My American 4th

My America.

Spent July 4th right here in good 'ole Utah.  As the 4th landed on Sunday, that meant we had an odd Saturday, Sunday, Monday kinda of holiday. Family came into town and we had Grandma's BBQ with the gang. We hiked Timp, checked out the balloon launch -- though what we say was actually balloons lying on the ground because of the wind. We had great times with our family. Even sat in the hot spring hot tub and looked out over Utah Lake as the sun set.

People go absolutely bananas out here for the 4th in a way that seems odd to me. Almost like a "who loves America most" contest, apparently determined by the size of your fireworks display and what you are willing to do to get a good spot for the parade. People sleep out for parade spots here. 4th of July is to many Utahns as the iPhone is to Mac Geeks. They are very motivated about the subject.

We sat on the far side of the lake, away from all the hoopla and watched our fellow Americans light Chinese fireworks to celebrate our country.

I love America much more after leaving the country, especially after visiting war-torn and impoverished parts of the world. We are so blessed, and it seems we are rather apathetic about that fact, instead spending our time complaining about the many social injustices we incur, such as waiting too long for our food in a restaurant, rain after we just washed the car, and $100 million movies that didn't meet our expectations.

Gad.

Now is the time to work for the future, but us folks today are spending and consuming far more than we make. Our plan for our future? Borrow more today! Making it worse, seems to me we are wastefully spending magic credit-card money on the wrong things. We seem to be convincing ourselves we are in desperate times requiring drastic measures while at the same time saying that nothing is wrong and we need more of the same of what got us here to get back to normal. What?

Everyone agrees things are crazy, and we all agree on the reason. Other people.