Economics Class is Still Fun

On Google Translate:

"And with Google Translate, it's amazing what you can get off government websites. Google Translate does an 85 percent good job. The other 15 percent it's fun to guess on your own."

On Occupy Wall Street: 

"They hold up Occupy Wall Street as the liberal alternative to the Tea Party, but the thing is the Tea Party at least had a charter they coalesced around. Occupy Wall Street doesn't even have a charter."

(Student: well, actually they have a charter now…no government debt, forgive all student debts, trillion dollar increase in this and that, free secondary education for everybody...and somehow no debt?)

"They've made progress. I didn't know they'd coalesced around something. (pause.) If you want to coalesce around fairyland, I guess that's fine."

On Medicare and the debt crisis: 

"Lots of fun stuff to talk about today. The subject is 'what destroyed the United States of America.' "

Students: (laughter, already?, it's finished?)

(Laughter) "I don't know exactly what tense it's in."

On Halloween:

"We instituted what we called the daddy tax. It had multiple functions, but one of them was to teach the functions of government. If you get a service like being driven around the neighborhood, you have to pay for that. The tax came in a variety of forms; it was particularly high in chocolate." 

It's an umbrella day.

Oh, life. Some days just take it out of me. Knock me off my feet, scare me blind. Then friends caught me when I fell, steadied my umbrella-holding hand, and ameliorated the storm for me and for everyone I try to keep under my umbrella. Except I'm learning how very much that umbrella isn't mine at all, but God's. I am the steward. Under His eye I learn to turn the umbrella just so to hold out the worst of the storm. Deep inside, where my breath is rapid and my heart beats fast and the interior liquid motion is found, exists a well of gratitude, deep and still, for those surprisingly steady influencers who stand by to lift and watch and hold me and my umbrella.


Grateful, too, for the gentle voice of the Holy Ghost in reassuring me. Grateful for the healing and peace that is restored thereby. I remember something I read once, a lesson taught President Henry B. Eyring by his father, who was dying of cancer. Of his father, he wrote, 

One night when I was not with him and the pain seemed more than he could bear, he somehow got out of bed and on his knees beside it--I know not how. He pled with God to know why he was suffering so. And the next morning he said, with quiet firmness, "I know why now. God needs brave sons."

I know too, God needs brave sons and strong daughters and strong sons and brave daughters. He needs children who will hold out an umbrella and who will be willing to get caught in the storm by doing so. And if that's the errand He needs run, I'll run it. I'm just unspeakably relieved that I don't run it alone.