Somusing

Jon and I have been libertarians forever, but we didn't really know what to call it until we found and bought a copy of Liberty magazine at Barnes & Noble many years ago. Well, Jon was an anarchist in high school, and he still sometimes borders on that; I think I've always been a libertarian. Liberty became the only magazine we subscribed to without interruption, until they stopped making the print edition a year or so ago. There were times when that magazine was like a cozy, cuddly blanket for me, even though much of what appeared in it was argumentative, sarcastic, sometimes pessimistic. Even our friend Brian, who is not known for his sunniness, found Liberty too caustic when we tried to indoctrinate him with it. But I loved it. So did Jon. We still read it online, but I do miss the print version.

Anyway, my point is that many times over the years, Jon and I saw ads for various libertarian conferences and one of us would always say, "We should go to that someday." Well, someday finally came: we went to FreedomFest in Las Vegas last week. Their tagline is "The world's largest gathering of free minds." FreedomFest has been going on every year since 2002 and is organized by Mark Skousen, with significant help from his wife Jo Ann Skousen, who organized the first-time libertarian film festival Anthem this year. (Jo Ann is the entertainment editor of Liberty and Mark is a frequent contributor.) We didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be interesting, inspiring, and thought-provoking, as well as full of useful and practical information that we'll be using in our home school, finances, and other areas of our lives.

I'm used to being alone in my political beliefs. Most of my friends and family are conservatives, with a healthy dose of liberals among them. Very few identify themselves as libertarians. Of course, there are other things about Jon and me that are "weird"--the home schooling, for example. So it was different and fun to be around so many like-minded people at FreedomFest. I think there were plenty of libertarian-leaning conservatives around, but what a trip to be hanging out with a couple of thousand straight-up libertarians. Here are some of the well-known people we heard speak:

Rand Paul, new Senator from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul. He was delightful every time he spoke. Funny, articulate, principled in his politics (though more open to compromise than his father). I hope he gets a chance to do some good things in the Senate.

Judge Andrew Napolitano. I know he's famous because he's on Fox News, but I never watch TV news, so I'd never heard him speak. Unfortunately, I missed the speech (Jon said it was great), but I heard the Q&A that followed, and he was fantastic. One great thing he said (not quotes, because I'm going from memory here): There's just one party in this country: the big government party. It has a Republican wing and a Democratic wing.

John Mackey, CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market. It's great to have a pro-free market "tree hugger" (his words, and others') running a successful company like Whole Foods. I was really impressed by him, his efforts to re-brand capitalism, and the innovative incentives to live a healthy life he has introduced to his employees and that will soon be introduced to customers. Too bad the closest Whole Foods to us is in Salt Lake.

Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. The highlights of this session by some entertaining impersonators were Benjamin Franklin hitting on all the women who asked questions and Thomas Jefferson breaking the audience down into voting persons according to 1786 standards. I'd say 5% of the audience was eligible.

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and doom and gloom finance guy who frequently appears on TV to argue with people. He's a great speaker and very compelling. But when Jon and I talked to him briefly, he was kind of a jerk. Maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe Jon touched a nerve when he mentioned Schiff's unsuccessful campaign for a Connecticut Senate seat last year. In any case, he is super sharp and fun to listen to (from a distance).

Herman Cain and Gary Johnson, candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. I didn't actually hear Herman Cain, but Jon did and enjoyed hearing him speak, though he was much more conservative than libertarian. Gary Johnson was governor of New Mexico a while back and did some impressive stuff there, cutting taxes and vetoing like crazy.

There were others, too, some from TV, some from the more narrow libertarian world. I wish I'd heard more from Mark Skousen, but I did hear him moderate debates, and he was very entertaining as his 8th great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin. I came away from the conference even more impressed with the Skousens than I already was. Jo Ann Skousen did a session on Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities that was very good and reminded me that I used to want to be a teacher. I think I'll start pursuing that again by teaching a literature course to my oldest boys and inviting other home schooled families in the valley. I do have a degree in Comparative Literature, so I guess I ought to use it. (Some people think that because I home school, I must be teaching my kids, but they really learn most stuff on their own with a little guidance from me.)

One of the Skousen daughters, Valerie, did a session about funding the arts in a libertarian way, something I think about pretty often (with no great ideas yet). Their oldest son, Tim, had an excellent film shown at the film festival (but not eligible for awards, for obvious reasons): Zero Percent, about a successful college education program in Sing Sing prison.

And if you need more proof that the Skousens are cool, here's a great advertisement parody they made for "ObamaCare" (and by laughing with this I don't mean to imply that I think the status quo in health care is fine and dandy):

I wish I'd had more time to take in festival films, but we did see a couple in addition to Zero Percent: Final Census, a dark and hilarious 10-minute short, and The Cartel, a documentary about how more money doesn't seem to be helping public schools, especially in New Jersey. There was a lot of good information in it, but it went on a bit long. Worth watching, though.

I read a blog post about FreedomFest on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website that claimed that the sessions at FreedomFest were of two kinds (and I'm paraphrasing here). One kind was about trying to "take back the country" through political lobbying, money, etc. The other kind explored alternative ways of living "outside" the state. I hadn't thought of this distinction while I was there, but it resonated with me. I'm not the kind of person who tries to change the school system so it will better serve my children; I'm the kind of person who keeps the kids home from school. In fact, I think there should have been a session or two on home schooling to complement the sessions/debates on school choice. I'm glad there are people who are trying to change the status quo in government, school, etc., like the tea parties. But I'm also glad there are people trying to live differently and with as much freedom as possible. It was fantastic to be around many of both types last week. I hope Jon and I will continue to attend.

A word about Las Vegas. Walking through the casino at Bally's every morning and evening was a weird contrast to the conference we were attending. I don't get the attraction of the slot machines, especially. Nobody at those machines looks like they're having fun. However, we ended up moving to a delightful hotel room after one night in a crappy room next to the loud elevators. The second room had a bank of windows across the outside wall that looked out on the Paris pool, Eiffel Tower, and the strip. One night we heard the live, muffled-by-the-windows Ben Folds concert that was going on across the street, complete with video being broadcast on one of those huge, Times Square-like video screens. Our room had a Jacuzzi centered on a marble dais kind of thing. I guess that's the benefit of getting the last non-smoking room next to the elevators the first night. I have been known to kind of freak out in the past when we've stayed in Las Vegas because I don't like it. I get all tense and unpleasant. But I think I did okay this time. I was able to observe the gambling, drinking, guys handing out pornographic cards/flyers on the corners, and the young kids out on the strip with their families at 11:00 pm without taking it all personally and feeling threatened or something. It was the best time I've ever had in Las Vegas.

Over the 4th of July weekend, I took my kids to the Huntsman Springs event in Driggs. It's in its second year, but this was the first time they had an all-day carnival type of thing going on during the day. Face-painting, bouncy houses, various kinds of entertainment (of which I only saw the air show, which was cool). All free, except for the food vendors. (True to form, I bought the kids one funnel cake and one cup of honey lemonade to share; I'm cheap. Also, I wouldn't let the kids do anything that required standing in a long line. I'm cheap and mean!)

It was really a great event, but we couldn't stay long because of other obligations we had that day. On our way out, we bumped into this guy:

Okay, we didn't literally bump into Glenn Beck. (Although I did nearly bump into one of the security guys who was creating a space around him as he walked along.) But we were pretty close for a few minutes. In the above photo, he's sitting in the real Herbie, the Love Bug. Mira said (loudly), "Why is he allowed to get into Herbie?" I think I said, "Because he's a celebrity," and she thought that was pretty cool. That's Seth in the front left corner, black hat.

I finally finished the sweater I designed and made for Jon, and here it is:

Jon is a programmer, user, fan, and proponent of free software (similar to open-source software), hence the "free as in freedom." I don't know if the phrase is the official tagline of the Free Software Foundation, but it's the title of a biography of Richard Stallman, the father of the free software movement, and it describes what is meant by "free software." Anyway, I wanted Jon's sweater (the first I've made for him) to be unique to him, and this is what we came up with.

It looks good on him, right? :)

I just read an article called Why I don't care very much about tablets anymore, and while I don't have a tablet, and think the author's overall point is weak (not being very excited about tablets, yet still planning to always have one), this part resonated with me:

"Some of the really savvy new media efforts like Flipboard are exciting, but after the initial "wow" factor wears off, these apps mainly serve to remind me that there's already too much good stuff to read out there, and that my life is slipping away from me in an infinite stream of interesting bits about smart animals, dumb criminals, outrageous celebs, shiny objects, funny memes, scientific discoveries, economic developments, etc. I invariably end up closing the app in a fit of guilt, and picking up one of the truly fantastic dead tree or Kindle books that I'm working my way through at the moment, so that I can actually exercise my brain (as opposed to simply wearing it out)."

The same thing applies to web reading for me. I find the web extremely valuable for news, conversation, blogging, and longer articles, but there's still a place for more in-depth treatment of topics in books, and for getting out and living and not always experiencing by proxy. Things that are useful and good may still not always be the most important.

So, my mom wanted me to write about this on here. Yeah. Anyways, I went to a camp at BYU called Startalk that was really awesome. It was a 3-week long Arabic language camp equivalent to a year of high school Arabic or a semester of college Arabic. It was really cool. There were about 27 students, I think, and they had us stay at the Heritage Halls dorms there. So our days went like this usually: wake up at 8 or so, get dressed and stuff. then we had class from 8:30 to 11:30. After that we had lunch at the Canon Center. At 1:00 we had class again until 3:00. Then it was Language Lab until 4:00, in which we did homework and DVD stuff. After that, we had Language Recreation for another hour. That was playing games with Arabic words and stuff. Then we had dinner, which was made by our counselors. Then Fun With Arabic, which was like soccer and stuff until 7:30. After that we had Study Hall (oh joy!) for TWO WHOLE HOURS until bed. We had a TON of homework. But I'm not complaining! We learned a freaking ton in just three weeks. Anyways, on Thursdays, we had field trips to a restaurant. Then on Saturdays we had no class and a field trip all day to either a lake or river and we had dinner there. On Sunday we pretty much could do whatever after church. There were a lot of non-LDS people there. I thought that was kinda funny, since it was BYU. The first three days we learned the alphabet and greetings and stuff like that. After that it was new verbs, nouns, and grammar stuff. It's all really cool! Anyway, here's some Arabic for you. اهلا ازايك انا كؤايس جدنز انا اسكؤن في المدينة درجز That says, roughly: Hi!, How are you? I'm very good. I live in the city of Driggs. I can say a lot more than that, but I don't know how to spell most of it, and I probably spelled most of that wrong anyways. I'm gonna go now. My mom will probably make me write more later, but Im' done for now. It was awesome!

I've given this recipe to a lot of people, so I decided to do a post about it, so I can just refer to it in the future. Although it occurs to me that I haven't verified that the people to whom I've given the recipe actually like it. But whatever. It works for me, so here it is:

• 6 cups whole wheat flour (or 5 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup white flour or any combination you desire)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoon yeast (one package, if you're buying those little packages)
• 2 1/2 cups water (about 110°, like a pretty warm bath)
• about 2 tablespoons oil (vegetable or olive oil or whatever)
• 2 to 4 tablespoons honey (I don't like bread overly sweet, so I stick to the lower amount. I think. I don't usually measure)

Mix all the dry ingredients in a stand mixer. (I have a Kitchenaid and use the dough hook for this bread, although I usually mix the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon first. Also, I almost never proof my yeast. I've never had it fail me. If you want to proof your yeast, just add it to 1/2 cup of the warm water and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and stir well before you do anything else. It should be foaming by the time you get around to adding the liquids later. And don't forget that you've already used 1/2 cup of the water, so you'd only need 2 more cups.)

Combine the liquids and make sure they're the right temperature. I usually measure warm water first (just from the tap) and add the honey and oil, but if it's not warm enough, I'll use the microwave in small intervals. Yeast needs warmth to be happy, and extreme temperatures both hot and cold will kill it. The liquids should be warm but not hot enough to burn you.

Turn the mixer on to the lowest speed and add the liquids very slowly. I use a glass Pyrex measuring cup that has one of those little lips for pouring stuff. And I mean slowly! It should take you a few minutes to get it all in, and the liquids should incorporate slowly into the dry stuff, without creating big puddles slopping all over the place. (Of course, I've added it too fast, and it's fixable, but it's so much easier if you just add it slowly!) Then let the mixer go for about ten minutes. Keep an eye on the dough and if you want to, you can test it by turning off the mixer and touching it. It should be slightly sticky, but not sticky enough to stick to your finger. That's the perfect bread dough, in my opinion. However, if it's too sticky, you can always add a little flour as it's mixing, or even later.

After ten minutes of mixing, generously flour your counter and dump the dough out. I usually have to scrape the dough out of the bowl with a wooden spoon. If you're making bread with all white flour, the dough is often this beautiful, smooth piece of dough that plops out without any stickiness, but whole wheat flour makes a stickier mess. Don't be afraid. Get all the dough on that counter, and do some hand kneading. If it's annoyingly sticky, just keep adding a little flour, but you want it to be somewhat sticky. (I'm overusing the word "sticky" here, but I can't think of any other good words.)

Knead a few times and then place it in an oiled (or sprayed with that evil Pam stuff) bowl. Cover it with a damp towel or with plastic wrap (also oiled or sprayed) and let it rise until double, usually about an hour. Then punch it down, divide the dough into two equal parts, and form loaves. I use a rolling pin (or my hands when I'm lazy and don't want to get the rolling pin out) to form them into roughly rectangular shapes, the short side about the length of the bread pan. Then I roll them up and put them in the oiled or sprayed bread pans, seam side down. (If the dough is being difficult and won't stay in the shape you're trying to get it in, just cover it and let it rest for 15 minutes or so, and then try again.)

Cover with the same towel or plastic wrap and let rise again. And the following tip is from Deborah Madison's book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which is my original favorite cookbook (I've had others since, but it's my first love and taught me so much about cooking and baking): when the tops of the loaves are just rising above the level of the pans, turn the oven to 375°, and when the oven is finished preheating, stick them in. (Uncover them first, of course.) Bake for 40 to 45 minutes and turn them out onto a wire rack to cool right when you take them out.

Wait for 15 to 30 minutes to cut into it! I know fresh-from-the-oven bread is amazing and yummy, but it will cut so much better if you wait a little bit and it will still be warm enough to melt butter.

Now I'll confess that 1)my bread doesn't always turn out perfectly and 2)I mess around with this recipe a lot. Sometimes I add powdered milk to the dry ingredients (enough to make about 1 cup of milk). Sometimes I use brown sugar instead of honey. Sometimes I use half white, half whole wheat. I have been known to use gluten and/or dough conditioners, but I think using 1/2 to 1 cup of white flour and the rest whole wheat does the trick just as well, and I like recipes with fewer ingredients. But I've also added oats to this recipe, and it was good. I think it'd be good with the larger amount of honey and with raisins and cinnamon, but I haven't tried that yet. I've left out the oil entirely, and it still seems okay. And I've made it entirely by hand, too, with no electricity involved. Sometimes I've had whole wheat flour that didn't rise as well as it should have, but everyone ate the bread anyway (and maybe the thing to do with wheat like that is to use it with more white flour). Sometimes my bread is a little too risen and it kind of falls over when you slice it, but the kids never care. (I think that happens when I let it rise too much before I put it in the oven.)

Anyway, that's my basic bread recipe. I do recommend Deborah Madison's book for a non-threatening, short but thorough tutorial on bread-making. You could just read it while standing in the aisle at Barnes & Noble. (Is that really how you spell "thorough?" Suddenly it looks weird.)

Beware of many knitting details below.

For Christmas, I got to give to my brother Colter, who is an artist and musician and one of the coolest people I know. He's interested in found objects and has created a lot of art using stuff he's found, whether it's someone's grocery list or a cardboard box or whatever. So I decided to knit him a sweater vest from already-used yarn. Ideally, I would have found some old sweater at a thrift shop, unraveled it and used that yarn, and I did try to do that. But the first sweater I found had been washed too many times or something and the yarn broke really easily. So my next best idea was to use yarn that I had knitted into part of a baby blanket about six years ago. Here's the beginning of Colter's sweater (on the left) next to a couple of panels of the blanket (on the right) before I unraveled them:

There's nothing quite like unraveling something you've knitted. You just pull and everything comes apart one row at a time. It's nifty and disturbing at the same time, because it's so easy to undo what's been done.

The main reason I chose to knit this blanket was to learn how to do cables, which I did, and then I lost interest, probably because its only purpose was learning to do cables, and I wasn't making it for anyone in particular. Anyway, I was happy to use the yarn for something else. (By the way, the yarn is Lion Brand Wool-Ease, 80% acrylic and 20% wool. It's from my earliest knitting days, when I hadn't yet discovered the expensive stuff. Since then, I've gone through a purist phase, when I wouldn't knit with anything that wasn't totally natural and usually expensive, to a more practical phase. Now I try to find yarn that's at least half natural but can still be taken care of relatively easily.)

So here's the finished product, displayed with enthusiasm and good humor by Mira:

I always knit from patterns (unless I'm making a dishcloth) but I almost never use the right yarn and often mess around with the pattern some. I've been fascinated by the idea of knitting something without a pattern for a long time, just to see how it's done. Colter's sweater vest seemed like a good place to start. I used Wendy Bernard's book Custom Knits, which is a great book. There are lots of patterns for beautiful women's sweaters in it, but she also includes directions on customizing patterns and on knitting sweaters from the top down with just measurements, no pattern. Colter's sweater turned out slightly smaller than I would have liked (although Colter claims to like it), but that's a gauge problem that I often have even with patterns.

I love knitting top-down sweaters! It's so nice not to have to sew pieces together at the end, and you can see how it's all coming together right from the beginning. Way fewer seams is also nice. That's how Leah's sweater was knitted, too, and the pattern is from the same book.

Zed's 14th birthday was in January. Here he is wearing the hat I knitted for him:

If all our plans work out, he'll be moving out in about 3 1/2 years. That is just crazy.

Lillian and Mira have apparently formed a "club" or something, where their names are Millian and Lira (cute, huh?). There have been some conflicts between them, which makes the "club" a somewhat delicate topic. So today, Jon and I were talking to Mira and suggesting that Millian and Lira was a great idea!

"You can be a rock band!" I said to Mira. (Band names are a big topic of conversation around here.)

"No!" Mira said, refusing to be flattered.

"You could be a dance team!" I said.

"No! I would just dance suckily!"

And then she burst into tears as Jon and I laughed. We tried to explain her superior use of adverb, but she was just in the mood to cry today, so that's what happened. At least she didn't cry suckily.