News Updates

Most of December 11 – April 24 was spent in the Rockies. This was my sixth “50+ days” season, and first since the “Epic Race” season of 2013-14. My base was the ParkCity Hostel, a well-located spot near the center of town. 4 minute ride to the Park City lot, 8 min ride to the Deer Valley Lot, and 10 minute ride to The Canyons lot. I managed to make six multi-day side-trips in six directions to powdery places:

South to Eagle Point

West to Heavenly (Lake Tahoe)

Northwest to Brundage, Idaho

North to Powder Mountain/Snowbasin, on multiple occasions

Northeast 2x to Grand Targhee, WY (near Jackson, but better than Jackson)

And

East to Breckenridge, Vail, and Winter Park

All but one were successful “snow-chases”, where predicted storms on OpenSnow came though beautifully.

Speaking of Winter Park. What drove me back there, after 35 years, was the late-season allowance for the IKON pass. For 2021-22 I am a passholder for IKON and EPIC. It leaves almost no highly-desired resort out of reach for at least 5 ski days.

Except:

The best resort in the Lower 48: Powder Mountain. I’ve skied at 119 resorts, and PowMow is best for the aspects I care about: more terrain, lots of trees, few people, high-enough snowfalls, and light snow.

For Powder Mountain and many other good ones, you can get two days apiece for $279 using Indy Pass.

https://www.indyskipass.com/resorts#western

On days that are not sold out, I can get you PowMow day passes and CatSki rides at a small discount. I will be a Mountain Host 2x a week next season, and will spend the whole of March slopeside (ski-in, walk-out). You can also get me, Julie, Loel, Dave, or Emily to guide you inexpensively into snowy tree, trail, and open bowl skiing that will contend for “best ski day ever”. You can lodge in Ogden, at the base of PowMow in Eden or Huntsville, or slopeside (elevation 7,300). More is at Up Top Alpine Hospitality, the site that helps skiers/boarders with lodging and guided tours in the Rockies, especially Utah.

That photo is from below the Timberline Chair at Powder Mountain. And yes, this IS during operating hours. A single rider and just one other human in sight is a common occurrence on many of the 8400 acres at PowMow. For comparison:

Acreage at Powder Mountain, Utah, exceeds those of the combined FOUR major resorts in Utah’s “Cottonwoods”: Alta, Brighton, Snowbird, and Solitude.

Acreage exceeds these combined four resorts in Colorado: Aspen, Beaver Creek, Steamboat, and Telluride.

If comparing to Vermont, well the famous four “S” resorts there, Sugarbush, Stratton, Stowe, and Mount Snow combined are less than one third of Powder Mountain’s acreage. Indeed the skiable area of ALL 17 public resorts in VT, including Killington, could fit inside Powder Mountain’s skiable terrain.

And PowMow’s skiable acreage is well larger than Whistler-Blackcomb’s. Canadian resorts are allowed to report “acreage” as anything in-bounds, even if the terrain is unski-able tight trees. Take that away from Whistler-Blackcomb and it’s 2/3 its reported size for actual skiing. (Yes, I’ve made a diligent comparison.)

And so…the powder lasts longer here. I’m now a host and some-time guide at Powder Mountain. If you join me within 4 days of a snowfall, I promise to take you to powdery turns, in-bounds, on parts of every run.

Here is my take on having two multi-mountain passes: having zero constraints on where you’ll ski on a given day is blissful. And unless you really want to ski black-out days, the expense is a non-issue. Epic at $583 and IKON at $779 for non-black-out days is SUUUUCH a bargain. I’m used to the old Vail/Beaver Creek season pass that used to be $1450 BACK IN 1986! (see News of Greenstein, 1986 edition – actually preserve it if a copy still exists).

Inflation-adjusted, that’s like paying $3500. At the time, you could access two resorts (just Vail and Beaver Creek). Now for $1362 it’s a season’s worth at over 30 resorts, and 5-day access to 50 more.

IKON destinations are here https://www.ikonpass.com/en/destinations

Epic Pass destinations are here https://www.epicpass.com/passes/epic-local-pass.aspx

And…skiing has gotten better over the last 35 years – better grooming, better bindings better outfits, better snowmaking, more terrain, and faster chairlifts. (Now that I can’t easily last more than 6 hours on the slopes, I’m fine with slow chairs. Indeed, because they deter many shredders, slow chairs often signal my favorite territory.)

I remember paying a whopping $40 for a Vail lift ticket in 1986. Though tickets are now 5x higher (and 2x higher after inflation) the skiing is now soooo much better that people should feel good about paying full freight.

Always one to help people pay LESS, I have some suggestions:

Beaver Creek -- The Christie Lodge (I own some Red Weeks there for lease)

Keystone / Arapaho / Breckenridge – The Bivvy, Fireside Inn, Frisco Inn, Holiday Inn (it’s nice).

Park City – Park City Hostel. Yes, you can get a private room, with shared bath, for <$150/night.

Powder Mountain – possibly with me, in Feb and March. Columbine Inn

Revelstoke – no deals this year – pent up demand from Canada’s 2020-21 closure. Wait a season.

Snowbasin (yes, bigger sustained vertical than Park City, Snowbird, or Deer Valley). Stay in Huntsville.

Vail – tricky, but we can talk.

First Ski Talk for those planning to ski in the Rockies with me this year “Friends in High Places” is Sunday November 7 at 9:15pm eastern. I do the 1st Sunday of every odd month on Zoom.us code 493 610 6872. This Nov 7 I may be in Tampa (freaking home of NHL and NFL champions) for an Education conference, but I will fire up the laptop.

Ivy Bound turned 20 this month. We enter our third decade beaten down by Covid fears. Not Covid itself – none of our tutors, staff, or clients have been hospitalized with Covid. None have had to stop work to take care of a family member. We actually are in a great position to take advantage of parents’ acceptance of online tutoring. We have conducted online tutoring since 2007. We used to beg more parents to “try an online tutor from Chicago” but it was often rebuffed until Covid fears made online learning so routine. So the revelation that online tutoring is effective SHOULD have been a boon.

But the SAT makers – the learned-but-unwise people at The College Board -- haven’t protected their own test. In 2016 they allowed it to become less of a standard; in 2019 they gave no reassurances against cheating in the wake of the “Varsity Blues” scandal. And in 2020 they failed to offer the SAT in venues that were open for testing. They stayed tethered to school sites, so whenever a fearful administrator or town official or state governor wanted schools to close, the students were shut out. With mass shut outs, college admissions committees “excused” students from showing any scores at all.

So many students hear that the SAT is unimportant. For some colleges, they are right. For most, they are wrong, but few students want to hear an “eat your spinach” approach, especially when many of their school counselors have long considered the SAT as a degrading imposition.

Why colleges think they can keep a high calibre of student without a national standard is hard to fathom. There is an element of “high calibre” that is taking over: replacing SAT scores and even high grades is “leadership”, “uniqueness”, “innovativeness”. All are hard to quantify. Ivy Bound tutors have tried to play do this, with our offer of “Extra Dimension” help.

My normal optimism gives way to a cynical explanation: some still-highly-ranked universities care less about high calibre than about “equity”. That’s a reasonable motivation, but it turns into vile admissions policies. In essence, they do not like seeing their campuses “overly” populated by Asian-Americans.

On quantifiable measures – GPA and SAT/ACT scores, Asian Americans are so much higher than all other races that they should comprise the majority of admittees to top-ranked universities. At California’s two premier state universities, UCLA and UC Berkeley, the proportion of Asian-Americans on campus using SAT/ACT as the prime criteria would exceed 80%.

So on one great aspect that America has saliently stood for, ascent-based-on-merit, Asian-Americans generally do better. And elite/effete edu-crats don’t like it. UC administrators have concluded that merit does not matter. They dropped the SAT as an admissions criterion, and are downplaying GPA in favor of “personal life stories” that students express on their essays, made largely with adult input.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, discrimination suits by Asian-American students against Harvard and Yale go nowhere. The defendants’ arguments are ridiculous, literally laughable in light of the hard evidence, but high courts somehow trust the authority of Yale and Harvard PhDs and their fancy lawyers over the rightful claims of aggrieved students.

The clout that the “establishment” carries goes well beyond EDU. The rising deference to authority, unwarranted authority, is despicable. See News of Greenstein – Political for more on this.

Back to my business:

Another standard was lost recently. The same College Board that used to administer very worthy “Achievement Tests”, a.k.a. “SAT IIs”, aka “SAT Subject Tests” decided in January to stop renaming and instead just drop the offering. What used to be a good way for students of ANY background to show their knowledge of Chemistry, or Physics, or U.S. History, or Spanish, or high level Math, is offered no more.

The only way for a student to show colleges her or his knowledge of a subject is now the turgid AP tests. These are given once a year only, and to only an already elite group of students whose schools offer many AP courses. AP tests are subjective (human readers account for 50% of the grade), now standardless (online testing is easier than in-person testing), expensive (nearly $500 to take four APs), opaque (students cannot study for them with full-length practice tests, or see their work afterwards) and still given in sometimes-daunting 3 hour tests monitored by creepy proctors wearing masks.

Enter a little band of academic-oriented business-people interested in keeping standards. That would be I and a crew of accomplished developers of straightforward questions. We are poised to step into the void and offer students SureSite, a guaranteed place to test comfortably, online, and “show what you know” to colleges.

Students who want to test from home, at the times they want, with the frequency they want, inexpensively, and see their results and the complete questions that were asked of them a mere two days later, can log on to TheSureSite.com starting in September. This should be exceptionally democratizing. It will especially help students who chose a community college for two years and want to show elite four-year colleges their abilities in a transfer application.

Elite is GOOD, so long as almost anyone can get there, and once there you have to work at least reasonably hard to stay there.

And finally:

Ivy Bound / Rising Stars is attempting to become a home to tutors who want to offer themselves to families with children in grades K – 12 who need academic help or would like semi-academic “learning + fun” classes.

We are also trying to serve families who want us to partially replace school. We tried this last summer, as Covid fears caused parents agitation about their children’s schooling. But almost all parents accepted their school’s solutions, so we did not launch. We still have ample tutors and wonderful online economics: a full 6 course curriculum with Learning Coaches is less than half of private school tuition. We lack a cafeteria and a gym, but otherwise have about as many class offerings each trimester as my alma mater, the semi-college-like Loomis Chaffee.

This year what may bring families forth to Learning Coaches (yes, the “LC” is intentional) is not “how or where kids will be learning” but “WHAT kids will be learning”. Parents concerned that their high school is teaching perversions, or their middle school is letting males into their girls’ locker rooms, or their elementary school is exposing children to subjects of sex and drugs too early (or not arming them with the three little words “just say no”, or the more strident “no, you’re stupid”) have in Learning Coaches a safe, stay-home-and-learn environment.

We even have “sports” teams:

Speed-Chess

Stock Market Game

And E-Sports.

I’d rather watch an E-sports competition than almost any event in the summer Olympics. Literally, watching their zaps, defenses, kills, & recoveries, all with past records and present statistics, are better than watching even the most admirable athletes who just show up every 4 years and then can’t realistically be followed.

So Covid fears have pushed me back, but if either of the above endeavors works well, these fears will be a success propeller. If you have any students who can be helped by SureSite or Ivy Bound, let me know. We’ll treat them well.

Covid-fears propelled me to spend most of last winter in Park City, Utah. Very good lifestyle switch for someone who thinks snow is the second-greatest substance on earth (and the prettiest).

More on that is in the “FIHP” (“Friends in High Places”) report.

The political report is a mix of bad domestic spending, unspeakable (for now) injustices and a foray about foreign policy. Some ask “what news do you read?”. Answer – not one newspaper, and not one broadcast. Occasional Jewish World Review opinion pieces, and occasional youtube videos.

Those who govern us have become un-American. I do not mean un-patriotic. By un-American I mean devoid of values that have been uniquely harbored in the United States in its first 225 years (1776 – 2001). Toleration, liberty, individualism, freedom of speech, rewards based on merit not blood, and the primacy of who you are, not who you were born to are, when combined, uniquely American.

Our leaders rarely recognize this. To some even the word “American” now carries negative connotations. They call the term nationalist, or even racist, forgetting that anyone born anywhere can enter this country and , with some acceptance of its norms, be considered “American”. I can’t be considered a Hungarian, an Egyptian, an Indonesian, or a Bolivian. But everyone who comes here can be considered “American”.

How about those born here who lack American values? It’s worth calling them “un-American” and with it re-asserting some American values. Unfortunately, many of them are elected to govern. And via 1-on-1 elections where the establishment has a tremendous advantage, they continue to legislate as though they have “consent of the governed”. But if plebiscites were taken, on policy after policy, few of us would assent to the takings, restrictions, and other injustices that state and federal governments routinely do.

The power of being in the establishment impels them to stay in office. The appeal of being in one of two clubs (Republican and Democrat) whose members protect one another, keep the best public servants from challenging from outside one or the other party. Within parties, the skew to protect their established territories, with more legislation that hurts outsiders, is strong.

NO president or prominent presidential candidate has espoused “leaving us alone” in this century (last was Steve Forbes in 2000, though Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz in 2016 came close).

No large bloc of congressmen vote to dramatically reduce federal regulation over our lives. No majority of state legislators approve the creed of individualism (though Wyoming comes close). And last year no Governor chose to resist dictating -- literally acting like a dictator -- social separations, education alignments and business closures. (Gov. Kristi Noem came close in South Dakota).

Our greatest hope is that the American creed survives among Americans, especially immigrant-Americans willing to embrace it. Our congresses, for two decades now, have put a damper on the American Creed of tolerance, meritocracy, free-markets, and individualism. Our leaders now actually excoriate all four. Some term them “racist” or “insensitive”.

Well, I am very sensitive. With almost every big-government policy, the weak are hurt, and the lawmakers are enriched, empowered, or both. Almost nothing good comes of government policy.

To all this spending based on Covid fears (I say “fears” to distinguish between reactions and actual illnesses) the proper response:

Zero emergency spending.

First, it’s not Constitutional.

Second, it’s unwise.

Third, spending by government can almost always be done more efficiently and fairly when NOT done by government. Private companies, private charities, and Individuals know far better where to spend money on welfare.

Big government does very little right. It can’t. Democracies elect many people with motives very different than ours. These representatives may be more knowledgeable about public affairs, but the on average are no wiser; some are more avaricious, some find that they have entered a “club” that protects them when they are wayward and enriches them otherwise. The few who desire to spend our money still have pressures from outside interests to spend or to regulate. It’s hard to find a legislator who resists both regulating others’ affairs and spending others’ money.

The answer there:

Defang them. Don’t let them have a trove of money. And DON’T let them have unwarranted power.

The beauty is that a simple document, if followed, does just this. The U.S. Constitution does not permit NIH grants, does not permit university funding, does not allow for Medicare fraud (because Medicare itself is technically unconstitutional). We’ve had 84 years of permissiveness by the Supreme Court; so NO branch now resists the NATURAL desires of legislators to grow their power and spend your money.

The change needed is thus not radical. It’s a return of government to most of the ways it was run 95+ years ago.

We have the greatest nation on earth, except our governments. When state and federal government power is minimal, we can abide by corrupt government, even laugh at it. When it’s as gargantuan as it is now, used to routinely repress people’s lives, Big Government is the enemy.

It might be worse than an enemy. We know how to fight enemies. A government that allies with enemy nations means its people get taken over without a fight. Over the last decade, China has grown to rival the U.S. Their technology is as good as ours, their industriousness is BETTER than ours, and their kids’ devotion to education is FAR better than ours.

They build beautiful structures in ¼ of the time we do. (1/20 the time if you are comparing to California’s “high-speed rail”). The Chinese influence on other nations is nearly as high as ours. Absent our proven military technology, many more nations would run to the protection of China.

Many national leaders are probably are eyeing Chinese protection now. While we dispute Russia (potentially our best prospective ally, and THE best if we really want to fight Islamic terrorism) over tawdry things like infiltrating political campaigns, the Chinese leadership woos leaders in Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Turkey, and now even Brazil. China has yet to display its military power, so we don’t know its capabilities. We somewhat know ours:

American military technology is incredible.

American servicemen are VERY well trained.

But American leaders are unwilling to use these advantages.

We just pulled out of a 19 year “war” in Afghanistan. We lost to a small group of terrorists who sleep in caves and a slightly larger group of goat herders. The Taliban terrorists are now poised to rule over innocent countrymen, and there’s no way those who try to stave them off will be able to count on the U.S. again. If our Pentagon leaders had the right will-power, at least half of those terrorists would have died or surrendered.

Note: the next three paragraphs are nasty.

Yes, the right will-power could entail blowing up a truck driven by two terrorists holding 3 people hostage. It could entail direct strikes on houses where terrorists hide among civilian families. At first the innocent would be injured or die along with the evil-doers. But it’s not our forces’ responsibility. Those who took the hostages are responsible; and the consequence is known, lethal retaliation. When Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the Pentagon brass decided to go to war against vermin who know no distinction between civilians and soldiers, the war needs to be serious. If future populations would know that our aid really is lethal (not just “managing conflict”) they might be better resisters when the terrorists come to take over their homes and mosques in the first place.

From what I read and from one more personal source (in New Hampshire, i briefly lived with a young man who was extracted after 14 months of providing great intel), this gruesome trade-off rarely is necessary. We can be surgical. With the help of good informants, our forces can find the evildoers when they are alone.

Retired soldiers have spoken about our ability to decimate cowardly enemies in Afghanistan. The same intelligence, technology, informants, and stealth that led us to find and kill Bin Ladin could have been used on many other thug leaders. When enough of them know they have no future, they will desist. When enough civilians see the arms, eyes, entrails, and brains of those decapitated leaders on display in areas made safe by U.S. forces, they MIGHT begin resisting on their own.

If thugs with guns came to dominate my life, would I attempt to leave? Absolutely. If my country is not “my country” any more, I can find another home. Yes, that IS easy for me, without family, to state, but I know fathers who feel the same way and would flee tyranny with their children mainly for their children’s’ sake.

Our military should have had a mass extraction mission: let those who don’t want to submit to Sharia rule under the Taliban get flown to Western lands. Reach an Afghan U.S. outpost with your family, behave well for two days, and a C-130 will be ready to take you and 90 to 120 others OUT. There are 13 million Afghans in areas that can become dominated by the Taliban; the U.S. alone could set up 6,000,000 for a new life here. Another 6,000,000 could be resettled in Islamic nations and the European nations open to immigration. In four years, the dominated territory of 13,000,000 could be down to 1,000,000 and devoid of human targets. The thugs can rule over just their own families and those who want to submit to them. And if they then cause international trouble they would be easy to pick off in a territory that’s only them and their crazed brethren.

By contrast:

China’s leaders just may have the willingness to use their military power. And because of its 30 year “one-Child” policy creating an oversupply of males, many of whom are the unmarried males causing friction, the Chinese leadership can part with 5 million wartime dead as a “balancer”. (Remember, there is high evidence, from cell-phone disuse and sightings of mass graves, that China lost nearly 2,000,000 people to Covid in late 2019 and early 2020. No problem, for Chinese authorities.) Meanwhile, most of China’s military trains in combatting chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) warfare. Few U.S. military divisions do the same. China’s state media helps people prepare for nuclear war. They know what to do with news of an inbound ICBM. We American civilians don’t.

America is still better at less-important things like fashion and entertainment; we’re still the place more immigrants want to come to than anywhere else. And while the Chinese take military readiness seriously, many of our “leaders” wrangle with whether pregnant females in our military need special uniforms, and whether we need third restrooms for the suddenly-discovered third, fourth, and fifth sexes.

Yet our government allies with the Chinese leaders. We let their grad students take our technology; we fund their research (including that of bat viruses in their Wuhan labs), and let them steal our intellectual property without penalty. Trump’s trade “war” was a sideshow that caused lost productivity here and didn’t damage the Chinese government one iota.

Our governments, state and federal, let Chinese “tourists” and “students” stay without deporting them. I happen to like immigration, but please realize we are letting in those who in will eventually make the US, holding so many Chinese émigrés, look to the Chinese leadership like Taiwan: tasty for attack and possibly defenseless. (Taiwanese are actually somewhat prepared; will we know how to fight cyber-attacks?, germ warfare?, or incoming ICBMs?). If the Chinese leaders want to take over the U.S. territory of Guam, or the Solomon Islands, would this Pentagon counter them? What about Hawaii?

Xi Jinpeng is arguably the most powerful person in the world, probably in the HISTORY of the world. He has been incredibly skillful. He wears suits instead of military garb; he meets with other world leaders; he does not call the U.S. a “great Satan”, and he sounds humble to 1.4 billion countrymen. But he is exceptionally assertive and if he becomes wayward, or if a truly militaristic leader succeeds him, China’s strength and preparation will be hard to counter. The solution I like best is to spread American values. Let our students, our businesspeople, our tourists encounter Asians in their home countries with our culture, our openness, our desire to be friends with the citizens we meet. Sell our stuff to them, on the black market if needed. If Chinese people’s appreciation for Americans turns to liking Americans it might help restrain their leaders from warfare.

I will conclude on another world-harmony note: I’d like to see the U.S. President take the lead making a Covid-memorial / slow-down time period. Not by command, but by plea, every two years let us quarantine ourselves. Whatever diseases might be festering, we let die (or at least not be transferred) over a 15 day period.

We’ve proven we can still have commerce, school, and social functions while quarantining. There is little sacrifice if it’s PLANNED. Feb 14 – 28 in 2022, 2024, 2026…might become a suggested world-wide quarantine. Little to no travels to buildings outside your home or to a single hotel where you’d like to vacation the whole time. Even without a rampant disease, a bit of quiet for two weeks, starting with your betrothed on Valentine’s Day, could be a healthy respite every two years.

I’ll try to write you just before then - the mid-Winter 2022 News of Greenstein is slotted for Feb 5.