Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

God bless this wonderful country, the USA. I love this country. I love the National Parks. This summer I visited one of the most wonderful parks in the country, Yosemite National Park. It was beautiful. It was breathtaking. It was majestic. It was an experience that comes maybe once in a lifetime.

The vistas of this country are wonderful. I love the cities, the deserts, the mountains, the snow, the rivers, the highways, the fall colors, the smell of spring and the growth of summer. I love the blue skies, the fluffy clouds and the blazing sun. I am so in love with this country.

The people of this country are terrific. We have such wonderful people. I am so glad that I am American. We have wonderful people who serve this country and who love this country. I am so grateful for the people who make up this country.

Having said all of this, I am so grateful for this county. We are at a time of great crisis. We are facing challenges that this generation has never seen. This country needs leaders who will step and save this country and all the vistas and all of the wonderful things that make it so special. With the partisanship that exits in this country, we will pull apart unless we start to pull together. I love this country, I do hope that someone else loves this country as much. I love the following song about the USA.

If tomorrow all the things were gone
I’d worked for all my life,
And I had to start again
with just my children and my wife,
I’d thank my lucky stars
to be living here today,
‘Cause the flag still stands for freedom
and they can’t take that away.

And I’m proud to be an American
where at least I know I’m free,
And I won’t forget the men who died
who gave that right to me,
And I gladly stand up next to you
and defend her still today,
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

From the lakes of Minnesota
to the hills of Tennessee,
Across the plains of Texas
from sea to shining sea.
From Detroit down to Houston
and New York to L.A.,
well There’s pride in every American heart
and it’s time we stand and say:

that I’m proud to be an American
where at least I know I’m free,
And I won’t forget the men who died
who gave that right to me,
And I gladly stand up next to you
and defend her still today,
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

And I’m proud to be an American
where at least I know I’m free,
And I won’t forget the men who died
who gave that right to me,
And I gladly stand up next to you
and defend her still today,
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

From the evening news tonight you would have thought that the entire financial structure of the United States had just quit functioning. I have to admit, it was an interesting and also stressful day at the bank. It is not every day that the DJI loses 500 points. The DJI Average lost that much in October of 1987 when the market was a lot smaller. We recovered.

Things are changing fast, that is for sure. Lehman Brothers disappears over a weekend, with Merrill Lynch being purchased by Bank of America. What some people, the ignorant, and most of the populace of this country don’t understand is that the investment banks are not the same as the commercial banks that they equate banking with. The commercial banks and the majority of the banks in this country are much safer than the country realizes. It is going to be a wild ride for the next little while as the markets sort out all of the problems that have come because of the greed of a few who put together mortgages that were not good, and then the populace of this country who wanted a home without paying the dues required and who wanted to profit by using constantly rising home prices as a way to build their equity.

Yes, it will take a while. Those of us who have 401k’s and the such will need to hold out for a while, but I believe that this country will recover. In the meantime, we have a Presidential Election in process and the candidates will beat this to death. We also have basic problems that need to be resolved, the IRAQ war, Social Security, Medicare, and budget deficits. Whoever is elected President has a real challenge on their hands. We will recover from this supposed financial meltdown.

I had a disturbing conversation with a friend and business associate the other day. We were discussing the disturbing state of affairs in the United States and the World with regard to crime, drug abuse, and particularly, the safety of our homes and our children. That thought immediately took me back to my childhood and my experiences.

I remember days of playing outside during the summer, and the winter, and not having a care in the world. I didn’t have a care, and while I am sure my parents had cares, they really didn’t need to worry much about the safety of their children playing in the neighborhood. Those were days of playing baseball from morning till night. Those were days of building snow forts and having neighborhood snow ball fights for control of the imaginary turf states that we held. Those were days of not worrying about strangers coming along and either kidnapping us children, or of trying to get us to use substances that would be bad for our health. When I became older, I knew that there were bad things in the world, but my neighborhood and my home were a fortress held inviolate and bad things of the world did not find me there.

How times have changed. I remember the first fear in Detroit in the 1980s, where we lived in a neighborhood that had drug houses across the street, and where we had a man stop and try to get our daughter to get into a car. It was only the speedy reaction of my wife that saved our daughter in that instance.

We had a respite in Cheyenne, when our children could go out and play and we didn’t feel the pressure that we felt in the “big city”. We moved to idyllic Payson, and also heard the screams and yells of children other than ours now, playing in the neighborhood, and it was music to our ears even though our young kids by then were grown and gone.

However, not all is well in Zion, or anywhere else for that matter. We also hear of a huge meth problem, or drug use going rampant amongst even the “good kids”. Neighborhood homes are broken into randomly, probably by friends of neighborhood kids who may have a drug habit to feed. You can’t leave your garage door open anymore for fear that a lawn mower, a car, or something else may disappear. You have to be careful about the appearance of your house. You can’t let you daily living habits signal to “bad” people the times that you and your aren’t at home. You have to worry about your house getting broken into, and putting in security systems that may or may not secure your home. What have we allowed this world to come to. The big problem is, we could trade our freedoms for guarantees of security from the government. If we do so, we will have neither security nor freedom. We indeed live in perilous times, and other than convincing the world to live according to the precepts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have no idea how we can cure the world of this disease. Yes, if fear that there is “No Safety for our Children”.

I have been noticing something that really is bothering me right now. This specifically I notice in family, but society has the same general problem. We just aren’t being tolerant of each other. We are too worried about whether we are right, rather than having compassion to each other. My recent foray into politics lead me into the same trap. I sometimes worry that I am getting to settled into one position or another and then believing that I am right and the other wrong, and never shall I compromise.

You see it in Washington. Our national government has come to a gridlock, with each side posturing and trying to convince the public they are right, all for the purpose of political expediency and not in behalf of the people. Both the President and Congress most recently have received all times lows in their approval ratings by the populace. The national media doesn’t help the matter either and we all take sides, shouting at each other, sure that we aren’t right, but not willing to compromise and get the people’s business done. This year, it will be probably the 5th or 6th year in a row that most of the national government funding will continue to be run on a continuing resolution rather than through the appropriate appropriation process. This has got to change.

Whether it is in a family where we might be intolerant of or make fun of another’s views, in a city where we stake out positions for ourselves and don’t back off, or whether we don’t get the people’s business done because we are ideologues more determined to be right and yell and scream, rather than work in behalf of the people we elect. I am just getting sick of this, and we are setting ourselves up as a family to fracture, or as a nation to elect someone (a devious man or a man like the German’s elected in the 1930’s to solve their problems, and see where that lead them) who will promise to solve our frustrations, just if we give him the power. Things have got to change, and we the people have got to demand the change, or as the Book of Mormon says, if the greater number of the people shall not choose the good, we will ripe for the fall of the government that we have cherished for all of these 230 years.

Well, I have come to learn more about the fire that just about swept our homes away. It appears that a hero was an orchard grower who used lots of water, some his, and some not, to water his orchard down and keep it from burning. That act kept the fire from sweeping through his place and other homes, which might have allowed the fire to sleep through our home as well. It was a blessing for us that such a thing happened. I am once again grateful.

They say that Ignorance is Bliss. That is what they say!! We took a walk around the neighborhood tonight as we often do, and found out that early Saturday morning the fire was so close to this neighborhood (which was easily observable when we came home tonight) that at about 1am Saturday morning they evacuated the neighborhood, INCLUDING OUR HOUSE!! The problem? Michael Scott was inside and sound asleep, and never heard about the evacuation, and could have been in danger had the wind not turned back on itself and helped put the fire out. This fire came within a half mile of my home. I wasn’t even here to get the things out that would have been important to me, and moreover, take care of my family.

I have been shaken up by this. The ability for disaster to strike, and to make major changes in our lives is never more visible than when things like this happens. There could be fire, earthquake, flood, or more that could happen. Ignorance is not bliss, it just delays the concern for a little while.

I came home tonight from our trip to Lake Powell and found that half of the hillside had burned down. This is getting ridiculous. We tried to have the ridge to the east of us burn us all to death about two years ago, and then I leave for a weekend and I come back to find that the ridge to the south of us had burned, and that it came very close to actually burning down homes both in Spring Lake and here in Payson. It is scary to see all of the hill to the south of the house, once beautiful and green, now nothing but blackness. Such as waste of life, and such a waste of a view.

My IPAQ is dying. I have usually seemed to go through PDAs really quick for about a couple of years, but for the last 5 years or so my IPAQ has functioned adequately. Now, it is dying. I am having trouble with the power function and I fear that it is going the way of all good things.

I am sorry for the death of my old friend. It has served me well. I am not quite sure what I am going to do without it. I must now think of replacing it. I am not quite sure that is a correct thing to do, but I don’t know how I otherwise will live without out. I feel so badly about the death of an old friend.

I actually heard today, “I Feel Like I Am Going to Lick the Asphalt in a Minute, Yum, Yum” and the crazy thing is I sympathized with what the guy was saying. We were coming back down from a hike to the Vernal Falls (I only made it to the first bridge, about 1 mile). They said that it actually was only .8 miles and a vertical climb of maybe 500-1000 feet. To me it felt like a vertical climb of 5 miles and a hike of 20 miles. Jeff said early on, this steep spot is about the worst that it gets. Liar!!!!

I thought it was going to kill me and what the guy said struck me as a summary statement of what the experience was like to me. Let me say, it was a challenge for an old guy with a knee that is giving out and a ticker that works not at full capacity. I am glad I made it as far as I did. However, it was a an ordeal and a challenge and one that I won’t forget for a while. I at times felt like I was going to collapse on the trail. I could see the headlines, “56 Year Old Fat Man Dies on easy Assent up to first bridge to Vernal Falls”. I am glad I made it, but I thought I was going to be eating some asphalt today.

We went on a fun walk this morning. I still have a little bit of the old youthful body in me. We as a huge family walked up to the Chilnualna Falls here in Yosemite National Park. It was a nice walk, somewhat strenuous but easy enough that we could make it. I can tell that I am getting older. My balance isn’t what it used to be and I can tell I am getting older. I need to start doing a better job of this getting old.