Glenside Allstars release first album

Pete's band, for which he is songwriter, singer, musician, manager and marketer (of course, I am his mom, and in truth, he is one part of a talented group of musicians), has just released its first album -- Ampliflower -- and has already gotten great reviews. They have a new blog on MySpace -- here's the link if you want to learn more: http://blog.myspace.com/glensideallstars.

A vacation with teeth in it

We didn't read the papers or listen to the news while we were on vacation, but just as we were leaving San Diego we saw that a Great White shark killed a man while swimming in the ocean just above San Diego. (As it turns out the shark is estimated to be 15- to 16-feet.) The day before we had spent sunning and swimming in La Jolla (just north of San Diego). While there we noted dozens of people swimming about a quarter mile off shore, rounding a buoy, and then back again. Some with wet suits (the water was a coldish 59-60 degrees F) but many without. One fellow we talked to (no wet suit) said that he is 89-years-old and swims everyday, year round. A routine he's had for decades. He told us a story about a woman from Toronto who followed him out of the water one day and continued to the dressing room. According to this Octogenarian, she approached him and said that she would do "anything" to live in San Diego (inferring anything with him). He told her he was too told but he had a younger friend who might be interested (the 85 year-old). He has probably told his story a hundred times and still chuckles at the thought. True or not, we don't know. But San Diego is beautiful and the weather is fantastic. Given the fact that it was beginning to snow as we departed Seattle, and we heard that it snowed something like 11 inches that day, we would be very tempted to move south if its wasn't for the tie that binds -- our grandchildren.

Photos and more on our trip - next post.

And while we are on the topic

Since I last blogged (just before heading to the Grand Canyon and points beyond) I wrote about CEO and executive compensation even when their failures are immense. Apparently, the subject is hot right now as this ABC prime news report reflects -- (copy and paste link) -- http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=7634126. According to the report, top executives are able to drive a company into the ground and still be insanely compensated because "the game is rigged." Analysts say that until the public shows their collective outrage, CEOs, with the blessing and collusion of their boards, will continue to rake in the dough.

All of this attention comes on top of Forbes release of the worst performing CEOs and their respective high compensation for failure.

Dissing

I just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. And as I was toting around little S.G. who just turned 7-months and so could not really converse with me (though she babbled a lot, some times very loudly) on the issue of government by corporations for corporate interests (or government by the rich for the rich), the current state of our economy, and things of that nature. But I gave a lot of thought to it all and especially the last eight years of economic and political decline. So when I came across Paul Krugman's editorial in the Seattle Times today on the subject -- Americans smell the rot in the nation's economy -- I read it with much interest. Here are a few of the things he wrote that really resonated.

"... a recent Pew report found that the percentage of Americans saying that they're better off than they were five years ago is at its lowest level in 44 years of polling."

Why?

"A major reason we're feeling so down is that for working Americans the boom never did come back. Job creation in the post-2001 recovery was pathetic by Clinton-era standards; wages barely kept up with inflation. Instead, corporate profits and the incomes of a tiny elite surged -- sucking up so much of the economy's growth that only crumbs were left for everyone else." AND "... my impression is that the subprime crisis -- with its revelation that titans of finance were dealing in funny money and its tales of failed executives receiving hundred-million-dollar going-away presents -- has resurrected the sense that something is rotten in the state of our economy."

I honestly laughed out loud when I read today's Wall Street Journal discussing how angry investors took umbrage with WaMu's executives' moves to protect their bonuses by making sure they weren't tied to losses even though the company lost something like $1.6 billion dollars in the subprime debacle last year, and at the same time are laying off thousands of employees. What the heh?

Bruce Ramsey, in Seattle Times said in his editorial today that when an employee and shareholder challenged the WaMu executives to give up their multimillion-dollar bonuses a "wave of cheers and applause swept the hall" at their recent shareholder's meeting.

And how about subprime central, Countrywide's CEO trying to justify his, what is it, almost half a billion dollar salary and bonus in Congressional hearings? How can he justify such greed?

Coincidentally, I just received an email from Fuse, www.fusewashington.org, on a recent Boston Globe article:

"Here's some tax day news that really made me mad: the biggest private contractor in Iraq isn't paying payroll taxes. Kellogg Brown Root, a spinoff of Halliburton and by far the largest private contractor in Iraq, set up two offshore companies in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying payroll taxes. The companies essentially consist of a computer file -- they don't even have an office or phone number. That's right. A company making $16 billion a year off of U.S. government contracts hires its employees through a sham "foreign" subsidiary, costing Social Security and Medicare more than $100 million a year."

Talk about tax breaks for the rich!

Hopefully, but not likely, a new administration will bring about sweeping changes. What is the saying -- power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?

At least people are starting to pay attention. I guess that's a start.

Kelly's Got A New Blog

Kelly, ever the adventurer, is blogging her way through the southwest as she heads to her first river guiding trip of the season. There's much to be admired about this lone traveler. She gets to the most beautiful, serene spots. Check it out. We'll be following it with interest.

Boy Genius

Andy drew this picture of an octopus at school and we think it looks exceptionally like one. In fact, we think it's genius. I took this from his mom's blog and sent it to the Seattle Aquarium which is holding its first family fun day this Sunday and the subject is -- Amazing Octopus.

Andy's Day at Nonnas and Grandpas

The weather has been outstanding this week so we took Andy to Golden Gardens yesterday after school. I had strawberries and chocolate, juice, nice little napkins, and a table cloth, but Andy was immediately drawn to the stream of water that every boy on the beach was attracted to -- stomping around, throwing sand and rocks into, splashing others... So we decided to cut our picnic time short and head directly home. Which is what Andy really wanted to do all along. An exceptionally well-mannered Andy played quietly inside, played big ball with grandpa and me outside, played with our neighbor's dog gently, and ate all his fish at Anthony's, before returning for those strawberries dipped in chocolate. I returned a very tired little boy to his mom and dad. I couldn't have expressed it better than Andy himself -- "It was a fun day." More beautiful weather is predicted until the end of the week. Yeah!