Anticipating a Vernal Equinox

I promised I would make my next blog positive, and I’m a man of my word. First I will provide a brief redress of my last post. I read a short blurb last night in yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune that addressed the recently ended, 45-day general legislative session. The main topic was that even though legislators fulfilled most of their constituents’ desires, the public would focus on the negative products of the Legislature. The Tribune said it was “human nature.” Even though I don’t believe I am included, necessarily, as a constituent of the average Utah politician, this article caused me to reassess my attitude.

This is an especially big deal because I have recently been posting angry and flagrant messages of unhappiness on my blog – a space I usually devote to positive messages of hope. I noticed I was getting significantly more readers when I ranted on about what makes me mad about the world around me. While I can’t guarantee that this won’t happen again in the future, I can say “Shame on me.” I apologize to the few readers who enjoy my inspirational words. I will continue to write these things, but perhaps I will mix things up from time to time. After all, a writer needs readers.

Yesterday was a lovely day. The sun was shining all day, until it went down at seven o’clock. The beauty of daylight savings in the springtime is that even though we lose that hour of sleep, we gain an hour of daylight. I anxiously anticipate the vernal equinox and, with it, warmer weather, longer days and happily chirping avian creatures. This will be another year filled with road trips, river trips and long hikes in the mountains – hopefully with beautiful friends.

I decided last night that I was able to go to sleep before midnight, so I took advantage of it and did. I was able to wake early this morning, thus fulfilling the first sentence of Benjamin Franklin’s adage, “Early to bed and early to rise…” Now if I can live up to the predicate of that statement, I’m in good shape, “…makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

I really don’t have anything more to say right now. I just woke up, Spring Break is over and it’s time to crank out the last six weeks of this semester. I promise to be more positive throughout my smatterings of political commentary and thoughts on text messaging 🙂

Gary Herbert, Utah’s Governator

Just a warning: this isn’t pretty, and it’s late, so let me just rant for a minute.

Well the nightmarish general session has finally come to an end here in Utah. Legislators are now free to call their illegally employed, undocumented worker nannies to watch their children as they head to Miami, Florida and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to wait for spring to come to Utah. While they’re down there sipping on their full-strength, un-metered Cuba Libres and Pina Coladas, they’ll be able to look back and reflect on all of the damage they have done to the already dwindling freedoms that citizens of Utah try not to think about.

As I sit here sipping on my bedtime tea pondering questions like, If the government is supposed to represent the people, then who voted for a bill that would eliminate government transparency? If legislators continue to change boundary lines in order to split up non-Republican voters and weight districts in their favor, how are the minority party members supposed to have a voice? Did Gary Herbert ever have a backbone, or did he just slither out of his old skin and show his true self to the entire state of Utah.

In summation, after this recent general legislative session, we can look forward to full priced alcoholic beverages every day of the week – which doesn’t really hurt alcoholics as much as the already severely underpaid employees of restaurants and bars who are struggling to attract business in a highly oppressive atmosphere. Thankfully, all of those drunken hillbillies who are staying home to drink their watered-down Budweiser will still be prohibited from pulling out the shotgun and shooting at the neighbor’s cat. Well…they might actually still do that, but at least they won’t be able to use, “Hey, I thought that dern thing was one a them feral cats!” as a legitimate legal defense.

We already know about HB477, the bill that drastically limits the public’s ability to access PUBLIC records. At least Gary Herbert, Utah’s new “education czar” was able to oversee a whopping 2 percent hike in public education funding. We’ll see next year if Utah is able to climb out of the hole as the lowest spending state for public education, per student, in the nation. Utah spends just over $5,000 per student, per year (50th in the nation). At least Bronco Mendenhall is rich, along with every Utah legislator.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. At least we still have all of the beautiful, pristine backcountry that makes Utah such a popular vacation destination – well, at least for now. With land parcels being sold as low as $2 an acre in some places, we might just have to wave goodbye to all of that beautiful scenery and say hello to big corporate oil drillers and nuclear power plants. Edward Abbey, the snobby hypocrite that he was, had it right. Unfortunately when people get the idea to follow his ecosaboteurist musings like Tim Dechristopher did, they head straight to court for a guilty verdict. The only thing people like Tim Dechristopher are guilty of is having the balls to stand up for what they believe in, in a place where the institutions that are supposed to protect the people do nothing but hammer them down.

Listen everybody! The government does not care about you or I. Legislators are out for themselves and the few people they can bring with them. I’m sure Gary Herbert would throw anybody under a bus if it meant he would be governor again after next election. But this problem I speak of isn’t only in Utah, it’s all over the nation. What is it going to take for us to win back our country? Bipartisan dissolution? An uprising or social movement of epic proportions that involves educating people of just how effed over we’re getting? Pick up a newspaper or book, or better yet, write your Governor, Senator or Representative and chew them out! Thank you for reading. Good night. I promise my next post will be happy and frilly.