What a Wonderful World! Merry Christmas

I see trees of green

red roses too

I see them bloom

for me and you

and I think to myself

What a Wonderful World!

I see skies of blue

clouds of white

bright blessed days

dark sacred nights

and I think to myself

What a Wonderful World!

(sung by Louis Armstrong, aka Satchmo)

May your troubles be less,
And your blessing be more.
And nothing but happiness,
Come through your door.

An Anti-Newt Public Service Announcement

Newt Gingrich was all but dead in June. No one took his presidential candidacy seriously, and how could they? As one pundit said, he has more baggage than JFK -- not the person, but the airport.

Nonetheless, here we are a month away from the Iowa caucuses and he's leading in the polls, because evangelical conservatives are absolutely desperate to find an alternative to Mitt Romney.

You'd have to be desparate to go with Newt. There is no other explanation!

I agree with the women who said of Bill Clinton, another known scoundrel, "If his wife can't trust him, then neither can I."

I must have been dreaming about politics again, because I woke up with the realization that an Obama vs. Gingrich contest would be an extremely risky proposition for Republicans. Both are ideological with very little real-world, practical experience outside of politics. Neither one could make heads or tails of a complicated Excel spreadsheet, for example. They are both theoretical, relying on well-delivered rhetoric to dazzle and impress instead of actual accomplishments. Obama in this match up would actually have the edge in the ethics department, because he has given us no reason to believe that he is unfaithful to his wife. He has also never been forced to resign from a Congressional speakership for ethical violations, like Gingrich has. Next to Gingrich, Obama is as pure as the wind-driven snow.

We also have to consider candidates from the American Idol perspective. Having Obama and Gingrich side-by-side in a debate would be like having Kennedy and Nixon side-by-side -- no contest.

People who have thrown their support behind Newt Gingrich have appraently forgotten that the main issue is not who will put Obama is his place in a debate scenario, but who has the economic background to right the sinking ship of the U.S. economy? Who has turned around failing economic entities in the past and helped them thrive again? Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. Obama's economic experience cannot compare with Mitt Romney's, even after 3 1/2 years in the White House, and the biggest problems facing the United States at this time are economic. Right now, America does not need a historian or an orator or a theoretician. We need a do-er. We need a CEO.

Here are some quick facts about Newt Gingrich, which ought to be unsettling to the voting electorate in my book:

***Gingrich has been running for office since the early '70s! He was finally elected in 1978, then served 20 years in Congress before resigning soon after re-election under an ethical cloud. Since that time, he has amassed a personal fortune not by working in the private sector, but by selling his influence among government entities. He says he was never a lobbyist -- he was a strategic advisor. Whatever you want to call it.

***Gingrich violated federal tax law by misusing charitable donations, then, when confronted by members of his own party, lied about it. He faced 84 ethics charges in the House where he served as Speaker, and had to step down. He then resigned in disgrace. Now, 20 years later, he's back and half of the electorate has never heard of him. The other half have forgotten.

***Gingrich proposed to wives #2 and #3 while married to wives #1 and #2. Wives #1 and #2 were suffering from cancer and MS, respectively, when he left them. When asked recently to explain his serial infidelity, he said he had been working too hard for the country. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but I don't know who that explanation is going to fool - apparently only himself, because no one bought it.

***Gingrich is sometimes applauded for having a good relationship with his two daughters despite divorcing their mother. The daughters themselves should be given more than half the credit for this since they were able to forgive him for breaking up their family with his selfishness. Some of the credit for their good relationship also has to be given to the fact that they both work for him. The fact that Gingrich did not write his two daughters off as well as their mother is not a credit to him, in my opinion, though I suppose he could have completely abandoned them, and that would have been even worse.

***Gingrich "advised" Fanny and Freddie, making millions of dollars, until 2007, just before the bubble burst. What did he advise them? And did his advice do any good? For whom?

***Gingrich was denied tenure at the only college where he ever worked as a full-time professor, back before he was elected to Congress. Why was he denied tenure? (My working theories: affairs with students, disorganization, egomaniacal lectures.)

I know almost no one reads this blog, but it's cathartic to get these thoughts off my chest and into the atmosphere. I invite differing points of view. Please defend Newt, if you can.

Hey, Obama White House, Try Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance

I started elementary school at the tail end of the prayer in school era, but we did recite the Pledge of Allegiance at most of the elementary schools I attended. (We moved a lot. I probably averaged a new school almost every year.) I can still remember springing to my feet at the start of the school day, hand over heart, eyes on the American flag in the corner of the room. One teacher carefully explained the meaning of each word to give the daily recitation meaning, which I appreciated then and still appreciate now.

When I woke up this morning, still lying in bed, the Pledge of Allegiance was running through my mind for the first time in years. It had been so long, in fact, that I stumbled over the words -- was it one nation under government? No, of course not. But I actually wondered for one Orwellian second.

And because I was thinking about government, I wondered if the people who work in the White House start the day reciting the Pledge? Probably not, but maybe they should. I assume all of them have taken the Civil Service pledge, which I have also taken a couple of times. And of course President Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts - everyone witnessed that.

But as time passes it's easy to forget the words and the meaning of the words. The Pledge of Allegiance could serve as a good mission statement reminder to our leaders in Washington:

I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.

P.S. A lady I met a few years ago pointed out to a group of teenagers I was with that there is no comma after "one nation" - it is meant to be one phrase: "one nation under God," spoken without pausing.

P.P.S. Yes, I know, I know. "Under God" was added 12 years after the pledge was written. The words were taken from the last line of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is worthy of a post of its own.

P.P.P.S. Ironically, the original Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist. I wonder how many socialists would take the pledge today?

Movie Review: "Moneyball"

We went to a matinee this afternoon to see "Moneyball," starring Brad Pitt, who also produced the film. It was excellent! I can't say enough about it, really. Go see it, if you can. Rent it on DVD when it comes out. It is well worth your time.

Moneyball tells the true story of the 2002 Oakland A's and how they re-engineered their approach to fielding a team because they could not afford the Yankees' business model of paying top dollar to great players. The general manager, Billy Beane, played by Pitt, teams up with a Yale economics graduate/baseball fan to select players based on a complicated computer analysis. The team's scouts and manager vehemently oppose the idea, and the players don't take it very seriously either, until Beane shakes things up. Suddenly they are winning -- in fact, they start breaking records for wins. It's very exciting.

But the movie isn't strictly about baseball. It also addresses Beane's relationship with his 12-year-old daughter, whom he quietly adores. Baseball is used as a metaphor for what happens when a person believes in himself, or fears failure. It's a great, great movie.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I was once a baseball junkie. For three years of my life (ages 13-16), 3rd baseman Hall of Famer George Brett and the Kansas City Royals were my drug of choice. I went to as many games, grand openings, and ribbon cuttings as I could and baked cookies for George at Christmastime. I subscribed to the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated and carefully clipped every picture and article from the Kansas City Star to paste in my scrapbook. George Brett posters adorned the walls and ceiling of my bedroom. I even followed the team on a road trip to Chicago, staying in the same hotel. Yes, I was a groupie.

Little did I realize that despite our seemingly insurmountable age difference of 11 years, George would eventually marry a girl three years younger than me. Alas, I was too old for him!]

Book Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

What a beautiful, beautiful book! I loved the movie version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, many years ago when my boys were small. I remember seeing it twice in movie theaters -- once in Utah and once in Minneapolis while visiting my best friend. We drove to the movie theater on a January evening in sub-zero temperatures to see it. I don't think she loved it as much as I did.

But that's because (as you know from previous posts) I am one of the few people on the planet who is more entertained watching grass grow than watching action flicks. I can't explain it! But I guess I don't need to apologize for it, either. That's just who I am.

About ten years ago, my aunt recommended the book version of it to me, and I finally got around to reading it six months ago. I finished it tonight. (I can't explain that, either. I am a very, very slow reader. My daughter, Abby, says I don't read - I analyze.)

The book is about an English butler and a head housekeeper at an estate in England just before the onset of World War II. They are consummate professionals and very, very English, rarely betraying their personal feelings about anything. The author is a master of nuance. I found myself marveling that someone named Kazuo Ishiguro could write so convincingly about being an English butler.

Mr. Stevens, the butler, reflects on his long career and his indefinite future while traveling to meet Mrs. Benn, the former Miss Kent, who was once his employee. He hopes to convince her to rejoin the household now that her long marriage has come to an end. I won't tell you what happens.

But reading the book at this point in my life, when I am more than half-way done with my 'magnus opum' (raising a family), I was profoundly touched by Mr. Stevens' situation. He has given his all to Darlington Hall, contenting himself with 'the remains of the day' and the resultant accumulation of dignity.

Here are some passages I especially enjoyed from the book:

'One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.'

'I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakeable feeling - the feeling that one is in the presence of greatness.'

'Dignity is something one can meaningfully strive for throughout one's career. Those 'great' butlers like Mr. Marshall who have it, I am sure, acquired it over many years of self-training and the careful absorbing of experience.'

'The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming, or vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit.'

'It was one of those events, which, at a crucial stage in one's development, arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has new standards by which to judge oneself.'

'It was a though one had available a never ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. But I see I am becoming unduly introspective....'

Quick Quotes on Happiness

“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” - Joseph Smith

I love this quote. A lot of people miss the whole point of our existence (!) and don't realize that we are here to experience joy, here and hereafter. Or they misunderstand where joy can be found and veer off the path that leads to it.

Life is undeniably fraught with real pain (physical and emotional), but our task is to live uprightly, to love and be loved, to eschew evil and celebrate all that is beautiful and good.

Alma had it right when he told Corianton that "wickedness never was happiness." It just looked like happiness from a distance.

Random thoughts for a random Thursday:

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

And a poem:

Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you. ”

- Christian D. Larson

And, finally, one of my favorite quotes of all time, a quote which I NEED every now and then to re-set my thinking and getting me back on the right track. I discovered this quote in college when I found myself doing a lot of negative self-talk:

Speak gently to yourself.
Speak freely in praise of all you are.
Speak clearly in pride for all you've been.
Speak bravely in hope for all you may become.

Romney for President

I've written about politics from time to time on this blog going back to the last presidential primary in which my favorite candidate, Mitt Romney, was defeated by John McCain after some Huckabee-McCain shenanigans in South Carolina. I shook off defeat easily then, confident that Mitt would run again in 2012, when I felt certain his financial expertise would be in even greater demand. The disastrous outcome that November, of course, was the election of Barack Hussein Obama who has been a dismal failure in every respect, a few terrorist corpses notwithstanding. (Don't get me started!)

Now we are in primary season again and the choice for many people is not an obvious one. Pundits on television say the Republicans must put forth a Romney and an anti-Romney, because Romney is not conservative enough. Enough? Enough? Enough for whom?

I would describe myself as an arch-conservative - so conservative, in fact, that I do not want to do away with our entire monetary system in one fell swoop by eradicating the IRS and adopting Cain's 9-9-9 plan. If I favored such a move, I would call myself a radical, not a conservative.

Imagine the upheaval! 9-9-9 is not the price of a pizza, as Huntsman suggested, but a crapshoot with the American financial system on the line. Middle class Americans would not be able to deduct mortgage interest or charitable donations or receive child tax credits. The poor who are mercifully exempt from income taxation would suddenly have to pay as much as everyone else in relative terms, and many of them simply could not do it. They are barely getting by as it is.

I am conservative enough to say tweak the current system 59 ways (Romney's plan), but don't reinvent the wheel. And don't give Congress in perpetuity the new revenue stream of a federal sales tax. No one likes state and local sales taxes -- who would want a federal sales tax added to what we already pay for every purchase? What an awful, awful idea!!!

Like everyone else, I like Herman Cain. I think he's brilliant in many ways and refreshing in every way -- but this 9-9-9 plan is not a good idea.

There are things I like about all of the candidates, but Romney is clearly the best option.

Most people do not know much about him. Every media story about Romney is at least partially negative. Pundits even disparage his good looks, which he has never commented on in my recollection. As though being good looking were, in itself, elitist or a liability or an indication of one's depth.

Until recently, I had no idea a man could be jealous of another man's appearance. It's as if the talking heads on television will not accept a president who is better looking, effortlessly, than they are. In my view, Romney's good looks are simply God-given. He did not do anything to deserve them. They are neither a plus nor a minus. In choosing the leader of the free world, looks should not be a factor, but polls show they inevitably are because of people who focus on such things.

The anti-Romney media (and there are very few of any other kind) would have us see through a glass darkly when it comes to Mitt Romney. I consider it my civic duty to illuminate facts about Mitt Romney that many people do not know:

1. Mitt has led a conservative life. He married his wife Ann over 40 years ago and had a large family of boys, who have all married and had children of their own. There is nothing in Mitt's personal life that would be considered anything but conservative.

2. Mitt speaks French fluently, which is the language of diplomacy.

3. Mitt has experience living overseas. He lived in France for two years and was declared dead there following a traffic accident in which he was not at fault.

4. The media would have everyone believe that Mitt was born of blue blood parents with a silver spoon in his mouth, but that isn't true. His father was an apprenticed carpenter and lath worker who never graduated from college but worked his way up to the top of American Motors and then became governor of Michigan and a presidential candidate. For most of Mitt's life, they were well off, but he attended public schools until junior high. Romney did not inherit his wealth from his father - he earned it in the private sector working in multiple industries.

5. Mitt attended Stanford for one year, then served as a missionary in France, then graduated from Brigham Young University. He and his wife had their first child while living there in a basement apartment. Mitt received dual graduate degrees from Harvard -- an MBA and a law degree.

6. Life for the Romneys has not been perfectly easy despite financial success. Ann has suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years and recently had a bout with breast cancer. She is usually by Mitt's side on the campaign trail.

7. Romney has experience with homeland security issues, having led the Winter Olympics a few months after 9/11 followed by four years as governor of Massachusetts.

8. Romney received an Honorary Doctor of Public Service from the very conservative Hillsdale College in 2007.

9. Romney knows how companies work, what they need to succeed (and hire new people), and what dooms them to failure, necessitating layoffs. He helped to launch or rebuild hundreds of companies, including Staples, Domino's Pizzza, and The Sports Authority. No amount of education or government service can provide that kind of experience.

10. It is well known that Mitt Romney is a 6th generation Mormon. Some evangelical pastors do not consider Mormons to be Christians, but Mormons regard Jesus Christ as the head of their church and partake of the sacrament in the name of Jesus Christ each week. For Mormons, Jesus Christ is not a mere prophet. They revere Him as the Savior of mankind and the only begotten son of God. Jesus Christ himself gave the formula for identifying true Christians when he said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Also, Mormons celebrate traditional Christian holidays, including Christmas and Easter. (I added that last sentence because I heard a reluctant Romney supporter in the last election lamenting the fact that there would be no Easter egg roll at the White House if he were elected.)

11. Romney's detractors. including many whose opinions I had previously respected, choose to focus on what they call his flip-flops. They are leery about electing a man who previously seemed to compromise on issues such as abortion and gay rights. I would remind them that he was seeking public office in the most liberal state in the nation at the time. He would not have been elected to serve in any capacity if he had held a hard line on such issues. The farther he gets away from Massachusetts, the more conservative he becomes not because he is changing but because the electorate can accept his natural conservatism. Parallels with Ronald Reagan in this regard are remarkable.

12. Romney has turned around businesses, a collapsing Olympic effort, and one state. He will not require a team of economists to interpret financial information. He is uniquely qualified to turn around our current economic situation and help lead the world out of crisis.

I'm sure there are dozens of other points I could make if I had more time, but I keep thinking of Esther in the Old Testament and the phrase: "who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

Mitt Romney is a man for our time, and quite possibly for all time -- a man in the mold of our country's founders, who were accomplished in their own right before seeking public office.

A Poem to Share

As a chronic worrier who seems to be getting worse over time instead of better, I found this poem/hymn by C. Margaret Clarkson refreshing when I heard it recited at a funeral today.

It's called THIS I KNOW:

I do not know what next may come
Across my pilgrim way;
I do not know tomorrow's road,
Nor see beyond today.
But this I know --my SAVIOR knows
The path I cannot see;
And I can trust His wounded hand
To guide and care for me.

I do not know what may befall,
Of sunshine or of rain;
I do not know what may be mine,
Of pleasure and of pain;
But this I know -- my SAVIOR knows
And whatsoe'er it be
Still I can trust his love to give
What will be best for me.

I do not know what may await,
Or what the morrow brings;
But with the glad salute of faith,
I hail its opening wings;
For this I know -- that through my LORD
Shall all my needs be met;
And I can trust the heart of Him,
Who has not failed me yet.

ET in L.V. Phones Home

Here I am in Vegas, also known as "sin city."

I am an alien in a strange part of the universe, sending missives to my home planet.

First the measurables: Land - barren, flat, layering mountains in the distance. Air - dry. Temperature - hot (but cooling through the end of the week, according to a weather prophet on television).

Lifeforms: Fauna - 100% adult, biped, semi-aquatic humanoids (no animals anywhere in sight, multiple cement pools.) White tigers and sharks are also rumored to exist. Flora - spectacular palm trees and flowers, no grass.

Females -backs of their feet inexplicably elevated on stilts. Skin appears airbrushed, golden. Hair defies gravity, voluminous. Clothiers very economical in use of fabrics, many of which mimic the metallic scales of invertebrates or the patterned skins of exotic mammals. Females commonly use strings to maintain modesty with small scraps of fabric, indicating that fabric is in short supply and probably very costly.

Males - travel individually with solitary females or rove in bands with other men, often mourning the impending nuptials of one or more of them; relaxed, casual, observant, vocal.

Children - non-existent.

Living Conditions - humanoids occupy rooms in communal bunkers fashioned to resemble pyramids, palaces, and urban landmarks from other places on the planet, artificially reassembled here for unknown purposes. Bunkers' dim interiors filled with blinking, whistling robots, which possess trance-like power over humanoids who walk too slowly past them. Humanoids who keep a lively pace and appear to have someplace else to go escape expensive mesmerizing powers.

Social Customs - individual smoke inhalation commonplace. Mind-numbing liquids available at every crossroads. Clothing optional, at least in advertising.

I know these early observations appear to be critical of Las Vegas, but I don't mean for them to be. There are a lot of things I like about Las Vegas that have surprised me this trip. I should probably focus on the positive.

Like Ping Pang Pong, the Chinese restaurant we dined at last night. Phenomenal!

I really like our hotel with its Egyptian motif...but more about that next time.

A very short poem to ponder

I heard this poem on the radio today and memorized one line of it to look up at home. The poet was an Australian horseman, born in the Azores, named Adam Lindsay Gordon, who died in 1870. The poem is only two stanzas long, but the last four lines are the most famous:

Question not, but live and labour
Till yon goal be won;
Helping every feeble neighbour,
Seeking help from none.


Life is mainly Froth and Bubble
Two things stand like stone-
Kindness in another's trouble.
Courage in your own.

I could take issue with the line, "seeking help from none," but, on the whole, I like it.

Creative License

I have just conferred upon myself an official "Creative License," which I designed on my computer, printed out and hung on the wall over my desk. If you need or desire a creative license, let me know and I'll print one out for you, too.



It reads:

"Creative License
Permission and authorization to exercise all creative impulses
conferred upon

Cheryl Kinrade Acton

with all the rights, privileges, and honors thereunto appertaining.
Dated the twenty-fourth day of September in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven."

I'm doing this because when I was in the fifth grade, Mr. Phillips, an outstanding teacher who would disappear two years later under mysterious circumstances mid-schoolyear, called my parents in to a conference about test scores my brother and I had received. Mr. Phillips told them that, according to the tests, I was 'gifted,' but that my sixth grade brother was *SHOCK* a genius. This came as a real surprise to me, his little sister. My brother had never done well in school and was very badly behaved.

Anyway, the warning Mr. Phillips had about me and my future was that I was the type of student who needed PERMISSION to do everything. When given an assignment, I needed to understand all of the parameters of it before I could go on.

My older brother, aka the genius, was exactly the opposite. He would either abandon the assignment altogether (his usual reaction), or do his own thing. He never gave a moment's thought to what the teacher wanted, while all I wanted to do was please.

So in conferring upon myself this 'creative license,' I hope to be able to create written works that are uniquely my own, no permission required.

I don't have a teacher to please anymore, or even an editor. I quit my job at the local newspaper this week, so, for better or worse, I am officially "free-lance."

PS Hanging next to the new license on the wall is one of Bjorn Wiinblad's 12 month porcelain pieces. He died in 2006, but he is one of my favorite artists. Most of his pieces are black and white ceramics depicting couples in love. They're all very whimsical. He was a Danish artist. I first became aware of him when I lived in Denmark in the early '80s.

Book Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

[Please Note: I listened to this book on CD, and the reader, Jayne Entwhistle, was really good.]

It took two recommendations to get me to read this book because I was put off by the sacharin sweetness of the title and feared it would be a book about middle aged (or older) women concluding that life is wonderful because they've overcome everything that makes it difficult. Well, it wasn't about middle aged people at all and I had it all wrong.

The heroine of this book is a hilarious eleven-year-old girl named Flavia de Luce, who lives in an enormous country house in the English countryside. (Her bedroom is the size of a dirigible hangar.) Her passion in life is chemistry, and I do mean PASSION! It is poetry to her. Her mother died in a climbing accident in Tibet, so she lives with her two older sisters and her emotionally absent father, who spends all of his time pursuing a stamp collection.

Early one morning Flavia discovers a dying man in the cucumber patch of their garden. Her father is later arrested for the man's death, but Flavia is always two steps ahead of the police is trying to find out what really happened. Flavia suspects her father may have done it (she heard them arguing the evening before), but she wants to figure it all out.

I enjoyed this book so much that I only let it end because I knew there were two other volumes waiting in the wings with the same characters by the same author.

It is a little difficult to believe that an 11-year-old could have so much wisdom, knowledge, wit, and understanding - but it isn't beyond the realm of possibility. It's possible that Flavia is an unrecognized genius, I suppose. But the fact that she's 11 makes it easier for her to get into and out of dangerous places with ease. She's not above acting 11 (or younger) if throwing a fit is required to obtain access or information, for example.

I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading the other books in the series. I have great respect for Alan Bradley!!! He must be a fascinating person to know.

After listening to my library copy on CD, I bought the book, too, in regular book form. It's just that good!

Have a Nice Day

I am old enough to remember the 1970s, when I aged from 6 to 16. Those were my formative years. I remember hippies and hippie vans, polluted rivers, litter, "All in the Family," "The Waltons," and happy faces.

You remember happy faces, don't you? They were as ubiquitous as peace signs. Yellow circles with big, elongated eyes and upturned smiles. (Wal-Mart has co-opted a variation of the happy face in its advertising, but it isn't quite the same. Emoticons have also brought back the happy face in a miniscule format.)

Anyway, I remember happy faces and store clerks (all store clerks) saying thank you and have a nice day. They don't say thank you anymore (in fact, I usually find myself thanking them), and they rarely say have a nice day. They usually just kind of shrug and turn their attention to the next customer in line. (Am I sounding like an old bitty, or what? I know I am, but it's true!)

Back then, it was good to be known as nice, but somewhere along the line people began disparaging the adjective. Nice went from meaning 'kind, thoughtful and sensitive to the needs of others' to meaning 'ordinary and unassertive.' Nice people became synonymous with doormats, and who wanted to be a doormat?

Now we've gotten 180 degrees out of phase with 'nice' often meaning its opposite, 'not nice.' (Think seagulls in famous "Finding Nemo" scene.) 'Ni-ice," on the other hand, means very nice.

I started thinking about this because today I realized that my view of how to experience a day is out of whack. To this point in my adult life (certainly since becoming a mother), I have regarded one 24-hour period as a commodity to be properly used rather than enjoyed.

For some reason, this makes me think of a story I read in our local paper in 2002 by Bruce Northam, a National Geographic travel writer. I wrote most of the story down in my quote book:

My father and I walk together a lot. Last summer we undertook a 180 mile trek across Wales, coast-to-coast along Offa's Dyke - the grand earthwork project conceived in the eighth century by King Offa of Mercia to separate England from Wales. Our walk was a celebration of sorts.

A year earlier, my father, who was then 70, had undergone open heart bypass and back surgery. Now we were walking together atop the long, curving ridge- boundary of Brecon Beacons National Park. En route we befriended Erica, a Welsh woman who was clearly oblivious to the beck and call of stress.

At dusk the three of us encountered an elderly lady and her beagle hiking toward us. Teetering along on a walking stick, she wore a motoring cap and held a bunch of wildflowers. I said "hello" and asked her where she was going. She replied in Welsh,

"Rydw I yna yn barod." We looked to Erica for a translation.

"She said, 'I'm already there.'" (Cheryl's side note: ISN'T THAT THE BEST?)

They continued their placid conversation in Welsh until the old woman resumed her walk. As she faded into the distance, I declared my envy for her simple philosophy.

"Let's catch up with her. There's something else I'd like to ask her."

We spun around and caught up with her. She walked a few more steps along the trail, traded her flowers to the other hand, and raised an eyebrow. Erica translated my question,

"What's the secret to a long and happy life?"

The old woman and I scrutinized each other for an instant, beings from different eras and opposite sides of an ocean. She directed her answer to Erica.

"Moments." There was a quiet pause. Then the old woman smiled, squinted at my father, and spoke slowly,

"Moments are all we get. A true walker understands this."

After a silent minute, we all clutched hands with the old woman, then we waved good-bye as she trudged off with eternal poise and bearing. As we turned to continue on our way, my father and I exchanged smiles.

Moments. They are all we get.

~ Author Bruce Northam ~

Anti-Celeb

Just now, while cleaning the kitchen, I clicked on an Oprah re-run, hoping to overhear a discussion of some interesting topic. Instead, seated next to Oprah in a luxuriously soft leather chair, was Jennifer Anniston. I have nothing against Jennifer Anniston -- I'm sure she's a fine person -- but she epitomizes one of the things I dislike about pop culture -- namely, celebrity worship.

Her hair is very pretty and she has a pleasant face and figure. People loved her in "Friends," a show I never watched. [I tried watching a few times but couldn't relate to the self-absorbed angst and sexual meanderings of the show's characters. My overall impression of the show is that it featured a lot of whining, and Jennifer Anniston's character seemed to whine the most, or maybe that was just her voice.]

When I was in junior high and crazy about a professional baseball player (who shall remain anonymous), I remember asking myself if I would still like him if he were a plumber arriving at our house to fix a clogged drain. I decided that I would still probably think he was cute, yes, but he would lose some of his allure without the uniform, the stats, and, let's be honest, the Porsche and the salary.

I've put other celebrities to the plumber test since then and found that all of them would lose some of their appeal if they weren't famous. The fame is what makes Jennifer Anniston Jennifer Anniston. Without the fame, she would be just a normal person - more attractive than most people, maybe, but no more interesting or insightful.

Jennifer Anniston's stock went up when she married the even more famous Brad Pitt. Her stock went up again when he left her for the even more famous Angelina Jolie.

What is it about human beings that makes us care about people we have never met and will never meet? Why do some people care about the political views of rap 'artists' and other entertainers? I know that many celebrities feel they need to use their God-given celebrity soapboxes to speak out on important issues of the day, but I wish they wouldn't. I also do not want to know details of their personal lives, like whether or not they bikini wax or have hair extensions. I really, really, really do not care.

On the other hand, I find real people fascinating. I was sitting in a doctor's office today, and, while waiting for my son, started chatting with an elderly woman on oxygen sitting nearby. I asked her if she likes to cook (we were watching a cooking show on the Food Network.) 'No, not anymore,' she said. 'Sick of it.' 'Me, too.' The celebrity chef was using ground lamb to make meatballs. 'I used to buy lambs right here in the valley from a farmer, but he's gone now,' she said.

I have a feeling that woman has a story to tell, and it would probably be more interesting and insightful (to me, anyway) than Jennifer Anniston's.

Pictures from Antelope Island, Utah

A tree in a corral at Garr Ranch on Antelope Island. This tree has probably given shade to a lot of grateful animals over the years.

Poppies and iris blooming at the ranch. Loved the contrast!

I've always been a fan of layering mountains. These islands lie north of Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.

We estimate that we saw about 400 head of buffalo yesterday, many of them babies. We could hear them rumbling and grunting as they made their way north along the water's edge on the east side of the island.

Sunset at the Antelope Island Marina as seen from the causeway. Makes me think of Jimmy Buffet songs.


So much beauty so close to home! Antelope Island is one of my favorite places, but I was eaten alive by mosquitoes last night while taking these photos. I am now covered with baking soda paste from head to toe. Still, I would have to say it was worth it to take a mini vacation for a few hours.

We waited for the sunset, then realized the sunrise would be beautiful there as well, peaking up over the Wasatch Front. Maybe later this summer...

June 1st ...

Ugh! It's been that kind of day, and not because of the events of the day - just the day itself, from the get-go. Kind of a bummer of a day for absolutely no reason.

But how could that be when it's June 1st? Is there any other date on the calendar more full of promise? I don't think so.

It all began when I got out of bed later than I should have - never a good beginning. Behind the 8 ball from the start, I threw on my clothes from yesterday, hastily made the last sack lunch of the school year for Emily, and raced out the door to drive her to school. Forty minutes later, I arrived home, made myself a glass of OJ and two slices of toast. One fell butter-side down to the dirty kitchen floor..maybe that's when this otherwise ordinary Wednesday started to go wrong.

I checked my four usual web sites: email - no happy news there; Facebook - not much news since last night; the family blog - I was the last one to post days ago; Drudgereport.com - totally depressing headlines, such as:

"We are on the verge of a great, great depression"
"Economic Horror as Data Plunges"
"America Dithering As Double Dip Looms"

I came upstairs to get to work, but decided to update my online to-do list first. The list is four columns long! I read somewhere that each item on your to-do list represents a burden you're carrying. The self-help guru who wrote that said the best thing to do is clear the list by getting it all done. The theory is that the fear and dread of a task saps more energy than actually doing it.

I got an hour of work done before the doorbell rang. Our dog, Panda, had escaped from the back yard again and was returned by yet another neighbor.

I made a quick list and went to the store to buy a few groceries, then spent a while talking to a friend. (That was nice.)

The day picked up a little after that. The girls came home from school. Scott came home from work. We went for a drive to enjoy a rare evening of nice weather. I sat down to get back online for work and found that the system is down...no work tonight, which is probably a good thing. Maybe I just needed to BLOG (read: vent).

Two Cows and an Old House Near Woodruff, Utah

Barn and Curious Cow Near Randolph, Utah

Bear Lake, Utah on Mother's Day (Eve) Drive

My mother likes to take very, very long drives on Mother's Day, so today (the day before Mother's Day) we drove from our home to Bear Lake via Logan Canyon, then came home through Evanston, Wyoming. We saw feral goats, antelope, deer, a chipmunk, and lots and lots of horses and cows. The color of Bear Lake is always amazing -- so many blues and purples. We had expected to find green spring up the there, but I always forget that spring comes later in the mountains.

Royal Wedding in Review

At 1:45 this morning I got up, woke everyone else up, whipped up a stack of cucumber finger sandwiches, put platters of "biscuits" (cookies) and chocolate dipped fruits, out on the table, and sat down to watch the Royal Wedding live from London expecting to fall asleep. What followed on television was so riveting to me, so foreign yet so familiar, that I couldn't sleep afterall and didn't doze off until the happy couple arrived at Buckingham Palace - then I was out like a light.

I've been fighting sleep all day, and giving in to sleep with long cat naps, but I don't regret being 'up in the night.' The entire wedding felt like a dream.

I loved the dresses -- Kate Middleton's and her sister Pippa's. I loved the bright green trees inside the Abbey. I loved the brothers, William and Harry, in their regalia, and the queen in her canary yellow suit and hat. I didn't stay awake long enough to see the kisses from the balcony, but I love that there were two of them instead of one and that the crowd roared its approval.

I stayed awake to witness it because I know it will be a memory 30 years from now and I like to make memories for myself and for the people I love.

Keeping a Running Balance

balance (def.)
•a state of equilibrium
•equality between the totals of the credit and debit sides of an account
•harmonious arrangement or relation of parts or elements within a whole
•something left after other parts have been taken away
•symmetry, exact reflection of form on opposite sides of a dividing line

Many years ago I realized the need to keep a running balance in our checking account. The right hand (me) didn't always know what the left hand (Scott) was spending, and back then I couldn't pull up a bank statement online at a moment's notice to see what had and had not cleared the bank, even if I knew what to be watching for. I discovered that when I kept an accurate running balance of our checking account I felt on top of things, no matter how little money was in the account. If I had $38.22, for example, I could breathe easily because I knew where I stood and could make decisions accordingly. I still get a thrill from knowing down to the penny exactly where we're "at," even when (especially when) the funds are drawing low.

Keeping a running balance -- we do it not just in our checking accounts but in our laundry bins and in our kitchen cupboards and sinks and garbage cans and gas tanks; in our sleep-to-waking, work-to-play, and indoor-outdoor ratios.

The point is we are running, and how do you keep anything in balance when you're running?

When I get really excited about something (which can happen every few days, it seems), I tend to go overboard on that one thing while neglecting almost everything else -- certainly everything else that is non-essential. I tend to get out of balance.

The pendulum swings recklessly for a few days -- up until 3am, sleeping mid-afternoon to compensate, barely meeting deadlines...And then I think of the Foucault Pendulum swinging in perfect rhythm in the Eyring Science Center at BYU, demonstrating the steady rotation of the earth.

William Shakespeare said it best: "Were man but constant, he were perfect." But we can't be constant. We can't live in a constant state of equilibrium. If things are momentarily in balance, they will soon be out of balance again, and we will be scrambling to put everything back in order.

I often feel like one of the Chinese plate spinners I saw in the Mulan parade at Disneyland about 12 years ago. Somehow they managed to walk the parade route with multiple plates at the ends of long poles, all spinning and tilting at once, each needing attention.

That's a metaphor for life. Just trying to keep in balance keeps us running.

Daffodils Are Up...

No, those are just paper flowers!

About half of them were made by some sisters in my ward, the other half by Abby and me, for our Relief Society Birthday Social / Dinner tonight. Another lady in our ward invented them and actually published a book about making all kinds of paper flowers out of ordinary copy paper, which is inexpensive, readily available, and curls well for petals and leaves.


There are about 70 daffodils in these pictures, but imagine happening upon ten thousand of them on a lakeside walk, as William Wordsworth did. He tells the story in this poem from 1804, which has emerged as my favorite poem of all time, I think (I published it in this blog last spring, too):

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A Few Thoughts and Quotes on Health and Walking

I've talked to several people recently who have seriously injured themselves exercising. I am talking broken hips, broken backs...serious stuff! In thinking about this, I realized I am probably meeting so many of them at this point in my life because I am reaching a certain age and the bodies of my contemporaries are falling apart. (I know, I know...mine is, too, but I don't want to think about that.)

So here are some health related quotes:

Health nuts are going to feel stupid some day, lying in hospitals, dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. - George Bernard Shaw

A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time - pills or stairs. - Joan Welsh

Walk: The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird. - Jules Renard

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other. - M. C. Richards

It is good to collect things; it is better to take walks. - Anatole France

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. - Henry David Thoreau

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. - Paul Dudley White

The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy. The best way to lengthen out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose. - Charles Dickens

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast. - Harry Truman (Advice on how to live to be 80.)

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven today and we don't know where the hell she is.
- Ellen Degeneres

A Hint of Spring

There is a hint of spring in the air again...just a hint. It was beautiful yesterday, too, but windy and, therefore, cold.

Just thought I would give that weather report. About as important as writing that I am making spaghetti for dinner.

I guess the big news is that we have a 'free' evening -- all four of us. We've had to push things off til tomorrow to get it, but we have it and we're going to enjoy an evening at home. Of course we will be doing some homework and that kind of thing.

I am still immersed in the world of Mra Remotswe of "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," a series I am listening to on CD whenever I am in my van. I did not realize how much time I spend driving around, but I am now on book five, "The Full Cupboard of Life," and I've only been listening for a few weeks. The books take place in Botswana and the characters are wonderful. There's also an HBO series on DVD that's pretty entertaining. We watched a few episodes of that while Abby was home with strep.

I realized sometime after listening to Book 3 that this fictional character, Mra Remotswe, makes me want to be a better person. If a fictional character can do that, there is real value in writing fiction.

To salvage this otherwise unenlightening post, let's have a Word of the Day:

Pluvial = rainy

We will probably be able to use this word soon, since spring is on its way.

Two Things to Think About

Travels with Charley, In Search of America by John Steinbeck. From the last chapter of that book: “Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”

James E. Miller, "The Art of Being a Healing Presence," paraphrased:If you try to make yourself anything other than who you are, if you try to act especially competent, especially sensitive, or especially 'together,' you create a distance between yourself and those around you. They may feel they can't measure up to this 'false' you. When you allow yourself to be with another person as you naturally are, with all of your frailties, you have taken a sure step toward the wholeness that awaits you both.

Learning Curves

You know how much faster you can travel in a straight line, as the crow flies? I wonder how much farther we could get in life if there weren't so many learning curves?

We'd be born walking, like horses, if there were no learning curves. We wouldn't require any schooling or training or experience. We'd all know how to do everything automatically. In fact, there'd be little point in living three quarters of a century. Everything would quickly become redundant.

I like learning. Actually, I love it. But when I want to be done learning something (espcially how to use some new technological thing) I want to be done learning it NOW and using it like a pro. I suppose that's why engineers struggle to make everything "intuitive." I guess I just don't have very good intuition when it comes to technology.

Santa Claus asked me what I would want for Christmas this year 'if money were no object.' Santa understood that for me, money is always an object. I am a naturally frugal person. But Santa really wanted to know (Santa was about to go shopping), so I told him what I had been secretly dreaming about for years: a Nikon digital SLR.

Over these years of quiet contemplation, the prices have really come down, and sure enough, there, under the tree, was my camera. It came in a package with two lenses, a camera bag, and 18 photography classes, which I thought initially were only a sales tool. Who could need 18 classes to learn how to use a camera?



I have now attended three or four classes and bought an additional class featuring my camera model specifically taught my a Nikon trainer out of New York. I've also invested in a good tripod and some camera cleaning supplies. I still have not taken one decent picture.

I am definitely intimidated by the thing. On more than one occasion, I have framed the perfect shot only to find that the camera would not shoot. The Nikon trainer said it was a focus thing. I should have stepped back or switched to manual. I'm learning.

I took the camera out last weekend at sunset to a quiet spot in the valley with a great view of the mountains. I snapped pictures while the sun descended over the horizon in what I thought would be a spectacular array of colors. Instead, it was the world's first black and white sunset. Grayscale.

Our valley has been under an inversion since about the time I got the camera. The sky is perpetually gray. The snow on the ground is gray. Everything is in grayscale.

So I await the perfect picture. But that is part of the fun of being a photographer, even a very amateur one like myself. The perfect picture is always out there, waiting to be taken. It beckons you to remote outposts in distant places. And to be ready to take it, it forces you to lug equipment and attend classes and practice, practicie, practice.

So thank you, Santa, for throwing me this learning curve. And thank you, Mom, for giving me my first camera (the trusty Olympus I took to Denmark.)

Interesting Article from Salon.com on Mormon Mommy Blogs

I am re-printing this article from the left-wing website, salon.com, on Mormon Mommy Blogs because a) I found it interesting and b) in some ways my blog is a Mormon Mommy Blog. I am a Mormon, I am a mommy (though my youngest is 11 now, and prefers to call me Mama), and I am a blogger, but I have deliberately avoided posting pictures of my children here and I don't think I've ever posted a recipe or craft project. My blog is less about appearances (interior design, crafts, perfect living) than it is about thoughts and ideals, writing and phtography, books and movies.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this article as much as I did:

Saturday, Jan 15, 2011 17:01 ET
Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs
I'm a young, feminist atheist who can't bake a cupcake. Why am I addicted to the shiny, happy lives of these women?

At first glance, Naomi and Stacie and Stephanie and Liz appear to be members of the species known as the "Hipster Mommy Blogger," though perhaps a bit more cheerful and wholesome than most. They have bangs like Zooey Deschanel and closets full of cool vintage dresses. Their houses look like Anthropologie catalogs. Their kids look like Baby Gap models. Their husbands look like young graphic designers, all cute lumberjack shirts and square-framed glasses. They spend their days doing fun craft projects (vintage-y owl throw pillow! Recycled button earrings! Hand-stamped linen napkins!). They spend their weekends throwing big, whimsical dinner parties for their friends, all of whom have equally adorable kids and husbands.

But as you page through their blog archives, you notice certain "tells." They're super-young (like, four-kids-at-29 young). They mention relatives in Utah. They drink a suspicious amount of hot chocolate. Finally, you see it: a subtly placed widget with a picture of a temple, or a hyperlink on the word "faith" or "belief." You click the link and up pops the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yep, Naomi and Stacie and Stephanie and Liz are Mormons. They're members of a large, close-knit network of Mormon lifestyle bloggers -- young stay-at-home-moms who blog about home and hearth, Latter-day Saint-style. From Rockstar Diaries (Naomi) to Underaged and Engaged (Stacie) to Nie Nie Dialogues (Stephanie) to Say Yes to Hoboken (Liz), Mormon lifestyle bloggers occupy their very own corner of the blogosphere.

Their lives are nothing like mine -- I'm your standard-issue late-20-something childless overeducated atheist feminist -- yet I'm completely obsessed with their blogs. On an average day, I'll skim through a half-dozen Mormon blogs, looking at Polaroids of dogs in raincoats or kids in bow ties, reading gratitude lists, admiring sewing projects.

I'm not alone, either. Two of my closest friends -- both chronically overworked Ph.D. candidates -- procrastinate for hours poring over Nat the Fat Rat or C. Jane Enjoy It. A recent discussion of Mormonism on the blog Jezebel unleashed a waterfall of confessions in the comments section from other young non-religious women similarly riveted by the shiny, happy domestic lives of their Latter-day Saint sisters.

"They have lovely homes, picture-perfect kids, loving, super-attentive husbands, and things seem very normal and calm," writes a commenter named BrookeD, who admits to reading five Mormon blogs daily.

"I thought I was the only one!!" responds another commenter.

"THANK YOU," adds a third. "I'm another closet non-Mormon reader of Mormon mommy blogs."

So why, exactly, are these blogs so fascinating to women like us -- secular, childless women who may have never so much as baked a cupcake, let alone reupholstered our own ottomans with thrifted fabric and vintage grosgrain ribbon? It's not as though we're sniffing around the dark side of the faith, à la "Big Love." And it's not about religion. As someone married to a former Saint (my husband left the church as a teenager), I certainly have no illusions about what life as a Mormon would be like, and I'm sure it's not for me, which makes my obsession with these blogs all the more startling.

Well, to use a word that makes me cringe, these blogs are weirdly "uplifting." To read Mormon lifestyle blogs is to peer into a strange and fascinating world where the most fraught issues of modern living -- marriage and child rearing -- appear completely unproblematic. This seems practically subversive to someone like me, weaned on an endless media parade of fretful stories about "work-life balance" and soaring divorce rates and the perils of marrying too young/too old/too whatever. And don't even get me started on the Mommy Blogs, which make parenthood seem like a vale of judgment and anxiety, full of words like "guilt" and "chaos" and "BPA-free" and "episiotomy." Read enough of these, and you'll be ready to remove your own ovaries with a butter knife.

"It seems that a lot of popular culture wants to portray marriage and motherhood as demeaning, restrictive or simple, but in the LDS church, motherhood is a very important job, and it's treated with a lot of respect," says Natalie Holbrook, the New York-based author of the popular blog Nat the Fat Rat. "Most of my readers are non-LDS women in their late 20s and early 30s, college educated, many earning secondary degrees on the postgraduate level, and a comment I often get is, 'You are making me want kids, and I've never wanted kids!'"

Indeed, Mormon bloggers like Holbrook make marriage and motherhood seem, well, fun. Easy. Joyful. These women seem relaxed and untouched by cynicism. They throw elaborate astronaut-themed birthday parties for their kids and go on Sunday family drives to see the fall leaves change and get mani-pedis with their friends. They often have close, large extended families; moms and sisters are always dropping in to watch the kids or help out with cake decorating. Their lives seem adorable and old-fashioned and comforting.

"I've gotten e-mails from readers thanking me for putting a positive spin on marriage and family," Holbrook says. "It's important to acknowledge the hard parts -- and I think we all do -- but why not focus more on the lovely and the beautiful? That positive attitude is a very common theme throughout all aspects of the Mormon faith."

This focus on the positive is especially alluring when your own life seems anything but easy. As my friend G. says, of her fascination with Mormon lifestyle blogs, "I'm just jealous. I want to arrange flowers all day too!" She doesn't, really. She's just tired from long days spent in the lab, from a decade of living in a tiny apartment because she's too poor from student loans to buy a house, from constant negotiations about breadwinning status with her artist husband. It's not that she or I want to quit our jobs to bake brownies or sew kiddie Halloween costumes. It's just that for G., Mormon blogs are an escapist fantasy, a way to imagine a sweeter, simpler life.

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about "the New Domesticity" -- an increasing interest in old-fashioned, traditionally female tasks like sewing, crafts and jam making. Some pundits see this as a sign that young women yearn to return to some kind of 1950s Ozzie and Harriet existence, that feminism has "failed," that women are realizing they can't have it all, after all. That view is utterly nonsense, in my opinion, but I do think women of my generation are looking to the past in an effort to create fulfilling, happy domestic lives, since the modern world doesn't offer much of a road map. Our parents -- divorced, stressed-out baby boomers -- are hardly paragons of domestic bliss. Nor are the Gen X "Mommy War" soldiers, busy winging snowballs of judgment at each other from across the Internet. (Formula is poison! Baby wearing is child abuse!)

If those are the options, I'll take a pass, thanks.

Enter the Mormon bloggers, with their picture-perfect catalog lives. It is possible to be happy, they seem to whisper. We love our homes. We love our husbands.

Of course, the larger question is, are these women's lives really as sweet and simple as they appear? Blogs have always been a way to mediate and prettify your own life; you'd be a fool to compare your real self to someone else's carefully arranged surface self. And Mormons are particularly famous for their "put on a happy face" attitude. The church teaches that the Gospel is the only authentic path to true happiness. So if you're a faithful follower, you better be happy, right?

The phenomenon of the happier-than-thou Mormon housewife blogger is so well-recognized it's even spawned a parody blog, Seriously So Blessed, whose fictional author brays things like "We have non-stop fun all the time and are LOVING married life!" and "Speaking of fall, I kind of sometimes want to start a non-profit to help moms who go all of fall without blogging pics of their kids in pumpkin patches, because it seriously breaks my heart!"

So why are Mormon women such prolific bloggers? "It probably has something to do with the fact that Mormons are the world's biggest journal-keepers," says my husband, offering a partial explanation. Church elders have long encouraged members to keep regular journals for the dual purposes of historical record-keeping and promoting spiritual insight, and as a result Mormons are champion journalers and scrapbookers. In the 2000s, church elders began officially promoting new media technologies like blogs as a way of spreading the gospel, and the Mormon blogging community soon became so large it earned itself a punny nickname: the Bloggernacle.

For many LDS women, blogging about the domestic arts is a natural fit. As ex-Mormon designer Emily Henderson explains on her blog, The Brass Petal, growing up in large families engenders an attitude of make-do thriftiness -- homemade bread, recycled soda can Christmas ornaments, Salvation Army fashion. With the rise of DIY culture across secular America, all of a sudden those skills have become trendy, even bankable.

"Blogging is something they/we can do that feels productive, can potentially make money for our families and can be done from the home at any time," Henderson writes. For young Mormon women, who face immense cultural pressure to stay home with children rather than pursue a career, blogging about their adventures in homemaking becomes a sort of creative outlet, a way of contributing to the larger world beyond the home.

The bloggers I read may be as happy with their lot as they seem. Or not. While some Mormon women prosper under the cultural norms for wife- and mother-dom, others chafe. Utah is, after all, the state with the highest rate of prescription antidepressant use, a statistic the president of the Utah Psychiatric Association attributes to the pressure among Mormon women to be ideal wives and mothers. The creator of Seriously So Blessed, an anonymous Mormon woman, addresses this pressure in an online archive of Mormon women interviews called the Mormon Women Project: "In any highly homogeneous culture we all feel pressure to be and look and think and act a certain way," she says. "You start to think you need to be absolutely perfect in every area."

Clearly, life for the Mormon wife is not all crafts and cupcakes. Even if it were, I seriously doubt that crafts and cupcakes are all that much fun when you do them all day, every day.

But the basic messages expressed in these blogs -- family is wonderful, life is meant to be enjoyed, celebrate the small things -- are still lovely. And if they help women like me envision a life in which marriage and motherhood could potentially be something other than a miserable, soul-destroying trap, I say, "Right on." I won't be inviting the missionaries inside for hot cocoa now or ever, but I don't plan on stopping my blog habit any time soon.

Emily Matchar is a Chapel Hill, NC-based writer whose work has appeared in Men's Journal, Gourmet, Babble and lots of others. More: Emily Matchar

Book Review: "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

I've just finished reading "Persuasion," Jane Austen's last novel. Because of the archaic language (written in 1816), many people mistakenly assume that reading Austen is some sort of an academic exercise, like reading Latin, but it is pure pleasure! With all of its hilarious characters, witty words and romantic elements, it's a bodice-ripper for the mind.

I could not put it down and dreampt of it in my sleep. The language does effect speech patterns (and writing styles), however.

The main characters in most of Austen's books are slightly unpredictable, idealistic youg women, but in this novel the heroine, Anne Elliot, is older but wiser, jaded by disappointing life experiences. The bloom of her youth is behind her. She is useful to everyone but valued by almost no one. At the outset of the novel, it looks like her life will continue in that vain until the end.

But,of course, love intervenes.

I found myself wishing with Anne Elliot that the object of her affection would appear at a party or chance to meet her on the street. or that he would glance at her at just the right moment to convey some meaning.

Jane Austen is all about subtlties!

I read this book over 20 years ago and had fond memories of it, but the only part I remembered clearly involved a minor character at the end of the book.

Here are some excerpts I loved:

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

On Mary Musgrove: "While well and happy and properly attended to, she had great good humor and excellent spirits, but any indisposition sunk her completely; she had no resources for solitude."

"A thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling: that it would soon be over."

"She found that to retentive feelings, eight year may be little more than nothing."

"Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement."

Mrs. Harville: "I hate to hear you talking so...as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days."


It was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship.

Like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

After all she had gone through, nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.

Family connections were always worth preserving, good company worth seeking.

"My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company."
"You are mistaken, said he gently. "That is not good company, that is the best."

A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes.

There is so little real friendship in the world!

"I am no match-maker, as you well know," said Lady Russell, "being much too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and caluculations."

He had an affectionate heart. He must love somebody.

Of course they had fallen in love over poetry.

She had some feelings, which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy, senseless joy!

Whoever suffered inconvenience, she must suffer none.

When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it.

Anne saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliancy of the room. Her happiness was from within.

On women loving longer than men: "We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is perhaps our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. "

A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never!

To flatter and follow others without being flattered and followed in turn is but a state of half enjoyment.

Anonymity & Independence

When I frequent a business establishment of some kind (a bank, a restaurant, a shop...whatever) I like to be anonymous. I do not want anyone who works there to know my name, or, if they know it anyway, to let me know that they know it. I like my anonymity. (As if I were famous or something!)

Is that weird or what? I'm not sure anyone else in America feels this way.

I know most people like doing business with people they know. They like walking into a bank and being recognized as a frequent customer or going into a restaurant where the waiter knows exactly what they want to order. For whatever quirky reason, I do not.

I was thinking about this today, because I was considering going to a clothing store where they go overboard on customer service, which actually keeps me away. You know: can I hold that for you? Can I find you a different size? Would you like to see it in a different color? etc., etc. You walk in and ten minutes later they know everything about you -- your name, your size, your color preferences, what the occasion is you're shopping for...everything! I do not need them to gather all of this information. I like to shop independently. I can look at the clothes myself and assess whether or not I want to try them on.

Places like this assume you don't really know what looks good on you, so you need lots of extra help. In my case, they are probably right, but I still prefer to dress myself. When I am shopping, I'm not asking for a makeover. I just want to find something I like.

When Scott worked downtown, he used to frequent a fast food Japanese place at lunch. I knew he ate there often, but I had no idea how often until I accompanied him one day and the person behind the counter greeted him by name and asked, 'The usual?' Scott looked at me sheepishly while I laughed. I still tease him about it.

I guess I came to this opinion when we were first married. We bought life insurance from a neighbor of ours, a very nice guy we liked a lot. But when we had to make a change to the policy, he put us on a guilt trip. We almost capitulated to his objection just to be neighborly, when we realized that if we did not know our insurance agent, we would have no emotional attachment to him and could make decisions independently. That's how commercial decisions should be made.

Don't get me wrong -- I prefer to shop locally and keep the money flowing in my own community. I feel personally responsibile when a local establishment goes out of business -- I really do! Like I should have patronized that tanning salon more, even though I don't use tanning salons.

Basically, if I lived in 1980s Boston, I would not frequent Cheers, 'where everybody knows your name,' and if I lived in 1960s Mayberry, I would be tempted to drive all the way to Raleigh to do my shopping. That's just me.

Sugar Factory Coming Down...Slowly

I was out practicing with my new camera today and took these pictures of a local landmark, which is being demolished very slowly with a small wrecking ball. Giant chunks of concrete defy gravity, suspended in webs of rebar. This used to be a very large sugar factory when our city was rural. It was one of the largest sugar beet factories in the world at one time. Now it has been deemed seismically unsound, too expensive to bring up to code, so it must come down. I finished taking pictures and I was driving away when I looked up and saw the door swinging open at the top, so I changed my lens and, voila! I could see inside. Obviously a very drab, gray day.