"Rules for Living"

Since Grandma Petersen passed away and my dad and his siblings went through her house, I have had a couple of boxes of things sitting on my bedroom floor. They were things I wanted to keep from Grandma's house, but have since just let sit on the floor. Since I had the day off today, I thought I would go through the boxes and try to put some things away. I came across a "Dear Abby" column that my Grandma had saved. It lists the "Rules for Living," by President James A. Garfield. I thought I would share them:

-Never be idle.
-Make few promises.
-Always speak the truth.
-Live within your income.
-Never speak evil of anyone.
-Keep good company or none.
-Live up to your engagements.
-Never play games of chance.
-Drink no intoxicating drinks.
-Good character is above everything else.
-Keep your own secrets if you have any.
-Never borrow if you can possibly help it.
-Do not marry until you are able to support a wife.
-When you speak to a person, look into his eyes.
-Save when you are young and spend when you are old.
-Never run into debt unless you can see a way out again.
-Good company and good conversation are the sinews of virtue.
-Your character cannot be essentially injured except by your own acts.
-If anybody speaks evil of you, let your life be so that no one believes him.
-When you retire at night think over what you have done during the day.
-If your hands cannot be employed usefully, attend to the culture of your mind.
-Read the above carefully and thoughtfully at least once a week.

I was reading this article in Newsweek while eating my toast this morning. I thought the last two paragraphs were extra poignant. I thought I'd share.

The article is refering to the bank stimulus package last fall, not the stimulus that is ready to pass today. The $18 billion that is mentioned is the number supposedly spent in bonuses paid to the higher-ups of all the big bank companies that Presiden Obama called, "shameful," last week.

"The Stimulus That Didn't Stir" by Jonathan Alter

Actually, $18 bilion smacks of, well, $18 billion. That's almost five times as much as we spend each year trying to cure cancer, which kills 500,000 Americans annually. It's twice what's in the stimulus for building mass transit, which creates thousands of jobs and cuts our dependence on foreign oil. The simplest thing would be for the banks to just collet the money back from the six-, seven- and eight-figure-income employees and lend it out to help get the economy moving again.

In the land of trillions, $18 billion might seem like a rounding error. But, let's review what happened to the average person in the last six months. First, these financial geniuses made a series of bad decisions that cost us a least 30 percent of the value of everything we own. Then we gave them $700 billion of our children's money so they could stay afloat. And now they're rewarding them selves for their incompetence with our tax dollars. This is what our casino culture has brought us, and it cannot stand.

Names

Disclaimer 1: Please don't take offense. This is all in good, clean fun!

Disclaimer 2: No. We are not having kids. It would not be a wise thing for a school teacher and an unemployed student to do.

There seems to be a lot of pregnant people around lately (Annie, Melinda, Tara). Because of this, James and I have had a couple of recent conversations about baby names. If we were to stick with only family names when naming our children that we don't have, we would name the boy: Karl LaRon Binggeli. Doesn't that sound great? Or is LaRon Karl better?

Ok, we're kidding. We like both of our dad's a lot and they are both great men, but we're not so sure their names would be the best choice.

How about the girl? Well that's an easy decision. LaRonette Judith Binggeli. Isn't it a beautiful name?

And in other news . . .

Annie and Ross were pretty upset with me for posting the name Vladamir to my blog after they had confided that name with me. I'm really sorry, but I just felt like the blog world needed to know what the name of your future child is. Since the exploitation of little Vladie's name, they have since decided to change it. I promised them I would not reveal it here, but if I did, I would tell you that it reflects Annie and Ross' love of geography and is a state name that starts with an "N" and rhymes with "braska." (Ha. Ha. Ha. They'll never know I told.)

Get your FLU shots

We had a lecture on the flu this last week. I guess it was to scare us, and it worked for me. Do any of you know about the FLU of 1918. If not, I suggest that you look it up. We have a similar thing today, commonly called the bird flu in Asia. It could do the same if it mutates enough human strains. There are 4 known deaths so far. It is called the H5N1 virus. I suggest that you look it up. Thanks for listening blog world. Here is a video that we watch in class from the CDC.

Week in Review

I am glad that this week finally came to an end. It was a long one. Here are some of the highlights:

• On Monday we had a meeting with our Superintendant to tell us no one is losing there job yet and we are going to try to ride out the remainder of this school year without too many "cuts." The bad news is that we all need to brace ourselves for next year.
• Wednesday my mom invited me to go with her to the radio-style production of "The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial." It starred Ed Asner and John Heard. It was a good production, but an odd audience. Plus, Charles Darwin himself was there. My mom took a picture on her cell. Maybe she can post it some time.
• Last night I volunteered to take tickets at the Murray v. Olympus basketball games and my mom's uncle Blaine showed up. His knee is great! He is great! And, he loved the snack bar pizza! He told me he follows the Olympus Girls basketball team. It was nice to see him. He gets around pretty well for an 80 year old.
• Sean Green, of the Utah Men's Basketball team, also came to the game. I told him, "Good game this week." (See post below.) He grinned and said, "Thanks."
• There were 2 high school students (plus one adult) who came to the game with definite smells of alcohol. There wasn't really anything I could do about it, though. I couldn't leave my ticket post and I knew there was no way I could have picked them out of a crowd later on. Oh well.
• Today I found out that Pyrex definitely breaks. It is also highly intelligent and capable of jumping off the top of the stove when no one is near it. It is also capable of shattering into millions of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. (At least is was just a plain dish and not the cool "Binggeli" one my aunt gave us for a wedding gift.)
• Tomorrow is the Super Bowl. Ross is excited since his team, the Cardinals, are in it. I am excited for . . . well actually I could care less about the Super Bowl.
• Tomorrow is baby Hyrum's blessing. Grandma would have been excited to go, but will probably be there with us somehow. I miss her.
• And in other news, Annie and Ross have selected a name for their new child, but are hesitant to share it with others, so I would like to do it now: Vladimir Periwinkle Howden