Picto Diary - 27, 28, 29, 30 November - Black Friday
(scroll to Addendum for feedback on Bishop review of "The Fall of the Ottomans" by Eugene Rogan)
Above: TIMDT observes Black Friday at City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City, UT. 27 November 2015.
In keeping with the emerging American Black Friday zeitgeist, at the Porche Design store, TIMDT was able to wrest a scarf she wanted away from the grip of a young Mom pushing her baby in a perambulator.
Earlier, the Bishop skied 7 runs at Park City. 7 degrees as Payday base likely kept a lot of people home early, so the skiing was fine. Legs burning less and less each day. Bonanza was open for the first time today. Summit House has been renamed, "9250 Summit House" and has undergone a modest face lift. A small 9250 Summit House coffee enjoyed with TWO3 and Title cost $4.30. This is how Vail makes money. Best ski pass deal in the world... but, once you are on the mountain you pay. A garnished baked potato was $13.00 at Legacy Lodge yesterday. Not complaining... just saying. I'll start the free tomato catsup soup next week.
7 Nov PC 7
Above: Park City ski area ski map. 28 November 2014.
New map this year shows new, combined resort, old PCMR and Canyons, into one mega resort. Park City, largest ski resort in the US.
New resort logo, "three infinities," is the old Canyons logo.
The first time our street has ever been on a ski map. Now if they could only get a lift down our way!
10 degrees today. Ie. great ski conditions!
8 PC 8
Granny, from her favorite seat by the fire, teaches Cat needlepoint. 28 November 2015.
Above. From left, Sundance Kid, B1B, Cat, Allen, Drums, FeeBee, Lark, and El. Park City Resort. 29 November 2015.
Two families who met, by chance, 9 years ago at Sundance. Then, they had only newborns, Drums and El.
Grandpa skis sweep.
Good skiing, but very cold.
9 PC 11
Above: Post ski. Shower. Bed. NFL to stimulate nap. TV off timer set for 30 minutes. Hoping for zzzzzzzzzz.29 November 2015.
This is a problem... however, because, I get up from the nap around three. I feel OK... but, then, I go to read my current book... before you know it its time for cocktail and a benign TV show or TV news... then dinner.... then more reading or binge watching a cable series... then bed.... I never get anything done.
Above: Everett Howell. The original Ski Geezer. Image captured 2008 ski season. Everett passed away in 2009. Nostalgia entry for 30 November 2015.
Everett was a forester. Sitting on the lift chair with Everett over a couple of seasons, I learned a lot about trees. I learned that the white King Con lift stanchions were painted white to reflect light. The dark stanchions on that lift absorbed the heat, expanded and rendered the lift cable unstable.
Everett is the only skier I ever saw chased by a Moose. Silver Star run... circa 2008.
Today's skiing, in very cold weather, was excellent. Still only Payday and Bonanza lifts open at Park City... notwithstanding there are 5 or six options for each run, including the top to bottom routines. Memory is fleeting, to be sure. But I'm enjoying November skiing more than I ever remember.
10 PC 9
Above: J. T. Martin, President, Integrated Energy Companies, former member Salt Lake City Council, speaks to La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM). Wasatch Bagel. Park City, UT. 27 November 2015.
Hat tip: Fish
Note: Note taker is fallible. Mistakes are his. J. T. Martin is welcome to make clarifications/corrections to these notes.
Note: Note outrageous mugging by ROMEOs Tucson and Fish. They have been put on LSDM probation.
Background:
Grew up Walker Lane, Salt Lake City.
Son of a developer. Wood Partners. Salt Lake City.
College in Cuernavaca, MX then graduate from University of Utah.
LDS Mission. Ohio.
Met Larry Kahn in Ohio. He got me in the jewelry business. I did it for 13 years. Didn't like it. No utility to it. Selling a $180K bauble seemed too saccharine in a world where people had to struggle to get by day to day.
I was in my late '20's. I had some money. I had a college friend who was about to enter his residency, having just graduated from medical school. We started an around the world trip.
I stopped in Austria - for 8 years.... my medical student friend continued on home.
I met Michael Von Rosen a German jeweler baron in Austria. We met on a beach. I stayed on his staff for eight years.
I joined an air line start-up (still in Austria) with Formula 1 race car driver Niki Lauda. I was deputy marketing director. I learned a lot. Our fledgling airline, Lauda Airlines, absorbed EuroSky airlines.
Met US ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt, daughter of H. L. Hunt, in Vienna in 1993. Got interested in Republican politics. I grew up as a young Republican. Liked to read the National Review. Yet, later,... I became more liberal over in Austria. There, Socialism looked good to me.
In Vienna, I dated a Filipina. Her dad was a high up Air Force general under Marcos. She was kicked out of the Philippines by Marcos... her husband, from whom she was now separated, robbed banks. We hooked up... but, there was no marriage. We are still friends to this day.
Late '90's got in touch with some old college friends involved in putting together the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics... including the renowned Tom Welch... through them, I met Kem Gardner, noted Salt Lake Attorney and candidate (Dem) for Utah governor (ran in Democrat primary against Matheson).
I came back to Salt Lake City... dated for 12 years... and married at 38.... the daughter of Kem Gardner. Kimberly. We're very happy. I was an elected Salt Lake City Councilman during this period.
In Salt Lake I worked in the meat business for a while. Internet sourced. Halal... kosher. I worked in a family partnership.
Then... my family partnership invested in an oil and gas deal in Duchesne, UT. It seemed to be doing well... but there were a lot of investors who wanted a say in what was going on...a veritable Utah whose who... people like Josh Romney. Kem, my father in law, sent me to Duchesne to sort things out.
The rest is history. I'm now an oil man. I sorted out all of the management and organizational problems. Things have worked out quite well.
Above: J. T. Martin fields a question from LSDM ROMEOs, Wasatch Bagel, Park City, UT. 27 November 2015.
Integrated Energy Companies
We are an integrated energy company including 10 subsidiary companies. We do deep well service, We own a couple of utilities companies in Wyoming. We do "upstream, midstream, and down-stream" work.
In real estate business. http://www.ie-cos.com/
Take Aways
Oil people are real smart. Highly resourceful. "They'll figure out a way."
There is so much oil! So much natural gas.
I turned from a tree hugger into an oil man... I was accepted.
I get in discussions with so-called environmentalists all the time. They say, "you shouldn't be fracking... it damages the environment." I respond, "how?" Invariably, none of them know how. They are like religious zealots. I tell them, "look, learn the fracking process and then come back to me and tell me how it damages the environment. I'm not in to "faith based" arguments on environmental issues.
Q and A
LSDM: Who owns underground oil storage?
JTM: Most of it is privately owned.
LSDM: Ralph Becker (outgoing SLC mayor).
JTM: He's a good guy. He's a friend. He started out his mayoral tenure well. He started out as the "anti-Rocky (Anderson... his predecessor). Anderson led as somewhat of a tyrant. He made things happen, even if he had to break a few rules. City department heads feared him.
Becker came in and did the opposite. He delegated. He let his department heads have free reign. For a while it worked OK. But, after four or five years he lost control... he was indecisive... not a lot got done.
Case in point. My father in law, Kem Gardner, was contacted by LDS general authorities and asked to rescue the Days of 47 Rodeo, which had been mismanaged for years. The rodeo was a Salt Lake City icon and its decline reflected badly on the city. Kem said no. The LDS general authorities made the request tantamount to a church calling. Kem accepted.
Kem was a bull dog. He raised money... invested his own money... and during the first two years of the rejuvenation effort, the rodeo lost money. The third year it made money. Kem "caught the vision" of his calling and wanted to go from strength to strength. He found a guy in Heber with some covered wagons. He wanted to put these wagons at City Creek, across from the LDS temple, as a promotion for the rodeo.
The city rejected the request to put covered wagons at City Creek. Kem bumped the request up to Mayor Becker who did not override his decision maker direct reports. The "city" said that the covered wagons were too reminiscent of the Mormon pioneers and that the city didn't want to push that linkage. We laughed our heads off at that. Salt Lake City not associated with the Mormons? What a joke!
Becker made other mistakes arising from indecisiveness... taking to long to fire the police chief for one.
LSDM: New mayor, Jackie Biskupski?
JTM: She's a good friend too. I like her a lot. I told her not to make the first lesbian mayor thing a campaign issue. She has some real tough... mean... staff. I hope she understands the difference between effectively governing and running a campaign. If she brings over some of the nasty people she had working for her in her campaign to help run the city... that's not a good thing.
LSDM: Current oil price downturn affecting your business.
JTM: In some areas yes. Not as many new wells. But, we have services that benefit in down markets as well. Such as, plugging and disassembling wells.
LSDM: Keystone Pipeline?
JTM: Not needed. Bad idea. Canada benefits... we don't so much. Problematic dirty oil. Tremendous environmental damage in Canada via tar sands extraction. Can't be reclaimed. You should never start a project that can't be reclaimed.
Thank you -
LSDM thanks J. T. Martin for his informative discussion of his background, Salt Lake City politics, and the oil business.
La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM) is a non-partisan ROMEO (retired old men eating out) group which meets daily, at 7:00 AM at Wasatch Bagel in Park City, UT. LSDM members are the rightful intellectual heirs of a group of authors (Hemingway, Sartre, Camus, deBouvoir) who met daily at Cafe Deux Magots, in Paris, France in the 1930's.)
Addendum:
Thank you Steve for being so generous in your reviewing tho happenings during the WW1 period that affects what is going on yet today? A good lesson for me.
Aunt Joyce,
Ashland, OR
Steve, Two other books which might interest you are:
Lawrence in Arabia By Scott Anderson
Into the Silence By Wade Davis
The first is a very good biography of a very interesting character, and gives one an excellent understanding of the intrigue surrounding the partitioning of the Middle East in the early 20th Century.
The second is really about George Mallory's attempts to scale Everest back in the '20's, how WWI affected those efforts, and how it affected English society then.
Both are fascinating, well written books about guys who did extraordinary things.
Zookeeper,
Williamstown, MA
I very much enjoyed learning of the events you recount about the decline of the Ottomans and WW1 and the impact the war's division of lands has had on today's crises in the Middle East. Thank you for the tutorial.
Squire,
Pensacola, FL
Thanks Steve. I look forward to this one, especially since it appears to have current perspective. Any publication on the Middle East and the region has a pretty short shelf life these days.
Hope you, Margaret and family had a great Thanksgiving.
Skip,
Bulverde, TX
Have you also read Lawrence In Arabia? Good book on the same topic from the Brit side.
Susan
Santa Barbara, CA
Dear M & S, Well I, too, am nearly finished with The Fall of the Ottomans. And after having read Lawrence in Arabia, I’m embarrassed how little I knew when we motorcycled through this amazing land. Perhaps if I could have kept the damn thing upright, I would have been more sensitive to the historical perspective. It’s never too late to learn! Happy Thanksgiving!
Teeth,
Basalt, CO
Available:
http://antiqbook.co.uk/boox/harrie/6605.shtml
Nathans,
Maui, HA
Thx Steve !
Comic Mom,
Park City, UT
Thanks so much.
Spook,
Reston, VA
It occurs Steve that you and others interested in battlefield visits might be interested in David Chandler's two volume Traveller's Guide to 150 Battlefields of Europe. Very thorough and in addition to the historical background it classifies each as (1) A easily accessible and practically unchanged to D difficult to reach and practically unrecognizable. It also rates each on a four point scale in terms of historical and military interest. Battles are listed alphabetically by country in Europe.
My copy is a photocopy in a binder without the publishing information that I made from the original years ago.
Perfesser (sic)
Ashland, OR
Thanks. Great stuff. Really appreciate this.
Did you see the Weather Channel documentary on the Donner Party Friday night? I think they are re running it on Monday night.
http://www.theweathercompany.com/shows/dead-winter-donner-party
Nathans,
Maui, HA
Bishop
Thanks, enjoyed the review. I bought the book.
Warm Regards……
The General
Park City, UT
You don’t write particularly well, and your perspective is shallow, to be kind. In order to give your – ah – reading deeper context, I recommend you try reading this:
A thrillingly panoramic and incredibly timely account of the rise of Islam, from the acclaimed author of Rubicon and Persian Fire.
The evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. In this exciting and sweeping history—the third in his trilogy of books on the ancient world—Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds to create an imperial civilization aspects of which endure to the present day. With profound bearing on the most consequential events of our time, Holland ties the exciting story of Islam’s ascent to the crises and controversies of the presen0.0.0.1582135301R:00670fd0 E:2290007.734544039 V:10fa.3f6.1.1.16.1.US S:BobDePinto [N3]]]dy [mN]N]N]N]]Q%--part1_22f159.77f755c3.43904d91_boundary-- ansitional//EN">
Jim Lewis.