Christmas Stats

5 favorite Chinese dishes eaten: crab wontons, tangerine beef, pork and green beans in brown sauce, ham fried rice, vegetable lo mien with yummy noodles

1 useful gift I never would have purchased: Belkin laptop rest (currently in use)

5:56--the ungodly hour by which we were awoken

6 Present Stations: hidden locations throughout the house where gifts were placed and then found by deciphering clues

1 stupid idea: hiding most expensive electronic gifts in the washer (I-pod for daughter, MarioKart for youngest son, digital camera for oldest son); luckily only one of the boxes got a bit wet

1 more gift given to wife than she gave me: I won but had to rely on two last minute cheapo presents from Kings--"I didn't know I was in need of gloves"

5 chocolate oranges given in stockings as always

1 fire started in stove (THE fire of the year)

1 cat in the bag of wrapping paper

$3,000 which wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, spent on our Christmas but was by a woman in Clearfield for her three children whose gifts were all stolen last week

1 pair of Mountain Dew pajama bottoms given to oldest son which brought more joy than any other gift

6 books given and then ignored while kids setup/used/played electronic gifts

1 French Canadian children's book given: Little zizi by Stephane Poulin about how little boys worry about the size of their.... (hopefully perfect for youngest son who has always been quite focused on his "gorilla"--a mishearing of "groin")

Christmas Eve, demolition projects and chinese food

Being Christmas (or should I say xmas) eve, I must move on to other "new" issues. I do love this time of year. I always struggle a bit at the beginning of break wondering where I should focus my energy, worrying if I don't feel like I'm accomplishing something. By now, the 24th, I frankly don't give a damn. Ironically, though, we started a demolition project this morning.

After our personal carpenter, John, sized up the last room in our house needing renovation, we couldn't resist getting started. Crowbar and sledge hammer quickly made slush of the 30+ year old brick wall/ mantle in our living room. Well, it's about 5% done and I only hit my hand once with the hammer.

Just as I chipped away at the brick, my wife has been working on me for a couple of years to get going on this project. Of course we don't have any saved up money but what the hell--we never will. Somehow it seems if we remodel this last room, the room we ironically spend the most time in, our lives will be made whole, we will have arrived. So, I've got a little work ahead of me during the break then I will hand off to our main man carpenter to do the finishing touches (that is everything but the demolition--design, cabinets, bookshelves, crown molding etc).

In about 45 minutes we will take off to Eastern Winds in Ogden, a slightly above mediocre Chinese restaurant where we eat every Christmas Eve--it's kind of homage to The Christmas Story movie. I wish I'd chosen a better restaurant to start this tradition but now we started the kids won't let us go anywhere different (like Dave's Kitchen on 33rd South in SLC. Actually we initially meant to go to the Mandarin in Bountiful but those slackers would rather be home with their families on xmas eve.

Now as long as none of our children barf up the Chinese food (this has happened twice) then we are set for tomorrow. Happy Christmas to all!

It mattereth not whether we believe or not for tomorrow we will all receive gifts we would have never gotten for ourselves and eat WAY too much food.

Religious indoctrination as abuse

I'm almost off my "new" atheist kick but I did reread some of the God Delusion and finally fished the last two chapters. I knew the "childhood, abuse and religion" would be a tough chapter for me as I have ambivalent feelings about my own childrens' religious training. I can't go all the way with Dawkins and still believe there is a developmental element to religion, something one grows out of and/or into a deeper, less institutional faith. Dawkins would clearly disagree. Still, I am struck, as Dawkins points out, by how easily society allows and even encourages adults to indoctrinate children into a religion. Even knowing that this indoctrination will, for many, necessarily lead to a lot of pain and anger as the child questions the inconsistencies, guilt, hatred, fear etc. later in life. This problem is unintentionally highlighted by Nick Seaton, spokesman for a conservative religious group: "To present all faiths as equally valid is wrong. Everybody is entitled to think their faith is superior to others, be they Hindus, Jews, Muslims or Christians--otherwise what's the point in having faith?" (340 qtd in Dawkins). Yes, what an entitlement it is!!

But Dawkins goes much further than I can. He asserts several times in this chapter that religious indoctrination of children is as bad or even worse than sexual abuse of a child. That just doesn't make sense. For one, you can't untwine religious belief from culture, identity, and parental love--they are interrelated and religious faith is not all while sexual abuse is one thing. Two, even if parents do not bring up a child in a religion they will necessarily inculcate many values which are contradictory, ineffective, and certainly some immoral. We can't escape human weakness by crushing religion. Of course many of these familiar secular beliefs or practices won't be tied up with the institutional power of a church but certainly *some* mothers and fathers can encourage as much or more guilt concerning secular concerns as the worst of religions.

Again I agree with Hedges that these human tendencies (to control for example) are in the human heart and would exist without religious institutions. Not that institutions can't and do not often justify and give place for these tendencies to work; they most certainly do. Of course, this assertion by no means indicates that I'm completely at ease about my complicitness with my own children's religious upbringing. I continually wonder how far to push. But I am confident that expressing confidence in their ability to think for themselves is more important than jamming down their throats my version of how things work. No sense exchanging one indoctrination for another--parenting has to be rhetorical, right?

Ok, so I'm not quite off this topic; promise to discuss my current sci-fi readings next time.

The Gap

I started this as a response to the comments on my last post but it go long and I have a goal of posting something each day during the holidays. Much more to say and think about. I have listened to 14 minutes of Harris here and find I agree with everything he says. Still need to listen to his debate with Hedges and need to find some of the more vitriolic stuff I've heard he has said. Must go to family xmas party, hence I'm sending out myy half-boiled ideas into the blogosphere.

***

Personally, Dr. W., your description of faith and doubt certainly reflects my life. I think I finally gave in to doubt because I was going crazy trying to hold both faith and doubt in my mind. Of course I still existed as a somewhat faithful Mormon for many years with much doubt. And I would consider many of my friends as "doubting" mormons though, certainly faith has the upperhand if you will.

But here, I think, we move away from Hedges' criticisms of the new atheists. Hedges' key point is that, as Lisa quotes, morality can both spring from faith or non-faith/doubt/science. Understanding/believing/using the scientific method doesn't guarantee moral outcomes. Partially this is true, must be true, because of the gap in what we actually know and understand. .

For me it's important to recognize that we as humans will employ different "ways of being" in order to work through/deal with this gap--the gap between what we know (can verify with the scientific method) and what we don't know OR what we don't know that we don't know. Humans will always need to humbly accept this gap.

But some of these new atheists give little credence to this gap. While I understand on a theoretical level that science can/could/maybe will slowly but surely fill in this gap in knowledge, there will always be a gap. Therefore we need a way of engaging this gap, speculating on this gap, comforting us because of this gap. For many this is religion which I can empathize with from this perspective even though it doesn't work for me. For many story and art help “fill” this gap, or at least contend with it.

To me postmodern theory does a lot of work with this gap but new atheists like Dawkins totally reject postmodernism as a critical vein of study--just a bunch of bullshit to Dawkins (see Postmodernism disrobed). That smacks me as pompous and dogmatic, a position that doesn’t respect the gap. Dawkins ends The God Delusion (I quite enjoyed the first half of this book) with “I am thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.” Here I agree with Hedges that Dawkins ultimately tries to externalize what’s wrong with the world as religion. Once we get past that there are no limits. And my understanding is that Harris and Hitchens go way beyond Dawkins in this front—e.g. Harris’ support of torture and possible preemptive strike on the Muslim world.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) we will always be humans, we will always have gaps in our knowledge, we will always live in socially constructed narrative which will continue to impose limits.

Criticism of the "new" atheists

Lisa B. asked for it so: My cousin turned me on to this podcast. It comes from a program called "Unwelcome Guests"--gotta to love that name. The first one is Christopher Hedges (guy who wrote War a force that gives us meaning), but I haven't listened to the second one.

Hedges nails what I find uncomfortable about the new atheists (Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and, though to a lesser degree, Dawkins). And he helps explain why I can't completely write off religion even though I do not believe in it and it tends to drive me crazy. To summarize my favorite criticisms of the new atheists:

*both the new atheists and right wing christians believe in collective salvation/ moral progress which is dangerous
*both believe in a utopia (which literally means "no place"; hence there ain't one)
*both condemn vigorously those that do not agree with them
*christians misuse the bible while these new atheists misuse Darwinism
*both want to make education about indoctrination
*both have a fundamentalist mindset

*new atheists forget some lessons worth keeping from religion. For example, "the wisdom of sin" as Hedges' explains we forget that we are always self-motivated and always imperfect.

I do, however, wonder about equating these two groups when one, the far right, is so much more mainstream and thereby has so much more power. Hedges addresses this but not adequately enough. One could argue that atheists or humanists are less accepted than any religion, race, or sexual orientation. Maybe I'm wrong but I know of more openly gay politicians than atheists.

I'd really be interested to hear what others think--SigNo? Lisa? Middlebrow? HappyHeretic? (even though I already know through email that HappyHeretic wasn't too happy about Hedges' criticisms)

Playing the intellectual

Today I finally feel like I got down to some studyin.

First, I continued to reread Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. Amazingly as it may seem *I* chose this book for our couples book club. It's a much more philosophical read than I'd thought and it's a bit confusing since it has three distinct sections, one a small print 20 page, almost unreadable, "Treatise on the Steppenwolf." What the hell was I thinking? I won't go into details. Suffice it to say that my criteria were the following: book in my house I hadn't read but had always meant to, book under 300 or so pages, one that caught my attention the first few pages (I think I was on something when I checked Steppen for this). Probably should have picked a Bend in the River by Naipaul.

So, anyways, since I gave Steppenwolf a very quick read over Thanksgiving, trying to assuage my nervousness about my pick (which was not accomplished), I decided to re-read the first half or so before book club on Friday. And I have to say I've enjoyed it much more than the first time (I actually like the middle section after the "guy" who finds Steppenwolf's manuscript, introduces said manuscript and before the pre-magical realism/ magical theatre stuff). As you may or may not know the main character, Harry Haller, can't stand the bougeious mentality but at the same time can't live without them. He's unhappy and contemplates suicide; kind of an older, more philosophical, Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye.

Here are some of my favorite sections, some stuff already "published" through email to my book club, emails which probably will only add insult to injury:

A central scene is the dinner scene with the professor and his wife (on pp. 84-89 in my book). Haller accepts the dinner invitation only to quickly realize his mistake upon seeing the Goethe portrait in their home: "Here fine Old Masters and the Nation's Great Ones were at home, not Steppenwolves." During dinner the professor criticizes and unpatriotic article that was, unbeknownst to them, actually written by Haller. Haller racks his brain for something "harmless to say" but like the rock in the road he finally lets loose on the Goethe portrait. Things go downhill from here. Haller leaves and then reflects: "I could not bear this tame, lying, well-mannered life any longer. And since it appeared that I could not bear my loneliness any longer either, since my own company had become so unspeakably hateful and nauseous, since I struggled for breath in a vacuum and suffocated in hell, what way out was left me? There was none" (89).

Even though this will surely to bring more scorn and ridicule on me, I can't help but connect in a deep way to his inability to leave with or without others.

***
One more then I will leave you alone:

Just found this passage I'd overlooked on the first read: "there was no power in the world that could prevail with me to go through the mortal terror of another encounter with myself, to face another reorganization, a new incarnation, when at the end of the road there was no peace or quiet--but forever destroying the self, in order to renew the self" (72).

Don't we all feel this at times? (maybe not this extreme). We get a new brilliant insight into our lives--how to be happier, more motivated, kinder--only to realize a week or a month or a year later that our insight was only skin deep. It crumbles in our hands, forcing us yet again to try and figure out what makes us tick.

***

I know that many of the passages are laughable--so very earnest--but I can't help but bring my own earnestness to them, couldn't help giving the book a second chance, couldn't help feeling a connection with another malcontent created almost 100 years ago.

I also studied up on Hesse's influences: Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard which I take it argues against Hegel's dialectic by asserting that our choices still matter, that we choose between the ascete or ethical path; Goethe, who did a bit of everything--should actually read something by him; thought about reading up on the musical stuff but not that ambitious.

Second, I listened to Chris Hedges' criticism of the New atheists (Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens etc.) but I will have to flesh that out in another post.

Dog Days of Winter

Saturday: High 9* Low -1*


This is a joke, right? Gotta be. Some Internet prank or something.

Happy Holidays

As per usual, I've felt sick twice since I finished my grades. Somehow my good-for-nothing-body knows the day my grades are done. There's both good and bad in that.

Bad that I wasted an hour trying to fall asleep last night while my stomach boiled and gurgled. On the other hand I did read a section from Do you speak an American? waiting for my stomach to stop its convulsions. And this morning instead of doing one of the many difficult things I probably ought to do, I read again from Do you Speak... and I'm now watching Factotum. Maybe you've seen it; if not it's about a writer/bum/womanizer/socialist (Matt Dillon). Kind of a Leaving Las Vegas, with some philosophical voiceover, but not as dark.

In one of the early scenes he has an interview for a job at a pickle factory. Henry tells him he's a writer:

"What's your novel about?" the manager asks.

"Everything," Henry answers.

"So it's about cancer?"

"Yes."

"What about…my wife?"

"She's in there, too."

Dillon's dry delivery is hilarious. Many funny understated moments like early on, but as it meanders along the pain, alcohol, and depressing "fucks" suck the humor away.

Naming the most important jobs

What do you call a person (usually the mother) who deals with the initial and most profuse barfing incidence of a child? Having played this role last night, my wife nailed the term this morning: barfmaid. Although this title may sound like a mere barf cleaner, I can only aspire to such high titles as last night I waited safely in bed till the herculean scraping and washing was done. But I did go on duty after that to take care of three bile throw-ups (really spit-ups) which allowed my wife go back to sleep. Still, a pale comparison to the duties of a true barfmaid, who faces one of the greatest challenges of parenthood.

Let us praise all barfmaids young and old: mothers who rushed to us as children, hand on our back while we wrenched up our guts, and women who hit the floor running before their mates gain consciousness.

Ricky Jervais on creationism

I heard Jervais interviewed by Terry Gross the other day. Loved him in the British office (grittier than the American office) but then kind of forgot about him. Of course without him we'd have no Office viewing on Thursdays. What a brilliant character he has created.

This bit starts with him saying "I used to believe in evolution but then I found this dusty old book in the library..." About 6 minutes in there is great bit about ch 3 in Genesis and the talking snake, "perfect diction as well, not a mumbling snake." Hilarious.

The girlfriend

My 13 year old son is downstairs with his girlfriend. It's kind surreal, just doesn't seem possible. I think she is a ghost.

The wife and younger kids went to the ward x-mas bash. The wife instructed me to head downstairs every once in awhile and say, "gotta get something from from the fruitroom" (actually my wife calls it a pantry but in cache valley we say fruitroom). So should I go down? It is kind of quiet right now. But what would I get out of the fruitroom? Some flour? Maybe some chips?

Again (see my earlier post on this subject) one half of me wants to maintain some boundaries while the other is kind of rooting for him. I mean who wouldn't want his son to experience the thrill of holding hands or the mountain-like accomplishment of a first kiss?

Whatever my own ambiguity, must be able to tell the wife I went down when she gets back. Guess I will go check out the canned goods.

When cleaning becomes a titillating temptation

Funny how the things I never have time for (listening to music, blogging, writing emails to colleagues, cleaning) I immediately start doing as soon as wheelbarrow of papers comes in at the end of the semester.

Hell, I got time for anything right now--call me! I'll pick you up. I'd drive you to Vegas and I hate Vegas. I'd shovel snow if there were snow. I'd even do one of my wife's projects. Shucks, I'd help you clean out your attic. Even cleaning my office is a titillating temptation.

Ok...temptation indulged: must read three papers and then I will allow myself to caressingly filter through the piles crap on my office floor.

Heroes: Pleasurable manipulation

My son and I have been watching season one of Heroes. We've knocked out 8 or so episodes during this last week. A romp of a show with almost as many cliffhangers as 24. Of course I feel manipulated but will allow such manipulations for pleasure and some time with my son for at least one season--not sure I can do more than that. The voice-over philosophical statements on agency, evolution, and ontology seem too serious considering the plot, but maybe I need to watch more episodes to find the meat underneath the action-packed veneer . . . not holding my breath.

More episodes will be watched as my son is begging me to watch two a day. Yesterday he watched one without me--how could he? He was reprimanded and made to watch the episode again while guiding me through it so we could ff through the slow parts (i.e. about 3 and half minutes).

With a fair amount of violence, gore, and tension (several squeamish demures while wondering, "can they show that on tv?") Tim Kring, the creator, made a brilliant move incorporating the Japanese odd couple who travel to America to help save the world. Hiro Nakamura, played by Masi Oka, is astoundingly funny which brings much needed breaks from the cranium lobotomies and regenerating, flayed body in the morgue.

Note to self: must figure out a way to discuss and watch Heroes episodes when I teach Middlebrow's scifi course next year. Certain to boost my evaluation scores.

Out of the mouth of babes: youngest son on Obama

Before election:

"Will Obama make us go to school on Saturday if he becomes the president?"

After election:

"Obama made the gas prices go down" as we pull into a gas station.

***

NOTE: the forcing kids to attend school on Saturday was heard by all of my children and by my wife who works at an elementary school--one third grade teacher got the question so much the day after the election she had to assure the entire class that surely it wasn't true because the government would never spend that much more money on education.

Compelled by The Road

Wow, I can't believe a month has gone by--been very busy. Somehow I'm doing less in more hrs. Go figure.

I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy this weekend. It's about a father trying to find some semblance of humanity amongst burned out towns and cannibalistic tribes for his son. I meant to nurse it over the next few weeks, like only eating two pieces of Halloween candy a day, but there was no way. Few books have compelled me to read them immediately and even fewer that didn't accomplish it through mere plot manipulation. I knew what would happen in this book; what I wanted were the emotional details.

It was beautiful in its own post-apocalyptic way. After I finished it late last night, I shed a few tears and then went into my youngest son's room and hugged him while he slept. It seemed an appropriate, albeit cliched, way to finish up my torrential relationship with the book. But the hug didn't ward off danger--early this morning his awoke throwing up.

Updating the Queue Mega style

Scanning through my Netflix queue, I realized that out of the 70 or so movies listed I wasn't too interested in any of them. That's not exactly true. There are movies I want to see but some are movies I "should" see (El Bola, Deliver us from Evil, Factotum, Helvetica, Born into Brothels), many are movies I want to see with my kids so can only line up so often, several are movies I want to see but would be a disaster with the wife, some are movies I put on my list and can't remember a damn thing about, and hardly any are from 08. Contemplating the sad state of my queue, especially the lack of 08s, I realized that I hadn't looked at one of my favorite movie reviewers, Hightoughmegastore, for some time--somehow this bi-annual event had slipped through the cracks.

Now, I don't add just anything from her list she's, to put it lightly, easy: she can find something good in about every movie she sees (btw I just used Mega as an example in my ch lit class to demonstrate that one can be smart, critical, and use criticism and still love all sorts of art). Which is one thing I like about her little reviews but which also causes me to only pick movies she really liked. Here's what made it into my queue: Smart People, Married life, Baby mama (I didn't really need Mega to get this one on my list), The Band's Visit, The Savages, Flawless, Honeydripper. More would have surely made my list, but Mega is sorely behind at least 20 movies. How dare she only list them without a review! Come on Mega, get choppin!

I was hoping one or more of these movies would be on the Watch Instantly Netflix feature so we could watch one tonight and sure enough two were (Flawless and Honeydripper) but neither seemed quite right for the wife--she's not much of a capper lover and Honeydripper looked too slow. Instead I found Outsourced (2007) on the watch now list (btw the online Netflix movies are getting better and better). So here in a few I'm off to hook up the laptop to the tv to watch a film with the wife, alone. Amazingly, the kids have all disappeared with friends. Well, two of them at least.

Before I end on a somber note, I'd love to hear about everyone's top three moview of 2008...ok onto serious, stewing over stuff I'm known for.

The third, my eldest son, was with a friend and was to come home when said friend went to the LDS priesthood session but then the friend invited him along to the all-male-afair with an offer of Garcia's mexican cuisine after. I picked him up from the friend, helped him get a snack, and then took him back. It was harder than I expected, a twinge of sadness that his father wouldn't be the one to induct him into this Mormon father-son ritual and a pang of fear about the future. Oh, well at least I found a movie I can watch with my wife--one can't be a miracle worker on every front.

Oh where hath my %$@#% Saturday gone

A Saturday spent already; not sure where it went but it's been nice day overall. Dealt with the sick throwing up son (wife did the most as usual) this morning, graded a couple of papers and read some email while listening for heaves, went to the library to pick up some books for a lecture I'm giving in my ch lit class picked, then picked up dancing daughter from her class. Lastly, instead of doing what I should do, I went on a mt bike ride. Now I'm tired, sweaty, stinky, and unmotivated to do the things I really should have done this morning: written a rough draft for a retention study I'm doing with a colleague, grade 30 ch lit book reviews on the symbolism in MC Higgins the Great, prepped for my Tuesday classes, increase our garden size by tilling a few swaths of grass, wrapping our apples in newspaper for storage.... See that's the problem. When I got up this morning I probably could have done one or two of those (I did pick the tomatoes I will have you know), but there were just too many things to choose from so I was like the indecisive deer in the headlights and once I regained my wits, I just figure ah to hell with it I will go on a mt bike ride.

And what a mt bike ride it was, primarily a lesson in humility (note to self: only ride with riders who will inflate imaginary sense of my riding abilities). The humility started in strong doses as my friend, one of the top three expert class riders in Utah, took it out "gently," a nice conversational pace FOR HIM!!, as we rode the pavement from Mueller Park in Bountiful to North Canyon. Once we turned off the pavement, the dirt road ascends steeply for 4 miles. Climbing I was rudely transported back to 100 degree August days, sweating out my jersey immediately and profusely, watching my friend speed out of sight. Back cramped, had to stop and stretch twice; I survived. It does improve at mile 4 with a much more sane switchbacked single track--before I knew it we were on top of Rudy flats and ready for some of the best downhill in the state and a solid 5 miles of it to boot.

Finally I'm used to my "new" bike I got about three years ago--a full suspension Specialized Stumpjumper for anyone that cares. If you want to know more about my bike, look it up--I only know it can go fast and has brakes which stop it. What I do know is that finally I feel comfortable handling the bike. Before I'd ridden a suspensionless Bridgestone MB5, quite a bike in its day, for about a decade. But now, sweet jesus, it's a beautiful ride. It's amazing what one can do on a bike, going over rocks, roots, washouts. I guess I didn't think this kind of fairly dangerous activity would attract me when I was approaching 40--in some ways I enjoy it more than I did as a kid. Anything else I say here will sound corny and cliched but, alas, I can't resist. It feels like the bike is an extension of me and somehow that's so beautiful because I could never run 20+ mph down this trail, could never descend the 5 miles in 30 minutes, could never jump over an obstacle floating for 15 feet....and somehow all that just tickles me silly.

It's approaching 7pm and all that stuff I should have done is safely out of reach, jusifiably undoable as it were. Relieved of duties, I will settle down to some reading, maybe a movie, some time with the kids--there's always tomorrow.

Bonus: video of guy riding Mueller with funny little dog

Things I meant to blog about but didn't

I've had lots (really!) of great blogging ideas but I've had little time and my brain is stuffed. So here's the short version of each; at least this post will move the F word down on my homepage:

1. Our 13 year old son has gone through some sort of evolution. A few weeks ago we realized he had a girlfriend--kind of difficult to keep tabs on this kind of thing when he can email, IM, and call her on the cell phone. This morning before noon he had already chatted with the gf and we fielded four calls from four different friends. What happened to the shy, boyish child of last year? Concerning gf thing I have radically contracting feelings and thoughts. On one hand, I'm think hold up buckaroo, there's all kinds of time left, no need to take the fun out of puppy love stuff (a note, a brush of hands, etc). On the other, I identify strongly with his plight to get with his girl. Several times I've caught myself constructing arguments my son might use with us and the gf's parents. And after seeing him IM for several hrs with the gr, I finally said, "You might as well go see her." Which of course he had already thought out and planned--that evening he headed out on his bike with goofy directions to her house, accepting none of our help. Amazingly he spent an eveing with the gf and her family. I was 17 before I did such a thing--much safer and less grown up to just make-out in the bushes during night games. What is he thinking!

2. My wife and I went to Beethoven's 9th symphony--it really go me going. Of course I'm familiar with the Ode to Joy but had never heard the entire piece. Near the end, during the last movement where the orchestra begins to tempt us with the Ode to Joy melody (after having taken us through some sort of Turkish march music), I nearly lept from my chair and had to blink away a few tears. It was brilliantly explosive.

3. Harvest time again. This past Sunday the whole family got invovled, picking peaches, pears, apples, grapes, tomatoes, peppers, and squash. I've designated myself the peach cutter upper for this fall-50 or so peaches later, I'm still loving it (the eating and cutting). I've made a couple of superb batches of fresh salsa with a variety of hot peppers--the classic jalapeno, the less well-known serrano, a long skinny red pepper, and the exotic tiny thai dragon (hot as a mother). Eating all this fresh food has given me an opportunity to detox from the modern vagaries of grocery store shopping. If only I could eat this way all year.

A case study: Student expression and the employment of "fuck"

Strangely I've read about five student drafts exploring personal memories and three have dropped the F-bomb. I usually don't get this kind of openness till later in the semester and even then at a much lower percentage; seems students often hold onto the rules of high school. I've often had students bashfully approach me with concerns about the language they have in an essay: "Professor, I'm writing about an experience in the military and you know the language in that setting is kind rough..." At this point I usually interrupt, assuring them they can use any language they'd like. And still I get: sh*t and b*%$# etc.

And it's not just the F-bombs in these papers: much of the writing is quite daring for a first assignment. I have no idea what's in the air. Certainly I haven't done anything that different from all the other 1010 sections I've taught. This proliferation of fucks has really brightened my day, giving me hope in the next generation. By fuck, I'm going to read three more papers before I do lunch.

Dancing across Morgan by cool clouded skies

Seth did it! After a couple of years discussing and then several months planning and preparing this summer, Seth completed his 50 mile bike ride which was the last requirement for his cycling merit badge. And along the way he somehow fits into my old cycling jersey and can ride my old bike.

It all started off with Seth, yes my teenage son, waking ME up at 5:15 this morning. We ate some peanut butter toast y and drove up Weber Canyon to Mt. Green and headed out, the back pockets of our cycling jersey's stuffed with Clif shot blocks, GU, peanut butter crackers, and granola bars. From Mt Green we circled around the southeast side of Morgan valley passing through several small towns. At our first stop at a gas station, Seth knew we were in another world: "Hey, did you hear those people? Both people that pulled up knew the woman already here getting gas. And all three of them shewed that dog home by name. That doesn't happen in Layton."

In order to get in the full 50 miles we headed up East Canyon road for about 7 miles or so--quite a climb to East Canyon reservoir. Then we flew down, finally arriving at Morgan where we sat in the grass a bit eating crackers and stretching.

Our only conflict was that Seth got a bit irritated that I kept looking back to make sure he was close and to encourage him to ride my wheel closer--the draft really makes for an easier ride. Eventually he started making fun of me. I guess after looking back about 1,000 times, it really doesn't help much. By mile 40 every time I looked back, Seth would quote lines from that great British comedy, Father Ted: "I don't know Father Ted, what would you like to do?" or call me strange names like Shaniqua.

All in all a great ride: 50 miles, about 3 and half hrs of ride time, max speed 35mph, average almost 14mph, several dead animals and bad smells, and hopefully some good memories we will both carry with us.

Who needs a car anyways? Day 2

Again I left at about 8:20 and for the second day didn’t have time to tell my wife good-bye—the train waits for no one. For this trip I selected my full suspension mt bike because, well, I wanted to go for a mt bike ride with my friend Jason in SLC after work. So instead of biking the 8 miles on my knobby wheels, I jumped on to Trax for my first Trax with bike experience. There didn’t seem to be a place for bikes like on FR so I just tried to lean it against me while trying to read an article out of TETYC. This did not work as Trax stops and jerks a lot more than FR. On one of the stops a seasoned Trax rider got on, stuff his front wheel down the stairs on the opposite side of where the doors open—will do that next time.

Then I rode the three miles to campus; unfortunately I chose the 45^th south stop and rode down 45^th. Very dangerous. Next time I will take the 39^th stop. And after a short 3 mile ride, I arrived safe and sound.

I have to say that I really enjoy being on public transport. It gives me a feeling of connection or something. I know that I have a romantic view of all this as I don’t absolutely have to use public transport—certainly it could be a pain in the ass to always depend on it—but still I can’t yet let go of that romanticism.

After teaching, I headed out thinking I would catch Trax at 39^th about three miles away but the 4:03 train didn’t show and I figured I’d make better time on the bike than sitting around. After almost an hour of riding, and a 5 minute stop for Gatorade at a gas station, I arrived at Jason’s house who lives just off 9^th south on the east hill above 13^th east. We threw the bikes in his Subaru and headed up Millcreek meaning to ride up to Dog Lake but we forgot about the even/odd day thing—personally I think mt bikers should be on odd days. Instead we tried for about .94 miles to ride the steep trail towards Lamb’s canyon. What an unforgiving trail. Wasted we skidded down and went on the much more accommodating Pipeline. I’d been on the lower 2/3s but never the upper part—some of the best, hard packed, fast single track I’ve ever done.

After the ride Jason dropped me off at the central Frontrunner station; again I felt oh so cosmopolitan, loving my look: the dirty, sweat crusted guy reading some sort of academic journal.

So I had a lot of fun but this will never work daily in non-summer mode when I’m actually really busy and need to get places quickly. Never. But twice a week I think I can do.

Who needs a car anyways???

I decided to chronicle my family’s journey—literal and metaphorical—of trying to survive with one car. But after one day of mass transit and bike, I’m not sure there will be much of a journey before I cave and buy a new car. Maybe it can be my journey to be less car dependent or something like that, something much less grandiose or important. I can imagine if I wrote one of those books about how I did something for a month or a year (do these kinds of books/documentaries make up a particular genre?), mine would be entitled “How a family of five kinda sort of went without two cars for awhile.” I’ll never quite reach the status of my one-car heroes with one kid, Dr. Write and Middlebrow, and my no-car hero, Signifying Nothing.

After my Kia Rio engine was internally destroyed and the red carcass was sold for junk, I immediately started to resent having to buy a new car. Certainly not something in our budget or plans. My mind tried to find a way out (read I started to obsess). Kids adjusted ok: youngest son thought it an adventure to ride his bike to his friends house a mile away; daughter was less convinced, as she called after a party,
"Are you coming to get me?" (long pause)
"No, that's why we had you ride your bike"
"Oh, ok."

And oldest son has been biking to drum lessons already. Still, not sure how we'd negotiate soccer/dance Saturday with multiple games and dance practices at a variety of locals, sometimes at the same time. But first things first: how the hell do I get to work?

Yesterday I left home at 8:15 am on my road bike and rode two miles to the new Frontrunner station—a mere 6 minute ride at 20mph. I boarded where there was a bike symbol, but a bike was already in the designated spot so I just leaned it against my seat which worked out fine. Looking the seasoned pro, I put on some classical music to block out the talk from the couple across from me and started to read the Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle—how often do I get to put 30 minutes into a book for fun during the morning of a work day? Never.

Frontrunner ride was smooth, fast, and air-conditioned. Next, transition central station at 6^th west and 250 south. From here I biked down 6^th west and then turned at 8^th south, which has a great bike lane, the plan being to head west to Redwood road. But I was tempted by the Jordan Parkway, so I traveled its circuitous route from 8^th south to 33^rd south—a nice detour even if it add a couple of miles and a few hills. At Redwood campus by 9:50 am, bike computer read 11.5 miles and about 35 minutes.

Only major unexpected, as I took off my son’s back pack, a completely and utterly sopping wet back. Luckily I’d brought my cycling shirt (thinking I might cycle all the way home in the evening which I ultimately decided against) which I changed into so I could dry out my shirt. Shirt never completely dried, but hey it didn’t stink.

After a day of teaching in my casual wear, including cycling socks with skulls on them, I left Redwood at 6:55 in order to catch the 7:25pm train. I knew this would be cutting it a bit close but I also knew Redwood slanted somewhat downhill to the north; unfortunately, I had moderate headwind most of the way. Not wanting to wait for the 8:25 train, I put the foot to the pedal, rarely letting my speed dip below 20mph and cranking up to 27mph on several occasions. All was going well until I hit the last train crossing on a 8^th south, just blocks away from the station: I should have made a run for it as the UP train was going slow as molasses but I decided to be safe and wait. I made Frontrunner with a minute or so to spare.

Exerting such effort was quite invigorating but also made me sweat: after having situated myself, I peered to my left and scanned behind me, then made a mad rush to take off my damp cycling shirt and put on my now finally dry regular shirt. Maybe there’s a bathroom where I could have changed; certainly the woman to my left, exposed to my brilliant white hairless concave chest, was wishing I’d scouted one out.

Journey #1 done. Tomorrow, Journey #2 with a couple of twists: I will take my mountain bike, which is much slower on the roads so I will make a transfer to Trax even though it will take me almost as long to get from the Frontrunner station to the Trax Fireclay station at 47^th South as it will take me to get from Layton to SLC. But then it’s only a 3, instead of 8, mile ride to Redwood campus—must save the legs as I’m going to mountain bike the Bobsled trail with a friend that evening. Now if I can figure out how to fit everything I need into my small mountain bike pack so that I can pop out just before City Creek at the end of our ride and, without returning to my friend’s house, descend to the Frontrunner station for my ride home. Good thing it’s the last day of classes so no need for silly fat books I make students buy and since student turn in work electronically no big bag of papers.

I’m never going to make it without a car; maybe, though, I can learn something and do the train 2-3 times a week while the weather is good. I even considered buying a junker car and parking it at the SLC Frontrunner station so I could drive it from there to Redwood each day and then drive it home on Friday. But I assume it would get ticketed or maybe even stolen.

Soooooooo desperately not wanting to buy a car.

Dancing across Antelope by Moonlight

Last night oldest son, Seth, and I completed the 22 mile Antelope by Moonlight bike ride "creatures by night." And we were indeed creatures by night even though we did not dress up as bugs etc as a few did, though son thought our biking spandex was plenty enough costume. The ride started at the marina and went out to the renovated Garr Ranch (or what I call the only place you can find a bunch of trees on the island). It was a spectacular ride in so many ways--30+mph downhill on the biggest hill; a full and visible moon, which started out a big yet orangey because of haze, but came into its own as the night progressed; an excellent tune-up for son's 50 mile ride in August which will complete his cycling merit badge; good late night conversation; and we missed all of the crowds by getting there early, starting out hard, and finishing early.

Speaking of starting out hard, I told Seth we should kind of push it a bit the first mile or two in order to distance ourselves from the 900 other riders lined up. I didn't want one of our wheels to get caught up in a cape or something. About a mile in, clearly revved up with adrenaline, he said, "so is this supposed to hurt since we are pushing it?" i.e. I can go faster if you want. He was, as they say, "dancing on the pedals" or my favorite "pedaling without a chain."

This summer may indeed go down in the annals of Christiansen family lore as the summer of biking. Sometimes when we think about having kids, we--read "I"--get nervous about all the ways in which we may screw up and then be blamed for said screw ups for years to come. And I'm sure this will happen to me, but it's also interesting how kids can salvage one's mistakes. For example, as recounted here before, I've been an obsessive and stupid athlete at times, injuring body and mind, in the pursuit of victory. All that didn't really work out too well for me and yet now I can share my joy of cycling with my son--kind of makes up for my mistakes. Also, riding with Seth tempers me. I'm less (note less--I'm not a saint) concerned with how fast we are going or who is passing us. Instead of focusing on myself (full disclosure: I did hammer the last hill and then couldn't find Seth but he was waiting for me at the van so all went well), I'm concerned with how he is doing, feeling, etc. Just about to hit 40, that's where I need to be.

A Room of One's Own

Life doesn’t seem to thoroughly surprise me too often anymore. Well, that’s not entirely true. I often get surprised at how absolutely stupid we are at times. Like when watching Sicko the other night, I just couldn’t believe the inanity of our health care system and the amazing lies we continue to tell ourselves about so-called socialized medicine. But I also couldn’t believe that a smart guy like Michael Moore continues to insist on including a few low blows (i.e his Charleton Heston stunt in Bowling for Columbine) like the boat into Cuba—dumb, over-dramatic, not even rhetorically savvy. So that kind of surprise I get plenty of but the positive shake-up, the “wow, I’m feeling so good about how the world has opened up” rarely happens.

It happened today when we set up my new office. It’s not exactly “new” but before it was just a fold up table and a book shelf. Now, thanks to furniture in a box and my wife who pushed and pulled me along, I’ve got a desk, a hutch, two book shelves and a matching filing cabinet (though my wife will probably take over this, sticking all kinds of unimportant crap in there like our birth certificates, warranties, account information, you name it). It’s got that new-all-over kind of feel—new carpet, new baseboards that I cut and my wife painted, a new lamp, and lot of space where I can stack books and papers and crap. But that’s not what led to my epiphany, not exactly.

A room of one’s own, a potentially blasphemous comparison I know being the dominant white male I am, but it’s true. I haven’t had my own permanent space since I was a kid and back then I didn’t know dick about what I liked or what comforted me. I know I have a house, all 3,000 square feet of it, but it’s not only my space and honestly it’s really my wife’s space. I’m not really blaming her—I’ve pretty much relinquished the space as I don’t trust my decorating skills and because I have other important battle fronts. To demonstrate: I’ve had some old beer bottles I’ve wanted to put out; instead they have been wrapped and shaded in a wooden box with a latch (one my dad made in wood shop) for years. I’m not a beer drinker so why in the hell would I want to display these? Because they have a story, a great story. When I was about 12 my grandmother Christy had me and my cousin, Jeff, help clean out her attic. While cleaning it we found cases of old beer bottles. Given my grandmother was a devout Mormon, this came as a bit of shock. Turns out her husband made his own beer. Funny she kept the bottles for so long—he died in the late 1950s.

My grandmother was quite embarrassed and wasn’t going to let us keep any of the bottle until we begged. And even then she only wanted us to have one of each kind. I clearly remember going back to the truck and sneaking about small 12 oz Fisher bottle. On many occasion I’ve tried to find a place for these but my wife has always put the Kaibosh on it. I guess they tie me to my past, to my grandmother Christy who lived next door where I spent evenings watching the Love Boat and eating popcorn popped the old way with oil in a pan and days helping the garden, moving the grass, carrying out her flower boxes (hell they were heavy) each summer that she’d kept alive in the house during the winter. And they speak to the often hidden lives of Mormons—I like that.

And now at 39, I have a space where I can put up whatever I want. It’s kind of liberating, opening up all kinds of possibilities.

I scouted around for the boxes that hold my childhood stuff. I’ve found many a treasure to put in my new found space: marbles that my dad gave me which he had gotten from Uncle Floyd—several are made of clay, dating back 70 plus years; nifty rocks I’ve held onto for years—a petrified piece of wood, a seeming embedded vertebrae of some sorts, a pink crystal type rock; and many more antique bottles. The attic clean up with my grandma Christy also yielded several wine jugs, my favorites are the fancy Ellena Brothers 1 gallon wine jugs from CA. It took cunning to keep a hold of these as my grandma tried to get them back a week later; she had a friend who wanted to plant something in them---of course we refused, thinking this was an abomination to blemish such a fine bottle.

I also put on display several of the antique bottles my grandpa Mackey gave me before he died. He literally had 1,000s of antique purple bottles curing on his roof for years, then stored them in the basement along side his vast collection of arrowheads. He was an impatient man with people, until he got older, but a meticulous, detailed oriented collector. A year or so before he died he began to distribute his bottles to his grandchildren. Among my 15 or so are several flasks, a few Watkin’s medicine flasks, and a purplish thick bottle which my grandpa said was of very good quality. Glass a dying age of containers, which reaches back to those past on.

It’s the oddest feeling sitting here with the familiarity of my stuff: my little sanctuary. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this before—the money, the time, insecurities. Here I am and feels good, calming, in the moment. So many possibilities open up for one not apt to buy much of anything outside of books and bikes: some images of Hayao Miyazaki crouched over his drawings smoking, images from Miyazaki’s films, some Dan Johnston artwork, a Georgia O’Keefe, a landscape painting or two. Maybe having these things around me solidifies what I believe in, what I’ve done, who I am. A room of my own is a very fine thing.

Guess what I saw?

While Rexburg itself is mostly flat, treeless, and unenticing (at least geographically) a mere 25 miles away is Mesa Falls. I got an early start this morning with road bike and gear in tow. I parked next to an alfalfa field just outside of Ashton, unloaded my bike, and started out on my Mesa Falls Scenic Byway adventure.

Yes, I did fell slightly guilty that I drove 50 miles (roundtrip) in order to bike 40 miles. Still, it had much more appeal than a ride through the potatoe fields around Rexburg and the appeal came through better than the promises of our $20 fireworks kit from the night before. First, I stopped to stretch and meditate a bit at Warm River, then I ascended through shady coniferous roads towards Bear Gulch, an appropriate name given I saw..... (I'm not shitting you) a bear cub. It ran across the road about 20 yards from me. I about fell off the bike, not from fear but joy--I just couldn't believe it. And, Yes, I was afraid the sow might be near so I did not dither; of course if she had given chase I would have cranked in a Tour de France type finish line sprint and left her in the dust. At least that's how I pictured it in my mind as I quickly looked back and forth across the road as I passed where the cub had crossed. Inspired by the bear sighting, I looked more closely for animals, spotting two white tail deer just off the road a few minutes later.

And through it all (at least the 20 miles out early in the morning) I only passed a handful of cars--everyone must have slept in with some hangover, alcohol or firework induced, keeping them flattened to the mattress. I wondered whether Mega was up and about yet--she and the Historian were probably only a handful of miles away from where I turned around (just west--I think--to Island Park). Seems they may have had the firework hangover (see here). And yes, Mega, Idaho does equal Heaven, about the closest any of us will ever get to heaven thinks me.

I did take two quick detours to see both the lower and upper falls (I've seen them several times but still had to stop). On the way back, I set out to improve my paltry 13mph average--several hills and some coasting to look for animals and the views to blame and I'm kind of out of shape. I only increased it to 16mph, but I was ok with that--I'd seen a bear cub, I'd seen a bear, and I'd enjoyed the immensley enjoyable sound of nothing else (for most of the trip) but my wheels spinning down the road in a vast Idaho landscape of tree, rivers, mountains.

Living Live

Tonight I'm taking the kids to see Cold Creek, a bluegrass band from Utah County. I need a motto for the summer or maybe the year. Something like Live Local Live or Live helps you Live. Ok, so maybe I don't need a motto. What I want is to continue seeing live performances, particularly of local stuff and/or in local/small venues. To that end, Cold Creek tonight, then Kansas at our very own local amphitheater in August; and either this summer or the next, I want to do the Shakespeare Festival with the kids. Also, and dang it I meant to order tickets to someone, I want to see something at Red Butte. Finally, for the year, David Sedaris in October (that's without the kids).

There's something about live performance that rejuvenates me; somehow while focusing on getting degrees, family, running, paying the mortgage etc. I let a million live shows pass me by. At least this one ain't getting by tonight.

Blogging World Predictions for 2009 (or revitalizing a silly juvenile genre just for the hell of it)

First blogger world

1. Middlebrow and Dr. Write, after an embarrassment of riches, will shake the dust of this community college for a prestigious joint chairship somewhere in the Northwest. Incredibly MB’s desk will become a shrine for the student group he forms before leaving, "Simplicity Now!," a desk which mysteriously stays clean even when officemate and other doubters mess it up.
2. Mega, already spending most of her time in the NW, will, as she does so well, duplicate herself and manage to maintain her current teaching position while also becoming poet laureate of the NW and Canada AND the radiant music professor in a new movie (see #3).
3. Sig Nothing will finally tire of the noise and congestion as the 4^th production of a College musical (aka high school musicales go to university) goes into preproduction and will take up Monkey Wrenching on the set in the evenings. The production will be delayed, until in an undisclosed deal Sig will become the Zac Efron for, the decidedly more intellectual HM franchise, “Teaching in College Musicale: the Remoteness of Being.”
4. Unip and Building a rock wall will move to a remote cabin in the Canadian frontier where they will telecommute via satellite to their jobs each afternoon; climbing crags and boulders with their five children (this won’t all quite happen in 2009) will take up their mornings.
   

Second blogger world (in chronology not affection):

5. Myself Undone (aka Anarchist) will create a one man play, “Freedom for: A Proustian approach to life.” It will go to Broadway where in an interview Undone will respond to questions about his ultimate purpose, “I have made to unmake; done to be undone; where I am, there is nothing.” To which mobs of New Yorkers will respond by ransacking established government and commerce to create land based, sustainable agriculture on rooftops.
6. Happy Heretic will hit it big in online stock market trading and will change his lifestyle radically by making two instead of one trip a year to Mesquite and by donating one million dollars to a project entitled, “Merging identities: Freedom ‘from’ is for dumbasses” run by Undone, SE, and yours truly.
7. Spontaneous expression’s (recently Disregulated) witty, hard-hitting blog will go mainstream; she will blissfully and unabashedly dance on Ellen while announcing her new blog as book, “Disregulating Yourself: The Kama-Sutra of Identity.”
8. Paradigm Shift will want distance from his friends and family and move to Utah. Even though he will take a job which pays 200K, he humbly and helpfully will buy two homes surprisingly close to my own (one directly north of my own and another one—kind of in disrepair—in my very own cul-de-sac). He and my sis will remodel beautifully the home in the cul-de-sac, increasing the value of my own home, all the while enjoying immensely the proximity to me, and strangely enough ultimately donating the home directly behind to me.

A vision of St. George with the kids: the road less traveled

Last year Alison and I went to St George and, as often happens, I found myself thinking the kids would love this hike or activity. So then and there we decided we'd bring them with next year. And amazingly enough we did--10 years quicker than it took me to get my kids to San Francisco after a similar experience there. I guess St George is a little cheaper.

First up: the rocks 2 minutes, just north of St George where you can sit...

or learn climbing skills from an inexpert...

"There are two ways up boys--the wimpy bridge thing or straight up."

or take shadow pictures...

or, not captured in photos, watch very scared people learning to rappel off the biggest square looking rock or look down on St George.

Next stop: Mt biking for some, hiking and complaining for others, at Gooseberry Mesa,
some of the best little known mt biking in the state. The practice loop is excellent for those learning to mt bike and/or one's first experience with slick rock:

It's hard to explain how amazingly cool it was to get Seth, my oldest, out on the slick rock. I've taken him mt biking several times but mt biking in Davis County is pretty boring and requires a lot of technical skill and strength. Very satisfying to see him enjoy himself. Hopefully an experience which will lead to many more mt biking trips.

Youngest son wasn't quite ready to bike the slick rock, but he ran alongside for a couple of miles.

Hana wasn't nearly excited by this slick rock wonderland.

Of course she didn't have a bike nor the skills to tackle it. I thought I'd do better with the gender-specific activities, but I've hit many rocky and unpredictable ascents--Hana has barely touched the bike we bought for her and tends to want to watch Hannah Montana instead. Keep offering opportunities, right? She did ride Seth's bike down the jeep trail which intersects the mesa. And find other stuff we can do together--we just watched A Room with a View, which I couldn't get my oldest son to even look at.

Youngest son finally got some biking in on the way out on the dirt road.

He was so cute as he would pull up on his handlebars whenever we crossed small patches of slick rock on the road--maybe next year he will be ready for slick rock 101.

BTW Gooseberry is a great little find between St George and Zion's (and it's free) but it's a bit of a bumpy, washboard road. Turns out two brothers laid out the trails and got the National Forest service to sign on; sometimes the little guy does win.

Next stop: the often overshadowed, by Zion's, Arches, and Bryce, Snow Canyon State park just north west of St. George.

Here's Seth climbing the petrified sand dunes:

more petrified sand dune climbing:

Daughter had (mostly) a better time on this hike:

And everyone enjoyed the lava tube caves--a break from the heat, adventurous, and a bit creepy especially since we saw the new Indiana Jones movie the night before:

If you do some hiking in Snow Canyon, I highly recommend the Butterfly trail which will connect you to the lava tube trail (take a left here) and just 20 yards later you will be at the biggest lava tube/cave.

***

Well, as you can tell I'm quite satisfied with myself--it's rare in life, at least mine, to have a vision of something and then actually, pretty much (note earlier post on eating at JB's), pull it off. On the way home, I brainstormed some other visions I'd like to actualize with the kids, preferably before the oldest graduates high school:

Colorado Springs (including Pikes Peak)
the Grand Canyon
Mesa Verde
Shakespeare Festival (the more cerebral is good too)
Mt Timpanogas

It's cliche, but wow there's so much I want to do and so little time to do it. I just can't believe that I've never made it up Mt Timp again since my initial summit in 94--where in the world did those 14 years go???

My meditation image for the day.

Crab Spider capturing a bee on yellow flower

p.s. I showed this image to my 7 yr old son, leading him through the image, like a good teacher, with questions (what do you see? what else? are you sure?) Once he could discern the spider and its intentions, he remarked "it's like playing hide-go-seek, except different."

Never, even if....

NEVER, even if the kids or other car occupants are screaming, even if you feel you can't go on, even if your head aches and your gut is growling, even if you've driven down the same street 12 times, even if your spouse threatens divorce, even if the meter's on empty, even if you may inadvertently scream: "where @$*&# do you want to eat then??", even if you have hit the wall, even if you may never go on a vacation again, even if every restaurant is closed because it's Sunday and only Mormons live in that town, NEVER EVER settle for the JB's off Bluff Street in St George.

I've never paid for worse food and service in my life--the beets were a light orchid purple, the lettuce wilted, each dressing and liquidy salad had a 1/4 inch film AND never was a refill on water offered even though we were the only other table.

Lesson learned: do not, as I often do on vacations, get so focused on eating at unique restaurants unattainable at home that one loses sight of the bigger picture--purchasing edible food which leads to sustenance. If you can't find unique and interesting, move onto reliable, rather than settling for whatever happens to be in front of you at the brink of utter frustration.

Consider yourselves warned.

Reading en espanol

I was chastised by someone this past semester, I think by a Latina woman I helped in the writing center, for not keeping up my Spanish through reading. Of course, although I have always intended to read in Spanish, I've read very little since my return from Spain except when getting my Spanish minor: started several novels, completed a few short stories, various newspaper articles. So, once again, I start down the road, hoping I might actually do some serious study--a leer!!

I've chosen through careful examination and contemplation (i.e. I happened to find a copy at Saver's half off sale) Isabel Allende's retrato en sepia. I'm not quite sure why I will be more likely to read this novel rather than any one of the 15 Spanish novels I have down in our basement, but what the hell.

Reading the first few pages reminds me that my early experiences with Spanish literature helped me decide to be an English major (my first college lit class was a Spanish one). And it reminds me of how beautiful the Spanish language is as the main character contemplates the difficulties in discovering the truth of one's past and of truth in general: "He venido a saber los detalles de mi nacimiento bastante tarde en la vida, pero peor seria no haberlos descubierto nunca; podrian haberse extraviado para siempre en los vericuetos del olvido. Hay tantos secretos en me familia, que tal vez no me alcance el tiempo para despejarlos todos: la verdad es fugaz, lavada por torrentes de lluvia."

Isn't that last line wonderful? La verdad (the truth) is fleeting, watered down by torrents of rain--sounds much better in Spanish. If all language is metaphorical then maybe the Spanish sounds better to the novice like me because it's still a fresh metaphor. And of course Spanish is much less gruff and rough than English with all its vowel endings.

Bueno, voy a leer algunas paginas.

Quite a *summer* weekend

Saturday:

• Bike ride to Layton park with my youngest son in the morning: I now know it’s summer.
• Watch oldest son’s last soccer game of the season: they went undefeated for the season; the passing and tenacity is a pleasure to watch; Seth will take on anyone in his midfield position and has of late found a certain composure and awareness.
• Hour and half mt bike ride in 90 degree weather—I was wasted but did get cheered on by some hikers as I made one difficult climb.
• Rush to get to Guitar City before it closed: son needed a cowbell for his drumset—serrendipitously son decided he wanted a cowbell and we happened to watch Christopher Walken’s and Will Farrel’s hilarious SNL skit with the Blue Oyster Club—“We need more cowbell.” See the video here: http://www.funnyhub.com/videos/pages/snl-more-cowbell.html
• End the evening with our favorite little Mongolian Barbecue in Ogden.

Sunday:

Up early with the two boys (daughter informed me she isn’t a hiker) to scout out a new trail I found in Centerville: Parish Creek trail or Centerville Peak. A five and half hour, 8 mile hike (longest one yet for my 7 year old)—beautiful views of Bountiful peak, Davis County, Antelope Island, and the Great Salt Lake. Every ounce of food, water and Gatorade was consumed but we did, as youngest son insisted, reach snow (mentioned by a guy coming down) which he threw at us for miles on the way down. I tried to get my pictures off my phone but the @*&$&#*& thing won’t work. See photo from someone else's hike.

• In the afternoon my daughter and I finish up Out of Africa (side note: I thought I had seen this movie but it turns out I had just listened to the soundtrack so many times I imagined it). Good moments with our daughter are far and few right now (she is solidly and only focused on herself at this point) so I jumped when I saw her getting into this film—several good conversations came out of the film. One about syphilis and another about the causes and planning of world wars.
• Later, an honest and nourishing discussion about religion with my wife (in part brought about since I under-estimated hike time and stubbornness of 7 year old, missing church by 2 hrs).

Friday's goals...

I thought about doing difficult work, stuff I've been putting off (update websites, research for a 1010 retention study, revision of a paper....), until lunch today and then rewarding myself with some sci-fi short stories this afternoon. Instead, I jumped directly to the dessert, reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's amazing "Elbow Room," a pleasurable unraveling of a story (as I noted on the contents page of my book) which starts out with a loner "womaning" a space station where her every psychological and physical need is met AND ends with self-aggrandizement and multiple personalities.

It's going to be tough deciding which of the Norton short stories not to use for my sci-fi diversity class this summer; tougher yet get myself to do the real work I've been putting off since April--maybe Monday will be the day.

We all live...in a different sensory world

Roberta Haas, recent Pulitzer prize winner in poetry, was interviewed today on the News Hour on PBS. In talking about his poem “The problem of describing trees” he ponders if a tree dances, no, capitalizes no… In the interview Haas quotes Wittgenstein’s “the limits of our language are the limits of our world” and E.O. Wilson’s “Every species lives in a different sensory world.” I’m aware that both of these claims, especially the first, might sometimes get overstated; still, I was bowled over by the latter. There are, without proving ETs, different worlds: my cat lives in my house yet in another house; the dolphin lives on this planet but we do not know the same world. Isn’t that an amazing thought? Each species has at its “finger tips” on its very own world.

And that got me thinking about how each of us human animals truly live in a different sensory world too. It's not that we merely perceive reality differently, we live in different realities. We’re probably all more similar to one another than we are to a cat, but still...this difference the ultimate proof of distinct subjectivities. All at once beautiful and terrifyingly depressing.

**I wrote this yesterday and had more to say but my all-day-grading-session has turned my mind to mush. I swear if I grade another paper I will barf up my brain.

La bella luna

Having been rebuked by Mega for my critical comment about poetry (though truth be told it was more about missing the regular non-poetry fare on her blog than a dig at the month long poetry contest), I pulled out some poetry the other night. I'd been feeling quite negative all day--everything seemed the color of brown shit. And that feeling hadn't gone away, a kind of funk I knew would interfere with my sleep. Instead of seeking a sleep I wouldn't fine, I took out Billy Collins Picnic, Lightning.

It's not that I do not like poetry at all. I've actually had some wonderful experiences with poetry: Robert Browning's bickering priests, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tom Andrew's Random Symmetries. But these encounters with poetry have been forced--an undergrad English class, someone else's book club pick. Because it's not my strength--I'm always better when engaging the big stuff where details take a less central role--I don't gravitate towards it and I often feel I should "get it" better than I do. I mean I am an English Major.

So, I read Collin's "Moon"--and I found a glimmer of hope on both accounts, particularly in the last three stanzas:

"And if you wanted to follow the example,
tonight would be the night
to carry some tiny creature outside
and introduce him to the moon.

And if your house has no child,
you can always gather into your arms
the sleeping infant of yourself,
as I have done tonight,
and carry him outdoors,
all limp in his tattered blanket,
making sure to steady his lolling head
with the palm of your hand.

And while the wind ruffles the pear trees
in the corner of the orchard
and dark roses wave against a stone wall,
you can turn him on your shoulder
and walk in circle on the lawn
drunk with the light.
You can lift him up into the sky,
your eyes nearly as wide as his,
as the moon climbs high into the night."

Of course I wanted to be that "sleeping infant of yourself" carried out to see the moon, to take our own infant selves, these "limp" and wrapped in "tattered blanket" selves. I felt limp and tattered and wanted what the moon could bring: wonder. I winced a tear back and decided to read some more. Just maybe I could develop a connection to such stanzad, syllabic, stuff.

The next night, still trying to resurrect my now not-as-glum spirits, we finished Moonstruck. And for the second time in so many days the moon figured brightly in saving me a trip and 50 bucks. The old grandfather with all his dogs: "La bella luna! The moon brings the woman to the man. Capice?" And Ronny's speech outside his house after the opera:

"Everything seems like nothing to me now, 'cause I want you in my bed. I don't care if I burn in hell. I don't care if you burn in hell. The past and the future is a joke to me now. I see that they're nothing. I see they ain't here. The only thing that's here is you - and me...Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!"

A bit of peace with myself and poetry I gained. Maybe both work on each other.

Towards Belief: Worthy of what humanity has become

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how one negotiates community and personal identity. A couple of weeks ago my niece was baptized into the Mormon church. My sister asked if I wanted to stand in the circle (a big deal in the Mormon community) for her confirmation since I have the Melquisedec priesthood. I wasn't sure how to respond as I wanted to support her and my niece, but had to admit to her, as she already knows, that I don't believe in God let alone the notion of a priesthood. This didn't really bother her as she is not much of a literalist and has just recently gotten involved in Mormonism for the community stuff. Eventually she had me be a witness at the baptism which also requires the Melquisedec priesthood I believe. In part I think involving me was one way of helping my sister and my mother have someone from the family involved--my sister is divorced and her not-so-beloved ex did the baptizing.

Thinking about this decision connects, I think, to Spontaneous Expression's recent comment on my last post which you can find here if you scroll down. I was struck by the insight she gained when attending a church (not a Mormon church): "It made me reconsider the potential benefits of a formal organization, Mormon or otherwise." And then later in her comment she gives a typical SE zinger: "Let the believers believe in peace." Yes, I too want to let the believers believe in peace. I wish they could let me believe in peace, but I realize I can't let my actions to be contingent upon theirs.

And this is where I have to part ways with the likes of Richard Dawkin's and other new atheists who sometimes seem to want to get in a fight with religious folks. I have no desire to do this--well, only on bad days. In trying to find a new community, I bristle when "atheists" make judgments of religious people as simple-minded and fanatical. To me these kinds of blanket pronouncements only serve to reproduce the very same fanaticism these atheists proclaim to denounce, ultimately narrowing what it means to be human and spiritual. Of course I allow some leniency because this is such a minority voice and it can easily get completely squashed--still it ain't where I'm headed. And as long as there is a gap between our understanding of the world, there will be a place where art and religion seek out meaning. Even if I prefer art, I can see why religion fulfills this same desire, is experienced as art by some, and is preferred by many. To simply say religious people are wrong is simple-minded--clearly a creative and artistic imagination often-times flourishes in a religious environment.

I'm even uncomfortable with the term atheist. It seems to define me by what I am not--not a believer in God. This is similar to terms like "non-member" or "non-white," a type of term which helps create silly questions based on assumptions, "How can you not believe in anything?" As Greg Epstein, a humanist Chaplain (yes, chaplain, educated in a humanist rabbinical school), argues in his recent interview on Speaking of Faith, he is a believer, a believer in humanism, in life, in his family. I'm not ready to give up on belief as an important part of being human.

I turn to a quote from André Comte-Sponville's, a French philosopher, The Little book of Atheist Spirituality. It was part of the Speaking of Faith program I refer to above; again, as I've mentioned before in my blog, check out the program particulars created for each SoF program--they include extended quotations, titles to music, links, and images referred to in the program.

The quote below helps me to begin articulating the positive side of my beliefs, the what I believe in rather than the what I don't believe in. It's still wrapped up with God talk and religion, but it's a start:

***

Where morals are concerned, the loss of faith changes nothing or next to nothing. That you have lost your faith does not mean that you will suddenly decide to betray your friends or indulge in robbery, rape, assassination and torture. "If God does not exist," says Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, "everything is allowed." Not at all, for the simple reason that I will not allow myself everything! As Kant demonstrated, either morals are autonomous or they do not exist at all. If a person refrains from murdering his neighbor only out of fear of divine retribution, his behavior is dictated not by moral values but by caution, fear of the holy policeman, egoism. And if a person does good only with an eye to salvation, she is not doing good (since her behavior is dictated by self-interest, rather than by duty or by love) and will thus not be saved. This is Kant, the Enlightenment and humanity at their best. A good deed is not good because God commanded me to do it (in which case it would have been good for Abraham to slit his son's throat); on the contrary, it is because an action is good that it is possible to believe God commanded it. Rather than religion being the basis for morals, morals are now the basis for religion. This is the inception of modernity. To have a religion, the Critique of Practical Reason points out, is to "acknowledge all one's duties as sacred commandments." For those who no longer have faith, commandments vanish (or, rather, lose their sacred quality), and all that remains are duties—that is, the commandments we impose upon ourselves.

Alain puts it beautifully in his Letters to Sergio Solmi on the Philosophy of Kant: "Ethics means knowing that we are spirit and thus have certain obligations, for noblesse oblige. Ethics is neither more nor less than a sense of dignity."Should I rob, rape and murder? It would be unworthy of me—unworthy of what humanity has become, unworthy of the education I have been given, unworthy of what I am and wish to be. I therefore refrain from such behavior, and this is what is known as ethics. There is no need to believe in God—one need believe only in one's parents and mentors, one's friends (provided they are well chosen) and one's conscience.

***
It helps, as Epstein argues and we can experience in this last quote, to connect my own beliefs in humanity to many great thinkers of the past. There's a lineage of folks throughout time who felt similar to me--that's community too. And just maybe these connection will help me, when appropriate, allow others to believe in peace, to even participate amongst them with all of our differences and similarities.