigor, ethics and honesty of some government employees to expose Trump’s monstrosity, we might see the man donning an orange jumpsuit. 

I just hope that this courageous young lady gets the physical protection she deserves, because in view of Trump’s total disregard for the rule of law and the like-minded thugs supporting him, I am scared for her.

Lost and isolated by technology

A few nights ago, as we were out on our evening stroll, we ran into two elderly neighbors that we hadn’t seen for a long time. She is 82, he is 88. They are doing the best they can to get out but are visibly much less alert than the last time we saw them and are now moving very slowly. 

We began chatting and they told us that the new Sony TV they bought for their family room isn’t working at all. They said they bought it at Best Buy four months ago and the installers didn’t bother to make sure it worked after they were done hooking it up on the wall. 

I offered to help them and soon found myself inside their home trying without success to get it to work. To make a long story short I asked them “Where’s the cable box?” as I couldn’t locate it. I then called Xfinity and explained the situation. After 34 minutes on hold, I finally got a female agent that I briefed on the situation. 

She asked me to check the two other TVs in the house and locate their respective boxes, which I found easily, and when it came to the new TV there was indeed none and no HDMI plug attached to the TV. Then, the couple explained to me that they gave the old TV to some charity or junk removal service, that must have also removed the box that was there, hooked on the TV.

Over the four-month period, the couple had multiple visits from their kids and grand kids who tried unsuccessfully to get that particular TV to work but no one took the initiative to do something or call the cable company and get the problem resolved. A pretty pathetic tale on how kids treat their elders!

A new neighbor…

Our garden is home to all kinds of wildlife, big and small, from the occasional moose, the frequent deer and cottontail rabbit, to our permanent residents the squirrels, magpies, robins, birds of all kinds and more rarely, gopher snakes. 

Last Friday, however, we welcomed a new one, a Uinta ground squirrel (Urocitellus armatus), a members of the squirrel family of rodents, related to the marmot, that lives in the ground. Locally, we call them “pot-guts” after their rounded belly.

Cute and full of personality, they’re primarily herbivorous, and mostly eat grass, seeds, and leaves, along with a small amount of earthworms and discarded human food. These guys don’t work too hard, as they’re only active for a few months each year. 

These diurnal animals wake from hibernation around March-April and return to their burrows to hibernate as early as late July and mid August. When they come out of hibernation, they mate underground, each male mating with several females. Gestation lasts 23 to 26 days, and results in an average litter of five young early May. 

They can live for up to seven years in the wild and could also be your neighbors if you lived in Park City!

The Big Lie and the Biggest Lie

Trump is the Liar-in-Chief of the United States. The modern incarnation of Pinocchio not only legalized lying, but made it part of all of his conversations. The man literally lies as he breathes. His biggest legacy of course, would have been to lie and keep the lie that he won the 2022 election alive to this day and believed by a huge minority of gullible Americans. 

Right wing politicians too say they believe that too, but they are hypocrites. This in America is known as the “Big Lie”. Yet, as powerful Trump and his cronies think it is, it gets beaten by the “Biggest Lie” which has been around for thousands of years and is used very effectively by all kinds of organized religions to control and, in most cases, oppress human beings the world over. 

What that Biggest Lie is about is totally unproven, improbable and yet it reign supreme over continents countries, separating entire populations from their hard-earned money and telling them what to do under the menace of ostracism and worse. 

In some countries, like Iran or Israel, religion also governs and in America, this idea of theocracy is seeping through society and this past Friday has now invaded the US Supreme Court. We always have had a big theocracy in Utah, where the Mormons control the state legislature, so we’re already used to this kind of Biggest Lie, but if Americans don’t wake up, Christian Mullahs will soon roam their bedrooms and suck their blood. 

My fellow American, think about this when you cast your vote this November!

Inside the head of Trump supporters

Sometimes I wonder what happens inside the head of Trump supporters. It must be as barren as a desert with very little exciting going on there. At the minimum gullibility, at the extreme primeval anger. 

This time tough, I’d like to focus on Republican members of congress that have, and still are supporting Trump, and that in the context of the January 6 hearing for which I watched the fifth installment yesterday. From these politicians 

I'd ask one simple question: “Now, that you’ve learned enough about Trump’s criminal intent, are you ready to take a stand against him and what he represents?” 

Then I'd continue by probing them further: “If you are, it’s good to realize that you’re finally seeing the light and that you were idiots, hypocrites or a combination of the two, which is your perfect right as citizens.” 

I'd conclude by saying: “If you are still supportive of Trump’s Big Lie after you should also be guilty by association, isn’t that right?” This is my communication to them.

A daily opportunity to solve problems

I see problem-solving as a salutary task that keeps us thinking, forces us to observe, make deductions, find creative solutions and cultivate patience. To me, it’s nothing but continuing education. 

At first, like anyone, I resented each time a problem landed on my laps, but after years of ups and down, of good and bad experiences and of taming more problems than being vanquished by them, I have accumulated so much wisdom and experience, that I welcome problems. 

 I know they’ll teach me something as I begin working at solving them. In fact, the more time I spend resolving a riddle the better I feel, so I must be enjoying the process and it’s simply because I’m adding precious knowledge that might serve me might serve me in the future and adds to the heap of know-how I already have collected. 

This is why problem-solving has become my new passion and I know that in that department there’s so much raw material available that the rest of my life will never experience boredom.

Trump belongs in jail

I have now watched four hearings on the January 6 insurrection and the role played by Trump in instigating it as well as his creating and developing his “big lie” that the election was stolen from him in favor of Biden. 

My most basic common sense brings me to clearly conclude that the former president is a dangerous criminal, that he should be indicted, judged, found guilty of crimes and put to jail. If not, this will literally “legalize lying” and bring this country into state-sponsored lawlessness by encouraging Trump or similar leaders to initiate other “coups”. 

I hope that the Attorney General has not just the courage but the natural urge to indict Donald Trump and some of his supporters. I have absolutely no problem is seeing Mr. Trump wearing an orange jumpsuit. This is what he deserves. 

Now I can’t explain why the majority of GOP congress people still support a thug. It must be a case that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

If Trumps isn’t locked up, I may have to consider moving out of the USA.

Nikes, glue gun and clothes dryer...

My wife and I walk an awful lot, in fact I should say a great lot. We cover between 2 and 2,300 miles each year, so it has a wonderful impact on our fitness but a disastrous on our walking shoes as we go through them as there’s no tomorrow. 

To make the matter worst, sneaker manufacturers have, in recent years, realized that making the actual sole super-thin has a huge influence on accelerating replacement. That’s where I come with my usual, unorthodox solutions. I remember the days I was a runner in the 1970s and that company named “Shoe Goo” that sold tubes of glue-like material to replenish the worn out areas in the soles of running shoes. 

I thought that I could to the same by building up the same around these areas by using my glue gun. The idea was excellent and the results acceptable if not so durable. Little did I know that it would trigger the law of unintended consequences! 

That was until, on two occasions, as our shoes were drenched following a severe rainstorm, that my wife put them inside her clothes dryer with devastating consequences. That quick-drying routine always worked well with normal shoes, but the ones that had received hot glue turned out differently.

The first time around, we couldn’t quite understand what had happened as the inside drum of the dryer was filled with dark streaks we couldn’t remove. Since we were afraid of dirtying our clothes, I jumped to the conclusion that something inside the dryer motor was causing the streak problem, we got rid of it and bought a new one. 

This past Monday, the same situation happened again and this time I finally understood that the low-melting temperature of the glue-gun plastic used for these repairs was spraying the entire drum and with the heat, was turning into these awful dark streaks that were stuck to the drum and so hard to remove at room temperature. 

The net result was that I had to remove each one by hand using a combination of credit card and metal spatula after soaking the stained surface with vinegar and that for three hours. An expensive and time-consuming lesson learned the hard way, and that will make me focus more on sole durability after walking comfort, next time we buy a new pair of shoes!

Park City Mountain upgrade plans blocked...

Last week, the Park City Planning Commission blocked two lift upgrades requested by Park City Mountain (PCM) for this coming season. 

These upgrades were appealed on the basis that the proposed eight-place and six-place chairs were not consistent with the 1998 development agreement that governs the resort. The planning commission also mentioned the need for a more thorough review of the resort’s comfortable carrying capacity calculations and parking mitigation plan, finding PCM’s proposed paid parking plan at the Mountain Village insufficient. 

As a skier, I have mixed feelings about that ruling. On the one hand, PCM is in dire need of modernization, and on the other, the rejected plan could have been better and the City’s refusal gives the ski lift operator a superb chance to tweak these improvements so they become more effective. The biggest problem faced by PCM is its chronically congested area at the confluence of Silverlode, Quicksilver and Miner’s Camp. 

Pushing more people into this bottleneck with the proposed Eagle six-pack, would have exacerbated an already bad situation, as a new Silverlode eight-pack would be likely to fall short of expectations. Based on the way Vail Resorts operates its lifts, pile-ups at the top will be common if the right-left exit options are maintained, creating frequent lift stoppage, and reducing the promised uphill capacity. 

The way PCM should reformulate its approach is by turning the current four-pack Motherlode lift into a six-pack and move its base station down into the drainage to an elevation of around 7,500 feet, allowing for a ski run to be cut into skier’s left of Broadway, looping around Miner’s Camp, down into Motherlode’s new loading area. 

Along the same lines, the top of that lift should also be extended to reach the edge of Puma ridge, just at the timberline, below Jupiter Peak. Reaching around 9,500 feet of elevation, the new chair would give users easier access to Jupiter and its West Face, Puma Bowl, Pioneer and McConkey lifts, as well as the rest of the ski runs currently served by Motherlode. In addition, the removal of Motherlode’s top station from the crowded Summit area would make users’ traffic easier. 

This new Motherlode lift serving 2,000 vertical feet, would be a game-changer as it could spread users most effectively over the whole Park City side of PCM. It might also lessen the need for the antiquated Thaynes double-fixed-grip chair, while Jupiter could be upgraded to a triple by “recycling” the old, Eagle triple-chair fixed-grip, and extending its loading area down near the current Thaynes mine shaft and tailings mound. 

I hope PCM listens to my suggestion; for me, it’s a win-win solution!

Macron’s poorlegislative election results

President Macron of France probably believed that his recent landslide victory would guarantee him, once more, another legislative majority, but this time, such a domination wasn’t in the cards.

The 2017 “miracle” didn’t recur and the “yellow vest”, Covid-19 and his aloofness at the helm of the nation didn’t endear him to much to his French electorate. 

What’s even more amazing is that the abstention rate for that run-off election was around 54% which either shows a total lack of interest on the part of my countrymen, or a full misunderstanding of the National Assembly’s role in the country’s political life. The benefit of this appalling disaffection is that each French voter who dropped a ballot has seen their voice count double. 

The bad news is that Macron will no longer be able to run the country autocratically, and the good news is that there is likely to be a healthy debate before any new law or program is adopted in France if it ever can!

Goitschel challenges Killy’s support for Putin

My home region newspaper, in France, just reported what Marielle Goitschel told about a recent phone conversation she had with Jean-Claude Killy.

The 1964 and 1968 Olympic medalist started by sarcastically asking: “How is your innocent buddy [Putin] doing?” Goitschel, the usual gadfly, said that Killy’s first words were, “But he's such a nice man.” 

She reacted by saying he was acting like a monster and that it made her sad, and went on to add: “But, wait, it's scary, he's a monster!", The only sentence Jean-Claude Killy could muster was: "Yes, it's not very good." Concluded Goitschel: “Fortunately, he said that, otherwise I would have been all over him.” 

It’s evident that Killy made a terrible choice in placing Putin on a pedestal and telling the entire world that the Russian dictator was his friend. This bizarre friendship is nothing new to those who follow the couple.

Was there any consideration other than admiration or friendship involved? One would easily conclude there might have been some. Over his long and illustrious career, Killy made more good choices than bad ones, but his total and unabashed endorsement of Putin will leave a very bad taste in his fans’ mouths. 

Just like Gerard Depardieu, he had plenty of time to come clean and denounce Putin’s actions, but chose not to budge, hoping it would go away on its own, and that will be devastating to his once pristine public image. http://go-11.blogspot.com/2013/10/killy-and-putin.html 

Early modern electric cars…

Decades before Tesla began becoming a household name and a symbol for high-tech on wheels, there were modern electric cars in America. 

The most recent of these and best known, was General Motors’s EV1 was an electric car produced and leased to consumers by General Motors from 1996 to 1999. The two-seater coupé was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker and the first GM car designed to be an electric vehicle from the get go and was offered on a lease-basis only. Its driving range started at 55 miles and improved to 105 miles when technology went from lead acid to nickel-metal hybrid batteries.

When production ended in 1999, a total of 1,117 EV1s had been produced. In 2002, GM notified lessees that it would be taking cars off the road from customers. This created a much ill-will for GM. This story came to my attention mainly through the 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” that questioned GM's decision. 

Longer before that, however, back in the late 70s, just when we immigrated to the United States, there was already an electric car called the “Lectric Leopard”: These were made by Chandler Waterman, of Athol, in Massachusetts. The man imported Renault LeCar bodies without an engine. He then installed an electric motor and 16 - 6 volt lead acid batteries. 

These batteries weighed 66 pounds each, for a total of 1056 pounds of batteries, a heavy price to pay in terms of performance. It had a range of 35–40 miles, assuming you weren’t running the heater, which would significantly reduce the range.

Top speed was 50 mph. The imported LeCar’s did not have an engine, but kept the factory 4 speed manual transmission and clutch, which made the car cumbersome to drive. 

About 60 of these vehicles were built and some are still in use today after having been extensively modified or upgraded (particularly to better batteries). 

So now, you know that the road to today’s modern electric cars is paved with an impressive number of precursors that didn’t quite enjoy the same success and fame of Tesla and his founder Elon Musk, who ironically got involved with that brand in 2004, just after the mighty General Motors through the towel on its first EV...

Another record ski season for Utah!

Is Utah a magic place? It could very well be, at least as far as skiing goes, because in spite of a rather mediocre snow season, staffing problem and dismal management at Park City Mountain, our state managed to increase its skier visits by a roughly10% over last season, setting a new record of 5,829,679 statewide skier visits for 21/22. 

Last year was already record year with 5,301,766 skier days! The truth is that after the pandemic, American skiers love to ski more than ever before, don’t hesitate to travel around to do it and take full advantage of the multi pass options available to them. It’s in fact a nationwide trend. 

The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) reported earlier this year an all-time high of 61 million skier visits nationwide during the 21/22 season. The Rocky Mountain region (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico) recorded the highest number of visits, at 25.2 million, while Colorado ski areas also set a new record last winter, with over 14 million visits recorded statewide. 

Vail Resorts, owner of Park City Mountain and dozens of other resorts across the country, said skier visits were up 12.5% at its North American resorts last season compared to the year prior. Remarkably, season pass sales now represent around 52% of all lift tickets sold. Since companies don’t report resort-specific skier visits for Utah, I make it up for you. 

I just hope I’m pretty close to reality. If you don’t agree, please chime in!

Why I became Catholic…

The day I was born, I wasn’t Catholic at all and I had no good reason to become one. I was far too young, I didn’t know anything, believed only in survival and that’s about it. My parents then thought they would have to get me baptized and later on, sent me to catechism. 

They did it because everyone else in their community did it with their off-springs. Even though my Mom had the fear of God in her, it was mostly social pressure that dictated my parents’ behavior towards religious education. 

Catechism was interesting because I’ve always liked history and since it was a branch subject that paralleled what I was taught in school I accepted it as true as well. I thought God was strict and was not a particularly gregarious character and if I believed in the story the priest told us, it’s because I thought it was factual, but I had no personal faith in God, Mary or Christ. 

I also enrolled into becoming an altar boy which gave me a free subscription to a children periodical with cartoons in it, and I liked that a lot. The priests I served mass with weren’t particular fun, but they were correct and with my colleagues we laughed a lot whenever we could and the priest couldn’t see. 

As I became adolescent, I realized that this religious stuff was a bunch of crap, constituted a pool of contradictions and was severely oppressing me. In summary, the influence of religion on my life was no longer (and never was) a positive and constructive experience, but it took me a long time to free myself from the power of control it exerted on me. 

On the positive side, I learned “Church Latin” and expressions like ite missa est (the Assembly is dismissed) and that’s not so bad! 

Bottom line, though, I was deeply contaminated, and to this day, I consider that my religious upbringing as a kid was and still remains a true form of child abuse.

Park City vapors

During my first visits to Utah, around April in the early 80s, I had observed a phenomenon I’d never seen anywhere before: Roadways steaming after a snowstorm. 

This past Monday, after we received a welcome rainstorm the same event happened as the rain stopped and the skies cleared. That’s when we choose to go out for one of our daily walks, and there was all that vapor coming of the road and the roof as if something was burning. 

Although I haven’t been able to confirm it, I attribute the sight to a usually very dry air in Utah and an exceptionally fast drying of the ambient atmosphere just at the end of a storm. 

Is there anyone informed enough to confirm that hypothesis?

The amazing Macron

A few nights ago, I watched an old documentary shot just before Macron began his first presidential campaign in France. 

In half-a-dozen years, the man hasn’t changed a bit! Back in those days he was glowing from his banking career at Rothschild and Co. and was an extremely smooth talker, using French words I had never heard before and had no idea what they meant. Needless to say that when folks speak over my head that way, they don’t generate to much goodwill with me. 

To return Macron’s favor of enriching my vocabulary, I found that word, “Sesquipedalian”, is used to describe someone or something that overuses big words, like a philosophy professor or a chemistry textbook. 

If someone gives a sesquipedalian speech, people often assume they were smart, even if they don’t really know what it was about because they can’t understand the words. Right there this could be part of Emmanuel Macron’s foundation for his smart reputation. 

This style has a problem though; it doesn’t endear him to the masses and he obviously hasn’t yet gotten the message, because in fact the man is luckier than he thinks he’s smart. It took both Dominique Stauss-Kahn and Francois Fillon’s roads to hell to clear Macron’s path to the presidency in 2017, so his fabulous victory was an unprecedented lucky case of being at the right place at the right time. 

Once more, his re-election was compliments of being opposed to Trump-like Marine Le Pen, but this time, his thinner victory should have warned him to get seriously to work and help his party earn a stronger foothold in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections. 

The run-off still has to be decided, but just like a cat Macron might still have a few lifes in reserve and turn the situation around….

Same (old) age, different styles

I just got to watch a video taken on June 9 for the first UK show of the Rolling Stones 60th anniversary tour in Liverpool. That gig was dedicated to their late drummer Charlie Watts. The band, made up of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, were joiined by Steve Jordan on drums.

Before performing The Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", something of a rarity, the 78 old Jagger said "But, we decided instead to do a cover of a song written by some other local lads so we're doing this especially for you Liverpool, OK?" 

In watching the decrepit-looking but engertic singer, I couldn’t help but compare him to Joe Biden, 6 month his elder, and who has the audacity to run precariously when he ought to take his time and walk.

I know he’s unfairly treated by the media, but all septuagenarian aren’t created equal and that the British singer is the exception rather than the rule, even though I believe that, for Mick Jagger, too it would now be ample time to call it a day and go into retirement. 

Whatever we do in life, seventy years old should be the cut-off date for compulsory retirement age. Whether one is Pope Francis, Trump, Biden or Jagger. No buts and no ifs, period. 

The Technocrat and the Tyrant

Emmanuel Macron, the recently re-elected president of France, is by some measures considered to be a smart man, but he’s definitely not a charmer. 

A tyrant like Vladimir Putin need much more than his Gallic charm to be swayed. To budge, the Russian dictator would have to be seriously smitten and Macron is woefully incapable of doing that. 

Yet, he professes that he can, as he calls to avoid humiliating Russia in Ukraine, in hoping to please the tyrannical head of state, even if looking as a savior comes at the cost of shattering the Western alliance.

Last week, Macron reiterated his belief that Russian leader Vladimir Putin must be given an exit from what he called his "historic and fundamental mistake" of invading Ukraine. 

Has he been paid by Putin to say that? Why not after all, Putin is sufficiently rich and devious to buy the support of an ambitious and shortsighted politician like Macron, but if he’s done that, he’ll play him like a cat plays with a mouse. 

Just get yourself a decent dose of common sense Emmanuel; if an enemy had invaded the French Alps and the French Riviera, killing, raping and destroying everything, everywhere, would you appreciate it if Biden told your invader something nice to avoid humiliating him? 

I don’t think so.

Impressed by Liz Cheney…

I watched intensely the first January 6 Hearing on Thursday night and was tremendously impressed by Liz Cheney’s performance and clarity when she spoke. 

I admire her courage, directness and performance. I didn't like the father, but I admire the daughter. She's is the only one who doesn't hesitate to call a spade a spade and Trump what he is: A failed dictator.

Trump should be indicted, judged, found guilty of sedition go to jail for a long time.

The changing nature of friendship

Over the years our friends come and go. As we move professionally, geographically and as we are busy and focused on supporting young families and careers, regular contacts become more difficult and originally strong friendships may gradually fade away, eventually replaced by new ones as we seem to have only room for a limited number of true, deep relationships. 

In friendship quality and quantity have very little room to coexist! True, friendships can be maintained but at a cost commensurate with the changes listed previously, but it’s often a very hard balancing act. It takes dedication, time, patience, tolerance and a will to build or re-build bridges. Forgetting or letting things slide into the past and oblivion is a lot easier, and as time progresses it becomes the default option for a vast majority of people. 

Then, there’s the unavoidable change in people, there are also arguments that arm or kill friendships; these can be hard to forget or forgive. Along the way, life experiences can make us diverge or get closer from one another, so it’s not surprising that someone who was a great friend in the past doesn’t fit anymore in our life, and conversely someone who was not necessarily close to us, suddenly reveal themselves after many years. 

So friendships are a living organism that can only last, mature and improve if we work hard on it, and it seems to me that the farther along we get into our lives, these continued efforts are very much worth their while.

In search of serendipity

The title might sound as an oxymoron, and it truly is, as serendipity is normally defined by: “Occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way…” 

What I mean is that I would like to believe that one can provoke serendipity, in other words, facilitate the phenomenon, so in surface at least, it might happen like a sudden, happy event that makes everyone delighted but wasn’t at all expected. 

Being at the right place at the right moment might be another way to define this unexpected, fortuitous event that could in many way be a “game changer” as we like to say these days. 

This being said though, I believe that serendipity exists at the a confluence between creativity, persistence and curiosity, and this is a pursuit that I’ve always been inclined to take, and still am, no matter how low and remote the odds are.

The government economists and me

To me, economic issues are common sens matters. This is why I have been up in arms ever since Covid-19 came and created havoc on our society. The US government printed money to soften the blow and a lot, no, far too much of it. 

I even had a friend that boasted to me that he gave his $1,400 Covid check to support Trump’s reelection. Needless to say that I haven’t talked to that “friend” ever since! 

Then Jeremy Powell told us repeatedly during 2021 that there was absolutely no risk for inflation. Was he just lying or being a natural imbecile? I’m afraid, he was the latter. Sure he’s not the only one “key economist” having even less clue than me about what causes inflation. 

The Biden Administration doesn’t even think that “the main reason we have inflation” or doesn’t forget to tell the Americans about it, because of all the money-supply measures that were liberally taken during the pandemic to keep an economic collapse at bay. Not really just Ukraine! 

We “borrowed” to ourselves to death in order to keep the economic consequences of Covid-19 at bay, and today we’re presented a huge bill to pay under the form of inflation. As is often the case, that sneaky economic consequence will hurt the poor much more than the rich.

That’s that simple and that could be called Economic 101. Powell and Yellen should go back to school!

Half a lifetime in one town!

When I was younger, I used to move around a lot, not just in my native province of Savoy, France, but all over the planet. 

Predictably, that fidgeting around has slowed down quite a bit since I’m not as young as I used to be, and I’ve lived now for more than 45 years in America, which is over 60% of my entire lifetime. This year, I can also claim that I have lived for half of my existence in Park City, Utah. 

Sure, we’ve lived in four or five different places in that town, but we’ve stuck to the same sunny and panoramic neighborhood. So when I look back, I still have spent 26 years in my Alpine hometown, 8 around New York, one very long one around the Riviera during my military service, one in a mixture of places around the planet and a last one in Nevers, smack in the middle of France. 

So that now makes more American than French, and more Parkite than anything else, so I guess I’ve passed any tipping point. 

Of course, will we stay here until we die? Probably, unless the American electoral remains so dumb that it elects a Trump or similar dictator, then we might seek political asylum in nearby Canada, but I hope it won’t come to that!

Irrigation: A yearly headache!

Utah is a very dry state and if we plants anything and expect it to grow, we need to irrigate. So, almost every home, even higher up in our Park City mountains, relies on some kind of watering system made up of a number of stations that are driven by a programmer. 

Since everyone has different requirement for watering that might have to do with the kind of plants that need to be fed or the local regulations that are increasingly restrictive as we’re moving into a permanent state of drought, this requires a programming system fairly sophisticated and therefore quite complicated to figure out. 

Just imagine that you were using your smartphone or computer only once a year, you wouldn’t remember a thing about its operating system given its inherent complexity. That’s exactly the situation I find myself into come the end of May or the beginning of June when it’s time to re-start our irrigation system. 

I simply go crazy trying to remember how it works, mess it up, do it over, check by watching a YouTube tutorial, and since the system is all but user’s friendly, it ends up taking me half a day to reprogram the whole system. Then, of course, I forget all this hard mental work till the following year!

A lifetime navigating social classes

I was not born rich, nor was I raised into the high class society. My picture as a kid, age 3 years old tell the story and I always keep it in my mind… I remember my origins. 

All my life, I’ve tried to fight the social class that was assigned to me, sometime with success, many times with hardship, but in the end, I’ve discovered that social class is still alive and well no matter where you go, live and work, in the entire world. 

In fact, it’s always surrounded me, especially when I was in boarding school in Cluses, the social differences were striking, yet hard to grasp and understand. Therefore they stayed in my way. The military service is said to be a social leveler in France, but only if you know to navigate the class labyrinth well. 

Then, there was my short ski instructor career that gave me the illusion that I had a pass to jump and pick classes of my choosing. I was useful to some of my students, because of my knowledge of an environment that was foreign to them. This let me peek closely into their world and sometimes experience it for a short while, but in the end, it never made me part of their caste. 

At that point, I moved into the corporate world; first, with relative ease in France in spite of its rigid class system. I must have gained some good training as a ski instructor! 

Coming to America was a totally different story. Social classes were said not to exist here, but they were everywhere as a non-written, often hidden code. 

They were just threaded into the culture, and thank god, I was white! That was tough to see, decipher and understand. I struggled, did my best and probably faked it until it was no longer necessary for my survival, but it often left me exhausted and puzzled. 

This is why I’m convinced that there should be more than one class about social classes as we get formally educated!

Getting up on the wrong side of bed?

This expression means that one starts the day feeling tired, unhappy, uncomfortable, or grumpy. Interestingly, it has an equivalent in the French language that goes like this: “Se lever du pied gauche” which translate to “Getting up on the left foot”, left being culturally associated with “wrong”. In Quebec, the translation is literal and goes like this: “se lever du mauvais coté du lit…” 

Now, back to the French saying, to get up from the left foot would suggest that one member of a couple sleeps on the right side of the bed, and that the first foot to land at dawn would be the left. This would suggest a really bad day for a right-footed individual and conversely a good one for a lefty like me. 

So for couples or singles with only one side available to exit their bed, they need to choose wisely how to orient their laying position (head vs. toes) in their bed. When I thought about that issue, I was pleased to realize that I’m lucky because I sleep on the right hand side of the bed, land my left (good) foot every morning and my right-footed wife, sleeping on the other side gets the same positive benefit. 

 Unfortunately this has not always been the case in close to 50 years of matrimony. While it’s been true for the last 20 years, we had at least 15 years when it was the opposite (we don’t recall the others, as we’ve moved a dozen time since we’re together), and I must say that before this present state of total bliss, it’s wasn’t always perfect. 

As for you, dear reader, are you getting up on the right or wrong side of the bed?

My life’s biggest regret…

I don’t have too many regrets, so far, in my life. There is mostly one big one which is not to have been meditating earlier. 

In just over two years of consistent and focused practice, I have progressed a lot in that practice and in the last months have been able to reap some wonderful benefits that are helping me a great deal. 

Had I begun that practice regularly since my twenties, I’d be much, much further along as an individual, with an even better life. 

I’m just saying this because I now believe that meditation unlocks so many inner treasures that everyone should really explore that possibility and hopefully, get on with it to make it a lifelong habit...

Snowbird’s eventful tram facelift

Snowbird ski resort may have jinxed itself when it decided to cut its snow season short, to the damn of its hardcore pass-holders in order to install its brand new tram cabins made in Switzerland by CWA, a subsidiary of Austria’s Doppelmayr, the largest ski lift maker in the world. 

The company produces ropeways, cable-cars and ski lifts, and as of 2019, boasted to have produced over 15,000 installations in 96 countries 

The old cabins were put into service in 1971, and the new ones were supposed to feature an open air rooftop balconies to receive 15 people, plus some glass panels in the floors, these two features for summer operations only.

The last Saturday of May as one of the two new cabins where being installed, it fell to the ground, damaging it beyond repair. The cabin was being lifted by a crane onto the hanger when it fell, according to Dave Field, Snowbird’s general manager. 

Accidents do happen all the time! Fortunately, no one was injured. The new cabins—along with a new drive, braking system, bullwheels, and other upgrades—were scheduled to be installed by Doppelmayr and the tram was scheduled to reopen sometime in June for scenic rides. 

After the accident, the resort is hoping it can operate the tram in a modified fashion by combining the other new cabin with an old one, while CWA builds a replacement one and it hopes to be operating with the pair of new cabins this winter. 

What’s ironical is that if Snowbird had kept a closing date of late May, this dumb and costly incident would probably have not happened. 

This also leads me why Snowbird got stuck into beefing up its iconic tram, when in fact a new 3-S gondola could have replaced it, tripling its capacity? Money and short time thinking might have be the answer to that question. At any rate, I can’t only speculate. I’m not owning or managing Snowbird!