2020 - In Review

Although I understand why many people are referring to 2020 as a dumpster fire, for my immediate family and me, it wasn't that terrible and actually offered many opportunities we might not have had otherwise. With that said, I recognize that we are incredibly blessed to have good health, good jobs, and good schools for our children. I fully understand that my year's success are just that: mine. Yours may be different, and that is okay. For many, this year was merely one of survival.

Highlights:

• One marathon, one half marathon. I joined a Facebook group for running mamas, and now I'm signed up for a trail Ragnar in May 2021!
• Felix learned to ride a bike.
• Trixie learned to ride a bike.
• Felicia is potty trained!
• Canoeing 88 miles on the Yellowstone River with lots of Eric's extended family.
• Connecting with my big sister, an old friend, and my niece on MarcoPolo.
• Joe Biden won.
• I won tickets for our family to go to Lagoon. We had so much fun!
• I made my own sourdough starter and can now make an adequate loaf of sourdough bread. I like this recipe.
• We got a Costco nearby. There are a handful of things there that I really love, especially the giant bag of spinach for my green smoothies.

Places in 2020:

• Cruise along the western coast of Mexico right before Covid-19 hit the rails. We even got a bonus day aboard the ship.
• Lots of camping, including a couple of nights in Fremont Indian State Park in a tipi, camping near Moab, and camping on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands.
• A trip to Seattle (and environs) to visit Eric's sister and her family. I am a bit in love with the San Juan Islands.
• Jackson Hole for Thanksgiving. (We defied the CDC.)

Birthdays/Traditions

Same traditions as usual, but this year we added Stockington Day the Monday before the first day of school. It was such a blast, and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Review of 2020 Goals:

• Run a sub-30 5K. DONE!
• Log 400 miles of running (outdoors and treadmill). DONE times 2.5. Yes, I ran over 1000 miles in 2020.
• Catch up on all the books I have downloaded to my Kindle. Ha! Not even close. The problem is that Amazon gives me a free book every month, and I joined a second book group this year!
• Read the Book of Mormon as a family. We gave up on this pretty early. Our little girls just cannot do it. I did read the whole thing, and I think Ike might finish before the new year.
• Start a social media hashtag called #forrealfriday where people take pictures and post about real-life stuff, not just the beautiful stuff. This hasn't caught on quite like I wanted, but we'll keep working on it.
• Crochet 20 beanies for a service project run by a family in our ward. I didn't do this one, but our ward did a service project for them, so I made five and put them with entire bundles for the project.
• Crochet 15 new snowflakes for my Christmas tree. I didn't count how many I did. It may have been 15? It may have been 10? I genuinely do not know.

2021 Goals:

• Run another marathon (or two, or three).
• Keep teaching my kids to cook. (Before the reinstatement of tighter lockdown (which, to be fair is hardly tight at all compared to other places), each of my kids helped me cook one night a week, and they got to have a friend over that night. It was working really well, and they were learning real skills besides just, getting food out for me.)
• Read daily with my kids. This should be a thing we do already, but we just don't. Sometimes we will check books out from the library, and I never even crack them open.
• Reinstate dates with our kids.

2020 focused a lot on myself, especially in regards to training. I am looking forward to being more mindful about the time I spend with my kids going into 2021.

Drug Testing for Welfare

I saw this post recently on somebody's Facebook status:

Kentucky just passed the best law ever: To be on Foodstamps, Medicaid or cash assistance for your children or yourself you have to pass a drug test. Now every other state should do the same. If you agree, repost this. People that work have to take a drug test, so should they! Amen! Repost if you agree.

Now, first off, I have to say that I am ALWAYS leery of these sorts of things. They are like the new email forwards. They spread like mad and rarely have any validity. Naturally, I checked Snopes out on this one. And what do you know? It's only partially true. The law has been proposed, but it has not yet been voted upon. Missouri lawmakers are considering a similar law for their state. Of the most importance, though is that Michigan started a drug screening program for welfare recipients in 1999, and this program was stopped when a federal court ruled that such drug testing was contrary to the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure.

With all that said, let's get down to the real problem with such a law:

It would cost FAR MORE MONEY than it would save. Most people, even welfare recipients, don't use drugs. As much as some people would like us to think that the vast majority of people on welfare are sitting on their rears using crack all day, it just isn't true. (Especially if they are using crack. They would probably be doing a lot more than sitting on their rears, though not necessarily working, which is what we'd like them to be doing.)

To drug test every welfare recipient would cost a lot of money, even if the drug tests were only annually or were only done randomly. In order to justify the cost, there would have to be enough welfare recipients with positive drug tests (thus losing their benefits) to balance the outlay of the processing of the drug tests. Just to give an example, the cheapest drug test is a urinalysis, and it costs about $25 per specimen to analyze. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding out exactly how much money an average welfare recipient receives in the United States. I know it varies by state, but when you really crunch the numbers, I seriously doubt this sort of program would be worth it.

Plus, drug testing is notoriously inaccurate. The cheapest form is inaccurate about 25% of the time. The most accurate urinalysis drug test costs more like $100-$200 per analysis. Even those can be tricked by the user drinking ample amounts of water in the days leading up to the test. Hair tests tend to be quite accurate and also substantially more expensive. Blood tests are the most accurate, the most invasive and also very expensive.

I really do understand the frustration behind the original Facebook post. It's annoying to think that your hard-earned money is going to some moocher who does drugs all day. But the fact is that your hard-earned money is probably not going to a drug-using moocher. If we want to focus on improving welfare, we need to focus on how to get people off of welfare ON THEIR OWN rather than kicking them off. I guess this would mean welfare-to-work programs and other programs that incentivise working. For example, a person who can make more money on welfare than they can working a minimum wage job is not going to be motivated to go get a job. It would also mean better funding for work training programs and better financial literacy throughout our society, particularly for the people in the lower classes.

I don't know if there is anything we can do to rid ourselves 100% of lazy moochers. There will always be people who figure out how to work the system. But developing welfare systems that promote work and sound financial choices are a much more logical route to getting people off welfare than drug testing everybody in hopes of catching a few cheaters.

Time-travel and political debates

We've been watching The Civil War, the documentary series produced by Ken Burns several years ago. It is a truly great series. The other night we watched the episode that included Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg. One of the interesting things about this speech is that Lincoln was invited in sort of an off-handed way. The folks dedicating the new cemetery realized they probably should extend an invitation to the president, and he knew that he'd be called upon to speak. However, he was not invited as the primary speaker. The chief orator was Edward Everett. His speech lasted a couple of hours. Of course, Lincoln's was only a few minutes, and it was one of the most eloquent and beautiful speeches most of us have ever read.

With all that background, here is my point: Can you imagine listening to somebody speak for over two hours? In the 1860s that was really common. Most politicians gave speeches that lasted that long. Sermons were that long too. Mormons attend a semi-annual conference each year. Each conference includes six two-hour sessions, four of which are directed at the entire church. (Meaning that at any given conference you probably will only attend as many as five sessions.) Don't get me wrong, I love General Conference, but sitting for two hours at a time and listening to speakers is a little tiring, and we're talking about NUMEROUS speakers in each session, plus songs! And I still find myself very ready for each session to end.

It is hard for me to imagine politicians of today, who are trained to speak in soundbites and quippy remarks having a debate with a politician of the 1860s. I mean, really, can you imagine Abraham Lincoln participating in the Republican presidential primaries with Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and John McCain? If anything on earth could make our current politicians look even dumber, I think that would be it. Of course, Americans, as a rule, appreciate the shorter, quippy remarks to the logical, thoughtful political explanations. (Thank you, television.) Not only that, but can you imagine a politician of the 1860s having to respond to debate questions within a 90-second limit?

Now, I'm not advocating a return to lengthy political speeches. I just thought it was interesting how very different our political discussions are now than what they were 150 years ago. The style of political discourse is so vastly different than it once was, that it really is like comparing apples and oranges. But I still do wonder if truly eloquent politicians of ages past are looking down on the Sarah Palins (and others, oh, there are others!) of today and shake their heads in disappointment.

Book Burning and Personal Revelation

I'm sure you've all heard about the pastor calling for the burning of Korans. I could write a diatribe against this pastor and his hate-mongering, but I won't. Partly because the issue seems to have mostly blown over now, but also because there are probably plenty of people who have said what I want to say in far better words than I would be able to use. Instead, I want to focus on the fact that this man claimed that if he got a sign from God we would not burn the books.

As a Mormon, I believe in personal revelation. I believe that God can and does communicate with people still. I have had too many experiences to count when I have received some sort of personal revelation. Sometimes this revelation has been small, sometimes large. Revelation has come to me in a variety of ways - by small thoughts in my head (maybe what one would call an epiphany), by feelings, by reading something that answers a question I've had, by conversations with people, and even in dreams. While I certainly cannot say that I have ever had a one-on-one conversation with my Heavenly Father, I can state with certainty that He has communicated to me throughout my life through various means.

With that said, I wondered what this pastor would consider to be a "message from God." Was he looking particularly for a personal visitation? Did he expect to hear a voice calling him by name? Or was he looking for something a little more subtle? Because I would think that a personal request from numerous political and national leaders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General Petraeus could perhaps be viewed as a message from God. I think God often communicates to us through other people. Sometimes that communication is a word of comfort offered by a person that speaks directly to your soul. Sometimes other people offer a voice of warning (e.g. If you do this you will be putting thousands of American troops at risk!), that could be viewed as a direct message to you or I from our Heavenly Father.

I guess that's my question - what kind of communication was this guy looking for?

My thoughts on healthcare

I've been thinking a lot about healthcare lately. (Who hasn't?) (Okay, maybe the non-Americans haven't been. You guys sure are missing out!) I have mentioned before that I am pro-government healthcare. With that said, I also feel like there are a lot of things within the healthcare debate that I can be very moderate on. I recognize that a lot of Americans do not like the idea of nationalized healthcare and are really repulsed by it. I get that. I can see where they are coming from, even though I don't necessarily agree with them. I get the back and forth wrangling about whether healthcare reform should be done in a comprehensive bill or several small bills. I understand people being wary about a health insurance mandate and the insurance companies disliking a mandate that would force them to cover pre-existing conditions. There are lots of issues at play, and lots of parties with very different interests. I get that.

But there are some things I don't get:

Why is America the ONLY country in the developed world that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all of its citizens?

Why aren't costs more transparent?

If the major reason that costs are so high is malpractice insurance, why hasn't congress passed tort reform in the healthcare field?

But my major beef with healthcare is that insurance companies are able to negotiate the prices much lower than the actual costs. For example, I had a test that was billed at about $800, but because I had insurance they negotiated the price down and I only had to pay about $250. I was glad that I had insurance - obviously it saved me a ton of money. But, if I hadn't had insurance, I would have paid the full amount. AND because insurance companies negotiate the prices so low, the uninsureds' rates are inflated to make up for the low costs the insurance companies pay.

What are your thoughts? (And be civil, or else.)

And Then My Head Exploded (And Donkeys Came Out)

One thing I asked my friend, Alli, about my new job: Do people talk politics much there?

Fortunately, the answer was no.

Don't get me wrong. I quite enjoy politics. I especially enjoy talking politics. That is, I enjoy talking politics in a civilized way. You know, where two or more people can express their opinions in ways that the others in the conversation can begin to understand why the participants believe the way they do. I don't even mind if the participants get a little flushed or maybe even frustrated. It's important that we, as members of the political process, understand why we believe what we do, and that we can back up our statements with facts.

I do not like conversations held in Maher versus Hannity style. Is anything gained from those sorts of discussions? Lines are drawn more clearly. Liberals jump eagerly on the liberal side; conservatives willingly rush to the conservative side. Neither side better understands the motives and beliefs of the other.

I work in a particularly conservative place. I, by Utah standards am rather liberal, by nation-wide standards rather moderate (although slightly liberal), and by Kiwi standards rather conservative. It took all of my will-power to just keep my mouth closed, and only raise my eye-brows when I was looking down and nobody could see my facial expression.

Here are a couple of things that I heard that caused much deep breathing and counting on my part:

"I was listening to him the other day, and I just realized what an idiot he is." This sentence was said referring to President Obama. And maybe it wasn't meant literally, but I thought, "The guy went to Harvard Law, I'm pretty sure he's not an idiot." Perhaps that was a poor choice of words, but then somebody else said:

"I just hope he fails so America will realize what a terrible choice they've made." So, let me get this straight? You WANT our country to do poorly just so your political opinions can be validated? Sounds like a great plan.

I think I was bothered, not just by the things they said, but the general assumption that everyone around agreed with them. I guess, what I'm really trying to say Nem said best back in November.

Please No Palin!

I'm really not too keen on Sarah Palin.

In fact, before McCain chose her as a running mate, I wasn't that averse to a McCain presidency, although I've been pro-Obama from the early stages of the democratic debates.

But Sarah Palin boggles my mind.

What is it, exactly, that everyone likes so much about her comparing herself to a pit bull?

And why is it so shocking that she kept her Down Syndrome baby and her teenage daughter is keeping her baby as well? Most people keep their babies! Abortions in the U.S. are not as high or as common as most right-wingers would have you think.

The bridge to nowhere? Palin approved the project until it was almost certain that it wasn't going to happen. And she certainly didn't tell Congress "Thanks but no thanks" to the money. It just went elsewhere in Alaska. (For questions, look at factcheck.org).

And to top it all off, she had NO IDEA what the Bush Doctrine was. Of course, most people don't know. Then again, most people are not candidates for the office of Vice President.

Also, living next to Russia does not equate to having any foreign policy knowledge at all.

Oh, it just pains me to think that McCain chose her! It pains me even more to think she could possibly be the next Vice President.

Americans are worried...

I've been following the presidential elections since the summer. I've been following them even more closely lately. We hear a lot about the middle class, the state of Social Security, qualms of Americans fearing huge lay-offs and the like. Most of it I feel like I can identify with. I feel like they are pertinent issues that need to be addressed.

But I'm sick of this one: Parents are worried about how they are going to pay for their kids to go to college.

And here's the solution: The kids can pay for it themselves.

No, if they want to go to a fancy-pants private school, they probably cannot. But they can pay for their own educations if they do the following things:

• Work in high school and save money.
  
• Choose a school that charges a reasonable amount of tuition. There are plenty of great educational institutions that do not cost an arm and a leg.
• Earn a scholarship or many scholarships.
• Work while attending college.
  
• Take out a loan. Assuming the student will graduate from college with a credible degree, paying the loan back will be relatively simple. Interest rates are quite low.
  
• Work during the summers full-time (or more) to save money.
• Be frugal.
  

It just isn't that hard, folks. And you know what? If you make your kid be responsible for paying for his own education, you can almost guarantee that he will attend his classes, work his tail off to spend the least amount of time in school as possible and make good grades because by-golly, he's not paying to play!

I just don't buy the idea that fewer kids won't be able to go to college because their parents can't pay for it. If you want it badly enough, you will be able to afford it. That's all there is to it.

Wearing Green isn't Enough

You may have heard about the protests in Jena, Louisana this week regarding unjust punishments for racial violence in the small town. When I first heard about the story I was appalled. I just couldn't wrap my head around the blatant racism that was being tolerated.

When I saw a group on Facebook called something like "Wear Green on 20 September for the Jena Six I was happy to do so. Then when I got to work I told some co-workers about the importance of wearing green today, but they hadn't even heard of the Jena Six. I went online to see what I could find about the wearing of green and to see how many people knew about it. (I had heard about it only because a girl from high school joined the group, and so it came up in my newsreel).

One article really got my attention. The basic premise was, "Wearing green is not going to do anything to solve the racial injustices that are still going on in this country. If you want to do something about it, you need to do more than wear green." That really struck me.

So I wrote a letter to Orrin Hatch tonight. I mentioned that although racial tension isn't much of an issue in Utah, it is a national issue. I emphasized that if he would speak about it, more people would realize what a problem it is. He would be able to put pressure on the Louisiana senators to step in. I think it especially would matter because it would be a white man speaking on behalf of black boys. That would show that even white people recognize racial injustice when they see it.

Immigration

I've been paying a good deal of attention to all the hullabaloo about who will be the next president, probably because I'm so frustrated with our current administration. On Sunday night I watched a fair amount of the Democratic debate on CNN, and tonight I watched almost all of the Republican debate. First and foremost, let me say, regarding the two debates that the Democratic debate was overall far more intelligent. There was much less pandering and more talking about the issues. It seemed like tonight the Republicans did a lot of issue-avoidance, to the point that I became really annoyed.

Immigration has been on my mind a lot for the last three years, more so in the last year when it suddenly became a hot-button topic, and all of America began talking about it virtually overnight. I intended to blog about it then, but just didn't get around to it. And now I'm going to.

Our nation has been built by immigrants. All of us (unless you are a Native American, and you probably aren't) are Americans because our ancestors immigrated here. Some of those were fortunate enough to get here before America ridiculous laws on immigration. Laws on immigration, when looked at from a historical viewpoint, have always been for the purpose of preventing different people from coming in. Laws were placed on Chinese immigrants early on. Later there were laws which limited the amount of people that could come from each country. Those people from countries similar to America were allowed to immigrate in far greater numbers.

Regarding today's immigration issues- A lot of people dislike, even hate, immigrants. Some people say they only dislike the illegal ones, but I think, on the whole, people are scared that American culture (which is, let's face it, really just T.V. and movies) is being infiltrated by another culture. There are all sorts of ridiculous arguments about how bad immigrants are. I read one on this site, and I found the rebuttal far better than the argument itself.

Our country needs immigrants. We need a lot of immigrants. They really will do the work that nobody else is willing to do. They are not taking jobs away from Americans. In fact, the five states with the highest levels of illegal immigrants (California, New York, Texas, Arizona and Illinois) all have very low levels of unemployment, and unemployment is only measured based on U.S. citizens. Illegal immigrants help our economy because they will work for cheap. If the labor is cheap, the prices are, in turn, cheap. Produce prices are expected to be higher than usual this year because there simply aren't enough illegal immigrants to harvest the crops, and Americans won't take the jobs.

Illegal immigrants put into the system more than they take out. Because illegal immigrants are illegal, they do not file their taxes, and all of their income tax goes into the government and never comes back. That means (at least for the ones who use stolen Social Security numbers rather than the immigrants working under the table) that the money they pay in income taxes isn't coming out. They aren't mooching off American health care and American schools. They are paying their share, and they're not going to receive Social Security payments for the work they do.

Immigrants do not come here because they want to expand their countries. They come here because the opportunities in their countries can only be seized through corruption or with great luck. I have known people from my home town who were very educated in their home countries (lawyers, teachers, accountants) but who came to the States to work as janitors because they are paid better as janitors than as professionals in their home countries.

These people would love to come here legally, but America's system is so convoluted that it's impossible for them to do so. The lines are ridiculously long. The number of immigrants America is willing to allow in is so impossibly small that people who want to come to the States have no choice but to sneak in.

I believe there are two types of immigrants, and this theory comes from and illegal immigrant that I was well acquainted with. The first type is the one who wants to live better. He brings his family here because they can own a house with a washing machine and a dryer, maybe have a car, and they will always have clean water, if nothing else. The second type comes because he wants to be better. He does everything in his power to improve his situation in his own country but finally comes to the States. When he gets to the States, he abides by all the laws (at least the ones that won't send him back to his dead-end life in his home country), he learns English (yes, he learns the language that will most readily help him move up in society), he saves his money and hopes his children will be able to attend college. He would rather be a professional, but for now he is content taking a low-end job, because that's what it takes to move up in this new society. There really is a difference in the ways people behave when they get here. Those who want to live better sometimes make those who want to be better look bad.

Too many people think that immigrants are here to mooch. They are here because their countries did not provided the opportunities we are blessed with in America. Americans are not worse off because immigrants are here. Certainly, there are cultural differences, but that is why America is known as the "great melting pot."

Regarding the learning of English- Immigrants just need to do it. It would be completely impossible for governments to put signs and forms in all the languages that immigrants speak. It would be ridiculous, and it certainly wouldn't help immigrants advance in society. It would only hold them back. In some ways, being an immigrant is a blessing because it (ideally) forces people to become bilingual, making them far more marketable than those of us who only speak one language.

So, what should the government do about illegal immigration? I'm not entirely sure. Of course, our borders need to be secure, but a giant fence isn't going to do that. Just ask France; they tried it after World War I. We certainly can't send everyone back. How on earth would we find all those people? And besides, there are a number of "illegal immigrants" who have been here since they were babies. Nobody should expect them to return to a country they are unfamiliar with because their parents brought them here illegally.

To decrease illegal immigration, we need to make legal immigration easier. People should be able to come over and work. More families should be given the opportunities to come so their children can receive adequate educations. The answer is in greater numbers of legal immigrants. I think some aspects of the new bill are great. Immigrants need to learn English. Immigrants need to have jobs. Immigrant children need to attend school. Immigrants need to obey the laws. If they can do these things, they'll be doing better than a lot of American citizens.