The Power of Narrative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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/.)