It's Over

It's official. I got a 96% in my final class, so, for now, I am done with graduate education and can add the MS to my list of accomplishments.

Pardon me while I go squat in the corner and go bbbbbbbbb with my lips.

Dancing, Dancing, Dancing

The rumbling thunderstorm and rushing breeze mix their sounds with those of Main Street.

Main Street noises, though, are not the swoosh of cars, the occasional click of a bicycle wheel, the regular shuffling stamp of pedestrian feet. From around the corner of the brick-fronted jewelry store, in the center of the street, emerges a woman carrying the black-on-white, yin with yang flag of South Korea. Behind her, pushed as if they were leaves on the growing breeze, a knot of reedy dancers clad in pink and aquamarine silken clothing, ruffled by the breeze, buffeted, as it seems, by the tloing! tloing! doing! crash! zloing bloing! of the drums and cymbals carried by the similarly-clad band, some of whom growl away on recorders, adding the drill and trill to the cacophony of clashes, accompanied by the swirling dancers, the rumble of thunder and the rush of the wind.

This is the Idaho International Folk Dance and Music Festival, in full swing for its twenty-fourth year. The festival has its roots at Ricks College, a private school – now Brigham Young University-Idaho – in Rexburg. In 1983, a team of folk dancers from the school attended a dance festival in Europe and decided to stage such an event at home. Partnered with the Rexburg Chamber of Commerce, organizers brought the first folk dance festival to town in 1986. You can read more about the festival's history here if you like.

During the festival, Rexburg is gently taken over by the dancers, musicians and their entourages. It’s common to run into them at Kmart or Wal-Mart, shopping with the local families who host them – providing room, board and companionship – during the festival. During the festival week it’s as common to hear German or Mandarin Chinese being spoken frequently, loudly and punctuated with laughter as the dancers eat burgers at McDonalds or ice cream at the Dairy Queen. This is how you know it’s festival time.

It’s a great event. Go read about it at Uncharted by clicking here. And thanks.

Bear Pix

Finally, after 37 years, I have decent bear pictures. I'm very excited to share them. They'll also be going up at Uncharted soon.

Good ol' Lisa the Bear. Read more about "her" here.

Wha?

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakira has written an odd, nonsensical column urging – or maybe warning about – Americans lurching back into spending mode to ease the worldwide recession. I’ve read it several times and still can’t fathom what he’s talking about.

He seems concerned that Americans will emerge from this recession riddled with debt. He also seems concerned that other countries – he mentions Germany and China – seem to be idling, waiting for Americans to spend again to get the world economy moving. And then he goes on about the savings rates, lambasting the government for “a series of government policies and programs [that] subsidized debt and expenditure and did nothing to reward savings.”

The most nonsensical thing he writes is this:

The biggest of these, of course, is the tax deductibility of mortgage interest, which costs the country almost $100 billion every year. Please don't tell me it creates an ownership society. Margaret Thatcher eliminated a similar program in Britain, and Canada doesn't have one either—and both have the same home-owner-ship rates as America. The policy does not encourage home-owner-ship; it encourages the accumulation of debt.

On the planet I’m from, this home mortgage interest deduction is a no-nevermind. Yes, I pay mortgage interest. So does everyone else with a mortgage. But I’ve not once been able to deduct it, because my itemized deductions never exceeds that of the standard deduction. I can’t believe I’m alone in this. It makes no difference to me if that interest is deductible or not. Maybe it does to others. But he just kind of inserts this paragraph into the column, without really explaining why. Does he want the tax deduction eliminated so that federal government can get more money through taxation? Does he think eliminating the deduction will encourage more frugality among Americans, or that the absence of such a deduction would have encouraged Americans to buy smaller homes? I don’t know. And I’m not sure he does, either, because he doesn’t really say.

He also seems to advocate a national sales tax, citing that as another “incentive” Americans have – over others in other countries, I suppose – to spend. He misses the boat here entirely, because in some countries that have national sales taxes, there are no such things as regional or state sales taxes, which most states in the US have. So once again is he lamenting that there’s tax money out there that’s not being fed to the Federal government? I don’t know. And he doesn’t really say. Do we need a national sales tax? I’d have to have a good reason to say yes. Health care? Sure. But having a tax merely to remove an incentive to spend seems a silly reason and surely wouldn’t stem the government’s need to spend whatever it takes in, plus some. I hope that’s not what he’s talking about.

In the end, he seems convinced that once somebody in the media makes the announcement: “The recession is over!” we’re all going to lurch back into our overspending habits. That may well be. But he’s got to figure out that there are people, like us, who didn’t overspend to begin with, who are scratching our heads over the whole mess.

For instance, my wife and I have been laughing over this “Cash for Clunkers” program which rewards those who bought gas-guzzling vehicles but doesn’t really help people like us who may actually have clunkers they’d like to trade in for a better-operating vehicle but don’t qualify for the program, so we’ll continue driving our cars into the ground while those whose cars work but get poor gas mileage can get new vehicles. Not that we want a new vehicle – but it’s just that with these government programs, they always start out with the aim of helping a certain group, and they miss every time.

Do we get government help? Sure. Show me anyone in the country who doesn't have their hand in the pie somehow and I'll show you a rotten liar. We get reduced school lunch prices for our kids. We get tax breaks because of our kids. All sorts of goodies come our way because of our kids.

Larsen Repair Again Hits A Home Run

I feel like explaining, once again, why we insist on taking our vehicles to Larsen Repair in Iona to get work done on them.

You've read here earlier about the brake trouble we had on our Toyota pickup over the weekend, and our interactions with yet another Rexburg-area auto repair shop. To recap: They had the truck in their shop for two hours and "Couldn't find anything wrong," but wanted to charge us $400 for new brake pads, turning of the rotors and other ancillary repairs, on top of the $88 they were already charging us for the time spent "diagnosing" the problem.

We demurred, and took the truck -- which was drivable, but evidently only just -- the 26 miles to Iona. Kevin -- in an act of derring-do the others evidently didn't try since they could not "find" the problem -- actually drove the truck around and, for a while, couldn't find the problem either. Then as he was pulling the truck back onto their lot, the brakes locked. He quickly jacked the truck up where it was and found that the master cylinder -- a part the other mechanics didn't mention in their promises of exploratory surgery -- was faulty. We'll get a new one put in tomorrow, for about $200.

So, on the one hand, we had a mechanic who wanted to charge us nearly $500 to guess at the problem. On the other, we had a mechanic who actually drove the truck around until the problem duplicated itself and can fix it for $200. Is it any wonder we keep going back? Oh, and the brake pads and rotors the Rexburg guys wanted to replace and turn, respectively? Kevin says they're just fine.

Kevin and Greg keep singlehandedly repairing the reputation of mechanics everywhere, and we're now 0 for 3 in Rexburg-area mechanics. That's not a good average.

One Fact I Am Proud Of

One fact I am proud of:

BA, 4 years in college, student loan debt of $1,500, paid off in the first year after graduation.

MS, 2 1/2 years, no debt at all.

I worked hard for this education, doing everything from technical writing, which I'm doing now, to working in a cefeteria, replacing windshields, bricklaying, stocking shelves at Target and, help me, taking customer service calls for Qwest.

Bears!

Blogger's Note: Photos coming soon.

Because the kids were disappointed we weren’t able to go swimming, we took them to Jenny Lake instead. Best part of the trip was seeing the bear. After we let the kids wade in the lake for a while, we decided to go walking up the trail that loops around the lake on the east side. We’d walked for maybe a quarter of a mile and some other hikers said there was a bear on the trail ahead. That immediately stopped the kids in their tracks; Lexie especially didn’t want to go anywhere near the bear. So Michelle took them back down the path to a little beach while I walked on ahead with the camera to get a picture of the bear.

And, as you’re walking through a rather silent forest, populated with trees and big bear-shaped rocks and on a little narrow trail that offers no hope of escape, you get to imagining things. I started whistling a lot, and looked for a big stick to grab. Nothing. Then, ahead, I saw three people stopped on the trail, pointing off into the brush. I knew what they were doing. I walked up, and, yes, there was the bear, grubbing about in the underbrush looking for bark or berries or deceased hikers to eat. The people there – man, wife and daughter – were very excited. Dad said to me a bit sheepishly, “They’ve named the bear, by the way. It’s Lisa.” So we watched Lisa the Bear move around, ignoring us, as it went on eating. I took about a billion pictures, hoping at least one would turn out. I have not seen them yet.

So to continue. Other highlights of the trip included driving home by way of Alpine, so we could see the Snake River Canyon, and having Liam fall down on a trail in the canyon and scream as if he’d just met Vlad the Impaler in one of his nasty moods because he (Liam, not Vlad) had skinned his knee. Michelle dealt with him really patiently. I told him, casually, “Hey Liam, next time you scream like that. . .” and didn’t finish the sentence. Michelle laughed at that.

Then, because the kids were hungry, we stopped at the Angus in Swan Valley – a place I’d driven by countless times but never stopped at – for dinner. Typical small-town greasy spoon, with shelves of books for people to browse in as they’re waiting for their food. I had a “Dorothy Burger,” which consisted of a hamburger embellished with ham and Swiss cheese. Good, but I never did get an explanation as to why it is called a Dorothy burger. I don’t recall Dorothy eating such a burger on the way to see the Wizard of Oz, so I assume there’s no L. Frank Baum connection.

We took the bat route home through Archer, of course. Very dark. I’m not sure I’d want to take that route in the dark if I weren’t familiar with it, because it was fun enough for me in the dark when I knew where I was going. It’s a stretch of about ten miles that cuts about another 20 miles off the trip home, so it’s worth it. But dark, as I mentioned. Going home the Alpine way meant we only had to cross the Teton Pass once, which is about as many times a trip as I prefer to cross that pass in the first place

BAMSPHD?

I find out this week, of course, if I've passed my online class on building an online class, representing the last three credits I need to earn a masters degree. I have high hopes. I know my final paper and website for the class aren't perfect, but I think I worked hard enough on them to accomplish something a little better than average. I have been wrong before, of course.

So now begs the next question: Since I may soon have the right to add the MS to the BA already behind my name, do I go on for the PhD? I'm listing pros and cons here, with cons first, as is my pessimistic wont:

• Sounds like just about any subject I pick has a teaching element involved.
• Not that teaching is terrible, but that means I can't complete the program and remain employed where I am, unless I want to drive myself crazy by driving all over the place. Nearest doctorate-issuing university to me is Idaho State, 75 miles. And do they have a program I want?
• Obviously I could continue at Utah State, get a PhD in professional communication. But that means moving to Logan.
• I can't provide for my family on what pittance I'd get from the university during the program. No way entirely. I'd have to work and go to school at the same time.
• I know people have done this, but do I want to do it? It sounds insane.

Yes, narrative style is helping me think these through. Now the pros:

• Earn big money, after spending big money.
• Honors and benefits, and at the age of nine.
• Working to accomplish something this difficult would be an amazing thing.
• More, better job opportunities, as masters degrees are going the way of the bachelors, in becoming a dime a dozen.
• Teaching experience on top of anything else. Could lead to better things, get me out of RWMC (not that it's bad, mind you) and into BYU-Idaho (not that BYU-I is necessarily nirvana).

One more con: I'd have to buy a suit.

So in a word, I don't know. I think a little more research is needed. That's a good place to start, right? But I'll have to act quickly because, like Cuzco, I ain't gettin' any deader.

Love Your Love Handles

And now for something completely different. British comedian Mitch Benn singing his song, "Love Handles." It's great, and fits in with the beefy/bespectacled (but not pompadoured) motif of the last post here.

Erik is NOT Dead

This, my friends, is Gaston Leroux, 19th century Paris journalist. I have a lot of respect for this man, and not only because, like me, he's beefy, bespectacled and blessed with a preponderance of puffy pompadourish hair. He's also the author of probably one of the best books I've read this year: Phantom of the Opera.

This is not, you besotted ones, the Phantom made popular by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Michael Crawford. This is not the phantom with the dinnerware on his face and the character depth of a mud puddle. This is the book that gives the phantom feeling, Christine Daae a soul and a mind and, frankly, makes the Vicomte de Chagny into kind of an impretuous, foppish dandy while the real hero of the story -- the Persian, a mysterious fellow from the Phantom's past who doesn't actually get a name -- is cut out of the musical entirely.

Do yourselves a favor, Phantom fans. Read the book. You'll get a lot more out of Christine's character, for one. She's such a soggy heroine in the musical, all fainting and nebbishness and no brains at all. In the book she's a rather strong woman who faces an incredibly difficult moral dilemma, and passes it.

You'll get a lot more out of the Phantom, too, and find out that behind the waxy persona, the schizophrenic mind, the dreamer, the composer of Don Juan Triumphant, that you basically have a normal guy who figures out in the end that it's not the having that counts, but the wanting.

And can I tell you what, this book has something the musical will never have -- exposition. I suppose the musical is written, in a way, for people already familiar with the story. Unforutnately, it's a crippled version of the story that leaves out a lot of the explanations. I know, it's the vogue these days to leave things up to the imagination, let the reader or viewer -- or soppy love-story lover -- to fill in the details. I like it when an author is in control and fills in the details for me. I like seeing how they all fit the story. Leaving things up to the imagination is fine to a point, but once and a while, explain something for heaven's sake.

Don't get me wrong. I love the musical. It's a fine story in its own right. But it's not really Leroux's phantom. If you love the musical, do yourself a favor and read the book.