The River's Edge

Tears and Loafing in Las Vegas: A Pilgrimage to the Lotus of Siam

2011-04-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

When our meetings in St. George wrap up early, I suggest to Theo that we consider heading down to Vegas for dinner. “It’s not that far,” I reason, “and we’ll never be closer.”

Theo assures me he’s game. He reminds me that he “appreciates good food,” and because he’s dated cover girls and lived a bachelor life in big flashy cities like LA, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota, I figure “the man must know what he’s talking about.” He certainly dresses the part.

We put the sleek, red Chevy Aveo on cruise control and let the miles roll by. Dust devils. Trailer parks. Joshua Trees.

In the distance, Vegas beckons like a mirage: a shimmering illusion, a lake of water over bone dry stones in a valley that sees less than four inches of rain a year, and when that rain comes, it comes all at once, like nickels from a slot machine. Here and gone. Boom and bust. Brandon Flowers screeching into a microphone.

Not far from the blazing lights of the Vegas Strip—the wide-eyed tourists, the mini Statue of Liberty—we find what we came for in a rundown strip mall, where tweakers peddle their pathetic stories about how a few bucks will help them get out of town and on to a better life. Though early March, it’s 70 degrees at 8:30 p.m. and a cool, dry wind blows from the southwest.

We have arrived. Where? At a non-descript Thai restaurant that looks like ten thousand other Thai restaurants in strip malls from Vancouver, B.C. , to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The entrance is dark and cluttered; the windows, dirty.

Pushing past the penny dailies full of used car ads, the signed celebrity photos, the drab plants drooping in the corner, we are greeted by a cheerful young woman standing next to a vase of origami flowers folded with oiled fingers from crumpled dollar bills.

We ask for a table, caring not for the run-down strip mall, the dirty windows, the penny dailies, the grimy flowers, for this, this is Mecca—the Promised Land. The Holy Grail for culinary enthusiasts. The Lotus of Siam.

As we wait in the lobby, crowded even on a Tuesday night, in March, at 8:30 p.m., we peruse the many framed restaurant reviews hanging on the wall. “Best Thai in America” gushes one reviewer. “Best Thai in North America!” blares another so as not to be outdone. Last but not least, this bold acclamation: “Saipin Chutima may be the finest Thai chef in the world.”

With visions of Thai nirvana dancing in our heads we are led to a small table and presented with a menu that looks like a Dickens novel. I stop counting at dish 135 and quickly become lost in that vast menu, torn between legions of dishes that all sound impossibly good. Should I go for the Tom Kha Gai soup or the Thai Beef Jerky I read about on the Internet? The bacon wrapped prawns with sweet and sour sauce or the fish cakes with fresh cilantro? Which of the dozens of delectable hand-ground curries—green, red, yellow, Massaman,or Panang? Beef, chicken, fish, or duck?

At length, reluctantly, I choose three: the beef jerky, for an appetizer; the green papaya salad to share (choosing a modest "4" on a heat scale from 1 to 10); and the duck curry, which I remember so fondly from a pilgrimage past.

The waiter smiles and takes my order, then turns to Theo, pen in hand:

“And for you?” he asks. Theo hesitates, no doubt dreaming of white sand beaches and palm trees, the turquoise waters of the Andaman sea lapping softly at the sides of a long tail boat, flags fluttering from a Buddhist temple, gleaming in the tropical sun.

“I’d like some … fried rice,” he says with a surprising confidence, “with chicken!”

Bold move, my friend. Carpe diem. Seize the day.

Halfway through the meal, Theo asks: “Could you pass the salt? This is kind of bland.”

I pass him the salt, wordlessly, and take a pair of chopsticks to the green papaya salad in front of me: shredded papaya, crisp and cool, set off by the fire of thai chilies, a hint of shrimp, and a shot of fresh lime, just spicy enough to keep one eating and eating and eating lest the heat become unbearable. It’s so good, it makes me want to cry.

Somewhere on the Strip, a light bulb burns out.

End of Season Tomato Review (Season 2: Heirloom Smackdown)

2010-11-08T16:29:00.001-08:00

The first hard frost settled over the garden about two weeks ago, spelling the end of my second season of growing tomatoes in earnest.

This season I set up the grand "heirloom smackdown": old vs. new, industrial food chain vs. the old standbys of yesteryear. Okay, so what I meant to test was this: Are heirloom tomatoes really worth the hype--do they really taste better? And so, in addition to various heirloom varieties, I planted Better Boy, Early Girl, and Sweet 100s. I also planted an "heirloom" variety I found at Home Depot called "Mr. Stripey," doubtless a proud tomato variety handed down from generation to generation. Not.

Though I planned elaborate blind taste tests, in the end, all that proved unnecessary, as the winners (and losers) were clear enough.

And the winner is ... Cherokee Purple. Hands down. Nothing else came close. Like last year, they didn't fruit in profusion, but produced big, fleshy, delicious tomatoes from early July through late October.

Mr. Stripey might as well have been named "Mr. Stupid" (as in what idiot would buy an heirloom tomato at Home Depot?). The plant matured late, and produced a few watery tomatoes that tasted like a bad pineapple.

Early Girl wasn't, as in 'wasn't early'. It matured later than many of my heirlooms and, when it finally did, the tomatoes it produced were forgettable.

Better Boy was quite a bit better. Lame early (the first several tasted awful), they came on stronger as the season progressed, and the ones I harvested in August and September were rather good, though still no match for the Cherokee Purple.

Another disappointment from the heirloom side came in the form of the Jaune Flamme (Yellow Flame), pictured above, a lovely French variety that produces small, round tomatoes in thick clusters that start out a bright yellow and then mature into a deep, apricot orange. I've heard they dry beautifully, and I'm sure it's true, but that's all they're good for, far as I'm concerned: lovely to look at, but ultimately a disappointment as they taste rather bland and uninteresting.

One pleasant surprise on the industrialized side came in the form of the widely available cherry tomato called Super Sweets or Super Sweet 100s. These little gems produced like crazy and blew the socks off of my heirloom variety, the Chadwick Cherry, in terms of flavor. Small fruit, but intensely flavored. Like last year, my Chadwick's were big and beautiful (for a cherry tomato), but relatively bland: neither as sweet nor acidic as the Super Sweets.

Lastly--and I'm not ashamed to admit this--I tried growing my favorite store bought variety, the Campari, from seeds I saved from a tomato I bought at Costco. The only variety worth buying and eating through the winter, I thought they might taste even better fresh, but these hybrid seeds didn't hold 'true,' so the vast majority of tomatoes this plant produces proved small, tough, and inedible.

And that, alas, is the tomato wrap ... at least for this year. Bring on the months of tasteless tomatoes and ice berg lettuce. I can bear it. Maybe.

Doctors Who Do It Right

2010-08-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

You know the drill when you go to the doctor these days, right? Spend 15-30 minutes in the waiting room, then a nurse or nurse practitioner finally takes your vitals, etc., asks lots of questions, and eventually--if you're lucky--you get to see the real MD for what, 5 minutes tops?

Well, how about this experience: When I lived in Bethesda, MD a few years ago, we were on a ho hum health care plan--a preferred provider network--so I had to choose an internal medicine physician from some list on the internet, selecting a random name from the relatively short list of "accepted" physicians in our area. With no other criteria to use, I opted for a doctor who had an office right on my commute route into work.

When I arrived, I checked in with a secretary that the doctor shared with a group of podiatrists. Five minutes later, the doctor--yes, "the" doctor--walked into the waiting room and called my name, then invited me into his office where he sat down at his desk and invited me to sit down opposite him. He then opened with, "So, what's up?" or some similar question, and then spent 15-20 minutes just talking about my overall health and any concerns I was having.

After hearing that, he took me into a separate exam room, where he--yep, the doctor himself--took my pulse, measured my blood pressure, and then took blood samples. After about 30 minutes, he sent me on my way, and get this: he did the same thing every time I visited.

At one point, I said to him point blank: "You know, you could probably make a lot more money going the usual physician route and using nurses/nurse practitioners and spending as little time as possible with each patient." I loved his reply: "I know, but honestly, I like to talk and, as my patient, you have to listen to me, so I prefer it this way" (or words to that effect).

Best doctor I've ever had. Never pretended to have all the answers, but was always genuinely concerned and interested in my well being. Asked lots of questions. Listened. Gave me multiple treatment options and then let me decide with the benefit of having heard all the pros and cons.

Too bad that such an experience has become so rare in U.S. health care these days. The doctor? William Condrell, MD. I'd recommend him to anybody.

First Tomato!

2010-07-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes. Despite a cool spring, I tasted my first garden tomato yesterday: a small cherry tomato called a "Super Sweet 100." Not great, but it was the first, so I probably picked it too early.

This year, I decided to plant common commercial varieties as well as heirlooms for a grand "tomato smackdown." I wanted to see how, when grown in the same soil and under the same conditions, the heirlooms really match up.

So, in addition to last year's favorites--Cherokee Purple, Black from Tula, and the Chadwick Cherry--I've planted Early Girl, Better Boy, and Super Sweet 100s, plus some new heirloom varieties--Black Krim and Juane Flamme.

Most of those are coming on fast, so it won't be long until we're in tomato heaven. Bring it on!

George Washington’s Farewell Address

2010-06-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

We venerate George Washington as the “Father of Our Country,” and yet, too often, we forget the man and what he stood for. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading and re-reading Washington’s Farewell Address, and I’ve been struck by the wisdom contained in that document and its continued relevance to our day. Though penned in 1789, many of its themes resonate today just as they did then, and we would do well, as a Nation, to learn and remember.

I’ve summarized a few of those themes below:

The ideal of the citizen legislator; term limits.

Washington served a second term as President reluctantly, and, when pressured to stay on for a third, firmly said, “No.” He believed in the ideal of the citizen legislator: someone whose professional occupation is not “politician,” but rather farmer, baker, teacher, or what have you, a person who undertakes to serve—temporarily—out of sense of duty rather than ambition and who returns to private life as soon as possible. In a day of career politicians, who stay in D.C. for decades and know little outside the political realm, I fear we have strayed far from that ideal and the example set by George Washington.

Humility; gratitude

Until his death, Washington remained profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve in public office, not because it conveyed status or personal recognition, but because it reflected the trust of his fellow citizens, and gave him the chance to serve as best he could. He recognized in that service that his “usefulness [was] unequal to [his] zeal.” In other words, he understood his own shortcomings, even as he did his best to serve the public well. Among today’s elected officials, such humble gratitude for the opportunity to serve and an open acknowledgement of weakness and imperfection have become rare traits indeed.

The importance of unity

We must remember that Washington and the other Founders sought to unify a Nation rather than to divide it. They saw the sum as greater than the respective parts, and sought to establish not a confederation of independent states, but a unified, federal government: e pluribus unum: out of many, one. “The unity of Government,” he wrote, “is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize.”

Which is not to say that Washington or the other Founders wanted power concentrated in any single individual or political body; quite the contrary: they set up a system that divided power between the several states and the federal government and that established an elaborate system of checks and balances designed so that "ambition would counter ambition" and preserve the liberty of the people intact.

Religion and morality

Washington realized that no government—no matter how carefully constructed—could long succeed in the absence of a virtuous people. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” he wrote, “Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.” He believed, further, that religion was indispensible to encourage morality: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Public education

Washington believed that the People and their Government should “promote … as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.” Without an enlightened populace, he reasoned, it made no sense to give public opinion political force. In a representative democracy, enlightened government requires an enlightened people.

Deficit spending; taxes

In an era when the U.S. owes China approximately one trillion dollars, we would do well to remember Washington’s stern warning that we should “cherish public credit” as an “important source of strength and security.” He admonished the Nation to “use [debt] sparingly,” to “avoid[ ] the cumulation of debt,” and to use “vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts” occasioned by war. Furthermore, he recognized the payment of government debt as the responsibility not just of elected leaders, but of the people as well: “[T]owards the payment of debts there must be Revenue; [and] to have Revenue there must be taxes.” Doubtless, Washington would have viewed our current deficit spending as reckless and dangerous, as he correctly foresaw the failure to pay off public debt as a threat to our strength and security.

The dangers of factions

Though the Farewell Address contains other themes as well, the last I’ll touch on involves something that, these days, we rarely consider: namely, the dangers of factionalism, a subject on which George Washington reserved some of his most stern warnings. He warned against “all combinations and associations” that “organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.” He goes on to describe factionalism as “truly [the] worst enemy” of the people, a impulse (however prevalent) to be discouraged and restrained on account of its tendency to “agitat[e] the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindl[e] the animosity of one part against another, foment[ ] occasionally riot and insurrection.” Those warnings should resonate with anyone who spends much time reading or listening to the news these days, where countless voices—right and left—seek to divide us as a people, to raise “false alarms,” and to kindle the animosities of one group against another. As a people and as a Nation, what unites us must be greater than what divides us, and we must be, first and foremost, Americans.

That these themes still resonate in 2010 speaks to the foresight and character of George Washington. It also speaks—alas—to human nature, and reminds us that, even after 200+ years of experience with representative democracy under the Constitution, we still haven’t figured some things out. Even so, perhaps remembering the words of this great man will inspire us to do a little better.

Plants Are Cool

2010-03-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

If William Blake found “heaven in a grain of sand,” I find it in plants. Sounds goofy, I know, but consider, for a moment, these green growing things.

You know the old magic trick, where the guy pulls a rabbit or a bouquet of plastic flowers out of an empty top hat? Well, plants do that all the time, only on a much grander scale. Only a plant can take raw energy from the sun, combine it with water and carbon dioxide and plain old dirt and … presto chango, a mere flick of the magician’s wand and we have … a pineapple. Another flick of the wand and we have a tulip, a kelp forest, a redwood tree.

Without plants, who alone possess this remarkable ability to create usable energy from sunlight, the earth couldn’t support animals, couldn’t support us. And that same miraculous process of photosynthesis absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. So, plants not only provide us the food we eat (all food ultimately comes from plants), but the very air we breathe.

And if that isn’t magic enough, plants, which typically stay rooted in one place, come up with all sorts of crazy strategies to accomplish two of life’s great challenges: self defense, and reproduction. Many plants are veritable chemical weapons factories, others arm themselves with everything from tough hides to sharp thorns. Plants seduce bees, moths, butterflies, and other flying insects to pollinate their flowers. Some tempt animals with fruit to spread their seeds, while others, like dandelions, let them loose on the wind; others still, like that dratted Hound’s Tongue, create marvelously clingy seeds that catch a ride on passing dogs, deer, or—alas!—humans, as anyone who’s ever tried to remove them from their clothing after a hike in the hills can attest. Irritating? To be sure, but devastatingly effective.

So, why all this waxing poetic about plants today? Here in the last week of March, I just harvested my third or fourth crop of fresh basil from the window box above the kitchen sink, and used it to make a near-perfect caprese salad for lunch (a perfect salad would require fresh summer tomatoes straight from the garden; I settled for Campari tomatoes from Costco).

What did it take to produce that all that magic? A plastic tub, some potting soil, water, a few basil seeds, and sunshine. Leaning over, I open the blinds to let in just a little more sunlight: today’s solar radiation, tomorrow’s lunch, thanks to plants.

(Photo of a basil leaf courtesy of wilczooor on Flickr; original at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25435541@N07/3406110139/.)

Portland

2010-02-27T09:04:00.001-08:00

An interesting place: Portland Oregon. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as many body piercings as I saw on the 40 minute train ride from the airport to downtown, and wide swaths of downtown have something of a grubby feel. I know, I know, I’m prejudiced: a first-time visitor jumping to conclusions, but—fortunately—my Portland experience didn’t end there.

After a two-day conference, I was able to spend a half a day running around town. First, I took the train and then a public bus into the hills just West of downtown: lush, green hills dotted with tall pines and stately mansions, many dating, I would guess, from the late 1800s. Some of the most lovely old neighborhoods I have ever seen. Tucked away near the top of the hill I found a lovely Japanese garden, as beautiful as many a garden I’d visited in Japan, and I spent a contemplative hour wandering among the stones and water and clipped hedges—the mix of the natural and the engineered that characterize most Japanese gardens.

With time to spare I found a genuine sushi place for lunch ("genuine" as in actually run by a Japanese family), and still had time to catch the train to the Chinese Garden, a more recent addition to the city built by Suzhou, Portland’s sister city in China, a small town cut with canals some 50 km from Shanghai. Just as lovely as the Japanese Garden and filled with delicious aromatics even in mid-February, most of the structures were patterned after actual buildings and gardens in that town, built by hand in large pieces, and then shipped to Portland and then painstakingly assembled and reassembled, down to the impossibly complicated stone patterns that make up the “floor” of each garden room. (The patterns change as one moves from room to room and view to view.)

The only lame thing about the garden? They had cordoned off the waterfall area for “safety reasons,” depriving visitors of one of the interesting and intimate “surprises” the garden was designed to reveal. (That’s how both Japanese and Chinese gardens work, by the way: slowly revealing one surprise, one view, one meditative space after another.)

Oh yeah: and the Dungeness Crab bisque at Jake’s Famous Crawfish? To die for. The soup alone warrants a return trip.

(Photo of the Portland Chinese Garden courtesy of the Garden Conservancy; original available at: http://www.gardenconservancy.org/events.pl?ID=141.)

Going Out with a Bang

2010-01-30T20:19:00.000-08:00

My wife and kids are lucky: when I die, I just want to be cremated. Forget mouldering away in a pool of chemicals under a patch of Kentucky Blue grass. No thanks.

I know, I know: different strokes for different folks, but cremation alone seems downright boring when compared to the guy I heard about today on the radio. When he dies, he wants to be cremated, the ashes packed into paper bags and then fired out of his beloved 110-pound replica cannon on the opening day of hunting season. Now that’s going out with a bang.

(Photo courtesy of Jason C. McMillian; original photo available at: http://library.thinkquest.org/25780/projects/38.shtml.)

Bird Food

2010-01-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Wild birds crowded the front yard this morning: juncos, house finches, cedar waxwings, and a few others I couldn’t identify. The waxwings hammered the remaining crabapples, while the smaller birds moved methodically between the dry stalks and seedheads of coneflower, aster, and hummingbird mint.

I didn’t plant any of those with birds in mind. I planted them because I like tough, hardy plants, resistant to drought and neglect. What’s more, I’ve hated that crabapple, with its soft, withered fruit that lingers well into Spring, and Becky finds the dry coneflowers unsightly and asked me to clip them off last fall. Fortunately, I didn’t remove the crabapples or the coneflowers and here they are, providing a midwinter feast to native birds of every shape, color, and size. Even a few robins dropped in for a fruit snack or two, the long boughs bending beneath their weight.

The take home lessons? Look for beauty and grace in unexpected places, don’t deadhead the flowers, and leave the old crabapples alone. The birds will take care of them, soon enough.

Any Excuse

2010-01-18T10:06:00.001-08:00

Friends and family know me as a serial hobbyist, with most of my hobbies having something to do with the great outdoors. The appeal may lie less in the hobby itself than the indirect benefits: like getting outside, at interesting times and in interesting weather, and hopefully experiencing something unique or extraordinary. Hobbies give me an excuse to be out there where the magic can happen.

I recall an experience several years ago collecting fossils on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay (sounds normal enough), but it was also at midnight during a raging storm. Sounds strange, I’m sure, but it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life: all sound and fury, wind and white caps and black water, the endless roar and spray of the surf, and there, rolling about in the surf … fossils. That night, as luck or fate or serendipity would have it, the yellow beam of my headlamp touched on one of the rarest shark teeth of all: a symphyseal tooth from a prehistoric cow shark (yeah, I’m a weirdo), which means nothing to the lay reader, but looks rather like the crown worn by the Statue of Liberty: a half circle of radiating spikes. Cool. Would not have found it—or experienced such a wild night—but for a quirky hobby and a peculiar passion for that hobby.

Do you know that you can find your way by starlight? I wouldn’t have thought so, until I was able to pick out a path quite clearly on a moonless night this past September, on a river in the wilds of Utah, where even the stars and planets cast long, bright trails over the water. What was I doing there? Fishing. At midnight, again, and it was as beautiful a sight as I’ve seen in all the world.

Again and again, hobbies have given me that kind of experience: rare moments of beauty, of wonder, of grace.

Yesterday morning found me out in the fog with a camera and tripod. Fog has that magical ability to transform the familiar into something entirely different: strange, mysterious, and wonderful, and a camera can capture that. A poor substitute for the real experience, perhaps, but, with persistence and a little bit of luck, it can produce something magical—presto!—a rabbit from the magic hat.

In the Bleak Midwinter

2009-12-21T22:02:00.001-08:00

Winter solstice. The longest night of the year.

I love the Christmas season: light and laughter push back the dark and cold outside, and the music … ah, the music … fills hearts with warmth and minds with a sense of wonder.

Years ago, my mother put it this way in a letter to one of my brothers, who spent Christmas that year far from home:

“As the years have gone by, Christmas has taken on new and deeper meanings. At this stage, the significance of the Savior’s birth and atonement grows … For me, the most enduring part of Christmas as we celebrate it is in the sacred carols. They carry the joy and awe of his birth. I also cherish the sweet feelings I have toward all the family as I try to think of things that would delight each one--and the pain that accompanies knowing I can’t give every delight. Mixed into that is the memory of Christmases past--mostly the feeling of gathering near the tree with loved ones, playing games, enjoying gifts, listening to sweet music, enjoying life together.”

I remember well those Christmas Eves spent around the Christmas tree. We always had a pinion pine: lumpy looking trees that smelled wonderful, we ate good food, and we sang carols for hours on end.

Like my mother, it seems that the older I get, the more I appreciate the Christmas carols. I’ve come to love one in particular that that we didn’t sing growing up: “In the Bleak Midwinter,” a poem written in the late 1800s by the English poet Christina Rossetti and first put to music in 1906. (Sarah McLachlan does a particularly good version of it, which you can listen to here: http://music.aol.com/video/in-the-bleak-midwinter-aol-sessions/sarah-mclachlan/1778450.)

The beautiful lyrics dwell on the contrasts that make the season so mysterious and magical:

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God incarnate,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom Cherubim
Worship night and day
A breast full of milk
And a manger full of hay.
Enough for him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;
But his mother only,
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him —
Give my heart.

(Photo courtesy of Sam Knox on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/swampy_bogtrotter/3052022793/in/set-72157604324308880/.)

End of Season Tomato Review

2009-11-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

The frost killed all my heirloom tomatoes over a month ago. It was a sad day.

But all good things must come to an end, and so it's time to offer my .02 on which tomatoes are worth planting again, and which ones are not. Opinions have changed somewhat since the mid-season review, and so we're due for an update anyway.

Let's start with the losers:

Moonglow (yellow/orange) - Like a few girls I knew growing up: pretty, but (sadly) without substance.

Yellow Brandywine - Same.

Sophie's Choice - Not my choice. All the charm of a grocery store tomato in December: bland and listless.

Red Brandywine - This is a popular heirloom variety, so I think I must've got a bad or diseased plant. What can I say? These pinkish, triangular tomatoes tasted like barf.

Best cherry tomato? I like the Chadwick Cherry: bright, round, and flavorful. We also planted Elfin: cute (sold in the store as "Santa Claus" tomatoes, or something like that), but not as good as the Chadwick.

And the winners?

Ananas Noir - I changed my opinion on this "black pineapple" tomato by season's end. Great color, and the flavor seemed to improve over the summer.

Black from Tula - Solid tomato. Good size. Nice color. Great flavor.

Nyagous - Far and away the most robust tomato I planted. Huge plant with an endless supply of tennis ball sized "black" tomatoes: sweet, but not too acidic.

Cherokee Purple - My favorite. Big, beautiful purple/black tomatoes with great flavor. My plant didn't produce a ton, but we loved every one it did.

I'll probably replant these next year and experiment with a few more. I realize that one season doesn't prove much of anything, but that's the view from where I sit. Now, if only I can hold out until next June ...

A Bottomless Pit

2009-09-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

This past spring, I bought a Lifetime Products' compost tumbler at Costco, thinking to myself, "Cool, this will be a great way to recycle yard waste and improve the garden. Mom would be proud."

While my wife has been a little restrained in her enthusiasm (shall we say?) and my neighbor likes to give me grief about "lowering property values," I've been impressed. It's easy to use, relatively inconspicuous (honestly, does it look that bad?), and here's the kicker: it eats EVERYTHING.

The thing has a "capacity" of 75 gallons, but I feel like I've put 10 times that volume of yard clippings, paper bags, sawdust, watermelon rinds and the like into that little black hole over the past several months, and there's still plenty of room. Pretty odd, really. It's like a reverse magicians hat: insert rabbit, presto! nothing. Open lid, put lots of stuff in, come back later, stuff gone, and what appears to be the same little bit of brown/black dirt keeps tumbling around in the bottom. I kept hoping I'd fill it several times over the course of a season, but no such luck. Not enough stuff around to "complete the batch."

But I guess that's the point of composting. All that junk--which would normally go to the landfill--gets boiled down into some kinda supercharged soil packed with every nutrient imaginable. Not bad, not bad at all, and maybe worth a bit of grief from the Mrs. and the neighbors.

In An Instant ...

2009-09-08T22:28:00.001-07:00

Everything can change in an instant, a point driven home with particular force this past Labor Day weekend when I stopped concentrating on a narrow trail for a split second and rolled my father-in-law’s heaviest and most expensive four-wheeler off the trail and down a hill.

It all happened so fast: the left tire caught a steep embankment, wrenched the steering wheel (and both front tires) into the hillside, and I found myself, in a kind of surreal slow motion, thrown over the handle bars and onto the trail. The four wheeler flipped over on top of me. I felt its weight run down the length of my right leg, and then lift off. Dazed, I rose to a sitting position, only to watch the four-wheeler slowly careen off the trail and begin rolling down the hill, gathering speed as it went. Eventually it came to rest at the bottom of the hill, maybe 100 yards away, and, after a few minutes spent recovering from the shock, I was able to limp down and turn off the engine.

I was lucky. Every year, people are killed, paralyzed, or seriously injured in OHV accidents like that one. By rights, any of those things could’ve happened to me—once the tire caught, the consequences were entirely out of my control—but they didn’t, and I walked away with nothing worse than a scraped and bruised right knee.

Sobering. I still can’t shake that “lack of control” feeling. In that split second, a relatively innocent mistake could’ve ended my life or changed it (and the lives of those near and dear to me) permanently and dramatically.

I feel deeply blessed that it didn’t, and I’m thankful, in an odd sort of way, for such a stark reminder of how fragile life can be and how quickly it can change. And if the experience taught me to be a little more careful, I also hope that it reminds me to savor each moment, each breath, each minute spent with a loved one, a little more deeply, because we can take nothing for granted.

Uncivil Discourse

2009-09-04T14:16:00.001-07:00

The recent debates over health care reform have brought out the best and worst in American politics. On the one hand, we have a citizenry engaged like never before, discussing a critical issue in forums ranging from Facebook to the family dinner table. On the other, people on both sides of the debate have resorted to name-calling, personal attacks, over-heated rhetoric, and shouting down opponents and elected officials.

I was particularly disturbed by a recent Facebook post that featured a poster with the face of President Obama painted like the Joker from the Batman movie “The Dark Knight” and the words “Obamacare: the Final Solution,” a ridiculous attempt to draw a line between proposed health care legislation and Hitler’s efforts to exterminate the Jews. President Obama is frequently described as a “socialist” or worse, and a democractic congressman from Texas was greeted at a recent health care forum with pictures of a headstone with his name on it.

But vicious, personal attacks and name calling aren’t confined to the Republican right. Left-leaning voters loved to question the intelligence of President George W. Bush, some labeled him a “fascist,” and others frequently invoked the term “jack-booted thugs” as a criticism—yet another disingenuous attempt to brand a political opponent with a symbol from Nazi Germany.

A pox on both our houses. Uncontrolled anger, overblown rhetoric, attacking people rather than policies—none of this serves our democracy well: at best, it distorts the debate; at worst, it feeds the lunatic fringe: guys like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, who shed innocent blood without remorse because, well, the “others” are wicked enough to justify any act against them, no matter how cruel or violent.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life, over three-quarters of Americans identify themselves as “Christians.” If so, how can so many of us forget the single most important lesson of the New Testament: the Golden Rule? (Last time I checked, Jesus made no exception for political debates.)

I was struck by a phrase uttered by Ted Kennedy Jr. in a eulogy he gave at his father’s funeral. He said that his father once told him: “Republicans love America as much as I do.” Can we say the same for our political adversaries? As a Republican (and I am one), can I say with conviction that “Democrats love America as much as I do?” ”

Fortunately, I can. It’s a lesson learned long ago from a deeply conservative friend and mentor, Woody West, a long-time associate editor at Insight Magazine and the Washington Times. When I wrote him a letter to praise one of his columns and condemn those who disagreed, he graciously invited me to lunch, and gently took me to task (to paraphrase): “Never forget that ‘those people’ are people too.”

So, please: let’s stop the name calling, the virulent emails, the Facebook rants filled with hateful or politically charged terms that shed more heat than light. Left, right, and center, we owe it to ourselves and to our country to elevate the dialog and to engage in a more civil discourse. The Framers of the Constitution began their debates with prayer, and we would do well to remember that example. My prayer is that we debate ideas—from health care to abortion to the War in Iraq--openly and honestly, and with a sense of humility, gratitude, and mutual respect. “Gratitude?” you ask? Yes, gratitude. Gratitude for this great Nation, gratitude for the freedom to speak our minds and have our voices heard, and, yes, even gratitude for people who happen to disagree with us.

(Photo by Steve Hopson on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevehopson/3802497362/.)

Mid-Season Tomato Review

2009-08-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, my experiment in heirloom tomatoes is about half-way through, and I've learned a few things. First, most indeterminate tomato plants really do need 36" between plants. I have too many mature plants in too small of a space. But that's just a side show, the real question is: which tomatoes are worth planting again next year?

Biggest and most robust plant: the Black Nyagous. Incredible plant. Huge and full of fruit. So big it's hard to control. Tomatoes are roughly the size of a tennis ball and a blackish red. Sweet, but not very acidic.

Biggest disappointment: Annanas Noire. The name of this plant mystifies me, as there is nothing remotely "black" about the plant or its fruit, which are big--baseball to softball size--and an odd yellow green color with a touch of pink. Flavor and texture both nothing to write home about.

Best conversation piece: A smaller plant called a Green Zebra. Fruit is small--ping pong ball sized--but beautifully striped: yellow on green. Flavor is good, but I'd plant this one again mostly for its looks.

And the mid-season award for best all round tomato goes to ... drumroll please ... a beefsteak tomato called Cherokee Purple. Smoky purple-red fruit, large, easy to slice, sweet and tangy. A terrific tomato in my book, and you can bet I'll plant several next year. I've also been happy with a similar tomato with an odd and un-original name: Black from Tula, Indiana (what? as opposed to "Black from Timbuktu?"). A little less acidic than the Cherokee purple, but I like acidic tomotoes, which is why Cherokee Purple takes the cake.

That's the view from the tomato patch ...

(The photo above is of a Cherokee Purple I picked and sliced a few days ago. MMmm!)

Investments Good and Not-So-Good

2009-07-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

The other day found me weeding in the garden and thinking about investments, as in "Geez, if I calculated all the time, money, and effort that went into these tomatoes, I suspect they'd start to look pretty expensive." But worth it, mind you, definitely worth it.

That got me thinking about other investments I've made over the years: some good, some not-so-good.

Let's start with the not-so-good. Exhibit A: e-Toys. After I finished law school and started working for a firm, we managed to set aside a little money ($500) to invest, even as we struggled to pay off all our accumulated debt from law school. This was the dot.com boom era, and so, when I asked a successful investor friend for his recommendation, he said, "Rambus." I looked up the stock, and was appalled to see that Rambus stock cost $75/share and had held steady at $75/share for a couple of years. I looked at e-Toys, and visions of e-commerce sugar plums danced in my head. What's more, eToys was trading at $6/share, meaning I could buy a lot more eToys shares for my $500, and more is better, right? Wrong. Within a few months, eToys had gone bankrupt, my shares were worthless and Rambus was trading at $500/share. The moral of this story: indexed mutual funds. That, or "I should've gone to Vegas."

Bad contractors. 'Nuff said.

Corners we tried to cut when we built our house. Anything we went cheap on, we regret: from toilets to double doors to "functional" sinks. If the price sounded to good to be true ... it was.

Annuals. You buy them, they look nice for a little while, then they die. (See previous post.)

Pets.

Okay, so how about the good investments?

(1) Good knives. Sounds a little morbid, I know, but if you cook even a tinesy bit, a good knife is worth its weight in gold. The only downside is that good knives spoil you forever, so you can't stand using a bad one. We received a set of high end J.A. Henckels for our wedding, and we still use them 14 years later.

(2) Good pans. Same thing. I've decided that if it's something we at least once a day, it's well worth investing in quality. We currently use a Calphalon non-stick set. It's about worn out after something like five-years worth of use. Cost us $350, but we've used it thousands of times.

(3) Quality outdoor gear. Rain gear, fishing gear.

(4) Travel. This may be a personal thing, but we've never, ever regretted money we've spent to travel as a couple or as a family. Okay, so we may regret the occasional bad hotel or restaurant, but travel, broadly speaking, has been a terrific investment. Along with this one, I've learned to appreciate the value of quality souvenirs. Not junk stuff, but quality art work or crafstmanship that reflects a particular culture or locale. Becky's had to prod me on this, since I hate shopping, but a lot of the stuff we've collected--from Japanese pottery to Lombok masks--serves as a reminder and memento of some great trips to fascinating places.

(5) Chocolate.

(6) Real ice cream. Real gelato.

(7) Time spent with friends and family. Okay, sorry to go all mushy on ya, but seriously. This isn't something that comes naturally to me. I'm a bit of an introvert, and I always have a million things to occupy my time and attentions, so I have to make a conscious effort to make time for, say, a one-on-one trip with the kids or a date night with Becky, but I never, ever, regret that effort. Best investment. Ever.

Feel free to chime in with your own investments, good or bad, but don't ask me for stock tips ...

Christian Comes Home

2009-07-19T14:57:00.001-07:00

After nearly two weeks in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Christian decided he'd had enough. With only "proof that he can feed himself" standing in the way of him and home, he tore out his feeding tube (literally) and, almost overnight, went from drinking about 40cc of milk in one feeding to nearly three times that amount.

And so they were forced to let him go, and we abandoned plans for T-shirts that said, "Free Christian" on the front and "Let My Baby Go!" on the back.

In all seriousness, we are deeply grateful to have our family all together again--the first time in over a month--and for the the many wonderful doctors, nurses, and other staff at the University of Utah Medical Center, who made it all possible. (A big thanks too, to Jenny and Joe Davidson, who went above and beyond in watching our kids over the past month to allow me, and later, me and Becky, to spend so much time at the hospital.)

Christian, for his part, will probably soon long for the relative peace and quiet of the NICU, as he's been mobbed by his siblings ever since his triumphal return home at about 11:00 a.m. this morning. We're thrilled to have him home, and feel greatly blessed to welcome another child into our family.

Garden Lessons

2009-07-16T14:13:00.001-07:00

Two lessons from the garden this week: one philosophical, and one practical.

The first lesson has to do with personal growth: I bought a bunch of heirloom tomato seedlings in early May and planted them at the same time. At the time, they were all roughly the same size. Some two months later, one of them--"Nyagous"--towers over all the rest. Here's the point: that tomato plant didn't get so big and healthy in a day; rather, day by day, it did something better than the rest and, over the course of two months, that modest, step by step improvement made a huge difference in the final result. Moral of the story: it's a mistake to think, as I often do, that one can suddenly break out and do great things. In reality, one's life and character are determined by the slow and steady accumulation of good decisions, daily effort, and getting the little stuff right. The little things add up.

The practical lesson has to do with aphids, or some tiny aphid-like fly that seems to have infested my beloved tomato plants (except for the Nyagous, by the way: go figure). I ran to the garden store in desperation, and they said that the only option to "save my plants" was a pesticide called "Sevin," which, from what I've read, is the equivalent of releasing a neutron bomb in the garden plot: killing not only aphids, but pretty much everything else for miles, from earthworms to stray reindeer. Bad idea. After further reading dug up recommendations that included killing them one by one(!) and using an old nylon to dust them with flour(!!) I stumbled upon this revolutionary suggestion: blast them off with a jet of water from the garden hose. Incredulous, I tried it, and I'll be jiggered if it didn't work just fine. Cheap. Simple. Effective. Did it wipe 'em out? Nah, but it certainly knocked 'em for a loop, which is all I wanted in the first place. As for the rest, my garden is full of ladybugs, damsel and dragon flies, and they know just what to do with a wandering aphid ...

(Photo courtesy of AIA GUY..Rwood on Flickr; original available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wood-n-photography/2586365199/.)

Happy Fourth of July

2009-07-04T22:41:00.001-07:00

For a variety of reasons, it wound up just me and Sarah (my ten year old daughter) at the fireworks display tonight.

We lay on a blanket in the grass among the glow-in-the-dark frisbees and whirling light sticks, and listened to a guy on the loudspeaker repeatedly express his thanks for the "Decoration of Independence." They played a lot of sappy tunes from the 80s and 90s. Everyone sang along (loudly and off-key, I might add) to I'm Proud to be an American, and the display ended with a massive finale as the loudspeakers blared the 1812 Overture.

So, a bit silly at times? Yes. Hokey? Oh, yeah. But wonderful all the same. I am proud to be an American. What a great country. Happy Fourth of July!

(Photo courtesy of smtpboy (Josh Simmons) on Flickr; original image available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/smtpboy/2042718984/.)

Dr. Wiseguy’s Gardening Tip #1 – Annuals vs. Perennials

2009-07-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

It’s taken me a long time, but I think I finally got this whole annual vs. perennial thing figured out: if a flower is bright and colorful and looks like something you’d want to put in your front yard, it’s an annual, which means it will die soon. If it’s kinda scraggly looking with itty bitty flowers, chances are it’s a perennial, and it’ll hang around far longer than you’d like.

I’ve figured this out by doing a lot of research on the subject. For example, the word “annual” has both Latin and Greek origins. The Latin word annualis means “buy repeatedly,” and the Greek word anulopolis means “a sucker is born every minute,” which explains why nurseries love annuals so much.

All of this amassed wisdom came in handy today at the annual Fourth of July sale at the local nursery. In front I found these gorgeous black-eyed susans in one gallon pots, with enormous yellow petals and deep purple centers. Appling my rule (see above), I guessed—reasonably enough—that these must be annuals, rather than the perennial variety, which is hard to grow around here and which often has thin, scraggly looking blossoms of pale yellow. It usually looks like it’s dying, even when it’s quite healthy.

But my little rule can’t really be so simple, can it? No-oooooooo. A little research and you will find that Rudbeckia F1 ‘Tiger Eye’ is “technically a perennial” as in “this plant is a perennial if maintained through the winter months at a constant temperature of 82.6 degrees Fahrenheit with Mozart’s Symphony No. 10 in G Major playing in the background,” only they left that last italicized part off the label because, as we learned from the Greek, if a flower looks good at the garden center, it just has to look good in my yard, and it'll make it through the Winter, right?After all, it's a perennial, not an annual, except it really isn't.

Clear enough?

(Photo of Rudbeckia FI 'Tiger Eye' courtesy of mbgrigby on Flickr; original image available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbgrigby/3616750264/.)

Pete Hawkes

2009-07-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

My brother Pete is a graphic designer and an innovator in something called Flash animation: basically the software that drives all the little moving pieces you see on websites and web advertising. He recently redesigned his website and put together a "Flash Reel" to showcase some of his work: http://petehawkes.com/10_flash_reel/index.html. Pretty cool stuff. Needless to say, he's a tremendously creative guy, and it's always fun to see what he comes up with next. So, stay tuned.

Orisinal

2009-06-25T21:35:00.001-07:00

Do your kids like video games, but they drive you crazy? Check out Orisinal, a series of cute and inventive games by Ferry Halim. Here's the link: http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/. Try the lady bug game. It's mildly addictive.

My brother, Pete, a graphic designer, turned us on to her site year's ago. Even the music's mellow and kind of catchy. My kids love it, particularly the younger set, and it's nice to see someone's creativity in full flower.

Frostalicious

2009-06-23T22:11:00.001-07:00

Tired of the same old Wendy's Frosty? Try this: take it home and add Hershey's chocolate syrup to taste (half the bottle wouldn't hurt), toss in a tablespoon of cinnamon, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and mix it up good. If it's too melty, stick it back in the freezer for awhile. Now THAT'S a frosty.

My kids just think I'm weird. Genius is always misunderstood.

(Photo courtesy of Nicholas Hall on Flickr; original available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholashall/2722908160/.)

Freedom

2009-06-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Incredible stuff coming out of Iran these days. There's such a power in the struggle for freedom: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/opinion/21tehran.html?_r=1. Something should ring true in that account, as that same spirit animated the American Revolution over 200 years ago. It is the struggle for freedom, for liberty, and the willingness to lay everything on the altar of sacrifice for a principle, for an idea, for an ideal.

Here's some more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html. I'm becoming a Roger Cohen fan. He seems to grasp this historical moment better than most.

Cranford

2009-06-17T21:29:00.001-07:00

For all you fans of period dramas (think Jane Austin's Pride & Prejudice, BBC version), fire up the Netflix queue, as I have a recommendation for you: "Cranford," a BBC adaptation of three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Becky and I have become Gaskell fans since someone gave Becky a copy of "Wives & Daughters" during a trip to Europe a few years ago. We've followed the book up with movie versions of "Wives & Daughters," "North & South," and now, "Cranford," an extraordinarily good adaptation featuring a lot of fine writing and British acting (if you're a fan of English period dramas, you'll recognize many of the faces). Judi Dench and Alex Etel, in particular, turn in stunning performances. The set doesn't hurt either--the town of Lacock, in Wiltshire, England. Gorgeous.

And if you're not a fan of English period dramas ... well, watch it anyway. It'll do you good.

(Photo courtesy of Paul Gulliver on Flickr; original image (and many related images taken in the same village) available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul-g/2073408317/.)

Death of the Small Town

2009-06-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

The drive home from a recent business meeting near Yellowstone took me through Southern Idaho, and, on a whim, I pulled over in Blackfoot to see whether I could find a small town drive- in to get a bite to eat.

It's not that I wanted a burger, particularly. Rather, I hoped for some fresh cut fries (this was Southern Idaho, after all), a chocolate shake, a line of locals, an eager, fresh faced teen behind the counter, and the energy that one can feel at "the" place to be on a summer evening in small town, USA.

Alas, no drive in, though I dutifully drove the entire length of "Business 1-15." So, I tried Pocatello, the old railroad town where my father grew up and both grandparents lived out their lives. The yellow house was gone, and the chestnut tree, and even the large, smooth boulder in front of the place next door that we used to treat as a slippery slide. I looked in vain for the old feed store, Hawkes Feed & Seed, and couldn't find that either, and the warehouse district felt tired and empty. And no drive-ins to be found, anywhere. One last try at McCammon, with the same results, and that was that.

Over that same stretch of highways, backways, and business routes, I suspect I saw no less than 15 Subway Restaurants, a dozen Burger Kings, at least that many MacDonald's. I could also see--and feel--how the energy had shifted from main street to the strip malls at the outskirts of town and closer to the freeway.

The slow death of small town America isn't exactly groundbreaking news, but I felt it keenly on that little detour to find a decent milk shake. I know it hangs on, in pockets here and there, and each of those towns may hold a classic drive-in that I just missed, but the change--and the loss-was palpable, and left me feeling melancholy.

We live in a world of fast food, the internet, and iPhone, where communities are built around interests rather than geography or industry, but all this technology, even as it expands our capacity to interact with others, can feel oddly isolating and alienating. The dull monotony of the strip mall. The stranger neighbors. The decayed urban core. The rusty old warehouse districts and faded signs. We drive around, one to a car, running a seemingly endless list of errands. We sit up late, typing on the keyboard. Alone. And the glow of the computer screen washes away memories of moon and stars and fireflies, campfires, and the neon sign above the local drive-in on a summer evening.

So, where did I wind up eating? Subway. In the end, I had little choice.

(Photo courtesy of kyfireengine on Flickr; available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21946699@N02/3345523269/.)

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (Restaurant Edition)

2009-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

The Good

Five Guys Burgers and Fries - We fell in love with this Virginia-based chain when we lived in Maryland. Simple, stripped down menu. Sliced lemon for your diet Coke, vinegar for their superb, fresh cut fries (don't ever order the large fry if you're eating alone; we often split the "medium"), and solid hamburgers where you don't have to pay extra for the fixings. (Best way to order a burger is "all the way."). They don't freeze their meat and they start cooking it the minute you place your order. You can find an equivalent burger, but you'd be hard pressed to beat their fries.

Sawadee Thai - Great place for lunch near the Governor's mansion at about 750 East and South Temple in Salt Lake. For $7.50 you get your choice of two dishes (I almost always pick #7 (bbq pork) and #11 (Massaman curry)). Solid if not stellar Thai. Good, friendly service.

Red Iguana - No secret here as the place in invariably packed. Go off hours. A bit pricey for Mexican but deservedly so. Best Mexican around. A wide variety of great moles (no, not the subterranean rodent kind, those heavy chocolate infused smokey spicy sauces).

Setebello Pizza - Fresh salads and uber thin, wood fired pizzas with a bit of cheese and tasty toppings. Skip the gelato, though, as its expensive and disappoints (to my mind anyway).

Nielsen's Frozen Custard - For some, inexplicable reason the store in Provo never took off, but this Bountiful standby (which a few other branches around and about) serves the real deal, the pinnacle of ice-cream fabulousness: frozen custard. Can't go wrong with the straight chocolate though raspberry is great when they have it, same with the carmel cashew. Though no one orders them, they actually make a pretty good turkey and avocado grinder. I've never had bad avocado there, which says something.

The Bad
Oh, there are soooo many places that deserve to make the naughty list, but I'll single out a few of my perennial (least) favorites:

Chilies (or, as the sign reads: "Chijies") - Question: How do you feel when you leave? Answer (invariably): vaguely sick to my stomach. 'Nuff said. Only I can't stop there: Waitress: can I get a little more cheese on that or maybe a dollop of Crisco? This dish isn't quite greasy enough for me. Thanks.

Any Other Chain Restaurant That Looks Like Chilies including, but not limited to, Applebees (boo!), the Olive Garden (hiss!), and TGI Barfdays (retch!). If it looks like Chilies, chances are it tastes like Chilies.

Lame Steakhouses like Outback and Lonestar. I bet grilled armadillo tastes better than most of their steaks and the bloomin' onion type deals may taste good going down, but raise your hand (anyone? anyone?) if you don't feel just plain lousy after eating one. Salads straight from the bag and taste just that good.

DQ (and equivalents) - You call that ice cream?! Save your calories and spend them on chocolate custard instead. You'll thank me. I promise. It's like the difference between cheetos and cheesecake.

The Ugly
Hard to know quite what to do with this category, but maybe it's best reserved for restaurants that I shouldn't like, but somehow enjoy anyway:

Cheesecake Factory - A chain restaurant serving obscenely large portion sizes (Becky and usually split an appetizer, split and entree, and split a desert, and still struggle), but I gotta tell ya, their Thai Lettuce Wrap appetizer is da bomb. Also a fan of the Chicken Marsala and, alas, the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake. At $7 a slice, their cheesecake is an absolute ripoff, and one waitress confided in us that a single piece of their "peanut butter pie cheesecake" (or some similar name) has 125o calories before adding the whipcream. Still, cheesecake is cheesecake, and that Godiva cheesecake is some serious stuff. About the most sinful food/beverage one can indulge in and still get a temple recommend. (Whether one should be able to get a temple recommend after eating a full slice of Godiva cheesecake is another question entirely ...)

Okay, so please weigh in with your own. I'm really just trying to get folks to cough up the good info. Reveal your fave hole-in-the-walls. Inquiring minds want to know.

Ed. note: this writer has no strong opinions about food. Ed note No. 2: if you don't want to drop $100 or more on a meal for two, $30-40 will buy you at least two filet mignons, asparagus, red potatoes, a pack of Martenelli's, and a pint of Haagen Daaz--and that's pretty tough to beat anywhere or at any price. Only downer is someone has to do the dishes. 1, 2, 3 ... Not it!!)

The Fortune Cookie

2009-05-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

So, we've had some interesting fortune cookies over the years--Becky swears she got one that said, "You will be married soon," just after we started dating--but one I got at a Vietnamese restaurant last week takes the cake for interestingness if not for its predictive power: Worry not that no one knows of you seek to be worth knowing. After puzzling over that for some time, I still have no idea what it means, and maybe that's the point: make a fortune vague enough, and the recipient will find in it whatever meaning he or she wants to find. Hmm. Maybe it means: you're an ambitious son-of-a-gun, but don't sweat it, because nobody cares. Ouch! That hits a little near the mark. Maybe those Chinese are on to something . . .

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Food Edition)

2009-05-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

I wish I were one of those guys who gets paid to shamelessly promote name brand products to his friends and family (without telling them, of course), but I'm not. So, I'll shamelessly promote (and demote) products for free, and hope that the retail Gods smile upon me. There's also a nasty, vicious rumor going around that I have strong opinions about things like food, movies, and politics, but it's all lies, I tell you, lies, lies, lies! Just for kicks, I've grouped the following food recommendations into categories that I hope will prove useful: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

(1) Campari tomatoes. (Bet you saw that one coming, eh? That is, if you are one of the three people who regularly read this blog!) What can I say more? Best store-bought tomato out there. Worth every penny of the $6 bucks I routinely fork over for them at Costco. But then again: I feel more stongly about tomatoes than I do about religion.

(2) Redmond Real Salt. Salt?! you say? There's a difference in salt? I'm afraid so. Redmond salt is mined in Central Utah from ancient deposits and has a distinctive reddish white color that I recognize from my childhood, as we used to buy it in huge blocks that the goats would lick, apparently because they needed the salt and it tasted good. Back then, I suppose, any salt other than white salt wasn't considered fit for anything but livestock, but now that old red salt has gone upscale, and let me tell you: it's good stuff. Tastes waaaay better than the chemically refined Morton stuff you find everywhere, and I actually buy into the notion promoted on the Real Salt label that a clean, natural sea salt, replete with all kinds of minerals, and laid down a bazillion years ago during a time when the air was free of soot, mercury, and flourocarbons is better than what we typically sprinkle on our food.

(3) Dove chocolate. I've tried chocolate from all over the world, and I'll be danged if Dove doesn't make a really, really good bar of chocolate. Dark or milk, I'll take both, thank you!

(4) Trader Joe's chocolate covered pretzels. If crack cocaine came in food form, this would be it. I would probably eat myself into a coma if the bag lasted that long. Seriously wicked stuff, and I don't even like pretzels.

The Bad

(1) Produce from Dick's Market in Centerville. I've seen bad produce in my day, including C-Town on 125th Street in Harlem, where two shrink-wrapped bananas set us back something like $1.50, but even C-Town won't, far as I know, sell 20 rotten pineapples at the same time. I kid you not: I've been there when every last, stinking pineapple was full-on rotten, and they still had the gall to advertise them for $3 or $4 a piece.

(2) Grocery store cooking wines. Small, expensive little bottles of "wine" chock full of salt and preservatives. Yuck! But I haven't found a good alternative as--what am I supposed to do: waltz into the Bountiful liquor store and ask, "What goes well with a thyme and mushroom reduction?" Besides, I can't afford to buy a whole bottle when I only need a cup. Arrghh!

(3) Twinkies. Can't believe I liked them as a kid. 'Nuff said.

The Ugly

(1) Breyer's ice cream. This long time family favorite recently started adding a guar-gum/carrageenan type emulsifier, tara gum, to their "all natural" ice cream, in addition to watering down their brand with all kinds of gooey gooey ice creams with ingredient lists a mile long. (The beauty of Breyers used to be "Milk, cream, sugar, strawberries. Period.") And what makes me really mad is that, even with the tara gum, we haven't been able to find a better brand outside of Haagen Daz, so we still buy the stuff, giving the lie to all the threats I sent to corporate headquarters about "never touching their product again." Ed. Note: Again, I have no strong opinions about food.

(2) Cavanaugh's Chocolates (Bountiful). Look: these guys make a decent American chocolate, and I'll be a sucker for a Mindy Mint until the day I die, but--in addition to being reactionary anti-United Nations whackos--these guys put the "cheap" in "cheap skate." A few year's ago, we decided to take the kids to tour their new factory out by I-15--the tour that offers "free samples"--only to discover that the tour costs something like $5 per adult and $4 per child, with a "free" sample at the end. Gimme a break. Sad thing is: they know they're the only game in town, so they've made millions charging a premium for what is at best a middling collection of chocolates.

Ah, but I'd better bring this rant to a close. Still, I think this idea might have some legs. Please feel free to nominate your own "goods," "bads," or "uglies." Future posts may well take up the same theme as applied to things like cook books, movies, and politicians.

Master Gardener

2009-05-19T20:55:00.001-07:00

I've read that it's really hard to grow tomatoes from seed--particularly from store bought tomatoes--and that all kinds of planning and complicated steps are necessary to accomplish this feat. This made me sad, because I really wanted to try and grow some Campari tomatoes from seed. (See previous post on Caprese for why I'm such a big fan.)

So--get this--I pulled it off. And here's the trick. Pay close attention because it's so complicated. I took a Campari tomato I bought at Costco. I ate the tomato (yum!) and took a few seeds off the cutting board and put them into a plastic bowl. Once they dried out, I scraped them off the bowl with my fingernail and planted them in a plastic cup full of potting soil. I watered them once and ... voila! ... one week later I have several healthy looking tomato seedlings. Pretty complicated, eh? This gardening stuff is tough. Good thing I'm such a genius.

I guess the moral of that story is: don't believe what you read, except for this post . . .

(Photo courtesy of Zeetz Jones on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeetzjones/1014666274/.)

Bird Brain!

2009-05-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

I found another hummingbird stuck in the garage this afternoon. They get in there this time of year, and, because the ceiling is higher than the opening for the garage door, they can't see a way out and start flying frantically around until they exhaust themselves. As a kid, I remember finding them dead on tops of the hay bales we had stored in our garage--not for lack of a way out, but because they panicked and couldn't find it.

So, I'm none to impressed by the mental capacity of hummingbirds. Having said that, in no way do I wish to demean this remarkable little bird, which weighs, on average, less than a nickel; can move forward, backward, up, down, or side to side at will; beats its wings 60-80 times per minute; and migrates over a thousand miles. Like a three year old let loose in the juice box aisle at Costco, a hummingbird can drink its weight in nectar or sugar in a single day, and burn all that energy just as fast.

For all those reasons and more, I admire the little guys, and wanted to find a way to help this little fellow out of harm's way. (The bird was already nearing exhaustion, I could tell, as it kept landing on various perches with its mouth wide open, like an overheated dog.)

Inspired by the bright fake flowers I'd seen on hummingbird feeders, I took a bright, yellow plastic cup from Ikea and taped bright, pink, construction paper "petals" around the lip of the cup. I filled the cup with sugar water and placed in on top of the van, hoping that the bird would either (a) come down and get a drink, and/or (b) finally see the way out. Didn't know if it would work, so I sat down to watch. Within a minute, the bird swooped down on the fake flower and tried to land. While it couldn't land easily on the edge of the cup, the action was just enough to offer the bird a glimpse of sky, and with a whir of tiny wings, off he flew, away and free.

(Hummingbird facts from www.rubythroat.org. For a great hummingbird pic, see the following link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekinthegarden/474685182/.)

Tongue of Wood

2009-05-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

I think anyone who's tried creative expression of any kind--music, drawing, painting, poetry, photography (you name it)--can appreciate this poem by Stephen Crane:

There Was a Man With Tongue of Wood

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.

The Mockingbird

2009-05-03T21:11:00.001-07:00

In early March of this year I attended a conference in St. George, Utah (in the extreme southwest corner of the State), and, after the conference wrapped up one afternoon, I drove down to the Virgin River to enjoy the Spring sunshine.

When I got out of the car, I noticed a bird sitting on top of a telephone pole and singing the most beautiful music--a song somehow familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. "I should know that bird," was my thought at the time. And then it hit me: the song wasn't repeating, but changing, and--just like that--mystery solved: I'd stumbled across a Mockingbird, my favorite bird of the East, here in the arid West and singing its heart out, like Mockingbirds do.

I love Mockingbirds. Unlike other birds, who repeat--endlessly--the same two or three note theme, Mockingbirds are masters of innovation. A single Mockingbird may have a repetoire of up to 40 different songs, many incorporating sounds from the world around it, including things like car alarms. Seriously. When we lived in Kensington, Maryland, and I often worked late into the night, a Mockingbird down the street would often start calling at about 1:00 a.m., and that particular bird loved car alarms, doing any number of variations on the same, basic, car alarm theme.

What a great bird. If you have them in the area where you live, consider yourself fortunate, 'cause they can sing like nobody's business.

(Photo courtesy of trisheroverton on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11437102@N00/384245868/.)

Pollywog Photography

2009-04-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

So, I've kicked of a new photography-related blog for two reasons: (1) to officially kick off a side business specializing in fine art children's photography, and (2) to create what I hope proves to be a useful resource for people wanting to improve their own photography.

Please let me know if you find the name, content, etc. good bad or indifferent.

Link on the right. Web address is pollywogphoto.blogspot.com. Eventually, I expect to have a dedicated website up and running, but hopefully this works in the meantime.

Plants Behaving Badly

2009-04-29T18:30:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, when we were first putting in the yard, and I was bumming seeds and advice off of anyone I could, my Aunt Janet advised me to avoid plants that "misbehave."

At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about. Now, I have a very good idea. Good: plants that quietly do their stuff, mind their own business. Bad: plants that aggressively move around, bully the neighbors, run rampant, and generally cause trouble.

Who's the culprit in the garden this year? A perfectly innocent-looking plant called a white sage. I've got little white sages coming up all over the place, like dandelions or crab grass. Infiltrating the Black-Eyed Susans, throwing a sharp elbow at the Purple Coneflower. Misbehaving. Bad, bad, plant.

Hint for the uninitiated: if the plant propagates (spreads or reproduces) by rhizome, just ... say ... no! If you see the word "rhizome" associated--even remotely--with a particular plant, that spells trouble. Avoid rhizomes. Avoid plants that misbehave. Avoid the evil white sage.

Eat Your Heart Out, American Idol

2009-04-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you've all seen the Susan Boyle clip by now, but you gotta love some of the other acts from "Britain's Got Talent" that come up along side her on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GrOMLylvhQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gHvATmUsSg&feature=related

What a great riff on ye ole' talent show.

Hidden Sorrow

2009-04-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

I greatly admire the work of a particular landscape photographer. So, I was pleasantly suprised when I ran into a fellow at a conference who had collaborated with this photographer on several books. As we discussed the photographer and his work, this fellow informed me that the photographer in question had, in recent years, suffered through a series of crushing personal tragedies.

If my recent post on Les Miserables suggested we all have it pretty cushy, this experience reminded me that--even in this day and age--none of us is immune to personal tragedy, and that, however good things may appear on the surface, a lot of people still suffer through tragedies small and great, often quietly and behind-the-scenes and sometimes alone.

Fame and fortune can't insulate us from that. Nothing can, though fate never seems to deal a fair hand to anyone. Some suffer unspeakably, while others seem to glide along with nary a bump in the road. But I suppose "seems" is the operative word.

Les Miserables

2009-04-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

I just finished rereading this beautiful, heart wrenching novel by Victor Hugo. If you haven't read it--or if you've only seen the play--you should find a copy and start working your way through. There's a reason it's widely considered one of the greatest novels ever written.

Like other great novels--The Brothers Karamozov comes to mind--it will put you through an emotional wringer. But that's the point.

If nothing else, the book stands as a powerful reminder of all that we take for granted. In this day and age, I think sorrow and loss and true deprivation are often vague and distant things. Not to say that such have have been banished from the world--far from it--but rather that here in America, few us of know what true poverty looks like, or recognize that most of the world's population for most of world history could scarce dream of the opportunities we take for granted: education, employment, health care, sanitation, leisure.

Even our perspective on death is someohow distant or muted. So often, death happens in the hospital to old people, not to the young or to people in the prime of life.

I suppose I'm a romantic at heart--a sucker for the sentimental--but something rings true in this social critique that also weaves togther themes of redemption, love, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. Vive la Republique!

The Power of Narrative

2009-04-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

I've been giving some more thought to this whole Susan Boyle mania (here's the clip I suspect you've all seen by now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY), and I've reached the conclusion that it's all explained by my latest theory of life, the universe, and everything. That theory is: it's all about the narrative.

In other words, finding the right "story" gives meaning to much of our life and experience. Stories play an important role in religious thought (consider the parables or even a concept like "restoration") and religious experience (such and such happened, and then I knew ...). Good narratives make for good books and good movies. Lawyers use them to persuade judges and juries (generally it's the most convincing "story" that wins the day). Even our interest in sporting events is often driven by a narrative of one sort or another. We root for "Cinderella" teams, relishing in the story of an group of misfits or underdogs overcoming adversity. We love it when the the blue collar team everyone counts out takes down a Goliath like the New York Yankees. Figure skating? The need for narrative explains the constant stream of "bio" clips about the contestants. All narratives; all stories. I think we even define ourselves by, essentially, taking a bunch of facts and writing a "script" to make sense of them.

I've think that same concept--the power of narrative--explains the world-wide phenomenon of Susan Boyle. She's a wonderful singer, to be sure, but there are thousands or even tens of thousands of better singers out there. What makes Susan Boyle interesting, even inspiring, is the narrative. So, she gets up there on stage in her frumpy dress and stumbles through a few intereview questions and--guess what?--we've already written the narrative in our heads: check her out, this is going to be funny: a real train wreck. What makes her story so compelling is that she proceeds, in just a few seconds, to turn that narrative entirely on its head, and suddenly we have a wonderful, inspiring story of a 48 year 0ld woman from a small town in Scotland who's never been kissed, and goes on stage in front of thousands of people and sings the living daylight out of a song about someone who's given up on life, given up on her dreams. Witht the flip of a switch, we have a story of perserverence, of courage, a diamond in the rough, a most unlikely hero. Wow. You couldn't write a better script.

Trail of the Ancients

2009-04-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

Our spring break this year had something of an "ancient America" theme. Covering roughly 1400 miles in 5 days, we visited, in order: Fisher Towers, Needles Overlook (Canyonlands), Lowry Pueblo (Hovenweep), Mesa Verde (Colorado), Durango, Four Corners (Navajo Tribal Park), Valley of the Gods, Cedar Mesa, Mexican Hat, Monument Valley, Natural Bridges, Hite Overlook (Lake Powell), and, last but not least, one of our all-time favorites: Capitol Reef. Whew!

Fortunately, our kids travel well, so all that time in the car wasn't too bad, and it was fun to round out the family travel map with a trip to Southeastern Utah and the Four Corners region. We saw a lot of great stuff both on--and off--the beaten path, met some great people from all over the world, and learned a fair amount about Native American culture and history. For example, we learned that the term "Anasazi" (a Navajo word meaning something like "enemy ancestors") has fallen out of favor and been replaced with "Ancestral Puebloans," apparently on the assumption that no one can possibly take offense at a word so long and hard to pronounce. Whatever term you use for its builders, however, one thing is clear: Mesa Verde is cool, as are the literally thousands of ruins the Ancestral Puebloans left scattered all over the Four Corners region. In some of the ruins we saw thousand year-old finger prints, clear as day, and corn cobs, the remnants of meals eaten long before Columbus discovered America.

Great stuff.

Ahh ... Caprese

2009-04-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

For a tomato junkie like me, nothing says "summer" quite so well as a caprese salad, particularly if the tomatoes and basil come straight from my own garden, still warm from the sun. Fresh. Delightful. Delicious.

Alas, for the rest of the year, caprese represents a particularly cruel kind of bait-and-switch: a hint of summer, a taste, a tease, a mirage that evaporates with the first bite of tough, bland, and mealy tomato. And yet still I order it at restaurants small and great, hoping, somehow, that this time, it will be something more than merely disappointing.

Take Setebello, for instance, a recently opened Neapolitan-style pizzeria in downtown Salt Lake. Good, smoky, woodfired pizzas with fresh ingredients. "Okay," I ask the waitress, "How are the tomatoes in the caprese?" "Good," she replies, "Everything here is good." But they are not: watery, tasteless tomatoes (all-too-typical winter tomatoes), coupled with a decent buffalo mozzarella and a few measly sprigs of basil.

But, tomato lovers take note: deliverance is here. A perfect, vine ripened summer tomato in January? Hardly, but pretty darn close. In a word: Campari. They sell them at Costco, and they are far and away the best store bought tomato I've found, particularly off-season. Firm, tangy, and sweet.

Pair them with a good, fresh, hand pulled mozarella (no easy find that, either, but available at most specialty stores; the local Costco sells a reasonably good one under the Bel Gioso label), a liberal helping of basil (I like it cut crosswise into thin strips), a good sea salt, cracked pepper, and a splash of good olive oil and, if you like, basalmic vinegar, and--voila!--a bite of summer, no matter how cold and bleak it may be outside. Winter, snow, and freezing rain ... I scoff at you! It is summer. I am in Southern Italy. The breeze is soft, and sun is warm. Life is good. I have caprese.

Goats

2009-04-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

I like goats. I grew up with them. Part of my mother's grand exercise in self-sufficiency. I remember milking them on cold winter mornings, and the way the first squirts of milk rang in the bottom of the tin pan, the warmth of the udder, the steam rising from the fresh milk. The smell of hay.

But even a goat fan like me must admit that they are strange little creatures. Some are cute, like Nubians with their floppy ears and endearing brown eyes; others are not, like Alpine goats; others still are just plain weird looking with Marty Thelman eyes and little stubs for ears.

We never ate goat meat, though my Mom would, from time to time, sell a billy goat kid or two to "the Iranians," who most certainly ate them.

Well, I stumbled across an article today in the New York Times on eating goat meat: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/dining/01goat.html?_r=1&em , and loved this description of how they look: "Their unappetizing visage is simultaneously dopey and satanic, like a Disney character with a terrible secret."

Great, great writing. That guy's got 'em pegged.

Bribes and Threats

2009-03-30T14:54:00.001-07:00

As a family we've been through countless "programs" of one sort or another: some successful, most not. The latest iteration of the 'carrot and the stick'--a Becky innovation--goes like this: we want the kids to keep their room clean, so we help them get the room clean (beds made, floor clean) and then tape a bag of swedish fish to the door. If we see something left out or the bed not made, we eat a fish. If they kids have any fish left at the end of the week, they get what's left.

Well, Mary tried to throw a bit of a wrinkle into the system this morning. First, she demanded that Becky pay her a fish for making her bed. "It doesn't work that way." Becky replied. "Okay, here you go," said Mary, handing Becky a fish as if to say, "Go ahead: I'll gladly pay a fish to have you make my bed." "Sorry," countered Becky, "It doesn't work that way either."

Take that, sugar monkey!

Chocolate Custard

2009-03-29T15:57:00.001-07:00

Is there anything better in all the world than real chocolate custard? Mmm. I think not.

(Photo courtesy of stu_spivack on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_spivack/477867065/.)

The Sacred Datura

2009-03-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting “nature moment” a few years ago after we finished our home in Centerville. We'd been slaving away for months putting in the yard, moving (and removing) rocks, grading the dirt, digging trenches, laying sprinklers, regrading the dirt, and so on and so on.

I’d noticed a lot of interesting plants (weeds) growing up here and there, but two in particular struck me as unusual. They began growing in a bare patch of dirt out by the electrical boxes and they had dark, rigid leaves. They looked almost like a squash plant or something, only somehow more earnest, even ominous. Anyway, I left them alone to see what they would do. Within a few days, I could see long flower pods beginning to grow, the most mature nearly three inches long.

About that time I started wondering whether they were a desert plant with large white blossoms called a “Sacred Datura.” I knew next to nothing about them, but I’d seen photos of them in the Visitors’ Center at Great Basin National Park—luminous, white flowers that open like a trumpet. Curious, I read up on them, and found out that they are a desert plant that likes dry, disturbed soils. They bloom in the late evening, with each bloom lasting only one night, and they are pollinated by sphinx moths. Considered magical by Native Americans, the plants contain powerful toxins and hallucinogens. Some Indian Tribes used to brew a kind of tea from their leaves, which was then administered to young warriors as part of a coming of age ritual. Some of them saw visions; others likely died in the process. Even today, people occasionally die from trying to make (and drink) their own Sacred Datura tea.

The leaves in the photos I saw were a dead ringer for the plants in the yard, and so I wasn’t surprised at all when, a few days later, the first flower pod opened and sent out a long, tightly wound blossom. Later that evening, as twilight deepened into full darkness, the corkscrew unraveled quite suddenly, and there, sure enough, was the mystical bloom.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Barber on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdwbarber/2867088239/.)

Natural Acts

2009-03-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've been re-reading this brilliant collection of essays by David Quammen. The man can write. Consider this passage in which he describes his companion on a three-day fishing expedition into Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness Area:

Whisperin' Jack is six foot five and weighs about 140 and wears a brown Dobbs fedora that, despite his degree from the Harvard Medical School, makes him look like the kind of quiet creepy guy whose car trunk is one day discovered to contain the sucked-upon finger bones of missing hitchhikers.

Like I said, the man can write. But clever asides like that are just the appetizers, the main course is a series of fascinating essays on natural history: crows and cockroaches, black widows and vampire bats; life and death and sex all take their turn beneath his wry and inquisitive gaze. Not everyone's cup of tea, to be sure, but fascinating stuff.

(As an aside, I once wrote Quammen a letter and asked him the secret to great writing. His answer: "hard work.")

Finding the Fremont

2009-03-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

Our family has spent a fair amount of time recently exploring Native American ruins of one kind or another, particularly those involving the Fremont Indians, who, at the height of their culture in about 1000 AD, occupied much of present day Utah in small farming and hunter/gatherer communities. Though the archealogical record is uncertain, the Fremont culture appeared to die out gradually between about 1250-1500 AD.

Unlike the Anasazi, who built elaborate villages of mud and stone, the Fremont built simple pit houses and rocky granaries to store corn they grew along the creek bottoms. For some reason--war? drought? internal conflict?--the Fremont eventually moved these granaries from the sedate creek bottoms to the dizzying heights above, where they camouflaged them carefully and tucked them into barely accessible nitches and narrow ledges. To this day, it remains difficult to spot these granaries, some of which still hold corn cobs and other artifacts, and even more difficult to access them, with many accessible only by helicopter or by skilled climbers using ropes and rappelling gear. We've found a few, but they remain elusive, even with a good pair of binoculars. (Can you spot the granary in the attached photo? I've made it easy for you by reducing it to a single cliff face. Hint: you can double click the photo and view it large.)

In any event, we've loved learning more about the Fremont and poking around in artifact rich areas like Nine Mile Canyon, which contains a stunning array of Fremont petroglyphs, ruined granaries, pit houses, and even a 700+ year old corn cob, which Sarah and I discovered near the remains of an ancient village (and, which, I'll have you know, we duly left right where we found it).

Photographing Children

2009-03-20T08:59:00.001-07:00

As those who know me may appreciate, I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to hobbies and interests. I've gone through many in recent years: fly fishing, fly tying, fossil collecting of various sorts, nature photography, English language haiku, and now ... children's photography.

And so you'll have to excuse me if this blog takes something of a turn in that direction.

Here's my gripe with most existing children's photography: it's cluttered and it's fake. By "cluttered" I mean that people love to fill photographs of children with a vast array of cheesy props, objects that pull attention away from the child. At worst, those photographs look something like this: http://www.cindybaxterphotography.com/ (Sorry, Cindy, I wish you well in your business venture, it's just not my cup of tea!). I think that props have their place, but only if they say something particular, and meaningful, about this child.

By "fake" I mean that most children's portraits are staged and awkward looking. Rather than take photographs of children in their natural settings, we like to put them under the studio lights with a paint dabbed drop cloth behind and then expect them "smile" (hold it, hold it!) or "act natural" when, in fact, there is nothing natural about it.

While family snapshots are much better at "telling a story" than Kiddie-Candid studio prints, they typically fall victim to clutter and poor lighting. Life is messy and complicated, and family snapshots reflect that. Besides, a birthday party or other event typically can't wait for perfect lighting or a clean house.

But I digress: what I'm really talking about here isn't snapshots for the scrapbook but portraits of children, where we set aside some time (and often money) to capture a particular moment, expression, age, or interest.

At their best, these portraits don't just show, but tell. The images are simple and uncluttered, the lighting works, and, perhaps most of all, kids are allowed to be themselves. Contrast the images from the link above with those of the Philadelphia-based Karen Carey: http://www.karencareyphotography.com/.

What I love most about children's photography is the challenge of reducing life--a little life--down to something that fits in a square frame, to capture a moment, an expression, that may never happen again. In some ways, children's photography allows us to do the impossible, to hang on to these little ones who grow and change so fast. Ah, yes, time's "fatal wings do ever forward fly," but a camera allows us stop time in its tracks, leaving us with an image, a moment, a story, that can endure beyond life and memory. And you know what? Those little suckers are just plain cute. And perhaps that's reason enough.

So, blah, blah, blah, and philosophic musings aside, here's a picture of guinea pig #1, also known around our house as Mary. I took it last weekend after Church with my new toy (Becky prefers the word "investment"). What do you think? No smile, no flash, no make up, no props ... just Mary.

Democracy is Beautiful

2009-03-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

I stopped by a City Council meeting this evening, and, after a presentation on a planned curb-side recycling program, the Council opened it up for public comment.

I spoke and at least a dozen other ordinary citizens did so as well, and it struck me how amazing this democracy of ours remains, for all its faults. I thought of the billions of people around the world who cannot speak freely on subjects of interest or importance to them, and yet here, in America, the idea is so fundamental, so natural, that most of us give it scarcely a second thought.

But there's another dimension worth nothing as well: a kind of creeping cynicism, even here in America, that whispers "Why bother? Your voice [or your vote] doesn't count." And, in truth, I think interest groups of one kind or another, particularly PACs, wield far too much influence.

Nevertheless, ordinary citizens can and do make a difference, a reality brought home again to me during the 2009 session of the Utah legislature, when a bill pushed by two of the most powerful interest groups in Utah--the Realtors Association and the Farm Bureau--went down to defeat on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives. Opposition to the bill was led by a rag tag assortment of trout bums and ordinary citizens, many of whom had never been involved in politics before. This time, however, they called, they wrote, they texted, and emailed. Dozens of them marched up to the Capitol and spoke to their legislators personally. Others testified at committee hearings. And it worked. Democracy works. Somehow. It can be messy, and ugly, but it works, and when it does, it's a thing of beauty.

(Image courtesy of USAID, available at: http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/democracy_rising.html. For those who don't recognize the image, it shows the hands of Iraqi citizens who voted in recent elections, where a hard-to-remove dye is used to prevent repeat voting. Insurgents, incidentally, have used the dyed fingers to single out and execute people for "supporting the U.S." or "supporting the regime." Many Iraqis voted anyway.)

Youthful Optimism

2009-03-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

So Mary got out the markers the other day, scribbled this picture on a sheet of paper, taped it to a glass jar, and declared it the "vacation jar" (or words to that effect). She was terribly disappointed when, after a few days, I told her that the few accumulated coins and bills wouldn't cover a big family vacation, at least not yet. Still, hopes springs eternal ...

Can you guess where she wants to go?

Pruning 101

2009-03-09T23:05:00.001-07:00

When we built our house in 2006, the first and only home we’ve ever owned, I took it upon myself to put in the yard. And so I planted things—lots and lots of things: Russian Sage, White Sage, Burning Bush, Eastern Redbud, Red Spire Flowering Pear, Dwarf English Laurel, lavender, plum trees, peach trees, crab apple trees, apple apple trees, and the list goes on.

I did so with all kinds of happy thoughts running through my head: “Gee, these plants are swell. Won’t this look nice when it all fills in?” In my mind’s eye, I saw the yard as a refuge, a sedate place for light weeding and blissful contemplation.

We finished the last yard project in 2007 and promptly moved to Maryland. When we moved back last August, I was thrilled get back and see how the yard had fared: beautifully, as it turns out, thanks to an improbable renter who loved yard work and had a flair for neatness, a quality that, sadly, I lack. So the yard looked great, but many of the trees and shrubs had grown in leaps and bounds, which got me thinking about … pruning.

And I was excited about it. You know, the cool little nipper things, and the giant scissor-looking shears, and the heavy, muscled lopper … it gives one a sense of power and accomplishment: trim a little here, cut a little there, yes, yes, me, the master of all I survey.

That was before I learned that pruning requires a PhD. Seriously. Astro-physics has nothing on pruning. Each tree or shrub, I learned to my horror and amazement, has different pruning needs, and those needs change based on time of season and the plant’s maturity. And there are rules—lots and lots of rules--though every rule has an exception and competing schools of thought and, as the pruning instructor at the local nursery told me, “Rules are meant to be broken,” except of course, when breaking the rule will kill the plant, or turn one’s life into some kind of pruning Hell for all eternity—the Myth of Sisyphus in your own back yard. Fun!

I also discovered that plants have one serious evolutionary advantage over humans: they can regenerate lost limbs, a lesson that struck me with particular force when I took my new set of nippers and promptly pruned the little finger of my right hand, leading to an episode of rapid blood loss, muttered curses, and stumbling blindly around the yard in near-shock. But, hey: once I wrapped my finger in a mass of bandages and sat down to keep from fainting, at least I had few quiet moments for contemplation.

The Power of Forgiveness

2009-03-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

I was deeply touched by a recent piece I heard on NPR from the "This I Believe" series on the power of forgiveness. Here's the link, which tells the story of a woman who picked the wrong man out of a police line-up, sending him to prison for 11 years for a crime he did not commit. Remarkably, the two of them are now friends, and they composed the NPR piece together. Here’s the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101469307.

The story reminded me of another powerful story of forgiveness from the recent past, that of a community of Amish farmers in Central Pennsylvania who have embraced the family of a mentally ill milkman who killed several children at an Amish school before taking his own life. That story, too, was profiled not long ago on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101469307.

In sharing these, I don’t mean to suggest that forgiveness is, or should be, simple or automatic. From personal experience I recognize it as a deeply personal choice, and one that can’t be forced or pressured. For forgiveness to mean anything, the “if” and the “when” must be left entirely to the individual.

But when an individual does choose to forgive, these stories speak of the powerful healing effect of forgiveness on the forgiver as much as on the forgiven. In the end, forgiveness isn’t about what's just or fair, but rather a conscious decision to let go and to move beyond, to love and forget, even when there’s no reason for either.

The Joys of Parenting

2009-02-28T21:57:00.001-08:00

You know, it's a mixed bag to have a creative child. Today, after I sent ten-year old Sarah to timeout for refusing to help clean the basement, she retaliated by rolling out the big guns: "I will NOT pay your rest home bills."

The Clamshell Boat

2009-02-27T10:33:00.001-08:00

One day in early spring, I found myself knee-deep in the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., fishing for shad. The fish weren’t biting, so my attention wandered. Suddenly, my eye caught something on the water not far from me: a small clamshell, like one of thousands I’d seen along the shores of the river, but different in one important respect—it was floating. I have no idea how it got that way, whether a gust of wind had tipped a dry shell onto the water or, less likely, a small child upstream had carefully placed it on the surface film: would it, could it … yes! Whatever the reason, there it was, riding concave side-down, like a little round boat.

The water pressed right up to the shell’s edge, but not over, and it seemed that the smallest thing—another gust of wind or a drop of water—would send it to the bottom, but, for as long as I stood transfixed, nothing upset that delicate balance, and the little clamshell boat sailed off, spinning a few times in the eddy behind my feet, and then away down river towards the open sea.

To the casual observer, the tidal Potomac may seem an unlikely place for miracles. It’s a bit dog-eared, not so much loved to death as ignored—ignored in the sense that most of the millions who live within the wide watershed that drains through that gorge just west of Washington haven’t the faintest idea what’s there, nor do they seem to care, as evidenced by the flotsam and jetsam along the river’s shores: tennis balls, bottles, cans; even toilet seats and shopping carts; and hundreds upon hundreds of plastic bags, caught in the tree tops during frequent floods and now fluttering in the breeze like so many profane copies of Tibetan prayer flags.

And yet, plastic bags aside, there is something miraculous, something almost divine, about that great green corridor that cuts through the heart of the Nation’s Capitol. Certainly, there was a hymn in the air that morning: the soft glow of morning sun on the cliffs. The mutter of cormorants. An osprey launching itself into the wind from its perch high above the river.

There was something miraculous, too, in my fishing for shad. For millennia, millions of shad—American and Hickory—pushed their way from the open ocean and into the Chesapeake Bay each Spring, then up the rivers and streams, where they first hatched, to spawn the next generation of shad. These days those great runs of shad, which sustained Native Americans and spawned local festivals among the American Colonists each Spring, are sadly diminished. Many streams that once saw hundreds of thousands of shad now see few, if any.

Fortunately, in response to sustained restoration efforts involving the States of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the shad have started to return, signalling again, as they have for millenia, the return of Spring.

It's all rather miraculous, isn't it--the light light on the water, the return of the shad, and the clamshell boat, sailing off on its improbable voyage with only me to watch it.

As the French theologian Blaise Pascal once observed, “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." They frighten me too, even as they fill me with awe and wonder.

Our knowledge of the universe continues to expand, and astronomers identify new planets all the time—raising the hope that somewhere, way out there beyond time and memory, there may be other worlds like this one. Even so, the mind-boggling distances and probabilities only confirm the miracle of this particular planet: this green earth—our home—spinning its way, like a little clamshell boat, down a river of stars.

(Photo courtesy of waferkitty on Flickr; available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/waferkitty/2052220258/.)

Class Dismissed

2009-02-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

When we lived in Maryland, we loved "snow days"--those unexpected school closings that accompanied the slightest hint of winter weather.

But imagine if school was closed not just for a day or two, but forever? What if it was closed to girls, but remained open for boys? What if the local elementary school was blown up by people who feared the corrupting influence of education? What if you and your children knew that they might walk off to school and never come back, or wind up in a hospital after having acid thrown in their face? What if you knew that your children, no matter how much they wanted it, could never receive an education?

All that seems inconceivable here in America, which, even in tough economic times, remains a country of enormous wealth and opportunity--a myriad blessings we take for granted, like public schools.

But that nightmare is a reality for many children and families in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. I can recall few news clips as sobering as the following short film documentary from the New York Times that I stumbled acroos this morning: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/22/world/asia/1194838044017/class-dismissed-in-swat-valley.html .

(Warning: video contains violent and disturbing images; photo courtesy of adibmuhammad on Flickr, available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adibmuhammad/3110618198/.)

Good Neighbors

2009-02-19T16:22:00.000-08:00

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall …”

Robert Frost

We live in a good neighborhood. I feel qualified to say that because we’ve lived in all kinds of neighborhoods over the years, and this one stands out for the way people look out for each other.

We get a lot of snow here in the winter, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, and that means pushing around a lot of snow over the course of a single winter. Lately it’s become a kind of race to see who gets out there first. If you’re too slow, the neighbors are likely to beat you to it.

You’d think that would provide a powerful incentive to put off going out, but in reality it works the opposite way: I try to run outside as quick as I can to avoid the embarrassment of having my neighbors shovel the walks of this perfectly able-bodied thirty-something. (Okay, my neighbors feel sorry for me because I’m too cheap to buy a snow blower, but it’s still embarrassing.) Despite my best efforts, however, the neighbors routinely beat me to it. Last month it was Paul Dowding, last week, Randy Ford, then Taalon Huber.

Yesterday, I got out real quick, but had shoveled for just a few minutes before Dan Wight stopped by in his pickup with a big bladed shovel on the front. In two runs and about 30 seconds, he’d cleared 90% of our driveway. So, me and five year-old Mary, my self-appointed snow shovel assistant, headed over to the neighbors, figuring that we better play it forward in the spirit of grateful neighborliness.

After shoveling for a few minutes, Mary looked up at me. “We’re looking for the good, Daddy!” she exclaimed, parroting a family motto, “Helping people is fun.”

(Photo courtesy of MNKiteman on Flickr; this and other snow shoveling art available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84853337@N00/404081264/.)

Compliment Night

2009-02-11T22:40:00.001-08:00

As a family, we pray together every night before bed. Last summer, when I asked a friend for any good parenting tips, he described something called "compliment night." Here's how it works: when it's your turn to pray, everyone in the family gives you a compliment first.

We thought it was a great idea, and so we decided to try it out. It has worked beautifully. If your kids are anything like ours, they will invariably start to complain about it being "their turn" for prayer. Though some relish it, all our kids, at one point or another, have chafed at it, but not since we instituted compliment night.

The kids just eat it up, and can't wait for it to be "their" night to pray. Tonight, five year-old Mary beamed for five minutes straight as we went around the circle. Although it becomes a bit of a challenge to come up with something new to say, we counter that by looking for specific examples of good things that person has done on that particular day. That kind of positive reinforcement has had a powerful effect.

Parenting is tough. We get things wrong. We screw up. We institute "programs" and "projects" that don't stick. So it's nice to occasionally get one right: compliment night, a seriously good idea.

(Photo retrieved through a Yahoo image search and identified from the following link: http://www.sacredheart.catholiccharitiesseattlearch.org/. It's a bad link, though, so I can't be sure of the source. Such a great photo, though, that I had to share.)

Martha Stewart Exclusive Tip

2009-02-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been to a fine restaurant where they serve the butter in a porcelain ramekin, and it's been pushed down and smoothed across the top--the kind of butter perfection one feels guilty disturbing with a knife? (In the photo at left, the butter isn't quite as smooth as what I'm envisioning.)

Well, some friends of ours used to frequent a relative's house for Sunday dinner, and the butter dish always looked just like that. They were really impressed that the hostess went to that kind of trouble ... until the day they caught the family dog with its paws up on the counter, licking the butter.

True story. Eat your heart out, Martha.

(Photo courtesy of lesleyk on Flickr; available at: http://flickr.com/photos/lesleyk/1106723698/)

An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

2009-02-05T14:32:00.001-08:00

When J.B.S. Haldane, a well-known British geneticist and evolutionary biologist of the last century, was pressed by a clergyman to explain what could be inferred about the Creator from his study of creation, Haldane is said to have replied, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”

While historians debate whether Haldane actually said that, no one disputes whether the statement is true. Simply put, God must love beetles. Though species estimates vary widely, science has identified and described some 370,000 species of beetles—accounting for roughly a fifth of all living organisms and a fourth of all animals. That means more types of beetles than types of plants. Incredible.

To cite another example, Smithsonian entomologist Terry Erwin has collected some 25,000 species of beetles from a single study site in the rainforest of Central America, with some 80% of those species previously unknown to science.

Why would the good Lord pay so much attention to beetles? I’ll add that to a growing list of life’s imponderables. Regardless of the answer, you’ve got to admit: beetles are cool. I’ve stumbled across them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, from little ones an iridescent orange and green, to assassin beetles mottled white and neon blue, to great black horned things that push along the ground like miniature tanks.

Several years ago, I used a 10x jeweler’s loop to watch a ladybug devour an aphid. Think lady bugs are cute? It looked like a fat guy tucking into a watermelon on a hot summer day.

Yep, beetles are cool.

(Photo courtesy of Natalini Butterflies and Moths; available at: http://www.butterflybeetle.com/beetle_group.html. Other sources: Arthur Evans and Charles Bellamy, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, University of California Press 2000, website at http://www.fond4beetles.com/; Morgan Simmons, Entomologist brings tropical studies to local conference: Biodiversity in Smokies pales in comparison to that in Amazon (December 3, 2008), Knoxville News Sentinel, available at http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/03/entomologist-brings-tropical-studies-to-local/?printer=1/.)

Intimations of Mortality

2009-02-04T00:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve always loved Wordsworth, and his "Intimations of Immortality" remains one of my favorite poems ("Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting …"), but I’ve been thinking of late more about the mortality side of things. A growing consciousness of that mortality seems to define this particular season of life.

A few years back, I penned the following haiku:

40th birthday --
the leaves just beginning
to change color

I wasn’t 40 at the time, and my birthday’s in spring, but, even at 35, I felt keenly the first hints of my own mortality: the inexorable movement of time, physical decline, the inevitability of death and loss. I feel it even more keenly know. The foot I injured two years ago still pains me. My blood pressure’s up and my blood sugar too high. My sideburns are shot through with gray. Our children move and mature at lightning speed—no matter how hard we try to hold onto them.

But this all sounds rather grim and melancholy, and I’m neither. We’ve been encouraging our children recently to "look for the good," to take a "glass half full" view of life. With that perspective in mind I’m encouraged to think that, if my luck is only about break even, I still have some 35-40 years left on this planet, and that’s a lot of mileage, and plenty of time to learn, and do, and see; to love and laugh and "suck the marrow" out of life, as Thoreau would say.

If I’m in the mid-summer of life, I’m certainly sorry that spring is forever behind me, and the fireflies will soon stop winking in the trees and the honeysuckle won’t smell quite so sweet, but Autumn promises its own beauties and adventures, and winter too, cold and clear, with time and space for peace and contemplation.

In the words of the Nissan TV commercial, "Life’s a journey, enjoy the ride."

Slow Children at Play

2009-02-02T16:54:00.001-08:00

I've been amused by this and other failures in punctuation recently. The one I saw today was "No trespassing violators will be prosecuted."

One that you may (or may not) find amusing depending on your political persuasion can be found off the George Washington Memorial Parkway just outside of Washington, D.C. We used to pass it all the time, though I never bothered to take a picture. Although punctuation isn't the issue there, it reads simply: "George Bush Center for Intelligence."

(Photo courtesy of Danny McL on Flickr; available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcl/2010860577/. We've seen lots of these; the funniest occur where, as here, there is no obvious visual break between "slow" and "children.")

Timzilla v. Bambi

2009-01-30T13:02:00.001-08:00

So, the final tally is: Tim 1; Bambi 0. Actually, there were no winners in this particular contest, which was, of course, no contest at all.

It's been 30 years since I was involved in a collision with a deer, but last night on the way to a meeting in downtown Salt Lake it happened ... bam! ... just like that, without so much as a split second warning or chance to slow down.

I feel bad for my little corolla, certainly, which wasn't designed to flatten deer, but I feel worse for bambi, whose life slipped away on the cold asphalt in near freezing weather, guilty of doing nothing more than typical "deer stuff." Sadly, anyone who lives in Utah occupies a chunk of traditional winter range for mule deer, which have nowhere to go when the heavy snow falls but down in the valley with the dogs and the cars.

(To avoid paying our insurance deductible, I tried to use photoshop to fix the car, but--alas!--it didn't work. So I just hit "max" everything and came up with this. At least it's colorful.)

A Real Hero

2009-01-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

The funny thing about heroes is that they usually aren't. Take any popular hero, scratch the surface, and one typically finds a lot of flaws. Which probably says more about our human tendency to oversimplify and exaggerate than it does about the hero herself. More than anything, a hero strikes me as an ordinary person who does something extraordinary in a moment of crisis, or, on a more basic level, simply does the right thing under extraordinary duress.

Don't get me wrong: I still like heros. Long for them. Idealize them. Celebrate them. Though I suppose my view of what constitutes a hero has changed over time. These days I'm less impressed by the brave soldier who goes down in a hail of bullets than the cancer patient who faces his diagnosis and treatment with grit, determination, and a sense of humor.

But here's a hero I think we might all agree on: Eric Liddell (photo above), the "Flying Scotsman," who took the gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Olympics after choosing not to run in his best race--the 100 meters--because the qualifying heat was scheduled on a Sunday.

While the movie "Chariots of Fire" popularized that part of his story, I was even more impressed by the untold story of Eric Liddell--the story of what happened after the Olympic games.

In short, he returned as a missionary to China, showed grace, courage, and compassion to a lot of people during the Japanese occupation, and died in an internment camp in 1945 at the relatively young age of 43, after giving up his opportunity for an early release to an expectant mother. One of his fellow prisoners described him as "as the finest Christian gentleman it has been my pleasure to meet. In all the time in the camp, I never heard him say a bad word about anybody."

That's my kind of hero. I'm sure he wasn't perfect, but he seems like an awfully good guy. Three cheers for Eric Liddell.

(Photo and other general information available on Wikipedia (as well as many other websites) at the following address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Liddell.)

A New Appreciation for Bar Chocolate

2009-01-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

So, I made chocolate truffles today, and it taught me a greater appreciation for ordinary bar chocolate. After some five hours and an enormous amount of work, I managed to convert two perfectly good blocks of Callebaut chocolate into a lot of smaller, rounder pieces of Callebaut chocolate.

Actually, it wasn’t quite that bad--and the truffles, for their part, were quite good (what's not to like about melted chocolate and fresh cream?)--but I’ll never look at a truffle the same way again.

(Photo from Portakal Agaci; available at http://www.portakalagaci.com/oburcuk/2004/01/chocolate_truff_1.html.)

The Button Jar

2009-01-14T13:59:00.001-08:00

I’ve thought a lot recently about time, and how fleeting life is. My mother’s been dead for seven years now, all my grandparents are gone, receding quickly into a few words and memories, and my oldest son, who just turned twelve, is nearly as tall as his mother. Of course, I remember him well as a little pink baby with a wrinkly face and bright eyes, wrapped in a hospital blanket and tucked into a warming bin that, today, would barely hold his sneakers.

Days blur into weeks that blur into years and, suddenly, I’m 37 and approaching my 20year high school reunion. I’m not “newly married” or “newly graduated,” I’m new nuthin.’

That’s not to say I’m depressed about it; to the contrary, life’s been good to me—a constant adventure, a series of blessings—and I enjoy where I am and the perspective that comes with a little more age and experience.

But that feeling of perpetual motion—the inexorable grinding of the gears--is bittersweet, as reflected beautifully in this poem by Carolyn Hall, one of my favorite haiku poets:

so suddenly winter
baby teeth at the bottom
of the button jar

If, as observed in an earlier post, children stand as proof that the most difficult things in life are the most worthwhile, they offer a similarly potent reminder that life is brief, and “time’s fatal wings do ever forward fly.”

(Photograph courtesy of tenthousandstars on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gladyoung/2840491749/; quotation from English composer and poet Thomas Campion (1567-1620).)

The Not-So-Bleak Midwinter

2009-01-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

Deep in the mountains
too deep to know of Spring
sparkling beads of melted snow
fall slowly, drop by drop
on my pine bough door
- Shikishi Naishinnō

A brief mid-winter thaw today reminded me of a favorite Japanese poem, dating from the thirteenth century. It speaks to me of the first hints of spring, even as the land remains cloaked in winter.

While we typically think of spring as an April event here in Utah, in truth, spring is well on its way, even in mid-January. The winter solstice occurred on December 21, 2008, nearly three weeks ago. As a practical matter, that means the sun warms this spot on the earth for 30-40 minutes longer today than it did then, and will continue to add a few minutes of light and warmth each day from now until the summer solstice in June.

Northern Pintail ducks, some of which overwinter in Central America, are already winging north to their breeding grounds.

Crocuses and Snowdrops, which often bloom in late February in Utah, send up their first green shoots even earlier, right through the snow if necessary.

And midges, a tiny insect beloved by both trout and fly fishermen, hatch clear through the winter, though they seem to like it best on snowy days when the temperature hovers right around freezing.

So, while it seems like we still have weeks and weeks left of bleak, grey winter, Mother Nature is on-the-move and ever changing. Like time itself, she waits for no one.

(Photo courtesy of kittykatfish on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kittykatfish/3048365775/. Poem from Oriori no Uta: Poems for All Seasons by Ōoka Makoto, translated by Janine Beichman.)

Modern Nursery Rhymes

2009-01-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

A few year's ago, I had fun experimenting with nursery rhymes in my free time. After all, I wondered, why have we cannonized only few from England in the 17th and 18th Centuries? The English language is no less fun and interesting now than it was then, and we have even more great subjects to write about. So, for better or worse, here are a few of those experiments. Please read them out loud to your children before bed for the sound morals they convey:

Zoe was busy
Zoe was smart
each day was filled
with soccer and art
Latin jujitsu
then what does she do?
Yoga and calculus
all at age two

9-1-1
let’s have a little fun
when Mommy’s away
such games we will play
with 9-1-1!

Oh, what a shame!
the video game
we played it from dusk until dawn
our eyes turned red
we longed for bed
but we still played on and on

spit shined shoe:
one for a dollar
two for two
conquer the world
in a spit shined shoe

Never mind the bedbugs
why, they wouldn’t hurt a flea
and–what’s more–they’re something that
you’ll never have to see
those bedbugs, they’re so friendly
so courteous and kind
they only creep out late at night
to bite your soft behind
they creep from corners dark and deep
on tiny tiny tiny feet
and suck your blood til morning bright
or somebody turns on the light
So go ahead! Your mom won’t mind
turn on the lights, pull up the blinds
They cannot get you, creepy creep
if you never fall asleep

The dentist waits
with bitey bits
for you to come
and sit sit sits
Don’t worry, son,
it’s just a prick
it only hurts a tiny bit
a pinch, a sting,
then nothing more
and you’ll get ice cream
at the store ...
Oh, the lies
these parents tell
in point of fact:
it hurts like Hell

(Photo courtesy of try-whistling-this on Flickr; available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/trywhistlingthis/2823412663/; original by Harry Whittier Frees in “The Little Kitten’s Nursery Rhymes,” Rand McNally 1941.)

Seven Kids

2009-01-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

So, we've been watching my sister-in-law's four kids for the past several days, leaving us with seven kids age twelve and younger. Yesterday I had six of them by myself for about three hours, and let me tell you, I gained a new appreciation for my parents, who raised eight, and other big families.

The whole thing was kind of a blur of runny noses, struggling with car seats, chasing toddlers around, cleaning up messes, and general chaos—-like bussing tables or making pizzas during the evening slam, only more hectic and with a significantly higher “ick” factor. Yesterday at its worst I thought, "Well, at least my parents' kids were more spread out." But they weren't. After doing the math, I realized that my parents matched or bettered that, particularly in terms of the all-important “number of kids in diapers” calculus. Good on ya, Mom and Dad! Let’s just say I gained a new appreciation for any overwrought parent tempted to run into the master bedroom, lock the door, turn out the lights, and hide in a corner (assuming one has a master bedroom with a lock that works).

While all that has left little time for reflection, it hasn’t been all bad, and I’ve been reminded of an important life lesson: the most worthwhile things in life require the greatest effort. Kids are, perhaps, the greatest proof of that.

(Photo courtesy of my niece, Grace, age three: a real character.)

Spam Jello

2008-12-28T19:40:00.001-08:00

So, we're getting ready for a family holiday party, and I did a little internet sleuthing to try to confirm a jello and 7-Up recipe from my childhood that remains a favorite among my extended family. I know, I know: jello is kinda gross, and 'green jello salad' stands as a Mormon cliche, but this particular "salad" (ha!) tastes pretty good, at least as I remember it.

Having said that, many of the jello salad recipes I found online were truly horrific. I'm cool with canned fruit in Jello--seems like a natural fit--but miracle whip and cheddar cheese?

As much as that makes my stomach turn, we make lots of dishes here in America that make foreign foods like fried grasshoppers seem downright appetizing (blended hot dog, processed cheese, mayo and pickle sandwich, anyone?). But even the wildest gross-out songs from my childhood could not have prepared me for this:

Spam Jello

1 large box lemon or lime Jello
1 large can Spam
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup ice cold water
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
4 hard boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup relish; pickle, corn, etc.
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
Tabasco to taste

And, no, it's not a joke, near as I can tell. Oh well, I guess someone deserves points for combining the two biggest cliche foods of all time: spam and green jello. Hungry anyone?

(Photo courtesy of ash2276 on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ash2276/2115503612/.)

The Children's Museum

2008-12-27T22:02:00.001-08:00

We visited the children’s museum in Salt Lake City today, and I was amazed at how far museums have come since I was a kid. Everything’s hands-on now, interactive. There’s something for everyone. Having said that, I left feeling, well, kind of sorry for today’s kids, and for today’s parents who feel compelled to run around and fill every minute of their kids’ schedules with “meaningful” activities.

The museum was crowded, full of kids of all sizes, jostling for the chance to do this or that activity, with a seemingly equal number of decidedly bored-looking parents and grandparents tailing them around.

But what really struck me was the artificialness of it all. Sure there were some great science-type experiences for the kids upstairs, but downstairs it was all plastic and pretend.

For example, they had an elaborate water play-type section designed to show kids how dams and water currents work. When I was a child, we had those too: we called them “gutters,” “creeks,” and “irrigation ditches,” and they taught us about dams, currents, and erosion equally well, if not better, as we designed them ourselves of rocks and sticks and sand, and built and sailed our own boats on them.

Instead of fake chickens in a fake hen house, we had real chickens in a real hen house, and, get this: we collected real eggs from those hens. What a concept! And we fed real carrots to real horses too, instead of fake carrots to a fake horse, and lived in genuine fear of having our fingers nipped.

The museum had a rock wall like the ones you see in a climbing gym. As kids, poor as we were, we had to settle for real rocks, which we scampered on, over, and around, without warning signs, medical releases, or the slightest bit of “parental supervision.”

Sure, the museum had a nice pretend house and pretend shop—beyond all imagining in the days of my youth—where the most elaborate play house consisted of four walls (maybe) and a window or two. But mostly we just made things up. We made forts from hay bales or blankets or sage brush, and used rocks and sticks as stand-ins for just about everything, and somehow we got by without being bored or feeling deprived.

What ever happened to simple, unstructured play, where kids have to use their imagination and build their own fantasy worlds from whatever they have at hand? To time spent with real animals and playing in real dirt? Today’s kids seem to have lost much of that, and I wonder what it means for the adults of tomorrow.

Despite all the advances in information and technology, the kids of today seem decidedly poorer—their horizons narrower—in spite of it, and possibly because of it. Do we really need more “adventure” museums? In my experience, taking them outdoors and turning them loose seems adventure enough, and when I take my kids to the local creek or pond or into the hills, they laugh, and pretend, and explore, and I never hear them complain about being bored.

None of these insights are terribly new or revolutionary—many of them have been summarized brilliantly in the book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv (a similar cultural critique lies at the heart of Wall-E, which we watched tonight as a family)—but they struck me with particular force today, as I wandered around the Discovery Children’s Museum, which charges $8.50 a person for the chance to pretend to do things kids used to do for real.

(If you haven’t read the Louv book, you should. He also maintains a website: http://richardlouv.com/ with a link to his blog: http://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/. Photo courtesy of blessed1with8 on Flickr; available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillybean4jesus/2785846232/.)

Woods on a Snowy Evening

2008-12-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

Another experiment with our point-and-shoot digital camera, this one taken on a drive home during a snowstorm as night fell on Christmas Day.

Confessions of an OCD Baker

2008-12-23T23:46:00.000-08:00

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I can be just a wee bit compulsive about certain things. Take those little, white, umbilical cord-looking thingies inside of an egg, for example. This evening, I was making cheesecake for a holiday party, and, at midnight, I found myself scraping out those little goobers one at a time before I could bear putting the eggs in the cake batter.

I just can’t stand the thought of forking off a piece of chocolate cheesecake and getting a dangly umbilical cord as a bonus prize, no matter how small. (Okay, I know they aren’t umbilicial cords—Wikipedia tells me they are called “chalaza”—but they’re still gross.)

But why, you may ask. What’s the big deal? I dunno. That’s the thing about obsessions and compulsions. You can’t ask why. As my daughter Sarah likes to say, “It’s not my fault. Jesus just made me that way.”

(Photo courtesy of Whateverthing on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whateverthing/2302962136/.)

The Magic of Snow

2008-12-20T09:48:00.001-08:00

What explains the magic of snow?

Today it snowed for hours and then, just as dusk began to fall, I glimpsed the line of hills to our east, the first sign of the storm lifting. Heading outside with the shovel, the sky remained an unbroken gray, and then, almost imperceptibly, a change: a hint of blue, first high and faint, then spreading slowly from the west like paint on a wet canvas.

Falling snow is the stuff of poetry, from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep …”) to this little ditty by the gifted haiku poet John Stevenson: snowy night / sometimes you can’t be / quiet enough.

Returning to my question, I think the magic of snow lies in its power to transform. Like the wave of a magician’s wand, a snowstorm—in an instant—transforms an ordinary landscape into something different, mysterious, and unfamiliar. Colors fade and lines blur. Sounds recede as well, swallowed up in the whirling dance of ice crystals. Somber. Meditative. Lovely. The larger and softer the flakes, the more dramatic the effect.

I suspect too that part of the magic lies in how quickly it fades. Almost a soon as the snow stops, the snow falls from the branches, restoring the familiar, winter shapes of trees. The horizon returns, along with the noise of traffic, and I’m left cold, scraping ice from the front walk with an old shovel.

(Photo courtesy of algo on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/algo/2391818054/.)

Quote Book for Kids

2008-12-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

As parents, there are plenty of things we don't do or we get wrong. One thing we've done right is to keep a book of "kid quotes"--all the funny, insightful, and interesting things they say--a practice we started when our first child, Jordan, was about a year old. We keep the book in the living room where we can grab it quickly and jot something down before we forget.

The quote book has grown over the years, and continues to provide fodder for the Christmas newsletter as well as entertainment for the kids and a lot of great memories.

Since this is the stuff of newsletters, some of you may have heard these before, but here are some classic examples:

Jordan to Mommy (at age 3): "Do you love me all the time, even when you're mad at me? I love you all the time, even when I'm mad at you."

Jordan (age 3): "Does Jesus like that police officers have guns?"

Daddy (putting on a black stocking cap): "Do I look like a bank robber?!" Sarah (age 3 and looking a little scared): "Bank robbers are nice to their kids, and they love their kids, and they catch butterflies, and put 'em in their nest."

Sarah (age 3), a "Little Mermaid" fan, explaining why she suddenly had to get out of the bath: "Because Ursula turned me into a human."

After Jordan (age 5) temporarily traded four of his toys for four of his friend's Pokemon cards, the cards found their way into his pants pocket and, ultimately, the wahsh. When we told Jordan he would need to use his allowance money to buy new, replacement cards, he said, "Let's just flatten them out and tell him not to worry about it."

Sarah (age 3), trying to get around our newly instituted rules that kids can't watch T.V. until their beds are made: "I maked my bed the way I wanted it."

One night I handed Sarah a sippy cup with only a little bit of old water in it. She took one sip, handed it back to me, and announced: "This tastes like Jordan's breath."

One evening over dinner Sarah announced that "When I get older, I want ballet." When asked whether she wanted to watch ballet or take ballet," she replied, "I want to take over ballet."

Dad to Jordan (age 6): "I think Mommy likes your (Christmas) cards as much as presents." Jordan: "Dad, can I tell you something? I like presents more than cards."

Sarah (age 4) to a then-expectant Mommy: "Does the baby swing on your bones?"

Sarah compliments: "Mommy, your veins are my favorite color." "Grandma: I think you were beautiful before you were a grandma."

Sarah to Jordan: "You can't judge a cookie by the way it looks."

Jordan (age 6), after seeing nude sculptures at the Smithsonian: "Those statues are immodest. Let's get out of this unholy place!"

Sarah, during a late night argument with her mother: "Mommy, you have beautiful ears, but they don't work very well."

Sarah (age 6), describing an airplane trip from Maryland to Utah: "I saw heaven with my own eyes, but I didn't see any angels. They must've been out to lunch or something."

Mary, still learning her numbers at age 3: "I want two of them," she announced this morning about some chocolate covered raisins, "six and five." Daddy: "How old are you, Mary?" Mary: "Twenty-five."

Mary, after getting a whiff of Daddy's cologne: "Daddy, you smell like a recipe."

Sarah, defending Dr. Phil: "Where would all those angry people go without Dr. Phil?"

Mary (still 3) upon feeling Daddy's hairy legs: "It's like Nar-ni-na (Narnia)."

Mary: "Daddy, why does Jesus wear a white dress?"

Mary (4) was acting out a fairy tale with Sarah when she called herself "Rapunza." When Sarah corrected her, she replied, "I know it's Rapunzel, but I call her Rapunza 'cause I speak French."

In response to the question "What gift would you like to give to the Christ child this year?" Mary replied, "A cookie."

Fun stuff. So, if you haven't been keeping your own little "book of quotes" you should. They grow up far too fast.

(Photo courtesy of Ti.Mo on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timo/6242424/.)

Miracle of the Gulls

2008-12-08T16:23:00.001-08:00

If you’re Mormon, you probably grew up, as I did, hearing the story of the “Miracle of the Gulls,” in which the Mormon pioneers faced starvation as hordes of locusts devoured their crops in June 1848, less than a year after their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. The story has an Old Testament quality to it, with seagulls darkening the skies, descending en masse, devouring locusts (actually a kind of katydid called a “Mormon Cricket”) until they puked (literally), and then going back for more. When the crickets were gone—and the miracle accomplished—the seagulls left. In commemoration of this event, the Utah legislature made the California Gull the State Bird and imposed a criminal fine for anyone caught killing one. The Church also erected a monument on Temple Square that stands today with a pair of gilded gulls atop a tall, granite pillar.

Raised with that image of the event burned into my consciousness, it troubled me to discover, in my late twenties, that the story had grown in the telling. A Mormon scholar and professor of history at Brigham Young University named William G. Hartley did some research and found that only a few of the journals from that period recorded the event at all, and those that did referenced it in decidedly more mundane terms, recognizing the hand of providence less in the appearance of seagulls in isolation and more as one piece of a broader story of survival and eventual prosperity (something along the lines of “Some seagulls came and they helped, thank the Lord”). So, while the seagulls didn’t wipe out the crickets in one fell swoop, they did—doing what seagulls normally do—play a role in saving the pioneers’ crops and, as a result, helped save the pioneers too. That version, however, lacked the drama to hold much popular appeal, and so, over the years, the story morphed into the Hollywood version I learned growing up.

To my mind, the story and the way it’s evolved over the years raise important questions. For example, if we take Professor Hartley’s version of the story as the correct one, what does it say about God and nature of miracles?

The skeptic will no doubt jump in at this point and say, “Professor Hartley’s research just confirms that religion is a lot of hooey. Things happen according to natural law and these weak minded types, desperate to find God in everything, wildly exaggerate an ordinary occurrence to persuade others to drink the Kool-Aid.” But that’s not the lesson Professor Hartley took from his research, and it’s not the lesson I take from it either.

If the “true” story of the seagulls suggests anything to me, it suggests we need to broaden our sense of the miraculous, to recognize the hand of God in all things, and not merely the inexplicable. As with those early journal writers, the pioneer miracle strikes me as more about survival than seagulls—that a group of people could plunk themselves down in the middle of nowhere with nothing but what they dragged in wagons and handcarts over thousands of miles and survive a series of harsh winters in an unfamiliar land. That they endured says a lot about their own fortitude, sense of purpose, and spirit of cooperation. It also speaks to miracles in the form of help from Native Americans, winter snowpack in the high mountains to the East (providing a source of water during summers hot and dry), sego lilies (an edible bulb), native fish (harvested in great numbers by the early settlers), and, yes, seagulls.

Oh, I believe in the miracle of the gulls alright, and I don’t care whether they blackened the sky with their wings and ate every last cricket. Seagulls are scavengers to be sure, petty thugs of the garbage dump, but they are also beautiful, elegant creatures, white against the sky, embracing the wind with wide outstretched wings. Isn’t it miraculous enough that, in doing ‘what seagulls do,’ they helped the pioneers survive?

And isn’t life itself the greatest miracle of all? Here we sit on a tiny pin prick, one small speck in an infinite universe, pinched in a narrow band—a thin shell—between the fire below and the icy void of space. Our lungs burn oxygen, our cells burn energy from the sun, and we move and breathe and love and laugh. Isn’t it amazing?

Why do we long so for a God who parts the Red Sea or sends seagulls without number to do things seagulls don’t ordinarily do? Why do we have to dress everything up in the mystical? The God I know works in ordinary ways, no less miraculous for being “ordinary.” Shouldn’t we thank God for the countless miracles of our existence, for each day, for each breath? He sends rain, as the scriptures say, on the “just and the unjust,” and the rain is a miracle. He sends friends and family to love us, and that love is a miracle. He gives us strength to endure and that strength is a miracle. Yes, I believe in miracles.

(Photo courtesy of thebugs on Flickr, available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebugs/529694292/.)

Small Town Diner

2008-12-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

Today I took my son to a diner in the small town where I was born, the kind where the waitresses still take and deliver your order at the car if you turn your lights on. We chose to go inside instead, and sat on round stools at the main counter (you know the kind). We ordered hamburgers and milkshakes and toyed with the old juke box as a few late season flies buzzed slowly around the room.

The food came in due time. My burger was decent, the fries overcooked, and the shake wasn’t chocolately enough, but it all somehow tasted better because it reminded me of home, and family, and the carefree days of childhood.

(Photo courtesy of fotoedge on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoedge/2745557238/.)

The Yin and Yang of Yardwork

2008-12-03T08:24:00.001-08:00

Last week a strong north wind blew leaves from all over the neighborhood into our yard. And so I’m raking them up today, loading them into the wheelbarrow, and piling them into the garden.

Recently I’ve been struck by the tensions of yard and garden work, the apparent contradictions. Today I water and fertilize this tree; tomorrow I prune it. Today I carefully plant the plants I like; tomorrow I violently uproot the ones I don’t. I kill myself getting the grass to grow healthy and strong, so I can cut it more frequently and wonder what to do with all the clippings.

I recall a monologue by Garrison Keillor about dandelions. After describing his failed efforts to control them (coupled with trouble nurturing domesticated flowers), he concludes: “I’ve started to wonder if we’re on the wrong side.”

Dandelions excepted, there’s a rough kind of balance there, don’t you think? The push and pull, the yin and yang of yard and garden. With some hard work and patience it all kind of balances out in the end. Harmony ... or at least a nervous truce between warring sides, which brings me back to my neighbors’ leaves.

I’m not a big fan of raking, generally, or of stuff blown in from neighboring yards, but my yard is new and leaves are few, and fallen leaves make a good mulch that offers nitrogen and other essential nutrients for next year’s vegetable garden. Besides, the wind did half the work, blowing all that nitrogen from the four corners of the neighborhood and piling it up neatly by the front walk … like so much manna, from Heaven. Bring it on.

(Photo courtesy of calderbrun on Flickr: available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/78709256@N00/393329145/.)

Photo Fun

2008-12-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

While the kids were waiting to see Santa at the Centerville City park last night, I had fun playing around with our point-and-shoot digital, capturing the Christmas lights in a unusual way. (Becky just sighed and rolled her eyes.)

This is just one example. I'll upload a few more to my Flickr folder tomorrow. (You can access that by clicking the photo of the goblin statue with the funny nose at right). Makes for some interesting abstracts.

An Unnatural Sweetness

2008-12-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

A recent blood test confirmed that I have insulin resistance. So, while my body continues to produce the insulin necessary to convert sugars into energy the body can use, my muscle tissues have become “resistant” to insulin, leaving too much of the stuff—a caustic (if essential) chemical—circulating in my blood. If not treated, the condition will almost certainly lead to Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, with all the attendant consequences. Fun stuff.

All this talk of sugar got me thinking about artificial sweeteners. Michael Pollan posits—and others have as well—that today’s epidemic of insulin resistance and adult-onset diabetes may have something to do with Americans’ particular fondness for high fructose corn syrup—think sodas, candies, and just about everything else sweet these days—and refined carbohydrates (which the body converts to even more sugar) coupled with an appalling lack of exercise. All that blood sugar has to go somewhere, and, if it isn’t burned off through exercise, it just floats around and causes trouble. So, given my bad eating habits and appalling lack of exercise, a diagnosis of insulin resistance comes as no surprise.

Compare that situation to the one faced by our ancestors, who were lucky to find anything sweet to eat, and, if they did, likely ate it with all the fiber and other good stuff included—fiber that would naturally moderate the ups and downs of blood sugar, sugar that would likely have been burned off in any event over the course of a hard day’s labor. Even natural sugars like those found in a glass of orange juice would never have been consumed in any great quantity as recently as my grandmother’s day, when, as a girl in Holland, a single orange was viewed as a luxury, an extravagance, and each bite savored.

But this “unnatural sweetness” problem is broader than diet, isn’t it? It seems to me that we’ve made just about everything unnaturally sweet. Take contemporary notions of beauty for example, where the fashion, make-up, and plastic surgery industries have sold us on an artificial notion of beauty—impossibly skinny models with perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect lips and playboy bunny breasts. Is it any wonder that a teenage girl, beautiful in her own way, looks in the mirror and gets depressed? Why anorexia and bulimia run rampant? (If you haven’t seen this video, you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U.)

And it isn’t just the girls who fall prey, as the recent flood of ads for products promoting hair growth, muscle-building, and male “performance enhancements” make painfully clear. (Just shoot me if I have to sit through another Cialis commercial.)

Apparently, reality is too dull, too bland, so why not sweeten it up?

It’s the same everywhere I look. Drugs and alcohol? Sweeteners. Step on those pleasure receptors, baby, no need for natural highs. Video games? Who needs saber-toothed tigers to give one an adrenaline rush? Pornography? Every fantasy at one’s finger tips (for a fee). But it’s all ghastly pink cotton-candy in the end, isn’t it, and does it really deliver as promised? A short term fix, to be sure, but does it linger?

Will we reach a day—if we haven’t already—where we no longer take pleasure in the simple joys of life: the sweetness of an apple, fresh from the tree? a sunrise? a smile? a warm hello? I hope not.

Life can be sweet in a simple, earthy sort of way. I just hope we don’t sugar coat everything to the point that we can no longer savor it.

On Gratitude

2008-11-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

Two days shy of Thanksgiving, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts on gratitude.

Years ago, my mother tried to explain her concept of faith in the following way (she used the Mormon term "testimony" in the original):

The idea of [faith] once seemed complicated to me and now seems much simpler. Sometimes, it seems as simple as gratitude--the ability to acknowledge divine purpose and order in all creation with a full and thankful heart--the joy of being alive, running, swimming, seeing, hearing, loving--the joy of seashells and stones, of colored fruit from the brown earth--rainbows in the air.

On another occasion, she said it this way: "The Lord has provided so much for us. In our abundance, we have become thoughtless--even offensive. ... It seems to me we have two duties: to remember the source of our blessings and to share them."

What got me thinking about gratitude was a documentary Becky and I watched recently called "God Grew Tired of Us" which tells the story of three young men, representatives of the so called "Lost Boys" of Southern Sudan, who fled violent upheaval in their country, endured incredible hardships and depredations along the way, languished for years in a refugee camp, and finally came to America as part of a special program to resettle them.

The take home message for me--apart from the idea that we Americans may have something to learn from these young men, their culture, and the way they care for each other--was gratitude: gratitude for family and friends and community, for a roof over my head, and clothes on my back, and food on the table. Clean drinking water. Time to think. Education. Medical care. All the day-to-day miracles that that we take for granted.

I was startled too by how the gratitude these young men felt for the opportunities they were given translated immediately into a desire to do as my mother suggested--to share them. While still in Africa, one started a "Parliament" to help the other boys keep their minds off their empty stomachs. Another started a foundation to build hospitals in his home country, and a third wants to build a school. Great examples: these boys who grew up with so little, deprived of all the things we take for granted.

And so, my Thansgiving prayer is for a deeper sense of gratitude, and appreciation for everyday miracles: wise mothers, the soft light of early dawn, clean water from the tap, a smile from a friend, or the touch of a loved one's hand.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(Photo courtesy of Pat Di Fruscia, available at http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/6638/morning_mist.jpg.)

The Spider

2008-11-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

I once read a Japanese folk tale about a wicked man who died without having performed a single act of kindness for anything or anyone except once, when, in the act of deliberately stepping on a spider, he said to himself "Ah, well: Live and let live!" and moved on. When the man died he went--as one might expect--straight to Hell, where he was forced to tread water in a vast lake of fire and brimstone with the rest of the damned.

In his misery he looked up and saw, to his suprise, a tiny strand of spider web slowly descending from the unseen heights above, a gift from the spider whose life he spared. Grasping hold, he found it incredibly strong, and began to pull himself up, thinking to his delight and amazement that he might be able not only to climb out of the lake of fire and brimstone, but possibly pull himself all the way up to Heaven itself.

As others saw him climbing, however, they swam over and began to climb the spider's web too. Angrily the man kicked at them, and, at that, the strand broke and back he fell.

The moral of the story? Don't kick, and leave the spiders alone.

P.S. In Russia they tell a different version of the same story, involving a wicked woman, a poor peasant, and an onion. The moral there? Don't kick, and give onions, because they are much easier to hold on to than a carrot.

(Photo courtesdy of Goshinsky on Flickr; available athttp://www.flickr.com/photos/24685723@N05/2988081733/.)

Nature's Temple

2008-11-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. John Muir

John Muir often compared the valleys of Yosemite to cathedrals or temples, and I’ve certainly felt that way in the outdoors generally and, in particular, as I’ve explored the desert landscapes of Southern Utah.

I recall a trip to Zion’s National Park a few years ago in early spring. After stopping by the visitor’s center and doing a quick hike to Weeping Rock, I persuaded Becky to give Angel’s Landing a try—one of my all time favorite hikes, but not for the faint of heart. Though Becky was nervous about attempting it with the kids, I was so impressed with their efforts on the Beehive in Acadia National Park that I thought we could pull it off. We decided to go as far as Scout’s Lookout and then make a decision there about whether to go further. To keep the kids engaged (and their minds off their tired legs) we promised Sarah her very own bag of beef jerky and Jordan the rough economic equivalent: four hot wheel cars. It worked. The kids did remarkably well, and less than two hours later we arrived at Scout’s Lookout. It was so easy to that point I was sure we could breeze on up to Angel’s Landing. Neither Jordan nor Sarah had any qualms about gazing over the railing from the lookout, despite an 800-1000 foot drop from that vantage point straight down to the Virgin River.

But our snack break there gave Jordan time to think about the line of chains he could see winding up the sandstone knoll to our left. “It’s so narrow,” he complained. But we said a prayer together and decided to give it a go. The kids did great. Just like the Beehive, Sarah clambered around like a little monkey, seemingly unperturbed. Jordan, on the other hand, struggled, but managed to keep going. We climbed up and around the knoll and then descended towards the last saddle before the final climb. The view of that last steep pitch, however, with vertical cliffs on both sides, did both Jordan and Becky in. Jordan refused to go any further and Becky, fearful for the kids, wasn’t going to push him any further. Sarah, on the other hand, was raring to go. See seemed genuinely disappointed when we decided to turn around. Frankly, I had to agree with Becky. The view of that last ascent is rather fearsome (much more so than I remembered), and it had been a little nerve wracking to get the kids even that far. I would’ve done it with just Sarah, but with Mary on my back I had to agree with Becky that it was wise to turn back.

On the way down, the kids were cute together, laughing and bouncing their voices off the canyon walls. Becky, Jordan, and Sarah eventually moved ahead while Mary and I lagged behind. Soon, she fell fast asleep, and I descended most of the way alone and in silence. It gave me some good time to think, and to soak in the awe-inspiring beauty of that great valley as the afternoon shadows slowly climbed the Eastern walls.

I was struck, first and foremost, by how well the pioneers had named the place: Zion. And I had the thought that the words of the hymn Beautiful Zion, Built Above could have been written to describe this place: Oh Zion, lovely Zion! Beautiful Zion. Zion, city of our God. Truly Zion Canyon is the kind of place where God can dwell, and I half-imagined Him, like Rodin’s Thinker, sitting atop the Great White Throne.

What it is about these desert spaces, about the sheer, red cliffs of Southern Utah, that turn one’s thoughts to God? They seem to strip life and existence down to its essence. In the East, Thoreau had to go to the woods and live alone to “strip life down to its essence.” In Zion, the grandeur of that great sandstone cathedral does it for you. In those spaces one cannot but feel small and insignificant, where the signature of God is writ large across earth and sky. If Joseph Smith had lived in Springdale, he wouldn’t have gone to a grove of trees to pray; he would’ve gone to Angel’s Landing.

(Photo of Angel's Landing--that's it, and the path to it, on the left--courtesy of OneEighteen on Flickr, available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneeighteen/1616837241/.)

The Killdeer

2008-11-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

July 2, 2006

A few weeks ago, near the duck pond behind my office in Murray, I spied a killdeer, making its odd cry and feigning injury. From experience, I know what that means: nest near by. So, I abandoned my plans for a walk and began looking for the nest, trying to gauge by the direction the killdeer was trying to lead me where her nest might lay. I wandered around in careful circles for twenty minutes or so without luck. I even tried to hide behind a tree and see whether the mother killdeer would return to her nest, but it didn’t work. At last, I gave up and headed back to the office. As I reached the shade of a line of cottonwoods, however, I paused again to see what the mother killdeer would do. This time, she fell for the ruse. She sat down on a barren patch of dirt I’d passed over several times previously, and right there, sure enough, I found her eggs—two beautiful, cream colored eggs with black speckles.

A few days later, there were four perfect eggs, nestled in a little cup of dirt; the next day, two. Then none. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away …

On Doubt . . .

2008-11-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

Since one of the beauties of a blog is that I can post whatever I want, you'll excuse me for dusting off a few old journal entries now and then. This sad, sobering one seems to be worth revisiting.

July 14, 2002

After a long, long drive home this afternoon, I planned to write a light-hearted account of my adventures in the haunted woods at the base of Mt. Fuji. (I spent most of the weekend traipsing about those woods taking pictures.) But a sobering email from Becky prompted me to address a far more serious topic: doubt. Not just uncertainty about this or that, but doubt with a capital "D."

My nephew Lindon, Jenny and Joe’s baby boy, has a brain tumor—a big, inoperable one. Barring some miracle of faith and chemotherapy, he will die, and his parents will be left to struggle with the big questions: doubt with a capital "D." It’s strange: I had a lot of time to think this trip, and at one point in my mental meanderings I remember stopping to consider what I would do, how I would feel, if something terrible happened to one of my children, Jordan or little Sarah. I remember thinking: "I don’t know if my faith could handle another blow like that." I came home to discover the just such a blow has been struck, just not at me. But I’m still left with the weighty questions. From a philosophical point of view, it’s no different, is it, just because it’s someone else’s kid? I don’t think so.

What I struggle with is the suffering of the innocent. I have no problem with personal suffering on account of wrongdoing, poor choices, even honest mistakes. Consequences—often in the form of suffering of some kind—teach us, strengthen us, benefit us in often unforeseen ways. Similarly, I have been taught, and have always accepted, that our poor choices may cause others to suffer as well. A drunk driver kills a small child. Tragic, yes, but at least we can ascribe the result to agency. God will not interfere with our wrong choices, even if they have tragic consequences for others. But this leaves unexplained a vast ocean of human suffering that has nothing to do with poor choices. (In truth agency can only explain a portion of the first two categories. If I make a mistake at the wheel, it may scratch the car, or I might be killed—for the same mistake. The uncertainty of the consequence defies the simple explanation that "I had it coming." Same goes for a mistake or bad act that hurts another--agency cannot explain the kind or degree of suffering.)

But the third category is the most troubling, and what prompted my soul searching. Why Lindon? What can explain his suffering? Nothing.

The only answer left is the one I cannot be satisfied with: it’s God’s will, or, put differently, it’s part of "the Plan." But the Plan doesn’t speak to this, except to suggest that we might learn something from his—Lindon’s—suffering. But what is there to learn? What is the wisdom purchased at such great price? Is it to be grateful for what we have, like Job, to thank God when all is taken away from us because we can still draw breath?

So, we’re left grasping at straws: "He’s needed more over there," "The whole point of this life is to get a body, and he did that," or "He will be in a place where there is no suffering and all is peaceful." I hope so, but something about these explanations smacks of administrative convenience: we can’t explain it, so we come up with these things to make ourselves feel better. But I don’t feel better. Not right now. Life is too precious to be given short shrift. I wonder why our little girl was born dead in my arms, and why our friends' baby died, and why Sarah had Down’s Syndrome, and Ben schizophrenia, and why Lindon has cancer. Why oh why must such things be?

I suspect I will never know the answer in this life, and will be left to make do as best I can, convinced—because there is a certain irreduceable sum of answers that I firmly believe—that there must be some explanation that escapes my finite mind. But it’s cold comfort.

. . . .

After some time to reflect I concluded that I can’t let the journal entry end there, as an unmoderated expression of doubt. So what do I believe? It’s a tough question these days, in the face of so much uncertainty, but there is, as I said, a "certain sum of irreduceable answers"—things I know to be true. Here are a few that come to mind:

I believe in love, and by love I mean to encompass both the love I feel for my wife Becky and the kids and "brotherly love" or charity: the pure love of Christ. The love I feel is never that pure, it’s often diluted or tainted by self-interest, but I believe in the ideal, and I’ve felt it enough in the giving and the receiving to be sure of it. I mean selflessness: that enobling quality of concern for others, and a willingness to serve them, help them, sacrifice for them. In this form it is pure and powerful, and it is real. My mother knew and understood this, and exemplified it in many respects. With time I have come to realize that the smug expression—"there is no such thing as a selfless act"—is a lie.

I believe in hope. I know that sound silly, since faith and hope are two sides of the same coin (would I say "I believe in belief?"), but what I mean is this: I believe in the power of hope. It has a redemptive quality to it, almost in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy: in hoping that the world is fundamentally good, we seek to make the world a better place, and it becomes—if not "good"—then at least better. That benefit is real. What’s more, there’s a tangible personal benefit as well. It doesn’t surprise me at all when studies come out saying that people of faith live longer or happier lives. It rings true, because I’ve felt it in my own life. When the Spirit attests that something is right or true or good, it feels good, and I know I am better for the experience.

Lastly, I believe in beauty, and by that I mean the spark of recognition I feel when I see something beautiful, whether it be an act of simple service, the face of a loved one, or a rainbow caught in a waterfall. These things are beautiful to me, and my reaction to them is real.

That’s a short list, I know, and there are more, but those are the truths that spring immediately to mind. From these truths I draw comfort and strength—even when the doubts seem overwhelming.

Can You Haiku?

2008-10-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

October 27, 2008

One of my more obscure hobbies is writing English language haiku and a related form called "haibun" that combines poetry and prose writing. For a definitions and explanations of these forms, see http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/HSA_Definitions_2004.html. Without getting overly complicated, let's just say a true contemporary haiku isn't the rigid 5-7-5 syllable poem you learned about in grade school. Hopefully examples like the following offer a flavor of for the simplicity and elegance of these forms, which seek to stay true to the spirit of the original Japanese haiku and haibun popularized by poets such as Matsuo Basho.

#1

Hundreds of pinwheels spin in the autumn wind, each one next to a small statue of Jizo, who watches over the souls of stillborns, miscarriages, and aborted fetuses. The images stand in long rows: three deep, one row higher than the next; each with a large, round head, closed eyes and pursed lips, tiny hands with fingers extended, palms pushed together in prayer. Some are bare stone, but most are decorated, commonly with a pinwheel, a knit cap, and a bib. Many have caps bright red yarn; on others, only a few gray tatters remain. I stop to contemplate an older Jizo, its features worn almost entirely away by wind and rain. Someone has tied a new bib around its neck.

At one end of the line of statues stands a large bulletin board of sorts, on which hang many wooden tablets. Each bears a hand-written message. I read a few in English: "Little baby: We are so sorry we could not keep you. Please forgive us." "Dear one: We will always love you."

temple bell--

a wisp of smoke curls upward
from the incense stick

Thousands have leaped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge. One man, who survived, tells his story: "I told myself that if someone--anyone--bothered to talk to me, to see if I was okay, I wouldn't jump." Near the middle of the span, a woman stops him and asks, "Would you mind taking my picture?" He takes her picture. She says, "thanks," and leaves. Then he jumps.

lone gull . . .
the cold sting
of the steel rail

And a few of my most successful haiku:

faint stars
the cabby speaks
of home

40th birthday
the leaves just beginning
to change color

another soldier . . .
the sound of wind
through a hole in the fence

Tulips and the Stock Market

2008-10-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

October 24, 2008

I’m planting tulips today and thinking about the stock market. Like most people, we’ve watched the value of our retirement savings and investments plummet over the past several months. Stocks we bought as much as six or seven years ago are now worth less than when we bought them. All we can do is wait and hope that, in three, four, or five years, they’ll climb back to break even.

But back to tulips. When we built our home and installed the yard a few years ago, we didn’t bother to truck in topsoil for the lawns and flower beds. So, the soil remains a dense clay, shot through with construction refuse and stones of all sizes. Still, I make slow but steady progress planting the bag of 90 tulip bulbs we bought at Costco a few weeks ago.

This new bulb planter is a cool thing. I jump on it—like a shovel—and, if I’m lucky and don’t hit a rock, I can push it 4-6 inches straight down, twist it, and pull up a perfect cylinder of firm, dark earth, cool to the touch despite the bright sun on this Indian summer day. In goes the bulb—fat, round, and waxy smooth—and then the dirt, back on top. I should use gloves for this part, but I hate the feel (or the “un” feel) of gloves, so I use my hands, crumbling the soil over each bulb, tamping it down, then pushing the mulch back in place. By the last bulb, my back aches and my hands are stained and rough.

So, what's it worth, anyway--my modest investment in bulbs, the newfangled planter, dirty hands, a sore back, and two hours work on a Saturday?

A lot, apparently, if one believes the accounts of the “tulip mania” that gripped Holland in the year 1637, where a single bulb of the Viceroy variety traded for two lasts of wheat, four lasts of rye, four fat oxen, eight fat swine, twelve fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four tons of beer, two tons of butter, 1,000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a silver drinking cup (and, one suspects, a partridge in a pear tree)—heady stuff for a simple flower that originated, not in Holland, but the high steppes of Central Asia.

The economist Robert Schiller and others have identified the wild speculation in tulip prices in Seventeenth Century Holland as the first recorded speculative bubble, which brings my garden musings full circle.

I’m no economist, but if I understand speculative bubbles, they are driven less by intrinsic value and more by a desire to get something for nothing—that’s the “speculative” part—to get rich off of some particular fad. To buy, say, a bulb or a stock or a piece of property for an outrageous price and sell it for an even more outrageous price to the next guy who comes along. Since the price becomes, rather quickly, entirely divorced form the true value of the particular object, it will inevitably fall back to earth and leave someone holding the bag, which usually happens with stomach-in-your-throat kind of speed, like the first big drop on a roller coaster.

And that’s the beauty of planting tulips in the Fall. There’s no speculation here. For a modest investment of time, money and effort, I’m guaranteed a great return in about six months. Tulips are one of my favorite flowers. I love the vivid splash of early color, the graceful curves of the blooms, and the way the petals cup the light and warmth of the sun in early spring. That’s a result one can bank on.

(Note: photo courtesy of northofsweden, available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/northofsweden/favorites/)