Total Eclipse of the Moon

Pretty cool sight as I woke up early this morning. I wish I had gotten my own picture but my photography skills are pretty weak and this is great!:

Photo courtesy of Cousin-in-law Randy De La Mare

Our inversion skies are a bit yellow making the moon creepier as it got darker and sank into the western horizon just as the light came up in the East.

Suppose They Gave a War and only Rick Perry Came?

If only it were just him. I'm afraid he would be joined by Gingrich, Bachmann, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and probably pretty much everybody else at Fox News and those who watch.

Yes, I find this really offensive. There is no war on Christmas. President Obama is not warring on religion. He has a Christmas Tree in the White House, for Heaven's sake! Christmas is a legal, federal holiday since President U.S. Grant! (I looked it up once. I knew there was something I liked about that guy.) President Obama is one of the best, solid family guys we've had in the White House.

The President and the Beast

No, I'm not blogging again about Gingrich. More of that will come to the extent that the amphibian is somehow able to stay ahead of Romney and Huntsman can't have his turn to peak. What I want to address is how the President is changing the game in dealing with the "beast."

A year ago I was pleased to see the President cutting deals with Congress just to get anything he could because any compromise helped defeat the tea party philosophy of no compromise. One of the best ones he got was the reduction in the payroll withholding tax. It was a small but effective stimulus to get more money circulating in our economy, necessary in order to have a market in the first place whether free, regulated or somewhere in between. Republicans love cutting taxes. This cut helped out all taxpayers, especially the middle class. It was a tax cut. How could the Republicans refuse? It was ideal.

Family History A to Z (Check Your Work!)

There is a great set of suggestions for researching and writing family history sketches over at Ardis's Mormon History Blog Keepapitchinin.org. It was very gratifying to get an honorable mention there.

Reading that today, I had a nagging thought that my work wasn't finished on my report on the Davis County East Winds and my Great Grandparents' experience in 1906. There was that confirmation in the 1907 Davis County Clipper about the great east wind storm of October 20 and 21, 1906, but there had to be more to the contemporaneous account from 1906. The one note I found in the "Bountiful Briefs" section about the Giles home destroyed by the winds was all that came up in my digital search.

Rhetorical Nationalistic States Rights

Sorry for missing that Republican debate last night. I took my wife out for dinner which was infinitely more enjoyable.

I found a good summary on the Atlantic website. It points out one of the serious intellectual flaws of the modern Republican Party. States Rights are OK for things you don't like everybody to have like health care, but you need national power to force people not to be atheists and follow your version of the cultural wars.

Great Destruction in the Land Bountiful

Out for my usual Saturday errands, I went past the Bountiful Cemetery where there had been so much wind damage from the recent storm.  It really did look pretty bad as there were many trees down. There had been some work done by city crews as the lanes through the cemetery were clear. And there were a lot of families checking things out and clearing off brush from headstones. I did some of that myself.

Davis County Winds

Well, we know what the results of a "Category 2" look like now. I don't know what it feels like, because I missed it. I just got home from a few days with the Ute Tribe in Ft. Duchesne, Utah, and with their attorneys in Colorado.  On the way in we stopped at Arby's in Spanish Fork where a got a free meal because their power was flickering and they couldn't read my card.

Still, I'm a witness to the aftermath here in Davis County with at least a third of the signs down in Centerville's commercial district on Parrish Lane. There are some roofs missing over gas station pumps, and trees down everywhere. A few are down on houses. Some are down on power lines. Ours are still up but our blue spruce out front whipped off all the Christmas lights. And while the gate to our fence that I have repaired at least a dozen times is still up, there are several other segments of the fence missing. I told the guy next door that we'll have to be better neighbors now. He responded that he'll have to start wearing something when he's in the hot tub. TMI!

Our fence (well, part of it). Note the neighbor's hot tub.