Movie Review: "True Grit" (2010 version)

Growing up at the tail end of the western movie era, there is something nostalgic for me about watching cowboys and indians or sheriffs and outlaws on the big screen. Some of my favorite television characters were Matt Dillon, Kitty and Festus. When "Silverado" came out in the '80s, I applauded the return of the western genre, but there have been very few westerns made since that time.

So when my husband suggested that we go see "True Grit" this afternoon, I wasn't opposed to the idea, even though "The King's Speech" was the next movie I planned to see. Somehow I missed the original "True Grit" and had the story line confused with "High Noon." I'm glad now that I did not know the story, because it was all fresh and unexpected.

It was one of the best movies I've ever seen. I was there, in that town on the edge of the frontier. I was 14-year-old Mattie, saddling up for an adventure, only mildly aware of the potential dangers ahead.

The story deals with vengeance, redemption, honor, and determination.

All of the acting was superb, especially Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn. Phenomenal! He was completely believable. Matt Damon made an exceptionally fine Texas Ranger. Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross was great, too. All of the minor characters, most of them outlaws, were absoltuely convincing. The casting was perfect.

And the writing was outstanding -- never too much. Sometimes I expected more information, because movies these days tend to spoon feed the audience, but I was pleased that this script did not attempt to explain self-evident details.

I expected the movie to be violent, but it was even more violent than I thought it would be. I also expected it to be suspenseful, and it definitely was. What I did not expect was humor, but it was full of humor as well. Cogburn's ramblings and his frequent squabbles with LaBoeuf were priceless.

When I walked out of the movie theater, I wanted to walk right back in again.

Some Quotes on Life and Writing

Pit your daily determination, discipline, grit, and sense of duty against the debilitating emotions of fear, dread, confusion, and procrastination.
-- Lloyd D. Newell. Oct. 17. 2010 ("Music and the Spoken Word")

There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write. - Natalie Goldberg

Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit. - Andre Dubus

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -- Pablo Picasso

Nothing keeps a poet in his high singing mood like unappeasable hunger for unattainable food. -- Joyce Kilmer

Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember. -- Willa Cather

I am always surprised at what I find in myself, and this to me is the most rewarding part of being a writer. -- Doris Lessing

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie

Publication - is the auction of the Mind of Man. ~Emily Dickinson

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~Arthur Polotnik

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. ~Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~Gustave Flaubert

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. ~Jules Renard, Journal, 10 April 1895

I do not like to write - I like to have written. ~Gloria Steinem



And one exquisite stanza of a poem by Ezra Pound (not necessarily about writing):


What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.
What thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee.
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

Change the Page...Write About Anything!

Late Sunday night, two stories due for the newspaper tomorrow -- the perfect time to blog. At least that is my M.O.

Anyway, I have one recent quote to share:


Frank Layden , Utah Jazz president, on a former player:
"I asked him, 'Son, what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?'
He said, 'Coach, I don't know and I don't care.'"

Love it! Utah's own Yogi Berra.

Here are some famous Yogi Berra quotes:
As a general comment on baseball: "90% of the game is half mental."[17]
On why he no longer went to Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."[18]
"It ain't over till it's over." In July 1973, when Berra's Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East; the Mets rallied to win the division title on the final day of the season.[19]
When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which is accessible by two routes: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."[20]
On being the guest of honor at an awards banquet: "Thank you for making this day necessary."[21]
"It's déjà vu all over again". Berra explained that this quote originated when he witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris repeatedly hit back to back home runs in the Yankees' seasons in the early 1960s.[22]
"You can observe a lot by watching."[23]
"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours."[24]
Responding to a question about remarks attributed to him that he did not think were his: "I really didn't say everything I said!"[25]
On the death of George Steinbrenner, the New York Times quotes Berra as saying "George and I had our differences, but who didn't?"[26]

Random Thoughts (not procrastinating)

I'm not procrastinating this time -- I'm just relaxing, or chill-axing, as my daughter Emily says.

I think I have one, maybe two actual people out there who read this blog so it's almost a private exercise like writing in a journal. Who can explain the inclination to publicize our thoughts or to eat in restaurants with total strangers or sit in movie theaters with hundreds of people we've never met, laughing and, sometimes, crying together? I can't, except to say that we definitely like being part of a pack, no matter how much we value our individuality (and I certainly value mine.)

So many random thoughts recently with so little time to flesh them out for blog entries.

Full Body Scan vs Intimate Pat Down: Is this really necessary? We all accept a certain amount of risk when we fly, or when we drive down the street, or when we step out the front door. I would be more at ease knowing that they are using El Al interrogation techniques on suspicious individuals than knowing that everyone on the flight has been seen naked or felt out. Neither method will detect items hidden internally. There is no fool-proof method.

When you cross nto the United States from Canada, the border agent asks a series of questions like: What was the purpose of your visit? Did you purchase anything while you were in Canada? etc. On our recent trip, the agent also asked what time our ship was scheduled to depart -- not because he wanted to know, but because he wanted to see if we were really on that ship. He wanted to catch us in a lie, if we were doing anything criminal. Maybe TSA agents could be similarly trained. That's how they do it in Israel, and they've been dealing with jihadists a lot longer than we have. El Al is the world's most secure airline because of its security protocols.

Snow:
Last weekend we had 15 inches of snow overnight with no media fanfare. For the past 24 hours we've been anticipating a major blizzard, which materialized on cue at 5pm and fizzled out (at least temporarily) about midnight after eight inches of accumulation. Now some of the windows in our house have oval frames of snow on them like fake flocking. This is the perfect kind of weather to have just before Thanksgiving because it makes you grateful for basic things like shelter and family and warm socks.

Hair color and the hijab:
I was shopping at Walmart recently and got in line behind a small Muslim family in the express lane. I noticed that the woman was wearing a simple hijab, or hair covering scarf. I could not see even a strand of her hair, so when I noticed what they were buying I was surprised: three boxes of hair coloring product. WOuld I color my hair if no one would ever see it outside of my own household? Probably not, but I admire her for it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Musings While Procrastinating

This is my relatively simplistic cell phone. It has a camera I do not know how to use and very few other features, which is just fine with me.


I have two stories overdue at the newspaper, so you know I am going to blog because I am a terrible, terrible procrastinator!

We had picture perfect weather for a few days last week, but now it is cold and blustery outside. Everything is wet.

I've officially decided that flowering pears are my second favorite trees when all lined up along the edge of a road. All of the roads leading to our house are lined with them. In the spring they're covered wth blossoms and in the fall they're multi-colored oranges and reds blended with green. One medium-sized leaf can be blotched with all three. Gorgeous! Of course maples are stunning and much taller and they bend over the road, while pears grow straight up, so maples would have to be my favorite. (Reminds me of my son, Tom, and how he always used to list for me his favorite foods, especially when food items moved positions. The foods he's always disliked: celery and onions.)

Why does every human being on the planet (myself included) carry a cell phone? I can count on one hand the number of people I know who do not use cell phones, and I admire them. Cell phones are everywhere and not just in pockets or at the bottom of purses (where mine usually is). Who needs to be in constant contact? It reminds me of the "nuclear football" the Secret Service carries around with the president in case the United States should come under attack.

It's like we can't be alone anymore and we won't be inconvenienced. If I want to call you, you must be availabel to talk to me N*O*W!!! My phone was dead this morning and I was momentarily panicked. I plugged it into the electric socket in my van as I ran errands, comforted by the knowledge that it was recharging. When you need a cell phone, you really, really, really need one, but most of the time you simply don't. (My son,Tom, for example, just interrupted this blog post to call me from his cell phone to ask me a minor cooking question.)

And who needs a cell phone / mini-computer / GPS unit all-in-one? My husband does. When he hands me his phone to place I call, I look at it dumbfounded. When he hands it to me to see something on the screen, the image always disappears before I've seen it because I touch some button on the the edge somewhere, or tilt the screen to its side. It drives me crazy! All I can say at such times is "I hate your phone!"

If it were up to me, we would have dials again and cords, just to keep it extra slow and anchored in one place. And when you stepped outside you couldn't hear the phone ring and when you went for a ride in the car you really couldn't hear the phone ring and you were free.

Nothing else to kvetch about...Don't make we focus on my articles! Alas, I must go.

No One Asked My Opinion, But I'm Giving It

Once or twice a year I get to express myself at the ballot box.

I haven't been interviewed by any polsters this election, but I have a lot more than usual to say. On local matters I'll say it all at the polls, but here are some of my stream-of-consciousness opinions (unsolicited) on a variety of other political figures:

on Nancy Pelosi - She SHOULD be ashamed of several things: suggesting that that protesting "Tea Partiers" were wearing swastikas, motivated by racism; linking arms with other Congressmen to march up the Capitol steps through a crowd of angry protestors with an oversized gavel in her hands to pass hugely unpopular welfare reform, a 2000+ page bill no one had read. She did not have to walk up the steps beaming from ear to ear - it was just one more way to demonstrate her power.

on Christine O'Donnell (Delaware senate candidate)-- I believed the early anti-hype about her (her shocking lack of experience, etc.) but when I heard her speak so eloquently and with conviction, I was reassured that she would be a good senator. The polls indicate she will not win.

on Meg Whitman (California gubernatorial candidate) -- A whore? Oh come on! I am extremely impressed with her on every level and can NOT imagine how Jerry Brown could possibly win. He is the west coast version of Joe Biden and a total joke. If Californians are stupid enough to vote for Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown, I hope the federal government will not bail the state out as it continues its inevitable decline. Elections have consequences, as the saying goes.

on Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader) and Karen Angle (Nevada senate candidate) -- I'm sure Harry is a fine man, but he's always wrong politically and has to go. Karen Angle has been unfairly criticized becasue she is a normal citizen and not a lifelong political hack. I will admit that when I first heard her interviewed on the radio by Laura Ingraham I was not impressed with some of her positions, but I hope she wins (and I think she will, barring election fraud, which is a very real possibility.)

on Marco Rubio (Florida senate candidate) -- Wow! I heard him speak for the first time a week ago and he is definitely a future presidential candidate. His biography is inspirational all by itself. He should win today.

I hope Obama's senate seat goes to Kirk in Illinois and that all of Ohio goes Republican.

From sea to shining sea, people are justifiably enraged! Thank goodness for midterms!!!!!!

Some Intriguing First Lines from Literature

As a reader, I love a really good first line, because great writing inspires me to read and to write. Here are some celebrated first lines from a variety of novels:

Call me Ishmael. - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. - George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

I am an invisible man. - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. - W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

Keep your lips from dull complaining...

Several years ago on Mother's Day I received a small book of poems, but I don't remember any of them except this one, which I accidentally memorized because I thought of it quite often, and still do:

Mother, keep your eyes from tears
Keep your heart from foolish fears
Keep your lips from dull complaining
Lest the baby think it's raining.

I think it's okay for a mother to cry and express fears and complaints occasionally, but this weekend my son, Tom, who was home from college for one day, said I was overdoing it (comnplaining, I mean) and he was right.

It was Sunday afternoon and I was trying to get everyone in the house to stop napping and playing and go to the car so that we could go for a drive in the mountains. Have you ever tried to move five people from a state of complete inertia...it's always a chore!

Within a mile or two of the house I was fine again, even semi-relaxed. We went on to enjoy our drive over the Alpine Loop, where we saw a moose and a lot of golden trees sprinkled with red and orange trees and evergreens.

So back to the little poem: my babies aren't babies anymore, but I still believe in projecting sincere happiness, confidence and satisfaction whenever I can. Sincerity is the key -- nothing fake or forced. But a mom has to model for her children what makes it all worthwhile.

I Am Living a Charmed Life, and I Suspect You Are, Too

Looking through some old photographs a few minutes ago I realized (not for the first time) that I am living a charmed life. I like the expression, because charms are little things that sparkle and little things that sparkle are the things charmed lives are made of (figuratively speaking.)

Despite this analogy, I'm not a jewelry affionado. I am just big into gratitude and all of its benefits in terms of persepective and contentment. I truly believe we are all surrounded by beauty and love - beauty and love are everywhere like hidden Mickeys at Disneyland, only more commonplace and even less conspicuous.

I don't always feel this way, of course. Day-to-day life is, in many ways, a struggle. I see very little beauty in bills, laundry, or traffic, for example. In this life we experience the bitter and the sweet, but we get to choose which one draws our focus. Do we complain (because there is much to complain about), or do we appreciate?

Some corresponding thoughts from greater thinkers than me:

That which we feel as beauty we shall one day know as truth. -- Schiller (I think he's onto something here...he and Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"...)

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed round our incompleteness - round our restlessness, his rest. -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My Least Favorite Holiday

I'm bummed out. It's the 9th anniversary of 9-11 and I've just finished watching a documentary about that day. While it played on TV, I tried to keep busy making a grocery list and wiping down counters, but I was near tears, depressed.

Man's inhumanity to man. Pointless death and destruction.

I think they are calling 9-11 'Patriot Day,' which seems artificial to me. Other than the heroes of Flight 93 and the NYFD, I don't think of 9-11 as Patriot Day.

For the second year in a row, they are calling it a 'day of service.' I don't like that either. 9-11 didn't really have anything to do with service.

What happened on 9-11 is this: thousands of Americans went to work at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and they were murdered there, working at their desks. They went to work and they never came home again.

Other Americans got on airplanes that day and died. Many of them were traveling on business, too.

So I think of 9-11 as a working day. We honor the people who died that day not by taking the day off but by working. We just keep going about our business -- like me, making a grocery list and wiping down counters.

Meanwhile, we reflect on the innocense of the world before 9-11 and we pray that some day we can return to that peace.

And we honor the firefighters who ran up the stairs to save lives while terrified people were running down. And the passengers who 'more than self their country loved' and brought down the plane in Pennsylvania, saving countless other innocent lives.

We don't celebrate much of anything on 9-11, but we do reflect and honor and work and pray.

Movie Review: "Eat, Pray, Love"

As much as I wanted to like it, I found "Eat, Pray, Love" to be a pointless movie with a deceptively bad message.

Julia Roberts portrays the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who ended a dissatisfying marriage and a subsequent rebound relationship with a younger man to live briefly in three countrries over the course of one year in an effort to 'find herself.' The three countries (all beautiful) were Italy, India, and Bali.

In Italy she focused on her physical need for food ("eat"); in India she lived in the ashram of an absent guru ("pray"); and in Bali she succombed to the advances of a wealthy Brazilian ("love") while valuing the advice of a charleton wiseman. That's the story line.

The acting was good, the scenery was nice...so what's not to like?

The main character (not Julia Roberts, but Elizabeth Gilbert).

I did not find Gilbert to be a sympathetic main character I could cheer for. She got off on the wrong foot with me by rejecting her husband of seven years for no apparent reason, despite his protestations. She had simply become bored with him and with married life in general and wanted out. Oh, sure, she is wracked with guilt about it for fleeting moments here and there, but finding herself is a much more important quest than rekindling their love. We, the viewers, are supposed to understand and champion her voyage of self-discovery.

When she decides to leave him, she kneels in prayer and tells God that though she has never prayed before she hopes he [God] knows of her 'ample gratitude.' Bingo! That is exactly what she lacks -- she has no appreciation for her life.

She thinks she will discover herself on the other side of the world, but if she were a quote collector she would know this famous thought from Emerson:

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

But the quote that fits most perfectly with my reaction to the movie is from Horace Mann. I especially LOVE the first line:

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

Realization

I've been wondering lately what's wrong with me? Why is it so hard for me to let my two oldest children (and only sons) leave home to go to a university less than an hour from my home? It's not as though my nest is empty -- I still have at least eight years of hands-on parenting left with two daughters at home. It's a bittersweet thing, but usually more bitter than sweet.

Then tonight it hit me as I emerged from a movie -- the reason it is so difficult is that I have enjoyed this chapter of my life so much that I don't want it to end. I don't even really want it to change significantly, even though logically I know it will and it must. My boys have to move on, so I have to move on, too. We're all learning and growing.

And even though I have to accept it as some sort of biological imperative, it's okay for me to accept it reluctantly.

Robert Frost understood, as evidenced by this final stanza of his poem "Reluctance":


Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Life 101

The most consummately beautiful thing in the universe is the rightly fashioned life of a good person. – George Palmer

That kind of life is not an accident. It is a highly creative work of art. – Rufus Jones


The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible. – Montaigne

Eclairs

I decided to make chocolate eclairs today for the first time ever. My mom told me years ago they are very easy to make, and I guess they are, but there are actually three recipes involved (dough, pudding, and glaze) so they weren't all that easy to make. Still, they were good and worth making again sometime when you consider a) how rare it is to find a bakery with really good eclairs, and b) the cost of eclairs at a really good bakery.

These are not picture perfect, but they kind of look like eclairs are supposed to look.

Maybe I will add some culinary quotes to go along with this post:

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. - Erma Bombeck

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. - Sandra Boynton

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. - Ben Franklin

My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it. - Buddy Hackett

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh. - Will Rogers

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. – Voltaire

My mother made me eat broccoli. I hate broccoli. I am the President of the United States. I will not eat any more broccoli. - George H. W. Bush

Our Two Pups

Panda this evening -- picture taken by Scott with his new loaner phone. Looks like she's been tearing up some paper, a frequent problem.

Panda hoping someone is up for a game of 1-2-3 with her omnipresent tennis ball.

Panda will just hold onto the ball in case someone wants to play later.

Sherpa, naturally modest, wonders why anyone would want her picture.

Sherpa curled for a nap.

At our house we have two dogs: Sherpa, who will be ten years old on Oct. 23, and Panda, who will be a year old in November. Both female shih-tsus, they look a lot alike, but Sherpa is definitely more refined and dignified and Panda is more of a ballhog ruffian. They are both huge distractions around the house because they are so adoreable (to us, their family members, that is.)

Shih-tsus make wonderful pets. They rarely bark - only to sound the alarm that someone is approaching our house or that a plane has crossed over the airspace of the back yard. They tolerate a degree of hair and tail pulling by small children. They are also affectionate and independent. We had no idea how wonderful shih-tsus were when we bought Sherpa on the basis of her cuteness alone.

The only drawback is that they require grooming, which can get expensive when multiplied by two. I bought a kit to do it myself, and these pictures reveal that I am still very much on the learning curve. Both dogs are half groomed. Panda's eyes at least have been cleared for better visibility. She has a true bottle-brush nose and when her bangs are long, you almost can't tell one end of her from the other.

I used to be a big dog snob. I didn't think I would like a small breed. Since then I've discovered that dogs come in all diferent sizes on the inside -- some small dogs think they are large and some large dogs think they are small. I've almost never met a dog I didn't like.

Blog Post #2 Without Quotations

I didn't really believe it when I was in my 20s, but wisdom comes with age - probably because implicit within the concept of aging is experiencing, and we usually learn from our experiences. (Which is not to say that all older people are wiser than all younger people, or even that all older people are wise -- that is certainly not the case. My husband, the wisest person I have ever known, was probably wise in first grade and has just gotten wiser.) Anyway, I digress...

I remember a young man who came to visit me when I was 20 as my home teacher. (For those who are not members of the LDS faith, all members are given 'home teachers' who visit each month to give a short lesson and see if you need help with anything.) He was very proud of his knowledge, like me, and gave me some advice I really needed and have thought a lot about since: "Don't take yourself so seriously."

I wasn't offended by this advice - I think someone had probably given him the same counsel at some point and it had helped him, so he was passing it along to the only person on the planet (me) who had ever beaten him at Trivial Pursuit. (I still remember the winning question involved "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, which he had never even heard of. When I recited the first sentence of the story from memory, he was astounded. It just happens to be one of my favorite first lines from all of literature, but again, I digress...)

Since that time, I have tried to remember to laugh at myself and to let some of my vulnerabilities show, and I've come to realize that people may admire us for our strengths, but they love us for our vulnerabilities.

A vulnerability is not necessarily a weakness, but it is a soft spot, a need, an unfulfilled dream, an indication of our humanity. We can camouflage our vulnerabilities and pretend that they do not exist, but we all have them. They are what make us empathetic to and protective of each other.

I've noticed a similar phenomenon in my reaction to art. I admire the nearly photgraphic quality of a painting that is a perfect refletion of the subject matter, but I love the painting that has human emotion in it even more. Dramatic brush strokes and blurred lines convey something of the artist and not just the object or landscape he painted. I am seeing the subject matter through the artist's eyes.

I have several excellent quotes on this subject which come to mind...but I am trying to express original thoughts, and believe me it's harder than it looks.

Here is the first line of "The Cask of Amontillado":

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. (Isn't that great?!) (Scott said, 'Isn't this supposed to be a blog without quotes?')

A Blog Post Without Quotations

I'm taking my son to the oral surgeon today to have his 3rd molars (his wisdom teeth) removed. Poor kid. We have ice cream in the freezer for medicinal purposes only and his favorite pudding in the pantry (tapioca). He's more afraid of the IV than anything else. I'm looking forward to the drive home when he is loopy, loopy, loopy. That will be my entertainment for today, and it should be good.

I've cleared my schedule (or rather, kept it clear) and I plan to be a mother hen. It's a good day to catch up on mending at the kitchen table so I plan to set up show down there.

See what happens to my blog when I don't have quotes to rely on? I have quotes, of course, but I promised not to use them for a while here -- I promised to have an original thought, and all I can think about is tooth extraction and seam repair.

Can you stand one more quote?

One more, and I will lay off the quotes for a while. This one is just so good!

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with old nonsense.

This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being Easily Impressed

I'm not impressed with people who are not impressed.

The world is amazing! We're surrounded by wonders. We witness miracles every day. We have spectacular light shows at dawn and dusk with blue sky, lightening, rain, snow, and clouds in between. We have trees, shrubs, and plants bursting with fruits, grains, and flowers. We have oceans and lakes and babbling brooks. We have feathered, furry, and finned creatures everywhere. We have love, language, talents, skills, thoughts, ideas, laughter...Why are we not in a constant state of speechless gratitude? I don't know why.

But I noticed a long time ago there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are easily impressed, and people who are not.

As a teenager, I fell into the latter category thinking it was more sophisticated to withhold praise. I had discriminating tastes and I thought that was a virtue. Only the very best from my limited field of experience deserved my admiration. I approached the ordinary and the unexemplary with reservation. Sometimes I withheld compliments out of personal jealousy because acknowledging someone else's superiority in one area seemed to amplify my own feelings of inferiority.

Gradually I grew out of that and experienced the thrill of recognizing someone else's attributes and accomplishments. Looking back, I think this happened as I associated with older women who were more self-assured and consequently less competitive. I discovered how delightful it is to share a sincere observation of a complimentary nature with someone, because people in general are unaware of their uniqueness. We all tend to think there is nothing really extraordinary about us because the world can summarize us in ten words or less: middle-aged housewife, mother of four. Such summaries don't make us sound particularly exceptional, but everyone has something...It's our challenge as fellow human beings to identify what is good in others (and in the world at large) and celebrate it.

Imagine God planting gifts everywhere -- in every person ever born and in every landscape -- and waiting for those gifts to be discovered, acknowledged, and appreciated.

Here are a few quotes that relate to this topic, which I cannot quite define:

Never lose an opportunity to see anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting…a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns never looking up to see where they came from. - Marion G. Romney

Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. - Anonymous

Who can say more than this rich praise -- that you, alone, are you? - William Shakespeare

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. - Samuel Johnson

And lips say 'God be pitiful' who ne'er said 'God be praised.' - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. - Anonymous

All great art is praise. - John Ruskin

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. - Karl Barth

The ultimate success of my life will not be judged by those who admire me for my accomplishments but by the number of those who attribute their wholeness to my loving them, by the number of those who have seen their true beauty and worth in my eyes. – Dave Grant

Trite But True

I almost always strongly dislike BAD poetry, which I would define as poetry that is sacharine sweet, preaches a sermon, and rhymes at the same time.

But once in a while I find that I like a poem that is nonetheless syrupy, preachy and rhyming all at once. I think the difference lies in whether or not I trust the poet's sencerity and believe in the overall sentiment of the 'work,' such as it is.

I came across this poem about 20 years ago, and I have been drawn to it again and again over the years. I am posting it on my blog today in case anyone else could benefit from it as I have. The author is unknown.

"God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, peace for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love."

P.S. I found the picture on the Internet, but it is from the Navajo Loop Trail at Bryce National Park. It's short (just 1.3 miles) but it's the greatest trail I have hiked in my limited experience. I thought it related to the poem because there aren't any flowers in this scene and the blue sky is hard to see so far overhead. When you're at this point along the trail, it's difficult to imagine how you'll ever get out. It's rocky, slick and steep in places, and you don't always get to pick which way you'd like to go. You just have to follow the course water has taken over the centuries and literally 'go with the flow.' But the overall experience is breathtaking! It's a great metaphor for life.

A Modern American Hero: Thomas Sowell

I've been hearing a lot over the past five or six years about Thomas Sowell. He was featured quite prominently in Clarence Thomas's autobiography, My Grandfather's Son. I've heard passages from his books and columns here and there and wondered about him, so I finally did a little reasearch and discovered that he is a modern American hero who has made a lot of thought-provoking statements over the years.

He is a veteran of the Korean War and a magna cum laude Harvard, Columbia, and University of Chicago economist (Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. respectively), but he had an impoverished childhood and dropped out of high school at 17. I've just placed his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, on hold at the library to learn more about him. I think I failed to mention that he is also Black. He was one of the first politically conservative Blacks, which was even more unpopular during the Civil Rights battle than it is now. In his 20s he was an avowed Marxist, but in 1960 he became a true capitalist after observing the unintended negative consequences of a state-imposed minimum wage on Puerto Rican workers while doing an internship there.

Here are a few of the quotes I've found from Thomas Sowell. Some of them will really make you think:

Hopefully, he (Obama) may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Thomas Sowell

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it. Thomas Sowell

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. Thomas Sowell

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. Thomas Sowell

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. Thomas Sowell

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Thomas Sowell

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. Thomas Sowell

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything. Thomas Sowell

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do. Thomas Sowell

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty. Thomas Sowell

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. Thomas Sowell

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. Thomas Sowell

Too much of what is called "education" is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. Thomas Sowell

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture. Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. Thomas Sowell

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation? Thomas Sowell

Mom, I'm Bored

We are only about a month into the summer and my 10-year-old is bored. In that time, her brother has returned from his mission. We've driven to and from Seattle and we've cruised to Alaska. She's had sleepovers, she's gone swimming and to piano lessons, and she's visited the zoo (with a friend's family, but hey, she visited the zoo, where she saw the new baby elephant! Come to think of it, they went on a picnic, too.)She's also gone to the movies...I think it's been a very entertaining summer so far.

It drives me crazy when my kids complain that they are bored! I have noticed that my two children who are big readers complain of boredom less than my other two children who are not. Reading occupies their time between big 'events,' I suppose, and takes them to far away places in their imaginations. I need to get Emily hooked on books...

When my kids say they are bored, I respond in different ways. Sometimes I give them work to do. Sometimes I brainstorm with them on things they could be doing. Sometimes I facilitate an activity they would like to do. Almost always I remind them that I never get bored because I have a lot of hobbies and interests to keep me busy.

Some quotes on this subject:

The man who lets himself get bored is even more contemptible than the bore. - Samuel Butler

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. - Voltaire

We (writers) have the power to bore people long after we are dead. - Sinclair Lewis

An hour's industry will do more to produce cheerfulness, suppress evil humors, and retrieve your affairs than a month's moaning. - Ben Franklin (who is rapidly becoming my favorite historical figure!)

Pictures from Alaska's Inside Passage, B.C., and the Yukon

It was too gray and misty for most of our cruise to get good pictures, but here are a few of my favorites with commentary:


While we stood on the pier in Prince Rupert, B.C., I noticed this elderly couple getting into this very small boat with a couple of bags of groceries, then (in the next picture) they started the motor and headed out across Cow Bay, the deepest harbor in North America. This was apparently just a normal trip to the grocery store for them. I told Scott he would need a beard like that if we were to travel by boat up here.



To me, these people were amazingly brave!



This picture of a bed and breakfast in Prince Rupert is probably my favorite picture of the whole trip because it's so colorful.



This is a mama bear we saw on our way home from the Yukon. We had stopped on the road to let one of her cubs pass. We knew she had to be nearby, so we looked around and saw her, then two other cubs. A cute little family.



We rented a van from Sourdough Car Rental in Skagway (a Sourdough is a person not from Alaska), and really enjoyed the interior scenery of the area. We were not supposed to be allowed to cross into Canada (only one of us had a current passport), but the agents at the border said we could -- that's how we picked up the Yukon unexpectedly.

More scenery from British Columbia.


We went up Endicott Arm to Dawes Glacier, where the captian miraculously turned the cruise ship around on a dime. Waterfalls were visible everywehere trickling into the fjord.


The colors of the 'bergys' were spectacular. Many of the small ice floes had baby seals on them. Mama seals keep their babies on bergys to protect them from predators.


Another picture of the fjord.

The governor's mansion in Juneau, former home to Sarah Palin and her family.


I love layering mountains anywhere, and in Alaska they were spectacular. Too bad it was so gray and misty. A local man on the city bus in Ketichikan told me that when the sun does come out (a rare event there), the colors are incredible. With so uch green and so much water, I'm sure sunshine is practically blinding.


This is a picture of a clan house with totem poles in Ketchikan's Totem Bite State Park. A Bite is a shallow cove.


At the very beginning of the Inside Passage we passed several lovely lighthouses. This was my favorite one.

Book Review: The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

I bought this book at a library sale and took it with me on my cruise because I knew it took place in India and I'd heard that a lot of staff members on cruise ships are from India (true). I've always had an interest in India since befriending Pinky Patel, a high school exchange student from Bombay. We had a lot of fun together my senior year, and she is the reason I went on exchange myself (only India was not available at the time -- so I went to Denmark.) Enough backstory!

The book transfers you to a city in the south of India not far from the coast to the comfortable home of Mr. and Mrs. Ali. Mr. Ali has recently retired when the book begins and his wife is terribly concerned that he doesn't have enough to do. She's also frustrated that he's always underfoot, so she encourages him to start his own business. Due to India's tradition of arranged marriages, he has decided to open a marriage bureau catering to people from all three religious communities in India: muslim, hindu, and Christian.

Business is slow at first but quickly picks up, so much so that he decides to hire an assistant. Mrs. Ali selects the perfect assistant after observing her passing by their house each day on her way to secretarial school. She is as matter-of-fact as he is about what makes a good match.

The book bridges the gap between traditional arranged marriages and 'love marriages.' I kept thinking that I could predict what would happen next, but I was usually wrong, which is always nice. The characters were all likeable and realistic. The writing was never flowery. The action was very simple. The book was interspersed with humor throughout, some of it quite subtle.

I enjoyed how Mrs. Ali fretted about her husband when he wasn't working, then fretted about him when we was. And Mr. Ali's advice to a father who was upset about his son's apparently disjointed match was priceless!

What I enjoyed about the book more than anything was that its characters spoke the truth. I remember arguing with my English professor in college about "Death of a Salesman" and how I held the mother at fault for the whole situation because she would not speak the truth. She perpetuated all of Willie Loman's myths and delusions rather than protecting him and her sons by speaking the truth. The professor thought this was a form of mommy bashing, but I maintain that she had a obligation to confront reality. Anyway, I digress.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that I was held captive on a ship at the time.

Home from Alaska

I'm home! But maybe you didn't even know I had left. I've been sporadic at best in my blog writing lately.

It's been a whirlwind of events the past few weeks. First my son, Taylor, returned from his mission to Pohnpei, Palau and Guam in the west Pacific. We hadn't seen him for just over two years, so that was extremely exciting!

He was home for less than a week when we left for a family vacation to Alaska, squeezing in a quick (very quick!) trip to the Yukon just to say we did. We traveled by car to Seattle, where we boarded the Norwegian Star, a cruise ship that took us to Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and Prince Rupert, B.C. with a visit to Dawes Glacier on Endicott Arm. We rented a car at Skagway and drove north to the Yukon through some gorgeous scenery where we saw a family of black bears. It was a beautiful trip and I will post pictures when I get them onto this computer.

For now, it's good to be home. Driving home from Seattle seemed to take forever! We've been reunited with our dogs, Sherpa and Panda, but the family room is still full of luggage and piles and piles of dirty clothes. It will all get straightened out eventually, right?

But the big news is, Taylor and I reached a lifetime goal by visiting our 50th state. Scott, Tom and Abby are holding impatiently for now at 49, and Emily has 47. I couldn't have done it without my two travel facilitators, Mom and Scott. Mom is the original adventurer in the family and taught me everything I know about hitting the road.

Scott was once lost on a business trip in Atlanta, so he pulled over and asked an elderly black man for directions. The gentleman thought a while then said, "I'm afraid you can't get there from here." We often laugh about that because there's really no where you can't get to if you really want to get there. There are certainly a lot of obstacles, not the least of which are money and time. Travel requires you to re-evaluate your priorities. Would I really rather go to Alaska or spend the money on (fill in the blank)? Of course, travel to distant places is a luxury, but we are all surrounded by beauty just beyond our own imaginary boundaries close to home. Day trips and overnighters can be just as fun as far-flung adventures, and much more relaxing.

Checking Drudge Report for my political fix as soon as I'd booted up, I read that Mitt Romney visited ND for the first time on June 23. I beat Mitt to 50???!!! Amazing. Maybe Taylor and I need to take a pre-emptive visit to Puerto Rico in case it becomes the 51st state. If Guam becomes a state, Taylor will be one up on me.

Politicians, Step Aside

[Who wears fine leather shoes and white shirts and blazers to an oil spill?]


What are community organizers (or any garden-variety politicans) good for?

They are really, really good at talking. They talk by themsevles on soapboxes and at podiums and lecterns. They talk on committees and in small groups pounding out and refining legislation. They talk to reporters. Sometimes they even talk to their constituents, or their would-be constituents.

The idea is that they are soooo good at talking that they inspire people to take action, but they rarely, if ever, take action themselves. I am racking my brain to remember a president actually DOING anything other than ceremonial types of things like throwing out the first pitch at a ball game or placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. (I heard once that George W. Bush liked to remove brush from his ranch in Crawford, but I never actually saw footage of him uprooting anything.)

This gift of gab only becomes an issue when actual problems arise that can't be resolved with words alone, like the Gulf oil catastrophe. Obama initially reacted to the crisis by publicly, bitterly deriding British Petroleum as if to clarify that it was all BP's fault -- a fact which is not yet a fact. No one knows why the oil platform blew up, though an invesitgation is underway. Ironically, the platform could have been blown up by radical environmentalists reacting to Obama's recent decision to allow more off-shore drilling.

Anyone who has experience dealing with crises knows that that blame is the last thing to be resolved. First, we should have announced our commitment to work as partners with BP to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. We should not have talked about keeping our boot on BP's neck - what a ridiculous and counter-productive image that is, though it has been stated over and over again by adminstration officials, espcially Salazar and Gibbs. We should have positioned all requisite government resources in the vicinity to be used as needed while convening the world's most knowledgable and experienced experts to hear their ideas and discuss pros and cons, then we should have started trying their solutions while drilling a relief well, the long-term but surest solution, just in case all of the quicker resolutions failed.

Next time, I want a president who can DO something. I want him or her to have some sort of potentially useful hobby, an actual, demonstrable skill. Maybe he'll know how to plant a garden or write a poem or bake brownies. It would be really cool if he or she knew something about carpentry or how to fix a car. I'll take a computer geek or a ten-key whiz or a lifeguard.

No more verbose politicians standing impotently on the sidelines denigrating people who are actually DOING something.

My next president does not have to know everything, but he has to know how to DO something.

For All Artists, Especially Writers

For about a year now I've been reading the same book, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler. It's taken me a long time not only because I am an extremely deliberate (i.e., slow) reader, but also because I'm studying and applying principles as I go along. It takes a while to absorb.

The back cover explains the premise of the book well: "From Where You Dream reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual. It proposes fiction as the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, and reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire."

While outlining the book, I discovered the following list which I extracted from the paragraphs of Chapter 1:

What an Artist Does:
1. An artist encounters the world through his or her senses.
2. An artist recognizes that chaos is at the heart of everything.
3. An artist has in intuition that behind the chaos there is meaning - and a deep and abiding order.
4. An artist lives moment to moment through the senses.
5. An artist recombines sensory experiences into a book (painting, sculpture...), allowing others to experience those sensations for themselves.
6. An artist is able to express his or her deep intuition of order.

Butler stresses that real art does not come from ideas - it comes from the unconscious. He says that if you analyze your way into a work of art, you will be at odds philosophically with what art is and where it comes from. The point of contact with the reader (or viewer, in the case of the visual arts) is emotional and sensory.

I loved the quote that opens the book:

To be an artist means never to avert your eyes. - Akira Kurosawa, Japanese Film Director

On Procrastination

Why is is called PRO-crastination? It certainly isn't PRO-active.

Pro*cras*tin*a*tion
The word first appeared in print in the 1540s (a very old vice)
Pro means "for"
Cras means "tomorrow"
Thus procrastination means "for tomorrow" (makes sense)

1.To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.
2.To postpone or delay needlessly. (American Heritage Dictionary)

From an interesting web site called babeled.com, here is a brief statement about procrastination:

In a 2007 study, Piers Steel, a University of Calgary professor, noted that 26% of Americans considered themselves as chronic procrastinators. Dr. Steel attributes procrastination with a rise in the distractions that affect most people. With the increasing diagnosis of ADD and SLOT, people have more reason(s) to procrastinate. Just remind yourself that when you are procrastinating, you are really planning on doing it tomorrow, not next week.

I thought I might as well study the phenomenon of procrastination because I am becoming quite expert at it. At this moment, I am over eight hours overdue with a newspaper story and still not knuckling under to write it. Am I rebelling or procrastinating? I'm not sure. If I am rebelling, what it is that I am rebelling against?

Four weeks of Census training schedules and deadlines, I think. But my part of the Census is over now and things should get back to 'normal' as soon as I get this story written and take care of a few other odds and ends that were neglected while I trained enumerators, many of whom, by the way, are still waiting to be contacted for actual Census work. Ugh!

Gone Training

Sorry my posts have been so sketchy lately...adjusting to full-time work on the Census again. Last year at this time I worked on Quality Control for the Address Canvassing part of the Census and this year I'm a 'dedicated trainer,' teaching enumerators how to do their job before uniting them with their crew leaders. (Technically, I am a crew leader as well.) Training takes five days and the first day (Monday) is the worst as we plow through all of the paperwork and take fingerprints. Ugh!

Maybe some day soon I will have a thought that I can blog about, but right now I just barely have time to breathe.

Quotes on Venice, Italy

Streets flooded. Please advise. – telegram from Robert Benchley in Venice to his editor

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolates at one go. – Truman Capote

In the winter Venice is like an abanadoned theater. The play is finished but the echoes remain. – Arbit Blatas

*** I know -- more random quotes. Why Venice? I'm not sure. It's a place I've never been, but when I stumbled upon these quotes a few years ago I realized I want to visit there some day -- definitely not in the summer when it is overrun with tourists.

Mostly I just wanted to advance the page a little because it's been so long since I last blogged. I've been working again - for the Census again. I am an 'enumerator instructor / crew leader.' This full-time working thing is a very, very hard adjustment. Thank goodness it is yet another temporary job, and the type that only comes along every decade or so.

I realized the other day that I am multi-tasking my life, and everyone knows that when you're multi-tasking it's difficult to do anything well. So I am re-thinking my priorities and wondering why I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I guess I fell into the trap of beleiving that when your youngest child is in school you should be contributing to the family coffers, even though it might be better for all concerned (children, husband, self) to take care of things at home and pursue lifelong goals.

More Quotes (Again)

I know...Quotes! Quotes! Quotes! And some people don't like quotes, but I love them because they make me think and/or laugh. I finished transcribing my very first quote collection from a small pink corduroy blank book to the computer this week. I remember walking to the drug store in high school to buy that quote book, and it took me years to fill it up. Now I have several others still waiting to be transcribed. I rarely write quotes down by hand anymore as I stumble across them -- I just type them directly into the computer. Saves a step.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this eclectic assortment of quotes:

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. – Popular Mechanics, 1949

The average person has one ovary and one testicle. – Statistical fact, proving that statistics are not the whole story

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. – Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart. – Confucius 500 BC

When the pilot told us to brace and grab our ankles, the first thing that went through my mind was that we must all look pretty stupid. – Jeremiah Rawlings, age 12, after the 1989 DC-10 crash in Sioux City, Iowa

I am a bit suspicious of any theory that says that the highest moral stage is one in which people talk like college professors. – James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, 1993

I am still learning. – Michelangelo, 1560, age 85

In youth we learn. In age we understand. – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1883

For some reason, possibly to save ink, the restaurants have started printing their menus in letters the height of bacteria. – Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns Fifty, 1998

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. – Scottish author John Buchan, 1875-1940

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. - Robert Hughes

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. - Leon Bloy

An irrational passion for dispassionate rationality will take all the joy out of life. - John Maurice Clark

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers. - Doug Larson

Librarians...possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is. - Garrison Keillor

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. Garrison Keillor

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. ~Ansel Adams

Lisa: "Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered?"
Homer: "Well, I think the veal died of loneliness." - Matt Groening, The Simpsons

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem. ~David Carradine

I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part. ~Shirley MacLaine

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Root Bound

I have four surviving houseplants, and they are constantly near death. If cats have nine lives, my houseplants must have at least twenty.

My jade plant is a weak, spindly thing with all four of its branches lying on, rather than emerging vertically from, the soil. Half of my spider plant is the color and texture of straw. The third plant, a heretofore nameless codieum (I just looked it up), has't grown two inches in five years. A weeping fig in the living room, which we received as a gift ten years ago when Emily was born, has been revived from death more times than I can count. Yet somehow they hang on. They thrive on neglect, as the saying goes. It's quite an amazing thing.

Most houseplants are probably doomed to die, but as a kid I had a friend whose mother cared for a virtual arboretum in their living room. This same woman was deathly afraid of birds, which made me wonder if she grew plants indoors so that she would not have to go outside. I wish now that I had asked her why she was afraid of birds -- she might have had an interesting reason.

Most of the other private collections of plants I have seen have been less impressive by comparison. I thought it was just the nature of plants indoors to wither up, drop their leaves dramatically, and die.

Then I visited Aunt Billie's condo in Albuquerque. She does not have a background in agriculture. I've known her for 25 years and I've never heard her mention a plant of any kind. On her trips to Utah, she's never fretted about the houseplants she left behind, as far as I could tell. I've even visited her at home and failed to notice the giant potted jade plant and the enormous Christmas cactus, both of which are at least a decade old. She recently donated a third specimen of some kind, the real beauty of the group, she said, to a local gardening club (of which she is not a part) to be auctioned off as a benefit for their fundraiser.

She insisted she didn't have a secret but said her plants appeared to thrive in the southern exposure of the patio door window. I resolved immediately to move my plants closer to the window when I got home.

But first I transplanted them into larger pots and discovered that all of them were 'root bound.' The gnarled roots of one plant had crowded out the dirt so that it was practically hydroponic in its pot with no nutritional source. No wonder they were barely making it!

Which got me thinking today that I may be 'root bound' as well. Having roots is a good thing - I know it is. But I may have taken it too far.

I first realized the symptoms when we were shopping recently for a new van. Our old one had served us well for 185,000 miles. We'd taken it to 46 of the lower 48 states. But first the rack and pinnion steering went out, then a $350 pump. I would have held on (I can be extremely frugal!) but something started burning when it idled and the fumes would sometimes seep into the interior. I started getting headaches and imagining that the fumes were carcenogenic - I decided, reluctantly, that the van needed to be replaced. (Scott had come to this conclusion years earlier.)

When we started shopping, I said that I wanted to find the exact same van - same color, everything. But when we found a similar van, I balked. It seemed toooo familiar -- I needed a change. We'd had that van for seven years and we would likely have this one seven more -- that's 14 years with the same van, basically.

We also have a ten-year-old dog who could live up to 20 years and recently acquired its twin in puppy form -- that's 30 years with the same dog, basically.

I need a little variety! As the poet William Cowper said, Variety is the very spice of life.

I've been worrying about my memory lately. My husband and children laugh at me when I tell them that we can't replace the fake Christmas tree or the lawnmower because we just bought them, when, in fact, we bought them years ago. Back when things changed on a regular basis (children were born, we moved occasionally, we changed cars more frequently...) I could place events sequentially. "That happened when we were in the green Omni, so it must have been before Taylor was born..." - that sort of thing.

For the longest time now, everything has been pretty much the same. Conversations with far-flung friends and family usually begin with 'Not much. How 'bout you?"

I probably feel this way at the end of every winter. Imagine how I'd feel living in a place without seasons! I don't think I could handle the sameness of it all.

Cool Discovery in Vero Beach, Florida

Sometimes a story shows up on the inside pages of my newspaper that strikes me as big news, even though it didn't make the front page or even the television broadcast. In this case it isn't really important news -- just interesting, even fascinating.

A man in Vero Beach, Florida, who is unemployed due to epilepsy, asked a property owner a few years ago if he could look on his land for fossils. The guy agreed, and he found some bones there, which he took home to clean up and study. He threw them under the sink in his mobile home. A few months ago, he pulled out one of the bones, a piece of ivory from a wooly mammoth, and while cleaning it up realized someone had etched a design into it. It was a carving of a mastadon.

He knew that what he had found had some value and considered selling it at a flea market, but decided to take it to a more sophisticated fossil hunting friend, who was extremely enthusiastic about the find. He convinced him to take the bone to the Univesty of Florida to have it authenticated. Scientists there agreed to 'authenticate' the find because they were almost postitive it was a fake. They had long ago decided that humans and mastadons did not co-exist in Florida. All of the elephants had died out before man arrived, they thought.

But they did all of their tests on the bone and concluded it was real and that it had been carved thousands of years ago -- before the pyramids were built in Egypt, before Stonehenge, before the Everglades were the Everglades. It's the oldest artwork anywhere in the world with the possible exception of the cave art in France. They estimate that the carving was made over 13,000 years ago, and they think that the man or woman who carved it must have been looking at a mastadon at the time because it's a very good likeness.



The ivory carving of the mastadon is priceless.

Now scientists are begging the man who found it to donate it to the Smithsonian or some other museum so that it can be put on display. They don't want it to fall into a private collection never to be seen again. But the man can't afford to be philanthropic to this extreme (he's unemployed and barely subsisting), so he is putting it up for auction. He will entertain bids of at least $1 million.

I liked this story because it's about buried treasure, the enduring value of art, and how something of great value might be under the sink.

Some recent thoughts and quotes to change the page...

Two thoughts of my own, which I wrote down for their amazing profundity:

Being home is really something of a sacrifice, yet it’s a blessing at the same time, as sacrifices usually are. – Personal observation

I had to first accept my own voice as a writer, that I am not Pavrotti with a pen, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Alice Munro or Jhumpa Lahiri – but it is my voice. It is how I write. Whether or not others like it, it is my authentic voice. – Personal observation

Regarding international politics:

Weakness is a provocation. – heard quoted from unknown source by Mark Steyn on the Rush Limbaugh Show 11-6-2009

Mind-boggling quotes:

For one must first know one is in prison in order to work intelligently to escape. - Philip Novak

Strength does not come from phsycial capacity – it comes from an indomitable will. – Mohatma Ghandi

I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library - Jorge Luis Borges

Some quotes pulled from J.K. Rowling's commencement speech at Harvard in 2008 (discovered on TED.com, a fantastics site for learning just about anything!):

As is a tale, so is life – not how long but how good – that is what matters. – Seneca

Rock bottom became the firm foundation on which I rebuilt my life. – J.K. Rowling

On abortion:

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.- Mother Teresa

Other quotes from Mother Teresa:

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.

The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving.

Ever wonder what would happen if you left your sprinklers on all winter?

We picked the prettiest day of the month to go up to Midway, Utah to look at the Ice Castles at Zermatt Resort. The sky was perfectly blue. I don't think they would have been as impressive to look at on a cloudy day, but they were really surprisingly beautiful. The drive through Provo Canyon was also great -- saw lots of fly fishermen and a few people ice fishing on Deer Creek Resevoir.

From the parking lot the ice castles looked small and unimpressive, but when we were walking through them it felt like we were on the movie set for the Chronicles of Narnia or on some sort of small scale arctic expedition. Some of these pictures remind me of the red rock down in southern Utah (especially around Bryce), but all blue and white.

More pictures of Ice Castles in Midway, Utah

The Shoe Tree

A strange thing has happened to a tree not far from our home. Over Christmas break, someone started throwing shoes into its branches and now there are dozens of them -- everything from baby booties to men's dress shoes to women's pumps. I don't know how they stay up there through the snow and wind, or how they will be taken down or when.

At first glance they look like birds perched in the tree, a familiar sight. My neice and husband had not even noticed the shoes until I pointed them out to them. How could you not notice shoes dangling in a tree you pass every day? We really need to slow down and smell the roses a little more often.