Well here we are at Christmas Eve, 2008; and to borrow from Dickens, the Christmas Present is kind of a shambles. Some good ideas are still just ideas, and I wish I had a maid and Martha Stewart’s staff in my employ. Yeah, I know, if I were as smart as Martha Stewart, I would have my own staff. But I don’t, and there is way too much Christmas to go around.
Actually I could be content just to remember Christmases Past when my family wasn’t all grown up and there were small children in my home to make a Christmas for.
After all, it’s the children who are mostly nice and the grown-ups who are naughty, but you can’t threaten big people using the Santa-won’t-come routine. In the Christmas Past, Santa was not only a good motivational tool, but he was a good scapegoat, as well. There was always someone to blame when Christmas was less than perfect.
Well, we had a few of those, but there was still plenty of goodwill to make everyone merry. Kids are pretty forgiving that way. Some years though, I was ready to shoot Santa myself.
His choice of toys was what I had to quarrel with. Maybe since he didn’t have to live with his toys for the rest of the year he was a little short-sighted, but his selection was incredibly awful sometimes. I don’t think he ever left anything that didn’t require batteries, make a lot of noise, or fit the neighbors better than us.
He has left trucks so big you had to park them in the garage, and cars so small that they got lost under the bath mat. He has brought guns that mimicked submachine and never ran out of ammunition. He has left building sets with more parts than my Ford, and all of them just that necessary.
He has dropped off games with instructions in French, sweatshirts that would fit himself and no one else, and bicycles that take eight hours to put together.
Of course there comes a time when each kid gets older and you realize its time for either the kid or yourselves to grow up and take responsibility for Santa and his ideas. And just once in a while, when you/he got it right, you might even like to take little of the credit for yourself.
My grand-nephew’s parents thought it was time to sit him down and explain to him that Santa might be a bit of a stretch for even a ten-year-old’s imagination. So the other day they tried to let Santa out of the closet without too much trauma. When they told him who really leaves the presents, the kid was unconvinced. He said, “I don’t believe that, because there is no way that you guys could afford what Santa brought me last year.”
So hold off on the expensive presents until you can get credit for them. Let Santa bring the games with French instructions.
But let you be the one who gives love and laughter—cookies made while little helpers stand on chairs, forays to find the perfect tree which will soon have its symmetry destroyed with overloaded bottom branches, the Christmas story read from St. Luke in children’s halting voices, Jingle Bells sung off-key all the way to Grandma’s house.
Christmas is about the toddler standing in front of the lighted tree murmuring “Christmas, Christmas.” It began with a Child who was born in a stable. May it live on for children everywhere. And may our celebrations reflect the wonder of it all.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Butterbeans remember the Sixties
Remember that good old decade—the Sixties? Well yes, a good share of you don’t remember it since you weren’t born yet. The rest of you are not remembering things too well. So I will help you out. That was the time when all the girls wore long hair, all the cars were Chevys, and all the schools were five miles away with snow every step of the way. For some reason, Chevys were never driven to school.
Life was definitely simpler then. Just ask Father Butterbean. All of the tee-shirts were white and so were the socks. All of the music was mellow; all of the jeans were Levis. All of the phones were AT&T. All of the tennis shoes were Keds. Well, it’s pretty much still that way for Father B.
There weren’t any teen-age identity crises back then because there were only two identities—hoods and everybody else. And once you arrived at school after trudging through the snow, there were only two halls that could qualify as Halls.
If you were rebellious you were a Hood. You still wore Levis and white socks. The only difference was that you carried a pack of cigarettes rolled up in your white tee-shirt sleeve, and you stood in Hood Hall only it wasn’t called that then.
Girls weren’t rebellious much, and they all wore dresses or skirts except for when they wore their Keds with their regulation gym shorts.
I’m not sure how many Halls there are these days. At least half a dozen. If I am wrong, don’t tell me about it, because I grew up in the two-Hall era and get most of my information regarding current high school culture third or fourth hand.
I may have heard of Jock Hall, Cowboy Hall, Skate-or-Die Hall, Stud Hall, Granola Hall, Reggae Hall and Rock Hall. If there isn’t a Rap Hall, I don’t know why not.
Finding a Hall to stand in with so many possibilities available must be excruciating since standing in the wrong hall could be social suicide.
And just because a kid has gotten through the crisis and negotiated the hall maze (figuratively speaking), that doesn’t mean he is through making decisions. Before a high schooler can leave the house in the morning, he has to make several different choices on several different levels. Sooner or later, he has to decide whether his reputation can stand up to blurring the image for one day. Say he hangs out in Cowboy Hall. Can he get away with wearing khakis when his Wranglers are dirty?
Then he has to decide whether to wear short or long khakis and with what. (In the Sixties, shorts were worn only when the temperature exceeded 80 degrees. The cutoff (pun) temperature is somewhere around 20 degrees these days. That may have been because shorts lived up to their name back then.)
Say our dude decides to keep it simple and wear jeans, a tee-shirt and sport shoes. He still has to decide which one of each, and each component by itself possibly has unforeseen implications in terms of image. “Do pink tee-shirts go only with Reggae gear or can they show up in Jock Hall occasionally?”
Shoes, by themselves, no matter which hall their owners habituate, could present monumental problems. You can’t tell me that Cowboy Hallers don’t have anything but Justins in their closets. At the very least, they have basketball shoes, hikers, joggers, something for church, and hunting boots. Can a cowboy’s image survive the wearing of alternative footwear in Cowboy Hall when his boots hurt his feet?
What I really want to know is whether those very baggy, very low-slung pants (they probably have a name that I don’t know of) can show up in every hall. I also want to know whether baggy-pants halls empty out at the same rate as jock halls during fire drills—presuming they still have fire drills at school.
I have never been great at making decisions. In fact, waffling is something I have raised to a fine art. The trick is to use the postpone-and-wait method which means that if you wait long enough you won’t have any choices anyway.
If I were 40 years younger and trying to get ready for school, I wouldn’t be able to decide which shoes to wear unless the dog had eaten every pair but one. And I would be late for school every day and wouldn’t get to stand in any Halls.
Life was definitely simpler then. Just ask Father Butterbean. All of the tee-shirts were white and so were the socks. All of the music was mellow; all of the jeans were Levis. All of the phones were AT&T. All of the tennis shoes were Keds. Well, it’s pretty much still that way for Father B.
There weren’t any teen-age identity crises back then because there were only two identities—hoods and everybody else. And once you arrived at school after trudging through the snow, there were only two halls that could qualify as Halls.
If you were rebellious you were a Hood. You still wore Levis and white socks. The only difference was that you carried a pack of cigarettes rolled up in your white tee-shirt sleeve, and you stood in Hood Hall only it wasn’t called that then.
Girls weren’t rebellious much, and they all wore dresses or skirts except for when they wore their Keds with their regulation gym shorts.
I’m not sure how many Halls there are these days. At least half a dozen. If I am wrong, don’t tell me about it, because I grew up in the two-Hall era and get most of my information regarding current high school culture third or fourth hand.
I may have heard of Jock Hall, Cowboy Hall, Skate-or-Die Hall, Stud Hall, Granola Hall, Reggae Hall and Rock Hall. If there isn’t a Rap Hall, I don’t know why not.
Finding a Hall to stand in with so many possibilities available must be excruciating since standing in the wrong hall could be social suicide.
And just because a kid has gotten through the crisis and negotiated the hall maze (figuratively speaking), that doesn’t mean he is through making decisions. Before a high schooler can leave the house in the morning, he has to make several different choices on several different levels. Sooner or later, he has to decide whether his reputation can stand up to blurring the image for one day. Say he hangs out in Cowboy Hall. Can he get away with wearing khakis when his Wranglers are dirty?
Then he has to decide whether to wear short or long khakis and with what. (In the Sixties, shorts were worn only when the temperature exceeded 80 degrees. The cutoff (pun) temperature is somewhere around 20 degrees these days. That may have been because shorts lived up to their name back then.)
Say our dude decides to keep it simple and wear jeans, a tee-shirt and sport shoes. He still has to decide which one of each, and each component by itself possibly has unforeseen implications in terms of image. “Do pink tee-shirts go only with Reggae gear or can they show up in Jock Hall occasionally?”
Shoes, by themselves, no matter which hall their owners habituate, could present monumental problems. You can’t tell me that Cowboy Hallers don’t have anything but Justins in their closets. At the very least, they have basketball shoes, hikers, joggers, something for church, and hunting boots. Can a cowboy’s image survive the wearing of alternative footwear in Cowboy Hall when his boots hurt his feet?
What I really want to know is whether those very baggy, very low-slung pants (they probably have a name that I don’t know of) can show up in every hall. I also want to know whether baggy-pants halls empty out at the same rate as jock halls during fire drills—presuming they still have fire drills at school.
I have never been great at making decisions. In fact, waffling is something I have raised to a fine art. The trick is to use the postpone-and-wait method which means that if you wait long enough you won’t have any choices anyway.
If I were 40 years younger and trying to get ready for school, I wouldn’t be able to decide which shoes to wear unless the dog had eaten every pair but one. And I would be late for school every day and wouldn’t get to stand in any Halls.
With Berthanomics you feel better already
I know that if you spend any part of your day listening to the news, talk shows, talk radio, or reading the papers, blogs, etc., you might be sick of hearing about the economic crisis we are in. Well, I am here to give you Bertha’s perspective on the whole mess which may or may not be correct, but I do have experience in dealing with messes—and this is the deal—whoever makes the mess cleans it up. Yeah right. But that is another column.
My theory is this: stock values are down; retirement accounts are worth less; real estate is worth less; the dollar is worth less. We heard last week that financially speaking the last seven years have been wiped out.
Well, trust the media to give you some meaningless piece of information which is designed to unnerve you. (It’s not the vampire movies that are scary these days, but the six o’clock news.)
But back to the economic situation. Yes, our money is worth less, and we have less of it, but in case you haven’t noticed, everybody’s money is worth less and they all have less of it at roughly the same percentage you do. Not only that, you have probably noticed that the price of lots of goods, gas, groceries, cars, houses, and electronics, are down and just about everything else you can get for a deal.
So if we have less money but it costs less to get things, we just might come out even anyway.
According to Berthanomics, we are all still in the same place we were before the bust. Okay, maybe seven or even twenty years before the bust. But we still buy what we used to. We just pay less for it, so having less of it is okay. Right?
There are a couple of positive things going on as well which could help to tip the scales to better than even for some people. The money in our bank accounts remains in our bank accounts. Your banker hasn’t called to say that your account now has fewer dollars in it. And most likely no one has cut back on your paycheck either, so the money you have to work with is more than before, relatively speaking. You still have x amount of dollars only now it will buy more. (Just don’t think about your stocks. or instead of thinking about how much they were worth at their peak, think about how much it cost to buy them.)
It’s like playing Monopoly with only half of the money, but making all of the properties cost half as well. You still get to collect the full amount when you pass “GO.,” and so does everyone else.
And for once, being on a fixed income is a good thing. Unless or until someone unfixes your income, advance to “GO.” And remember, Park Place only costs $175. I have to admit though that you will probably have to keep taxes at $200. They aren’t going to go down anytime soon.
As games go, I hate Monopoly; it takes too long to play, it is boring, and I never win. “I knew it,” you say, ”Bertha is not a closet financial genius, she is an idiot. She doesn’t even know how to play Monopoly, let alone understand finance.”
You may be right. I suppose you are thinking of all of the things that may never come down in price. But I don’t know anyone who thought that gasoline would ever come back down either.
The alternative to Berthanomics can look pretty dismal. You find yourself wondering whether you are going to be able to eat bugs when your food runs out, or whether you want to buy a horse in case you can’t drive your car. Thinking about going without electricity could really make you crazy.
My daughter says that if she finds herself eating bugs someday, cooked or not, then she has bigger problems than hunger anyway and starving might be a solution rather than a problem.
So when you get your next mutual funds statement, think about the Butterbean Financial Institute’s Monopoly model, or better yet, go ahead and play a game with half of the money kept in the box. (You could always put it into circulation if you decided to.) It will still be boring and you might lose, but it won’t take as long to do it, which may or may not mean something.
My theory is this: stock values are down; retirement accounts are worth less; real estate is worth less; the dollar is worth less. We heard last week that financially speaking the last seven years have been wiped out.
Well, trust the media to give you some meaningless piece of information which is designed to unnerve you. (It’s not the vampire movies that are scary these days, but the six o’clock news.)
But back to the economic situation. Yes, our money is worth less, and we have less of it, but in case you haven’t noticed, everybody’s money is worth less and they all have less of it at roughly the same percentage you do. Not only that, you have probably noticed that the price of lots of goods, gas, groceries, cars, houses, and electronics, are down and just about everything else you can get for a deal.
So if we have less money but it costs less to get things, we just might come out even anyway.
According to Berthanomics, we are all still in the same place we were before the bust. Okay, maybe seven or even twenty years before the bust. But we still buy what we used to. We just pay less for it, so having less of it is okay. Right?
There are a couple of positive things going on as well which could help to tip the scales to better than even for some people. The money in our bank accounts remains in our bank accounts. Your banker hasn’t called to say that your account now has fewer dollars in it. And most likely no one has cut back on your paycheck either, so the money you have to work with is more than before, relatively speaking. You still have x amount of dollars only now it will buy more. (Just don’t think about your stocks. or instead of thinking about how much they were worth at their peak, think about how much it cost to buy them.)
It’s like playing Monopoly with only half of the money, but making all of the properties cost half as well. You still get to collect the full amount when you pass “GO.,” and so does everyone else.
And for once, being on a fixed income is a good thing. Unless or until someone unfixes your income, advance to “GO.” And remember, Park Place only costs $175. I have to admit though that you will probably have to keep taxes at $200. They aren’t going to go down anytime soon.
As games go, I hate Monopoly; it takes too long to play, it is boring, and I never win. “I knew it,” you say, ”Bertha is not a closet financial genius, she is an idiot. She doesn’t even know how to play Monopoly, let alone understand finance.”
You may be right. I suppose you are thinking of all of the things that may never come down in price. But I don’t know anyone who thought that gasoline would ever come back down either.
The alternative to Berthanomics can look pretty dismal. You find yourself wondering whether you are going to be able to eat bugs when your food runs out, or whether you want to buy a horse in case you can’t drive your car. Thinking about going without electricity could really make you crazy.
My daughter says that if she finds herself eating bugs someday, cooked or not, then she has bigger problems than hunger anyway and starving might be a solution rather than a problem.
So when you get your next mutual funds statement, think about the Butterbean Financial Institute’s Monopoly model, or better yet, go ahead and play a game with half of the money kept in the box. (You could always put it into circulation if you decided to.) It will still be boring and you might lose, but it won’t take as long to do it, which may or may not mean something.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Responsible Christmas tree ownership
Last week we took our annual trip to cut a Christmas tree. Those of you who value convenience in completing holiday chores will think we are crazy. Why go up on the mountain for a tree when you could have a artificial one which would only require a trip to the basement? But then how much fun is that?
We don’t really have to go far, and this year we didn’t even have to get our feet wet or cold.
I know life is about being responsible, not having fun. I’ve been telling my kids that for years. I began to wonder about the extent of that responsibility when I learned while picking up tree permits that things may have changed a bit. It seems that the permitting process has undergone some restrictive changes. What else is new? I only wanted to cut a tree, not adopt one.
Well, it worked out, but I began to wonder about our traditional tree harvesting. Could I possibly be overstepping the bounds of social responsibility by choosing a live fragrant tree instead of a manufactured one?
I thought going organic was a good thing. Just how green does this tree have to be?
So, after the fact, I checked the websites to see whether cutting a live tree could possibly be politically or environmentally incorrect.
I found out that fir or pine “holiday” trees last longer—as opposed to what other kinds I couldn’t tell you. And there really are organic trees. They are raised on farms where very few fertilizers or chemicals are used. (Hey, the trees I cut are as organic as they get since they raise themselves without help of any kind.)
Artificial trees on the other hand are made from PVC and could possibly emit bad tree gases. In addition they are made in Japan or China and leave big tree prints by virtue of being shipped long distances. On the other hand, again, most are already strung with lights and relieve the owner from excessive handling of the some kinds of lights which may have lead in them.
One website suggested taking a walk in the forest to enjoy the trees in their natural habitat instead of having one of any kind, which translated means “do without a tree,” and which led me to grumble something about taking a hike yourself.
Doing without is what we nearly had to do the first year we moved back to the Basin after living away for several years, and it was a rather traumatic experience. It seems we delayed a little too long in going to buy a tree at the tree lots. There was not a tree anywhere in town. We learned that not many trees are sold in the stores because most people actually go and cut their own.
We finally scrounged a tree from a friend who had decorated with short, obese spruces at a wedding reception. It was the tree I would “dubs” for you if we were playing “There’s Your Tree” as we usually do while riding to the forest to cut one.
So rather than be stuck with “your tree,” after that we got the permit and cut our own. At least we had no one to blame but ourselves if when we got it home it looked like Snoopy’s master had picked it out.
So over the years, we have added Christmas tree hunting stories to the vast collection of family hunting lore. There was the year that our dog jumped out of the truck and bounded off through the snow, never to be seen again. If someone picked him up thinking they had found a good hunting dog, they were mistaken. (There are unexpected benefits.)
One year when the snow up there was especially deep, wading through it waist-high was the only way to see how tall that tree (at least 30 feet from the road) really was. The snow was piled up alongside the road as high as a car, which uncharacteristically kept us from getting stuck that year. But one of our tall high-schoolers climbed up the berm and jumped off the other side. He was nearly never seen again as well. When Father B. climbed the berm to check on his progress, all he saw was his hat.
If Christmas is about experiences and relationships, then we are doing the right thing. If it ever becomes about saving fuel and time, then we have thought of a helpful solution. While the guys are up there hunting for deer or elk in the fall (which activity is never about fuel or time) and they spot the perfect tree, they can “GPS” its location. In late November, we can drive right to it and be back home in the time it takes someone to go to the basement and haul up the plastic.
Meanwhile, we can say we did our part to reduce CO2 emissions by cutting three trees.
We don’t really have to go far, and this year we didn’t even have to get our feet wet or cold.
I know life is about being responsible, not having fun. I’ve been telling my kids that for years. I began to wonder about the extent of that responsibility when I learned while picking up tree permits that things may have changed a bit. It seems that the permitting process has undergone some restrictive changes. What else is new? I only wanted to cut a tree, not adopt one.
Well, it worked out, but I began to wonder about our traditional tree harvesting. Could I possibly be overstepping the bounds of social responsibility by choosing a live fragrant tree instead of a manufactured one?
I thought going organic was a good thing. Just how green does this tree have to be?
So, after the fact, I checked the websites to see whether cutting a live tree could possibly be politically or environmentally incorrect.
I found out that fir or pine “holiday” trees last longer—as opposed to what other kinds I couldn’t tell you. And there really are organic trees. They are raised on farms where very few fertilizers or chemicals are used. (Hey, the trees I cut are as organic as they get since they raise themselves without help of any kind.)
Artificial trees on the other hand are made from PVC and could possibly emit bad tree gases. In addition they are made in Japan or China and leave big tree prints by virtue of being shipped long distances. On the other hand, again, most are already strung with lights and relieve the owner from excessive handling of the some kinds of lights which may have lead in them.
One website suggested taking a walk in the forest to enjoy the trees in their natural habitat instead of having one of any kind, which translated means “do without a tree,” and which led me to grumble something about taking a hike yourself.
Doing without is what we nearly had to do the first year we moved back to the Basin after living away for several years, and it was a rather traumatic experience. It seems we delayed a little too long in going to buy a tree at the tree lots. There was not a tree anywhere in town. We learned that not many trees are sold in the stores because most people actually go and cut their own.
We finally scrounged a tree from a friend who had decorated with short, obese spruces at a wedding reception. It was the tree I would “dubs” for you if we were playing “There’s Your Tree” as we usually do while riding to the forest to cut one.
So rather than be stuck with “your tree,” after that we got the permit and cut our own. At least we had no one to blame but ourselves if when we got it home it looked like Snoopy’s master had picked it out.
So over the years, we have added Christmas tree hunting stories to the vast collection of family hunting lore. There was the year that our dog jumped out of the truck and bounded off through the snow, never to be seen again. If someone picked him up thinking they had found a good hunting dog, they were mistaken. (There are unexpected benefits.)
One year when the snow up there was especially deep, wading through it waist-high was the only way to see how tall that tree (at least 30 feet from the road) really was. The snow was piled up alongside the road as high as a car, which uncharacteristically kept us from getting stuck that year. But one of our tall high-schoolers climbed up the berm and jumped off the other side. He was nearly never seen again as well. When Father B. climbed the berm to check on his progress, all he saw was his hat.
If Christmas is about experiences and relationships, then we are doing the right thing. If it ever becomes about saving fuel and time, then we have thought of a helpful solution. While the guys are up there hunting for deer or elk in the fall (which activity is never about fuel or time) and they spot the perfect tree, they can “GPS” its location. In late November, we can drive right to it and be back home in the time it takes someone to go to the basement and haul up the plastic.
Meanwhile, we can say we did our part to reduce CO2 emissions by cutting three trees.
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