The Write Stuff

Berry Memories

2012-01-26T08:42:00.000-08:00

Costco always has raspberries, and I always get some when I shop there, not usually to use in recipes, although I have discovered the joys of freezer jam, but to munch down by the handful, to pig out, to indulge shamelessly. It is my definition of heaven on earth.

Whenever I eat a luscious raspberry I am transported back to mygrandmother’s garden just outside of Portland, Oregon. I am nine years oldagain, and I am picking raspberries and eating them indiscriminately, wantonly,not knowing that I will never again have such a close relationship with thisexquisite fruit.

Beingraised in Western Oregon is at the same time a blessing and a curse. It is ablessing because of the temperate climate, the definite identifiable seasonsthat don’t pass too quickly, the trees and flowers, the abundance of freshfruits and vegetables, the nearness both to mountains and shore. It is a cursebecause with all of that perfection, you get spoiled, and no other place you live willever measure up.

Nothingassails the senses like a trip to a farmer’s market where all this bounty isavailable. As a teen, I picked strawberries and green beans every summer toearn money for school clothes, and went in the fall with my mother andgrandmother to harvest pears, apples, nuts and other tree fruits to fill thelarder. I have joked with friends that I was raised in Oregon on nuts andberries, which explains why I like to hibernate in the winter like the bears.

Oneof the reasons I appreciate raspberries is that I know how hard it is to retrieve them. Thorny bushes can be intimidating, and the berries hide demurely behind leaves sothe picker has to risk the thorns to find the treasure--life's like that sometimes. Like many other fruits, berries have to bepicked at just the right moment. If too ripe they don’t keep very long, but ifnot ripe enough they’re too tart.

Motherused to can raspberries by the quart, back in the days before we had a freezer,and when it came to making punch for a party, she conjured up a magnificentnectar with a quart of those berries, some raspberry sherbet, some lemon-limesoda and other magical ingredients. We had fresh raspberry shortcake in season,but never enough, and in the winter we had raspberry jam, raspberry jello, andwhatever delicious raspberry concoctions her creative mind could imagine. Sinceleaving home, I have paid the same kind of homage to the genius who first pairedraspberries with chocolate.

Somepeople don’t like raspberries because of the seeds, but they just don’t knowhow to eat them. I learned in mygrandmother’s raspberry patch that you put the tasty little red gems on yourtongue, then press against the roof of your mouth to crush the berry,coaxing the sweet juice to dance joyfully with your taste buds. That way theseeds don’t have a chance to get stuck in your teeth. If you must chew, justdon’t bite down all the way.

AsI remember them, of course, Oregon raspberries were as big as thimbles andloaded with juice and flavor. I’ve been accused of exaggerating thebig-ness and best-ness of everything western Oregon has to offer, and though I may beguilty of bragging, I’m not wrong.

So every time I go to Costco when it's not berry season where I now live, I grab a package of raspberries and I am immediately transported for a delicious moment back to mygrandmother’s garden when I was nine years old and nothing mattered exceptfinding the next thimble-sized, perfectly sweet ripe raspberry.

A New Perspective on…

2012-01-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

vomit

verb

1 be sick, spew, heave, retch, gag, get sick; informal: throw up, puke, purge, hurl, barf, upchuck, ralph.

2 regurgitate, bring up, spew up, cough up, lose; informal throw up, puke, spit up.

noun informal: puke, spew, barf.

AH (adorable hubby) doesn't often get sick to the point of losing his lunch, but one day this week he had a touch of flu and his lunch came up for consideration. He's over it now and we're all glad.

This isn't a frequent topic of conversation in our family, except when we go to dinner with AH's siblings, and one brother-in-law is inclined to choose as our destination Chuck-a-Rama, the popular buffet restaurant in Utah, which he usually refers to as "Upchuck." Maybe the first time you hear that it might be mildly amusing, but not the 101st. We're all willing to go there anyway when it's his turn to choose because they have favorites we don't make at home. I'm partial to the variety of salads, scones with honey butter, and bread pudding--which I take to the ice cream bar and squirt caramel sauce on.

Nevertheless, we've been talking about barf a lot lately. And cheering.

Yes--IVF worked, and our son and his wife are pregnant. Now she has morning sickness. I told him that if he wanted a full-spectrum experience, he could at least manage to throw in with her by throwing up with her a few times. He's thinking about it.

They've been married ten years and this is the first time they've been pregnant. We're so thankful for so many factors and medical miracles that have aligned to make this happen for them.

Ethan, our fifth grandbaby, will be eight years old in May so we've been baby-hungry for a while. Now we're all looking forward to August when this long-anticipated, much loved little person will arrive. And very happy at this point about the barfing.

Putting Christmas away

2012-01-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

It seems an ironic way to say it--"putting Christmas away"--and I'm feeling a little melancholy, but it's more than just wrapping up all the decor and ornaments and stashing them in the garage for eleven more months.

I always loved the symbolism of an evergreen tree. It's alive all year round, doesn't lose its leaves or go dormant for a season, and it represents the eternal life that Christ offers. Having grown up among trees, I'm especially fond of all things "greenly leaping" as ee cummings has described them.

Our new house doesn't really have space for a big green live Christmas tree. Instead, we use a wrought iron tree especially for ornament display--no lights, no tinsel or garlands, no star at the top. I used to have Christmas music as the theme of the tree, with angels and musical notes and little parchment sheet music. Now the theme is "Let Heaven and Nature Sing," so I still have angels and music, but I also use birds and butterflies, pinecones and stars. It's all organic, too, with wood, clay, seashells, glass and metal.

It's not big or ornate or flashy, but our bare essentials tree represents the most important event since the creation, the event we celebrate in the winter even though it happened in the spring. There's no need to banish reminders of Christ just because it's not December anymore. So why should I put everything away? I want to keep visible in my home year-round reminders of what the birth of Christ represents; although the ornaments may go back in the storage boxes, my heart is still full of what the celebration really means. We have Christmas so we can have Easter.

Career Advice

2011-12-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

We live on a main street through our normally quiet west Provo neighborhood, far enough from the railroad tracks that we can hear the whistle wail in the distance. In the middle of the night, it has a certain romantic charm because it evokes memories of the great train trips I've had. It's Americana. It's exciting. It's pleasant.

On the other hand, because we live on a main street through our normally quiet west Provo neighborhood, we also hear every juvenile hotshot in a pimped-out ride who thinks the whole world also wants to hear his stereo played at the "deafening" decibel level. We can feel the bass beat while the vehicle is still several blocks down the street, and as it nears the house, we can hear the sound loud enough to cause pain and drown out our own music. I can't imagine what it's like inside that truck.

Being a fairly new resident of Provo, I don't know if there are anti-noise ordinances in town, but if so, they are among the most violated civil laws. I'm sure those drivers just want to share their music with me, but I have a right to refuse to listen to sounds so loud my ears bleed. People with an ounce of sensitivity ought to establish a personal anti-noise ordinance. Unfortunately, respecting air space is not considered by some to be an inalienable right for other people.

Noise is sort of like cigarette smoke. I don't want to breathe it because it nauseates me, and I don't want to hear the booming bass because it not only offends my ears, it's very possible that the decibel level can do actual damage to my eardrums as I hear it passing by. No thanks; old age is doing its own number on my hearing levels without the help of inconsiderate strangers.

So my advice is this: Anyone seeking a career that will never be modernized out of existence should seriously consider audiology—hearing aids, sign language education, that sort of thing. Listening to that high decibel bass long enough in that enclosed environment will make a lot of people deaf who just thought they were being cool. Whether they like it or not, they're going to need medical care in the future for deafness they've inflicted on themselves, and it'll happen much sooner than they think.

Christmases I Have Known

2011-12-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

In 1995, we had no Christmas tree. It wasn't the first time we'd gone without, nor the last, and it wasn’t because the Grinch sneaked in and stole our holiday. Rather, it sneakedup on us when other things got a higher place on the priority list as the year came to a close. Dau # 2 married in September and moved to Logan, and Dau # 1 returned from her LDS mission in October and got married in December. It wasn't a surprise. It had been on the radar screen for several years, but she wasn't making very many decisions about it until she got home, and then everything happened fast. By the time we went out looking for a tree on Christmas Eve that year,there weren’t any.

Lately I have been reviewing other Christmases I have known.

Guam, an island in the western Pacific,was the scene of our first two Christmases as a married couple. Like Utah, Guam has two seasons. InUtah, it’s freezing cold winter and burning hot summer. On Guam, it’s wet andwetter. Without snow or even a chill in the air, getting in the mood forChristmas in our island apartment was difficult. Real evergreens were simply too expensive, but we had some other representations and substitutes. Wewent caroling in the hospital with our church group, but not even singing "Jungle Bells," the island version of the old song, could make us feel theholiday mood. Our second Christmas was a different story. We had a six-week-oldbaby, and our gift to each other, and her, was a new rocking chair, deliveredin Santa-like fashion on Christmas Eve.

Possibly the most unusual Christmaseswe’ve had were the two we spent in Iran, a long time ago, before the revolution. Dau # 1 was about a year old. Our landlord and his family had rentedto American Christians before, and were sensitive to our homesickness at thatseason of the year. We socialized with our Christian friends, but it didn’tease our heavy-hearted feelings. In a Moslem country, of course, littleattention is paid to the celebrations of infidel religions. As we sat there onChristmas Eve, trying not to think about what would be happening back home thatnight, we heard some noise and giggling at the door, then a knock. I went tosee what was going on, and there were the landlord’s children, tugging at a potted pine tree to get it through the door. Itwas decorated with colorful paper chains and handfuls of cotton. We were so touched that a Jewish family prepared this meaningful gift for their foreignChristian friends. More than a tree, or what it symbolizes, we needed to feelkindness and love, and they certainly gave us that.

Over the years we've tried some other traditions. One year we went out in the hills and cut our own Christmas tree (bad idea unless you don't mind pitch dripping on the carpet) and another year I got my husband a surprise gift he didn't like because I hadn't cleared it with him ahead of time. (Yeah, that's how he thinks.) But we recovered and forged on. For a few years I experimented with fruitcake recipes to find the most amenable, for a while went through a chocolate dipping phase. Then there is the Christmas bear collection. I don't know when that started, but we now have a stuffed bear for every member of the family. I've tried to get the kids to choose one and take it home, but nobody wants to break up the set. For a few years, my sister and I would make and exchange ornaments, until we both got too busy.

However, the tradition that has stayed with us is the pudding prize. Danish Rice Pudding, an exquisite blend of rice and cream and transcendent bliss, is a tradition of my great- grandfather's homeland. You put one whole almond in the pudding, and whoever gets the almond in his/her serving gets a prize. We've enjoyed that, and the tradition has gone with the kids when they left home.

When the girls left home, our Christmas began to take on adifferent form of celebration, and if it weren't for our son, we wouldn't have had much at all. When we're not going to be together it's hard to keep up the traditions as enthusiastically as we would if we were going to share them. Son is best described as the Christmas Kid, and his philosophy is, "We need a little Christmas NOW." He'd get out some lights to put on the bushes in front of the house, and decorate the tree, and pretty soon I'd feel like making holiday goodies. Then he left home, too, and some years we didn't get out many decorations at all.

Now we are in transition again, having moved to a new house. I highly recommend downsizing. It's liberating. One good thing about a smaller house is that there's no place for a lot of extra stuff, like holiday decorations. After our first year here, I eliminated half of what I had, and we haven't missed it. So I got a wrought iron tree, about four feet tall, that's strictly for ornament display, and there's space for that in the corner of the living room--no lights, but it works for us. We have an olive wood nativity set and a couple of smaller ones to put on the piano, and the bears sit in the entry.

Through all of that, the ongoing question was "Why are we doing this?" Christmas got better when we released Santa with a vote of thanks and focused on the Savior. Each year it's a challenge to pay attention for opportunities to serve and help others, and we are reassured by the knowledge that, as the Grinch learned, Christmas doesn't come from a store. If Christ isn't already there, no amount of trappings will bring Christmas into our hearts. Over the years we have begun to understandmore keenly what Charles Dickens meant when he says through his changedcharacter, Ebenezer Scrooge, “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try tokeep it all year."

December Bride... And Groom

2011-12-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

It’s been 42 years since my husband and I were married, and having had a December wedding,and three children in the next nine years, the focus changed for a while tothem instead of us. We never really sat down and talked about how we wouldcelebrate Christmas, but as time passed we experimented to discover forourselves what traditions offered by our culture would best fit our family.Some years the holiday came, and there were numerous family obligations andvisits as we had time off from school, during which “our” day came and wenodded and smiled and said, “Yep, this was the day,” and went on with whateverwe were doing. Some years we had time to celebrate by going to dinner, andafter our nest emptied out, we even had brief getaway vacations when ourschedule allowed. We always celebrated Christmas, but our anniversary receivedattention only if we got around to it.

This evolution of celebration has mademe think back to that first Christmas Roger and I spent together. Actually,Christmas that year was five days before our wedding, and he went home toPortland with me to meet my parents for the first time. I knew I had made theright choice when I saw what a good sport he was. A photographer friend of myparents did our wedding portrait, and my mother held an open house for us. Shewas always a gracious hostess and a generous person. She loved to celebrate,and having a new son-in-law was her favorite Christmas present that year. Wewere 26 at the time, and I’m sure there were times she had despaired andwondered if I’d ever find someone to put up with me. Nevertheless, the firstmeeting with my parents was nothing if not memorable for Roger.

On Christmas morning, as we gatheredfor our gift exchange, Mother somehow lost her balance as she bent over to plugin the tree lights, and fell into the tree. It remained standing, even if shedidn’t, and as my brothers helped her up, she laughed along with the rest of usat what a Laurel and Hardy thing she had done.

Motheralways liked to have a special breakfast on Christmas, and this year it wouldbe extra-special because Roger was there. We all took our places around thekitchen table, and as she hurried over from the stove with a pitcher of syrupshe had just heated, the bottom dropped out of it. Our food got cold in thetime it took us to clean up the mess. Permanent syrup stains on Roger’sslippers became a cosmic admonition for us to keep our sense of humor, nomatter what we fell into, no matter what splashed on us.

We spent the following two Christmaseson Guam, an island in the western Pacific. My mother sent us a box of Oregonholly to make a wreath, and some gold satin ornaments, which I piled up in theshape of a Christmas tree. Real trees were simply too expensive on ourbeginning teacher’s salary, and it's hard to celebrate Christmas in perpetual summer weather. For two years after that, we were in Iran, with aJewish landlord who understood our Christian customs and kindly provided us with aliving tree that we later planted in their garden.

We’ve had more ordinary celebrationssince we settled down, and our children have enjoyed establishing and followingthe traditions we have had together. We all love following the tradition of our Danish ancestry with rice pudding onChristmas Eve--whoever gets the whole almond in their serving gets the pudding prize. It took the kids years to figure out that I manipulated the servingsso the same person didn’t win the pudding prize two years in a row. As ourchildren have left home, they’ve each had the collection of tree ornaments Istarted for them when they were very young. Now they do the same thing fortheir own children.

When the three of them got old enough to govern themselves, we'd go away for a couple of days and leave them home alone. Our rationale was this: "Before there was you, there was us. Some day you'll leave and it'll just be us again. We don't want to come to that place having forgotten what it's like to be us. So we go away to focus on each other and remind ourselves who we are."

Both of our daughters were married inthe year we celebrated our 25^th anniversary. When they celebratetheir 25^th, we’ll celebrate our 50^th, and we have decidedto get together and have a big party that year. For 15 years, we arranged and juggled Christmas visits between Vancouver WA and Decatur ILwhich took our minds off the subject of anniversaries. Besides, grandchildrenare so charming, so delightfully distracting. Now two of our kids live in Utah and one lives in New York.

Through the years, we’ve seen Christmasand our anniversary take on different forms of celebration, and looking backover the mellowing process of time, I appreciate more and more the celebration of the birth of Christ, who did for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and who is the holder of the seal that binds our family together. To focus on his birth and his gifts helps us remember that he has always been a part of our lives and our marriage, that he is the ultimate marriage counselor, and that it matters to him that we have been true and faithful not only to each other, but also to him.

Overcoming the 'Thanks, But Gimme' Syndrome

2011-11-25T09:17:00.001-08:00

When I was growing up, this transition between Thanksgiving and Christmas was an easy mental leap that I made every year without much reflexion. When the Montgomery Ward Christmas Wish Book came in the mail sometime in early November, I'd thumb through it, noticing all the nice Stuff I'd like to have. And then the week after Thanksgiving, I'd throw myself down on the living room floor, open to the toy section of the book and start making a list. My mother was very patient when I'd show it to her while she busied around the kitchen. "We'll see" was always her response.

Not such a clod that I didn't recognize skepticism when I saw it, I'd look at the list again, study the catalog some more, and decide which of those items I could probably do without. With a much more modest list redrawn, I'd approach her again. "We'll see," she'd say. It was a sort of game we'd play in the runup to Christmas, but in my naivete I didn't figure out for a few years that "We'll see" in our household was a way of letting you down easy. We were not a household of independent means, but I didn't relate that to my list.

One of the items on my "must have" list was always a bride doll. I don't think my parents ever understood the crucial nature of having this toy. Somehow, in my child mind, I identified with it and figured that if I didn't get one I'd probably never get married. However, I don't believe that the fact that I never got one had anything to do with the fact that I didn't get married until I was almost 27. Lacking self-awareness had more to do with it than anything else. But we can save that discussion for a Pam Williams Retrospective some other time.

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that on Thanksgiving we list all the things we're thankful for, and then the next day we start making lists of more things we want to accumulate? That's the human race for you--never satisfied. Over the years I've learned that it’s spiritually and mentally a lot healthier to make lists of things to give other people. Whether or not it’s in our power to give them things we wish they could have, going through the exercise fosters the kind of insight about the human condition that selfish, greedy people never learn.

I don't make lists anymore, but if I were still tempted by that "thanks a lot but gimme more" trap, my list would be much different than it was in the days of the Montgomery Ward Christmas Wish Book. Now it would be tempered with realistically knowing that I'm not the center of everybody else's universes.

I don't remember exactly when the understanding came, but when I stopped gnashing my teeth over getting More and Better Stuff, I discovered that when we live with gratitude, we live with joy.

One gratitude rules and dictates all the rest--I'm grateful every day of the year that we can celebrate the birth of the Baby at Christmas, because if not for His birth, we would not have His sacrifice, making Easter the most important holiday of the year. If we live with continual gratitude for His tender mercies, every day is an endless thanksgiving.

Hair, Not the Musical

2011-11-18T20:12:00.001-08:00

Oy! Isn't the upkeep on the human body frustrating and time-consuming? Showers, teeth-brushing, nail-clipping, eating, exercising--you know what I mean. This week I had a perm, the every-two-months ritual to keep my hair in some semblance of order--stinky, tedious, soggy. Here's the problem: Ihave old hair. In fact, my hair got old before I did.

Some peoplehave bad hair days, but I’ve had a bad hair life. I was born with fine, limp,straight, plain brown hair, with a cowlick in the front of a wide forehead. [Well, it was blondefor the first few years, but that didn’t last long.] It grows fast and will not be ignored. Before I started taking care of it myself, my mother kept it in a "Dutch boy" cut.

Intemperate western Oregon where I was raised, in the days before portable hairdryers, you didn’t give a lot of thought to your hair. Washing it in the naturallysoft runoff from Mt. Hood that came out of our water taps, I would comb it into place, maybe put a few curlers in it, and eithersit by an open window to let the sun and breeze dry it, or in front of the heat of a roaring fireplace. When my hair was dry, I brushed it, and that was that--nota lot of fuss. I liked it that way.

WhenI got into high school curls became the trend, and the fussquotient increased. I knew by then that I was fighting a genetic predisposition for straightness. Through highschool I usually wore it collar length, no bangs, often in a French twist or aponytail. My older sister had naturally curly hair, wore it short, done up easily in pin curls, and had what was then described as a tossed salad hairdo, very stylish. She pulled the hair pins out on the way to early-morning seminary, ran her fingers through it and she was set for the day. I was so jealous.

UntilI went away to school in Utah, I had never used hand lotion or hairconditioner. Nobody warned me about the hard water and the dry climate in Utah. When I washed my hair the first time there and didn’t use conditioner (because I didn't know I should), Ilooked like someone who had never fixed her own hair before. It wasembarrassing, and I still have the yearbook picture to prove it. Editors usedyour student ID picture for the yearbook in those days, for freshmen anyway.Lacking the natural drying elements I used at home--sun and fire--I got oneof those portable hair dryers with a plastic cap that fit over my curlers so Ididn’t have to go out in the cold with wet hair. Duringcollege I experimented a lot with hairdos. Some were pretty extreme, andobservers might have assumed I was a rebel, but the truth was, I was justtrying to make peace with my hair.

Overthe years I have not managed my hair as much as it has managed me; sometimesall I could do was give in to its whims. I tried coloring it a few times when Iwas in my early 20’s, but that turned out to be a treadmill I didn’t want tostay on. When we lived on Guam, the tropical climate and the Hair With A Mindof Its Own conspired together to undo me again. This time, curl was impossible becauseof the humidity. (Believe me, the tropics are highly overrated; nasty organisms thrive--my husband had bronchitis for eight months.) I had collar length hair when I arrived, and when I washed itthe next morning, there was a power outage that took out my portable hairdryer. Masterfully taking charge, I went to a salon the following week where my hair was coifed andsprayed within an inch of its life. “That’ll show you,” I thought as Iinspected the finished product. I strode triumphantly out into the weatheragain looking fabulous, but again the hair had the lastlaugh. By the time I got home about 20 minutes later it was a sticky,back-combed, shapeless mess. Not long after that, I surrendered to a very shortwash-and-wear hairdo known in those days as a pixie cut; yeah, think Tinkerbell. I have most often worn it fairlyshort, though not always that closely cropped.

Tomaintain some semblance of order, I have to get my hair cut every six or sevenweeks. It laughs defiantly at curling irons, so permanents have been my onlyhope for an alternative to that look you see in cartoons when someone hastouched a live electrical wire. With a perm every couple of months to give me alittle height, and some softness around my angular face, things have gone alongpretty well for quite a few years.

When we lived in Iran (before the revolution) and I went to the local hair salons, I was more than a little alarmed when the hairdresser put brush rollers in my hair and secured them--very carefully--with two-inch hat pins.

Aftermy children were born, when I was in my late 20’s and mid-30’s, my hair turneda much darker shade of brown. Shortly after my son was born it began to turngray, which has nothing to do with the fact that he was a boy and also my lastchild, but I wasn’t that far from 40. Actually, my hair took on a kind of minkeffect, with gray ends and dark roots. People think it costs me a lot of moneyto keep that up, but I just smile when they suggest such a thing. I’m way toolazy for that.

My hair was almost completely gray by the time I was 60, and is wellon its way to white. Yes, white hair is beautiful, as is gray that hasn't yellowed, (I am blessed to have attractive gray) but it is also curlresistant. For a while I surrenderedand let my hair do what it wanted. I let it grow long and swept it up on top of myhead, like a matronly silver halo hovering over me, suggesting to my grandchildrensomething otherworldly and mysterious. That didn’t last long--there's that upkeep issue. When I went again to a hairdresser to get it chopped off, I had only two requirements: I don't want to be a George Washingtonlook-alike, and I don't want to frighten small children. Other than that, I don't care. I'm not the one who has to look at me all the time.

Some days it's grim, but as the years have passed, I've occasionally wondered if I can make some kind of quid pro quo bargain with the Lord, something in exchange for curly hair in the resurrection. Until then, Iam giving serious consideration to hats.

Aftermath: Northwest Writers Retreat

2011-11-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

Just came back from the best three days I've had in a long time--a writers retreat with talented, dedicated women who love and support each other and feel no jealousy or resentment when someone else has success. Left there feeling validated and affirmed.

Then I found this in a "scrap" on my desktop, if there are such things as electronic scraps:

From Pam 101—It is almostan affirmation to be an ordinary human being, gloriously flawed, willfullyrebellious at the ridiculous things in the world, and curious with anticipationat the prospect of another new day. Everything passes too quickly and there'sno money-back guarantee on breathing. Live in the moment, learn from the pain,and give thanks for the chance.

Confessions of a Halloween Agnostic

2011-10-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Halloween is by far the stupidest holiday of the year (unless you count Administrative Professionals' Day) and no convoluted rationale about its "religious" origins canconvince me to buy into it. If I'm a Halloween "Scrooge" for refusing to cooperate with a custom in which I must give a treat to strangers in exchange for them not practicing some sort of vandalism on my property, and if that attitude is uncharitable, earning for me only a lowly rung in Purgatory, then so be it.

From October to February we have five holidays on the calendar for which candy or some other form of empty calories is recognized as a central theme. My blood sugar goes up just thinking about it. I've heard of dentists who keep their office open late on Halloween so kids can bring their haul of sweets and exchange it for some non-food thing that won't rot their teeth.

Something about being required to willingly suspend my disbelief in order to play this elaborate little social game brings out the rebellion in my soul. Every year we plan to be otherwise occupied somewhere else so we can avoid the shameless little blackmailing beggars. Sometimes we go to a movie or plan evening activities for dinner, shopping and running errands. If all else fails—like it's Sunday and we don't shop or go to movies—we turn off the lights and don't answer the door.

There you have it. I am a Halloween agnostic and likely to remain so. What about you?

And the winner is...

2011-09-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's getting close to bedtime, so I'll go ahead and pick a winner for "Right, Wrong, and Risky," but I also found another book writers would like so I'm giving two prizes."Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage" goes to *Runaway Bridal Planner*and (previously unannounced prize)"Spunk & Bite: A writer's guide to bold, contemporary style" goes to *Joan Sowards*Wish I had 30 more prizes to thank you all for playing the game. I'll keep the blog posts coming and let you know about how the publishing effort is going. Stop me and say "hi" when you see me at a writers conference!

2011-09-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the September Blog Hop!

Celebrate the beginning of fall with me and my blogger friends by hopping around, visiting our sites, and entering our contests! There are no limits - you can enter the contest on every blog. With over 40 blogs participating, that's over 40 prizes you could win. Just click on the links below to move on to the next blog.

On my blog, you can win … Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's English Usage by Mark Davidson, professor of communications at UCLA and USC.

Would you like to win this prize? You just need to do two things. 1. Become a follower of this blog. 2. Leave me a comment in the trail and tell me why you'd like to win this prize. That's it! You are now entered. The contest ends on Saturday night, September 24th, at midnight MST, and the winner will be contacted shortly thereafter. Please either leave your e-mail address in the comment trail or make sure it's visible through your profile so I can contact you to tell you that you're the lucky winner. Now go visit my other friends ...
September Blog Hop Participants

1. Tristi Pinkston, LDS Author2. Joyce DiPastena3. I Am A Reader, Not A Writer4. Mandi Slack5. Michael D. Young6. Six Mixed Reviews7. Pam Williams8. Laurie Lewis9. Kristy Tate10. Marilyn Yarbrough11. Stacy Coles12. Kristie Ballard13. Lynn Parsons14. Pushing Past the Pounds15. Sheila Staley16. cindy Hogan

17. Jamie Thompson18. Jaclyn Weist19. Cathy Witbeck20. Secret Sisters Mysteries21. Tamera Westhoff22. Tina Scott23. Lynnea Mortensen24. Danyelle Ferguson aka Queen of the Clan25. Jeanette A. Fratto26. Bonnie Harris27. Melissa Lemon28. Mary Ann Dennis29. Stephanie Black30. Jane Still31. Janice 32. Laura Bastian

33. Tamara Bordon34. Betsy Love35. Maria Hoagland36. Amber Robertson37. Debbie Davis38. 39. Christy Monson40. Carolyn Frank41. Rebecca Birkin42. Melissa Cunningham43. Emily L. Moir44. Ronda Hinrichsen45. Lisa Asanuma46. Joan Sowards47. Jordan McCollum48. Diane Stringam Tolley

Learn more about September Blog Hop here.Get The Code

Rearranging Priorities

2011-09-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

Particularly after Iperused the Daily Chronicle mistakenly inserted in the DeseretNews this week, I was reminded that rivalries have very few positiveoutcomes. Rivalries desensitize, dehumanize, and demean. Some fans take rivalries aslicense for hatred and prejudice; the opposing school becomes the facelessenemy with no redeeming value, unworthy of sympathy, compassion or concern.“Love thy neighbor” is null and void on the run-up to certain games.

Restraint is not ahallmark of rivalries. In fact, rivalries inspire behavior unchecked by self control, giving fans permission to perpetratebreathtakingly dumb pranks in the name of loyalty. Rivalry impairs judgmentbecause it takes counsel from immaturity and a false sense of personal andinstitutional righteousness.

It’s too bad therearen’t any laws on the books that would let the sheriff to charge overzealous fanswith multiple counts of gross stupidity because whether one wears red or blue ongame day, stupid is as stupid does. Painting the school colors on one’s face orbody does not prove one’s loyalty; it proves only that one has no dignity, selfrespect or wisdom.

And I’m fairly surethat pathetic issue of The Chronicle didn't have its desiredimpact. It was more of an embarrassment for the University of Utah than aninsult to BYU, kind of like seeing Michael Moore in a speedo—you had to lookaway.

It may come as asurprise to some die-hards, but game stats and rah-rah team loyalty are notpart of the entrance exam into heaven. Get over it.

Book Review: All That Was Promised

2011-09-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

In the spring of 1847, Richard Kenyon, a humble Methodistminister in Cardiff, Wales, is called to the bedside of a member of hiscongregation and feels helpless when he can’t answer her grieving husband’squestions about death. Then Richard hears a Mormon missionary preach, finds theelusive answers, and his world is suddenly topsy-turvy, but he also gains the innerpeace that will sustain him through staggering tests of his new faith.

All That Was Promised,Vickie Hall’s 231-page novel from Bonneville Books, takes the reader through a captivatingstory that includes many manifestations of persecution, both subtle and overt, sufferedby early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales.Richard’s wife Leah comes to her convictions later, but Richard’s brotherRobert, sole proprietor of the Kenyon & Sons tea company after Richard becomesa minister, is outraged that his brother has converted to Mormonism and seversties immediately. Though keenly hurt and disappointed, Richard never gives upon Robert.

Richard’s new friends enrich his faith—Ben Lachlan, theAmerican missionary who baptized him; David Simmons, the LDS branch president;Henry and Charlotte, an elderly convert couple; Jonah Reese, a young convertboy; Claire and Samuel, Leah’s sister and brother-in-law who are also members;and Church leaders in Wales. Richard flourishes and finds happiness in his newreligion despite becoming a target. LDS readers who understand the concept willappreciate instances where characters are “led by the Spirit” and miraclesensue. Through all the relentless persecution, the Mormon congregationcontinues to grow.

In contrast, Robert lives a grim, desperate, bitter life, theresult of his own empty soul and a loveless marriage to the disparaging, maliciousAbigail, a woman with no redeeming qualities. She controls, abuses andmanipulates their fourteen-year-old daughter Amelia, imprisoning the girl inher own room for the slightest misstep. Robert hires John Morgan, sort of a one-manWelsh mafioso, to disrupt meetings, intimidate, and create personal havoc foras many Mormons as possible. However, they need someone on the “inside,” andthat’s Meredith, a bar maid who pretends to believe even to the extent of beingbaptized, becoming accepted by the Mormons and gaining their trust so she canreport to her nefarious boss where the LDS live and work. Their onemiscalculation is that they didn’t expect Meredith to develop scruples. When helearns of Richard’s baptism, Robert misses a chance to change course, persistinginstead in his “get the Mormons” campaign.

Hall’s prose is highly readable. Scenes of violence andcruelty—necessary in a story like this—are written without lurid details,describing what was suffered but sparing the reader gratuitous gore. Appealingcharacters, a tightly woven plot and non-stop acts of lawlessness, betrayal andtreachery keep the story flowing. All the characters have ample opportunitiesto repent and forgive; as in real life, some people do, some don’t. And all thevillains come to foreseeable ends, although a shrewd barrister could probably havewon Robert’s case with a plea of justifiable homicide.

This impressive story would have been much better served with moremeticulous editing. It also needed a Welsh-English glossary with an explanation ofcustoms so the story didn’t have to be interrupted with historical and culturalfacts to bring readers up to speed. Otherwise, as the author’s first publishednovel, it is a fine piece of work and one I recommend.

(I was asked to review this book and received a copy from the author.)

Twenty Random Things You May Not Have Known About Me

2011-09-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

1. My first child was born on Guam. People often ask her if she's a naturalized citizen. (Guam has been an American territory since the Spanish-American War, FYI.)

2. I never went to a high school prom. However, I went on to live a normal life anyway.

3. When I was 14 I had a boyfriend, the only one I had in high school, and we went together for a year and then I lost track of him after we broke up. He later earned a PhD in human sexuality. I think that’s hilarious.

4. I’m a bit Monk-ish. (Monk was my favorite TV show; not long after it went off the air I gave up watching TV.) I LIKE having a place for everything and everything it in its place; however, unlike Monk, I don’t fall apart when it almost never is.

5. My feet are short and wide, making it impossible to go into a regular shoe store and find something that fits, other than a box. To complicate matters, one of my feet is size 6 1/2 and the other is size 7.

6. I love word games and jigsaw puzzles. It's probably a manifestation of my Monkishness because it's where order and organization can be found. I have discovered a lot of people feel the same way but are reluctant to come out of the closet and admit it unless someone else brings it up first. Why is it such a bad thing?

7. I taught creative writing for Snow College outreach for nine years, but I only had an inconsequential little BA, and when the People In Charge decided to compete in the big leagues, they refused to grandfather in a longstanding successful class because I didn't have an MA. At that point I had nothing to prove; ironically, many of my students were taking the class to get their masters degrees. I focused on poetry, drama, essays and novels, and a lot of my students later told me that as teachers they often referred to the things they learned in my class. To my knowledge, creative writing has never been taught in Richfield since my last class.

8. It's from ancient history (2008) but I'm still waiting for someone to explain this to me: “We are the change we’ve been waiting for.” Does that actually make sense to anyone? I see what it PRETENDS to mean, but that doesn't compute in my mind. It’s total, pretentious baloney masquerading as a clever, insightful aphorism.

9. I used to be a TV news junkie but my blood pressure got too high. Now I go online to select news sources that speak my language and philosophy.

10. Chocolate is my favorite indulgence.

11. How did I get along in the world before the internet? It's where I buy shoes, in case you were wondering, and I have been known to do ALL my Christmas shopping online.

12. I have the most wonderful husband in the world.

13. My total, complete, unequivocal most favorite place on earth in the Oregon coast, and beachcombing is my favorite pastime. August and September are the best times to go there.

14. I got my first cell phone on January 20, 2009. Now I don't know what I'd do without it.

15. Music and art are two of my great passions, even though I know little to nothing about them. They speak to my soul and that compels me to learn more.

16. I have many nicknames, and daughter #2 is always making up new ones. When she got married, her Intended--the respectful soul that he is--asked what name I'd prefer he used, and I said, "Well, Chickie Babe would probably not be appropriate." My original name is Pamela Gay Stott, but I have also been known as Pammie, Pammie-wammie, Stottie-wottie, Pamalia, Miss Pam, Momster, Palmolive, Pamalamadingdong, Mommie, and GramPam. My kids often refer to me as The Pamster, and there are many permutations surfacing all the time. (By the way, hubby is sometimes known as Rogerbil--he and I are the cuddly little pets in the family.) When I was in high school, some of my sillier friends started calling each other by our names spelled backward. For a while I was Alemap Yag, or one of its many variations.

17. I love puns. Once when I was in college I lived in an attic apartment with three other girls, and with all the odd ceiling angles in the place it was hard to decorate and personalize. One day I came home to find my roommates sitting at the table enjoying apples and peanut butter (our favorite snack) and grinning with anticipation to see my reaction when I noticed the bigger-than-life-size poster of their favorite male Russian ballet dancer someone had mounted on the wall/ceiling. I looked at their giddy faces and sniffed with mock disgust, “Well, you’ve got your Nureyev.” They exploded in laughter that went on for ten minutes. It was one of my greater linguistic triumphs.

18. I have serious acrophobia as I get older. (Roger calls it ‘high-drophobia.’) Even in my dreams, if I’m going down stairs, the stairs gradually become steeper until they’re like a ladder, but I'm facing the wrong direction and I can't hang on, so I fall. But I don’t mind having a window seat in an airplane; in fact, I love flying into Portland and seeing Mt. Hood as we approach the airport.

19. If I were a Winnie the Pooh character, I’d be Pooh. I love honey and I’m afraid of heffalumps and woozles. Okay, and I'm also stuffed with fluff. Don't push it.

20. I love making people laugh, but I prefer to do it deliberately with wit rather than with pratfalls.

What Do You Do With a Bandelo?

2011-08-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Daughter #1, from upstate NY, has been here attending Education Week classes on the BYU campus and helping me organize and sort all the stuff I've been saving for my personal history. We divided it into categories--elementary school, high school, college, mission, marriage, and that doesn't include the last 40 years which still has to be organized. Some of my stuff is pretty strange--an empty aspirin bottle cast members gave me as a gag gift after a play production, a plastic tortoise shell bracelet my mother used to wear, and a bandelo.

Like Boy Scouts have those long wide bands to display all the merit badges they've earned, kids in LDS Primary classes displayed this plastic representation of our achievements on a band of maroon felt we wore around our necks every week in our class. As we passed off Primary graduation requirements, we added bars and symbols of the things we had learned. I can't recite all the Articles of Faith anymore, and I don't recall what all the other symbols represented, but obviously I was there and ticked off all those requirements. I do remember how intimidating it was if my friends had more of their symbols on their bandelos than I did.

Here's the problem: It isn't flat and doesn't fit easily into a scrapbook. It has no earthly purpose now and would be meaningless, and therefore useless, to shoppers at Deseret Industries, so I can't pass it on to the thrift store. It has no significance to anybody else, but it doesn't mean anything to me anymore either. I look back now at the concept of displaying our achievements on maroon felt bands around our necks and am seized with the urge to shriek, "What were they thinking?" And yet, would I feel guilty if I tossed it out?

Before Daughter #1 left today for the airport she showed me that she'd clamped my bandelo inside the rings of the binder/scrapbook with my early history. If it becomes annoying when people try to turn the pages of the book we'll have to think of an alternative.

If you had a bandelo when you were in Primary, what did you do with yours? What should I do with mine? I've already decided against suspending it in clear plastic, so let's move on.

Music Magic

2011-08-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl my mother listened to the radio every morning as she did her chores, and she would often sing along with her favorite music. I listened as I worked with her or played where I could hear the radio. Programs were about 15 minutes in those days, with few commercial interruptions. One program of popular song and light patter involved several singers and lots of laughter. I remember one inconsequential little ditty, a tribute to the joy of camaraderie:

In the cool, cool, cool of the evening,
Tell 'em I'll be there.
In the cool. cool, cool of the evening,
Better save a chair.
When the party's gettin' a glow on
And singin' fills the air,
In the shank of the night,
When the doin's are right,
You can tell 'em I'll be there.

Of course, in my child mind, it never occurred to me that a party getting a "glow on" might refer to the consumption of alcohol, with which I was unacquainted. Nevertheless, it was a catchy tune and I've remembered it all these years.

Mother also listened to a program of inspirational music every morning, and then later in the day there was Arthur Godfrey from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I knew where all these programs were on the dial and could run to the console radio and change the station when one program ended. In the evenings we listened to Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Nat "King" Cole. On Saturday mornings the sounds of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast from New York wafted through the house, and in the evenings we heard a program of island music, "Hawaii Calls," complete with steel guitars and ukuleles, followed by the authentic Western sounds of Gene Autry's "Melody Ranch" and the sweet harmonies of the Sons of the Pioneers.

To say that my musical influences were eclectic is to understate the situation, especially when you add to this the fact that I grew up in the 60's with Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and folk music at hootenannies. I listened faithfully to the Top Twenty countdown on Saturday nights to see if my favorites were there. (FYI, Elvis never appealed to me and I didn't see the charm of the Beetles--too shallow, not enough substance, like 99% of the rest of popular music.) Later I discovered jazz--nothing like the Modern Jazz Quartet--and then in college the world of classical music opened up and filled my soul and spoke to my spirit. All that explains why my present music collection is still rather diverse, including Bach played on the marimba, British folk tunes played by a harp and harmonica, and masses from Spain, Africa and South America.

Fast forward to my life as a writer of fiction--a computer with iTunes on the desk in front of me, with the potential for playing uninterrupted music of my choice for three or four days straight. Early on I discovered that if I chose a piece of music representing characters in my book and played it while I was writing, my brain was sharper, my vocabulary quicker, my ideas more forthcoming. With the music the words began to flow, and writing a 300-page manuscript was practically effortless. I can't listen to anything with words because they're telling a different story than the one I'm engaged in portraying and that's too confusing, unless it's a language I don't know--think Daphnis and Chloe, Rachmaninov's Vespers, or Carmina Burana.

Now I'm working on a trilogy of stories based on the Book of Mormon, and I'm struggling with ideas and sometimes the flow of words that I've been accustomed to is more like a puny drip. It's like swimming through old honey. But why? I didn't understand. And then it occurred to me that I haven't assigned a piece of music to these books yet, something that will stimulate the synapses and make it cascade rather than trickle. So what am I waiting for? Excuse me while I go find a CD that fits. I think I'm going to start with the Mahler First Symphony, one of my favorites, and see where that takes me.

Any suggestions? What music inspires you?

Latedom

2011-06-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

This was the verification word when I made a comment on a blog this morning and it might as well have been flashing neon in 12-foot letters. Latedom describes the world I live in. It is the state of always being behind with projects, this month's book club selection, dinner preparation, whatever. For example, we just sent Father's Day cards to our son and son-in-law today. It takes less than two minutes to drive to church but why can't we ever get to choir practice on time?

Latedom is a good way to describe the foot-dragging I've been doing on my latest writing project. It's a fictionalized Book of Mormon story that I first wrote as a play more than 25 years ago, and although it was later revised as a novel--after all, nobody reads plays--it was rejected about five years ago, even with great reviews and high praise by the editor because her company wasn't giving contracts to new authors at the time.

Latedom manifests itself in many ways for me. I can avoid writing because my fingernails are too long, so I have to stop and clip them. I can avoid it by looking up stuff on google, reading the catalogs that came in yesterday's mail (that's my best trick--have you checked your mailbox lately?) or by answering emails, checking my friends' blogs or Facebook, or in my extremity even cooking. If you've checked my blog lately, you know I'm a genius at latedom here.

Nevertheless, all things work together for our good. In the ensuing years since I wrote the Book of Mormon play, and as I've concentrated on fiction instead of the other kinds of writing I've always done--journalism, essays, poetry--I know this piece is much stronger now as a novel. I still love the story and characters and the new understanding I get of the Book of Mormon as I scrutinize it again and again for additional insights.

So why am I so strangled by "latedom" with this project even though I love it so much? It isn't that I can't meet a deadline. I've done that satisfactorily all my life. I think it's that in the revision process I--the renowned queen of tweak--found a plot twist that enriched the main character so much I made a major plot change, which had a ripple effect through the whole manuscript, and then I found another twist that bumped into that ripple, and I'm driving myself crazy trying to keep everything consistent.

What I have learned from this frustrating experience is that I'm strictly a write-from-an-outline kind of writer. I've been at writing conferences where speakers talked about free writing without an outline. I stand in awe of those who can write by the seat of their pants. To me that's like a trapeze artist performing without a net. Because I haven't taken the time to revise my outline along with my manuscript, I'm in a perpetual state of topsy-turvy. Blinding flash of self-knowledge: I'm a person who needs fences.

Well, I'm here to announce that this morning I made a break-through. Like a child whining "I don't wanna," I finally struggled my way to the end of the manuscript, then did the sensibly useful thing at the moment--printed it out. I often do that at this point in the process, so maybe I've caught up with myself. Now I'll red pen it, make the changes on the computer file and send it off for its "summer camp," i.e. line-and-content edit, on August 1. Barring some unforeseen plot twist lurking in the corners of my imagination, its two companion pieces will be ready as well. And all's right with the world again. Ta-da!

My Solemn Promise

2011-05-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

Names I will never give characters in my books: Araminta, Elphelia, Lispenard, Howso, Freelove, Tatiana, Alpha, Wormley, Cleghorn, Zerilda, Bossieux, Parthenia, Dorfish, Seldra, Rathborn, Tazewell, Goldendine, or Caroline Valentine.

Under the right circumstances (certifiable madness) I MIGHT give my characters these names: Agrivalla, Sydolia, Launbural, Luberta, Egberta, Delaware, Oneidgia, Lillis Willis, Lena Farina, Lizzie Blizzard, Emma Lemmon, or Lydia Middleton.

Just thought you'd like to know where I stand on the naming of characters.

Rhapsodizing on the Rapture

2011-05-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, today's the day to contemplate for a few minutes the state of your soul. Unfortunately, deathbed repentance has a low approval rating in heaven, so if you're not ready to go now, you'll be left behind with the wicked. And the Mormons, some say.

Still, if the rapture does begin today, and the Second Coming is in October--sometime between the second session of Saturday conference and priesthood meeting as I've always imagined--then today's headlines are all irrelevant. Obviously, it doesn't matter what our Israel policy is; in fact, betraying Israel seems to be part of the plan, so we're on track there. I believe, as an old 1960's bumper sticker used to say, that we should "Support Whirled Peas" and that seems to be the guiding principle of US foreign policy the last couple of years. After all, it has brought is to this point of being ready to be raptured.

But just in case--a smart person would prepare for ALL contingencies--I also intend to have some chocolate cheesecake today, and brownies with chocolate chips and chocolate frosting, maybe a little...no, a LOT of pasta, and bread...WHITE bread, plus raspberries by the handfuls, and all the chocolate cinnamon bears I can find, and maybe I'll stop by Carl's Jr. for something with a lot of bacon on it.

On the other hand, just in case somebody misread the calendar, maybe I'd better go ahead and get my Primary lesson ready for tomorrow.

Disappointments and Compensations

2011-04-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

Shingles, the senior citizen’s version of chicken pox, is a painful malady that can pop out on the body at any time because people who have had chicken pox still carry the self-inflicting virus. We learned that when we discovered Roger’s latent virus had chosen to emerge at a time that made him contagious just as we were supposed to be getting on a plane and going to Miami to board a cruise ship for two weeks. It started as what his primary care doctor thought was a bacterial infection in his left eye. Treatment didn’t work. Over the following week it took trips to InstaCare, ER, and a specialist to finally diagnose it.

We had been planning this trip for months, looking forward to spending time with family members on an adventure we’d always remember. We are mighty disappointed to be here cooling our heels and assessing hour by hour Roger’s progress toward recovery. Don’t misunderstand—I’m also mighty glad he’s recovering, mighty glad there’s a specialist willing to see us on Easter Sunday afternoon, and a pharmacy open so we can get medication going right away, and mighty glad his vision has improved in that eye from 20/50 on Sunday to 20/30 on Wednesday. But we were both looking forward to a trip through the Panama Canal.

However, with the lesions still visible on his face, he is still considered contagious, although our doctor said in 20 years he had never seen anyone get chicken pox from someone with shingles. Since the cruise line believes it’s possible, and they make the rules, we would be barred from boarding the ship, or else Roger would be quarantined to the stateroom until the lesions were no longer visible, in about a week. Most vulnerable would be newborns and people with compromised auto-immune systems—not a lot of those people on cruise ships, but you never know.

Having purchased trip insurance, we will get a refund, and we’ll have some airline travel vouchers to use before the end of the year. So we have been consoling ourselves with an ongoing discussion of how to use this “windfall.” (And with chocolate; nothing consoles like chocolate.) We’ve decided to remodel a bathroom and take a leaf tour in upstate NY this fall. And I’ve registered for a day at the LDStorymakers conference next week.

Instead of sailing, I’m doing what I always do—writing and reading and reading and writing, and struggling with the ever-present challenges of clearing off my desk and generating some interest in cooking. Roger is puttering and medicating and sleeping and sleeping and medicating and puttering. We are both dealing with the disappointment and looking hopefully, expectantly toward compensations.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Things I Really REALLY Hate

2011-04-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

1. Those thin skins on peanuts that get stuck on your tongue and you can’t pick them off but you can still feel them inside your mouth.
2. Chewing gum—anytime, anywhere, in anybody’s mouth (especially people who answer the telephone in an office), on any street, under any table, on anybody’s shoe (especially mine), in anybody’s hair.
3. People who drive around with their car stereo bass volume at the “deafening” level so I can hear it inside my house at 1 a.m. when I’m otherwise alone enjoying a peaceful meditation.
4. Hangnails, especially the little ones that elude nail clippers. How DID Adam and Eve deal with that anyway?
5. People who say “Okay?” at the end of every sentence to be sure you’re following them, as if you were too much of an idiot to understand simple instructions. Close second: People who say, “Oh, uh-huh” at the end of every statement you make in a conversation, as if you somehow need to be occasionally assured that they’re still listening.
6. Slow internet connections.
7. People who friend you on Facebook just to play games.
8. Junk mail. Most of the mail I get is catalogs which go from my hand into the recycle bin. They could stop sending me those things and cut out the middle man, but it practically takes an Act of Congress to get OFF a mailing list you didn't ask to be on in the first place.
9. Interminable legal language of privacy statements that come with dismaying frequency from every company I do business with, leaving me wondering what privacy they’re protecting. One statement at the beginning of a relationship ought to be assurance enough.
10. Colonoscopy prep. Now there’s something to look forward to when you get up in the morning—self-induced diarrhea.

A Fine Pestilence

2011-04-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

Winter is the best time to be a putterbutt.

This is a word I learned from my friend Elaine, and as a serious lover of useful made-up words, I installed it in my vocabulary immediately. It means to just fool around and sort of flirt insincerely with your To Do list, that primary source of proof that you are an adult and can be trusted with Serious Responsibilities. Putterbutting is my form of Attention Deficit Disorder, a diversionary tactic to avoid tackling a task I don’t really want to do. Somehow, when I’m trapped by winter’s tricks, there’s more opportunity, knowing the task has to be done eventually, to put my trust in eventuality and allow my attention to wander shamelessly, aimlessly, toward anything, everything else. That’s putterbutting.

Being a putterbutt helps me keep a positive attitude under gray skies and in white storms. Having been born in Oregon, and raised on nuts and berries like a bear, I have an inclination to hibernate in the winter. Sleep is a putterbutt’s hobby. For that reason, I have never found winter depressing and endless – boring maybe with its frigid sameness – but I believe spring will ultimately win. The tutoring message of winter is introspection, reflective pondering, putterbutting, while the triumphant message of spring is progress, action, resurrection.

A practiced putterbutt knows the unbridled, guilt-free joy of saying No. With experience, a savvy putterbutt knows not to wear a watch or make appointments that will certainly be sabotaged by motivated forgetting.

A putterbutt has an intimate knowledge of procrastination, which can be justified and rationalized despite an inbred work ethic and overgrown sense of duty. Slow-paced low-metabolism winter days with short daylight hours are perfect for putterbutting. Stuck with mostly indoor activities chokingly dull in any season – things like cleaning out drawers and closets, updating the address book, making an inventory of the food storage – I am desperate for interesting alternatives. Being a putterbutt helps me deny the existence of those chores, firm in my conviction that if ignored long enough, they’ll either disappear or become irrelevant. There are plenty of other days when I can prove I’m worthy of my over-21 privileges.

Putterbutting is a proud occupation for one or two, but it’s too personal to be a group activity. It is conducted by the rules of Whatever, guided only by whim and whimsy, curiosity and quizzical wonder. A dedicated putterbutt can spend hours reading greeting cards in the Hallmark store and never buy one, search through bottomless bins of Kmart clearance items she doesn’t need and won’t buy anyway, wander pointlessly the aisles of thrift stores, all motivated only by Because It’s There.

For a putterbutt all the world’s a museum, opening life to the wonders of serendipity, the unexpected discovery of delightful surprises, sweet moments that make me smile or possibly even giggle, moments that will contribute to sparkling conversation later in the telling. Things discovered serendipitously are like lovely, intriguing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that may fit together sometime in the distant future, but until they do, can be appreciated now for their individuality.

But I digress, and that’s what makes me a champion putterbutt. Wandering from place to place around the house, or the town, noticing details, nuances, subtleties, shades of differences, I ponder, dissect, deconstruct and reconfigure. I take the leash off my imagination. I ramble over unnumbered unscheduled detours to What If and Hmm. I take pleasure in the vistas on the hill above Maybe Some Day, and make mental reservations to return when I can stay longer.

An occasional day spent in putterbutt limbo can be most satisfying. It is “wasted” only if I allow guilt to intrude with its shameful Should Haves and imperative Oughts who come shaking their scolding fingers dangerously near my sense of responsibility. There will always be other days ripe for taking charge like an adult and rampaging headlong through the To Do list, masterfully checking off jobs as if they won’t have to be done over again in another week or two.

Putterbutting has a cleansing effect, decontaminating the soul from the anxiety that keeps it earthbound on tooth-gritting deadline days. At the end of a long delicious putterbutt day, not much has been checked off the To Do list, but I’ve been everywhere and thought everything and put all the problems in perspective.

If there were some magic elixir that would cure my seasonal bouts with putterbutting, I would tear up the prescription. I look forward to the appearance of this welcome coping mechanism every winter, my capitulation to the animal hibernation instinct. It’s a disorder that doesn’t strike very often, but when it does, I plan to indulge completely. I refuse to be cured of this fine pestilence.
(essay written 2005, revised 2009)

Who's of Your Board of Directors?

2011-03-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

My son Jordan works at a facility for troubled youth. When they take in new students, they have orientation sessions to help them identify the thinking and communication patterns that led to the choices that landed them there in the first place. One of the concepts they introduce is that we all have an “itty bitty mind committee” made up of people who influence us the most. It got me thinking about my choices and the greatest influences on me. At some periods of my life, I've had some pretty negative people and attitudes dictating my behavior.

A few months ago I was in a meeting where a presenter challenged us to think of our life as a corporation. She asked us to name the twelve people who have influenced us the most and who might be called our board of directors. Like a board of directors guides the course a company may take, friends, families, philosophies, principles and values influence each one of us. Christians would list Jesus Christ, of course, on their board of directors. I also listed family members and particularly influential teachers. I am who I have become because of them. Whether we're shy or outgoing, an optimist or a pessimist, we all make judgments about the world according to our own experience, and those on our board of directors are most often the people we trust to help us interpret and make sense of the world.

We could all probably find specific areas of our personal lives where we have a board of directors, too - work, volunteerism, family, parenting. As a writer, I include my alpha readers and my editor as people who influence me the most. My board of directors changed with changing circumstances of my life - when I left home, when I married, when I had children, when we moved to a new neighborhood. That's the ebb and flow of life. But we don't pass through this life in isolation. Consciously or unconsciously, we are always influenced by our belief system as well as who and what is around us.

Who’s on your board of directors? Is it a large group or a small one? What standards do you require of them? Who needs to have more or less influence on you? How can you dismiss someone from that position of influence? When we stop to think about it, we're all on somebody else's board of directors, too, and the inevitable question is: are we doing a good job?

Generosity

2011-02-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

My mother would have been 90 years old on February first, and in March it will be 20 years since she passed away. I miss her profoundly in so many ways, but one of the greatest ways that she influenced me is that she was one of the most generous people I've ever known, both with her hands and with her heart.

Mother was a child of the Depression. In 1930 her father took his family to wait out the bad economic times living off the land on a homestead in Southern Oregon. Mother's memories of that time read like "Little House in the Cascades," complete with carrying water from the creek, going to a one-room school, and picking wild berries. Grandma, one of 14 kids, had grown up on a ranch in Idaho and knew how to sew and can. She made underwear for the girls out of flour sacks and scrimped and made do. Grandpa sold cord wood in town and did odd jobs to earn money when he needed to buy things at the general store. Knowing Grandpa was out there with four little kids, the storekeeper kept an eye on him. Once he gave Grandpa a case of unlabeled cans that he couldn't sell, but not knowing what it was didn't matter when the kids were hungry. Mother said she'd never forget the smell when the can opener pierced the tin. It was spinach, and it tasted good.

For Christmas that year, the family got a box of used clothes and toys and were so grateful that someone remembered them. Grandpa, orphaned at eight, had grown up in a Masonic Home where the thoughtful matron saw to it that each child had fifty cents to spend for Christmas every year. Likewise, Grandpa took his children to Woolworth's in Roseburg and gave them each fifty cents to buy gifts for their siblings and parents.

For the rest of her life, Mother tried to make life better for other people. She appreciated what she had and though my parents were never wealthy, they shared their blessings. Mother gleaned apples from nearby orchards and made sure her widowed or financially struggling friends had a box of apples. Every year she bottled a thousand jars of fruits, vegetables, juice, jam and sometimes meat. She made sure all the kids in the family had coats and boots for the winter if their parents couldn't afford it. When she took me to school at BYU, she'd stop on the way home at a dry bean warehouse in Idaho for a couple of sacks to divide up among friends and family in Portland. She noticed when other people needed something and was always on the lookout for a way to satisfy that need. When something came into her hands that she couldn't use, she'd pass it along to someone who could. Other people might have been insulted and thrown the thing in the trash, but not Mother.

Growing up with this kind of mother, I never resented the treasures she brought home from the Good Will store. I understood what it meant to have a generous heart. Our children will never forget the trips we took with my parents, full of adventure and laughter and good food and endless interesting information (Mother was a walking encyclopedia). When we moved in 2009 and downsized, I had the kids come and help me clean out closets so they could take away what they wanted. They can enjoy their "inheritance," such as it may be, and I have the pleasure of watching that.

In our world of selfishness and narcissism and "what's in it for me," a generous person is a rare find, even a treasure. I could do a lot worse than to be like my mother.

Camelot - NOT!!!

2011-02-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

With the jetstream pumping Arctic air into the Rockies and a massive storm paralyzing the Midwest and Northeast, there's a lot of complaining now about the weather. In parking lots we drive past the piles of dirty snow, reminders of our heavy December storms that will still be there a month from now.

Yesterday morning the faucet in our kitchen was frozen. Since the sink is on an outside north wall, and the temperatures were subzero, of course something's going to freeze. Duh. Why didn't we anticipate that. Roger called the plumber, who was having an insane day and would not be able to get here until 6 o'clock. Fine. In the meantime, we didn't have a spare space heater to aim under the sink, so Roger went to Home Depot to get one. "Sorry," they said, "the only heaters we have left are the ones on display." And they weren't what he wanted. So he bought some insulated sleeves for the outside faucets and Home Depot employees went on unloading the summer fans that have just arrived. Don't you love irony?

Instead, Roger went to Sears and found a small space heater. Good ol' Sears. In the meantime, the line unfroze itself and water started running again. We canceled the plumber and left the faucet dripping overnight with the little heater aimed at the pipes underneath.

But it got me thinking. No fact of our lives - not love, not genius, not even babies - provides more immediate proof of the existence of God than does the weather. He gave us rocks and trees and autumn and Eagle Creek Falls, and we do nothing but complain about snow and cold and the serendipitous randomness of the world. Come on, people - He never promised us Camelot, where the rain may never fall till after sundown, but we can be sure of this: our world is never boring.

On the contrary, we should be grateful that the seasons change and the world renews itself in spite of whether we've lost ten pounds or apologized or taken down the Christmas lights by Valentine's Day. Seasons of planting, growing, maturing and harvesting are gifts we take for granted. We remain reticent and skeptical while all around us is proof that God loves us and believes we can straighten things out.

According to people who have studied the phenomenon, spring starts at sea level and moves up eleven miles per day. You see? God loves us. He gives us time to adjust and change.

Counting My Blessings Again

2011-01-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

It's been two years for me and Barack. He only got sworn in as President of the United States. But I got my life back.

Two years ago today I had my left knee replacement surgery. I'm doing much better with simple things like walking, but not so much with more complicated things like kneeling. These days I sit to say my prayers, but mentally I'm kneeling. I'm not doing 5K races and I'm not sprinting all over big box stores like a teenager, but I am out there and into life. My second surgery was February 17, meaning the left one had to be the "good" leg I could depend on. It sort of worked that way.

Now I note the milestones – doing stairs, shopping without riding the motorized cart, even just standing around talking is progress. I'll never take for granted the ability to walk without pain.

I'm so grateful for modern medicine. And plastic and steel and the way the human body adapts. I've catalogued my experience here before so I won't repeat it, but today I'm thinking about where I might be if I hadn't done it - in a wheelchair.

Cattle Call

2011-01-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

In the theatrical world, auditions are known as cattle calls, but that's what I felt like yesterday when I went to get my driver's license renewed at the East Bay location in south Provo. I dreaded waiting in long lines and sitting there with nothing to do while the process moved like a herd of snails on parade, so I came prepared with a sandwich and a book.

However, the line was surprisingly short and I went happily to the first window where the process begins. My good mood didn't last long. I'd forgotten my social security card - not my number, but the card that proves it's my number. Never mind that the number is in my head, on the medicare card in my possession, and I had to have it to get the passport I presented to them, but no, that wasn't enough. If I couldn't find the actual card itself, the clerk told me with a smile (am I paranoid or did I detect a certain sense of power-mad glee in it?) that I could get a replacement at some other government office some distance away where I would be privileged to stand in another line.

No thanks. It was mid-afternoon and I knew that by the time I went home and found the card, I'd come back to this office and find longer lines. It was risky since the office buttons up precisely at 4 p.m. No exceptions, no mercy.

Though I didn't remember exactly where the card was, I knew sort of where I might have put it in my desk, so I went home to west Provo, found it, and drove back to the driver license office. There's only one Window #1 where the process starts. Other people at windows 2, 3 and 4 weren't that busy because people weren't funneling through Window #1 very quickly. (I'm reaching for a dysfunctional alimentary canal metaphor here that would apply to dealing with government institutions but it isn't working so I'll skip it.)

In its infinite wisdom, the Utah Legislature changed the law so new and renewal licensees have to show four forms of identification. I brought my passport, birth certificate, proof that we paid property taxes in Utah County this year, copies of paid utility bills, and my driver's license. In lieu of the social security card I could have brought a W-2 form, but I don't work, so I don't get those anymore. Faxed or photocopied documents are unacceptable, and if your name is different than the last time you got a license, the law says you have to have documentation for the change. We have government assurance that images of all these documents will be kept in a "secure database."

Now if the Utah Legislature doesn't think I am who I say I am with proof from three documents and 35 years of paying taxes in this state, what makes them think four will be stronger proof? And how do I know that database is really secure? I'm just asking. If the Legislature wants to do something useful, they could put the social security office, the passport office, and the driver license office all in the same vicinity, next to the city office and the county courthouse. With drink dispensers.

As I left those hallowed precincts, was it my imagination or did I really hear sounds of mooing from the 20 people still standing in line?

Anyway, I medicated with chocolate as soon as I got home and I'm fine now. My new license should be here in time for my birthday next week.

Belated Christmas

2010-12-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

We will be celebrating Christmas this year with two of our children and two of our grandchildren.

Almost.

Our REAL Christmas will come in a few weeks when another grandchild arrives. Our son Jordan and his wife Heather have been chosen by a birth mother to be the parents of a little boy who will be born in late January. That's a unique Christmas gift, to say the least, an example of the most selfless kind of love. Christmas will never be the same. Is it any wonder we can't hear or sing lullabies and songs about Joseph this year without floods of tears.

They have named him Samuel, which means 'asked of God.' For more than nine years Jordan and Heather have prayed for a baby. This one is an answer to prayer. A string of happy miracles has brought him to our family. And there will be more miracles in the life of his birth mother as she reaches for new goals in seeking to renew her own life. We will never forget her, and we will always be grateful for her faith and trust.

Because of various scheduling circumstances we had two Thanksgivings this year, and now we are going to have two Christmases. No family could be more blessed!

How Shall We Celebrate Christmas?

2010-12-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

Recently I read an article that suggested there are three ways to keep Christmas –
…at the Santa Claus level, with the decorations, trees, presents and food,
…at the Silent Night level, with the carols, Bible reading to review the story of Christ's birth, and traditions involving the symbols of Christmas,
…at the Adult Christ level with its lasting joy, lasting peace, and lasting hope.

It seems like the first two levels get the most attention, but they don't last and they go away quickly. However, the third level is one that requires spiritual maturity to become like Christ, with his forgiving touch and boundless love.

Here are some thoughts that help me keep my attention focused on the Christ in Christmas:

This Christmas, mend a quarrel, seek out the forgotten friend, dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Try to understand. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak love, and then speak it again. (Howard W. Hunter)

Gifts in God's Name
by Sigrid Undset

When we give each other
Christmas presents in His name,
Let us remember that He has given us
the sun and the moon and the stars,
the earth with its forests and mountains
and oceans –
and all that lives and moves upon them.

He has given us all green things
and everything that blossoms and bears
fruit –
and all that we quarrel about
and all that we have misused –

And to save us from our foolishness,
from our sins,
He came down to earth
and gave us Himself.

(author unknown)
If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things,
and again with things;
if we consider ourselves so unimportant
that we must fill every moment of our lives with action,
when will we have the time
to make the long, slow journey
across the desert as did the Magi?
Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds?
Or brood over the coming of the Child as did Mary?
For each one of us, there is a desert to travel,
a star to discover,
and a being within ourselves to bring to life.

Back By Popular Demand... Christmas Music: The Heaven and Hell of It

2010-11-26T11:37:00.001-08:00

from December 2008, why Black Friday means nothing to me...

My husband and I were on a phone call recently that required us to wait on hold for about half of the total one-hour time it took to complete the transaction. While we were on hold, we were subjected to the torturous sounds of New Age ‘music,’ put there by some well-meaning person convinced we needed to be ‘entertained’ while we were waiting. Running barefoot on broken glass would have been infinitely more satisfying. I am convinced that New Age ‘music’ destroys brain cells and breaks down resistance to truth, logic and common sense, making people believe that there is no such thing as good or evil – it’s all a matter of preference. New Age sounds dissolve conscience and create a vacuum in its place. Suddenly everything is hunky-dory for listeners and they think all the problems of the world will go away if we all just sit around listening to and grooving on this foulest form of air pollution. New Age ‘music’ is the sorry consequence of bra burning, free love, and Woodstock.

That’s one way of saying I’m picky about music, especially now that it's Christmas time and there's more questionable music in the air. My eclectic musical tastes were formed in a home where we listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturday mornings, and ended the day with the steel guitars, sweet harmonies and ukuleles on Hawaii Calls, as well as the authentic Western sounds of Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch.

Because music has such power, particularly in my own soul, my deeply personal celebration of Christmas very often centers on great music inspired by a heavenly source, and its effect on me is profound. Most especially, probably because I pay close attention to the precise meanings of words, my soul yearns to hear or sing appropriate lyrics from significant texts, paired with satisfying and rewarding melodies expressing the deepest meaning of Christmas. Let me worship through reverent, joyful music in the most sublime, eloquent way, as the Savior of the world deserves. In fact, singing in the church choir I sometimes find myself so moved that I can’t sing. My heart is touched by so many inspired works, the cherished carols and anthems, and authentic folk music that arises from simple, humble faith of ordinary people.

However, there is some Christmas music so patently offensive that I want to wipe out all memories of ever having heard or sung it. I want to slink, Grinch-like, into all the music stores, radio stations, private collections and sheet music publishers and obliterate some sounds I hear over public address systems in stores during the holidays. You don’t have a choice when you hear this drivel in a shopping mall. They mean well, but it doesn’t entertain; in fact, most of these songs don’t even mention the real meaning of Christmas. Indeed, they inspire my inner Scrooge, making me want to buy less so I can leave the premises as quickly as possible. That’s how I first heard the number one selection on my Top Twenty List of Christmas Songs I Never Want To Hear Again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the complete and generous list of losers with the heartfelt scorn and derision each so richly deserves:

20. It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas – …to which I want to respond, “Well, duh! What was your first clue – sundown on Halloween?” It sounds like the guy who says during a heat wave, “Hot enough for ya?” This is something clueless Goofy would have said to patient Mickey, who is far more tolerant of stupid remarks than I.

19. (tie) Winter Wonderland/Marshmallow World – Ain’t no time nowhere winter is a wonderland for me; I cannot celebrate the charm I do not find. Winter is a slip-on-the-ice, sprain-your-ankle, freeze-your-tushie-off, endlessly boring season broken only by the sweetness of celebrating a sacred holiday. Don’t let’s confuse the two.

18. I’ll be Home for Christmas – This is total schmaltz when you first hear it, mind-numbingly dull after that. So you’re not going to be there except in your dreams – boohoo. Put on your big kid panties and get over it.

17. Let it Snow – This is nothing but a seductive (you’ll excuse the expression) invitation to use bad weather as an excuse for someone to stay over at his sweetie’s house, a one-of-a-kind gift that can only be given once.

16. Have A Holly Jolly Christmas – Actually, this sounds like the worst kind of Christmas to have, completely shallow and unrelated to the real meaning of the holiday.

15. Jingle Bell Rock – Social events at holiday time are nice, but this lyric is unencumbered by logic or a description of an appropriate observance of a sacred event.

14. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – See #15 and #16.

13. Frosty the Snowman – Once you’ve heard this ludicrous winter legend, subsequent hearings are migraine-inducing torture.

12. The Christmas Song (you know… chestnuts roasting… yada, yada, yada) – Nothing is more offensive than clichés, and this one is loaded with them. In fact, Santa has loaded his sleigh with toys and goodies. Isn’t that what’s wrong with Christmas in the first place? We don’t need more things.

11. White Christmas – Here’s another tear-jerking string of clichés. What’s the big deal about snow? What about Christmas in Australia that takes place in the summer? Huh? Did you ever think of that? And it wasn’t snowing in Bethlehem. Since the shepherds were out with the sheep at night it had to be lambing season, and that happens in the spring. Unless it’s the Rocky Mountains, you don’t usually get snow in the spring.

10. Silver Bells – There’s not much wrong with this one if you like a boring melody and totally mindless lyrics. Can you say platitude?

9. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Really? You love spending too much money, eating too much rich food, going to parties you don’t want to go to with people you don’t really like? What’s wonderful about that? Statistics show Christmas inspires a high incidence of depression, too. Too much hype, too many unmet high expectations.

8. Twelve Days of Christmas – Repetition is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Again, we’re stuck on using things to express love, a pitiful substitute for the genuine article.

7. Deck the Halls – Nonsense lyrics are Exhibit A in the case against this song. I don’t drink, but I should think that drunk would be the best way to find meaning in it. Far more appealing, rewarding and cogent was the Mad Magazine version of this I read in my youth, which began, “Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla Wash and Kalamazoo…” It makes just as much sense.

6. (all songs referring to reindeer with or without red noses) – On the whole, these are completely idiotic, without redeeming value or even a modicum of charm. Lord of the Flies teaches kids to play nice together, too.

5. (all songs referring to Santa Claus) – He sees you when you’re sleeping? Really? He knows when you’re awake? Really? Isn’t that what God does, and didn’t He do it first? How can kids NOT get confused?

4. Jingle Bells – Here’s another mediocre winter tale with no connection to the holiday. Translation: people with the IQ of pinecones ride around in the snow apparently unwilling to take refuge from the weather and protect themselves against frostbite. Maybe it's really a song about survival of the fittest.

3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Nobody even knows what figgy pudding is anyway, and simply repeating the sentiment ad infinitum doesn’t make it more intelligible.

2. Feliz Navidad – If a guy sang this to me, I’d poison his eggnog. I do not want this derivative, dreary rubbish stuck in my head for the month of December.

1. Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time – No, we’re not. We’re paralyzed by the tedium of this inferior music and pointless lyric written by Paul McCartney in a fit of acute uninspired tastelessness. With the last chorus repeating ad nauseum, you think you’ve entered a new rung of Purgatory Dante must have created just for shoppers, as if another were necessary. If Christmas shopping doesn’t trigger insanity, you haven’t spent enough time in the Walmart listening to this on the PA system.

And while I’m on a roll, here’s a bonus: I never want to hear another roomful of third graders shouting I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas, or Up On the Housetop, or All I Want For Christmas is my Two Front Teeth. It’s only cute once.

It’s true of music no matter what time of year it is, but especially at Christmas you’ll have a deeper, richer spiritual experience when you’re more careful with what you choose to think and sing about during the holidays. When your spirit is fed with spiritually nourishing music, you grow closer to the reason for the season.

And by the way, Merry Christmas.

LDS Fiction: A View From the Fringe, Part Three

2010-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

WHERE ARE WE GOING?
As an LDS writer, I sometimes ponder the 1888 statement by Elder Orson F. Whitney: We shall yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God’s ammunition is not exhausted. His highest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God’s name and by His help we will build up a literature whose tops will touch the heaven, though its foundation may now be low on the earth.

Is this not a mandate? And yet I’m reminded of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Perhaps not fully appreciating the sacredness of their gifts or their potential to participate in celebrating the joy of redemption, some LDS writers are content to pluck blackberries. I am not. There’s probably a trashy novel in almost all of us; that’s the literary natural man we struggle with that constitutes an abuse of talent. Overcoming the temptation to write that kind of book is to acknowledge the heavenly source of our talent and accept the responsibility to use it respectfully. It’s impossible to separate the giver from the gift, and those who try to do so misunderstand the purpose of their gift. Clearly, expectations are high – to paraphrase the scripture, where much talent is given, much excellent output is expected. That gives us permission to become great.

There will never be another Milton or Shakespeare but their works are the paradigm of the finest literature at Elder Whitney’s time. Had Milton and Shakespeare known the Plan of Salvation their works might have been even more sublime. They were born at their times in their places for the same reason we were born in our time in our places – to fulfill a part of an eternal plan. Had he lived in the 20th Century, would Elder Whitney have mentioned Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Faulkner? Would he have referred to Nephi Anderson as the standard for LDS writers? Perhaps having "Miltons and Shakespeares of our own" means they will have a different definition than the world might give them. I believe Elder Whitney’s observation means our LDS potential Miltons and Shakespeares should shift the paradigm and establish their own rubrics, though it’s understood that high standards of language, usage and storytelling will always apply.

An author who sees his LDS roots through a noncommittal haze of sardonic cynicism is not spiritually equipped to write a great Mormon novel; he’s a cultural Mormon, what my father used to call a Latter-day Ain’t. Perhaps the question of developing great Mormon novelists depends on our desire to live the gospel. What could be riskier than the decision to be a true Christian every day, in every way? Perhaps my own ambition to share my stories, and my deep caring, i.e. OCD compulsion, about doing it well skews my accuracy in assessing the present LDS literary landscape. Acknowledging that one person’s sappy novel is another person’s revered guide for life, LDS writers still need to keep writing and being honest and meeting high standards of excellence so that the best manifestations of their talents will shine. We can’t be so busy trying to earn the world’s approval that we are embarrassed by who and what we are. No matter what we do, some people on the outside looking in will always dismiss us as naïve.

To limit ourselves to the safe cotton candy topics and to ignore or refuse to write in a realistic way about very real problems in our world implies that those problems either can’t be acknowledged or don’t exist. That’s a collusion of silence that helps no one. In this there is a crushing irony. Novels dealing with sticky topics for which there may be no answers in this life can help people experiencing those things to know how to handle them – think of that circle of support – and yet books dealing with those topics will be rejected by the three major LDS publishers, Deseret Book, Covenant Communications and Cedar Fort, Inc. Even kissing between married characters can’t be in a sexual context. Marriages and families are falling apart all around us but we can’t deal with that in literature because publishing such stories and selling them through Deseret Book stores would imply Church sanction, or - worse - might offend someone. I understand that a filter is necessary when it’s the Church’s bookstore, and of course, the practical issue of sales enters in. Still, I believe realism in fiction can be handled respectfully, without gratuitous detail, but writers of realistic fiction don’t have an alternative outlet to connect them with readers. Perhaps developing Miltons and Shakespeares of our own – superior LDS writers – depends on finding and meeting the demands of an audience of superior LDS readers.

This means that some LDS writers will never fit currently established writer molds. These are committed temple Mormons whose superior prose, eternal themes, fascinating plots and captivating characters will never land on a shelf in a Deseret Book store because the subject matter of the “latter times” they’ve chosen to write about isn’t what Elder Whitney imagined. Sometimes people have to go to some dark places to learn life’s hard lessons before they can rise up to spiritual heights to rejoice in the atonement. Writers don’t go there to praise the darkness; we visit temporarily to show the contrast and to celebrate the triumph over it; its portrayal is a necessary part of the story.

I didn’t grow up with vulgar language in my environment, nor did I marry into it, so reading it in books was a shock at first, but now it’s easier to ignore. I still look for books with minimal offensive words. Ironically, even J. Golden Kimball’s notorious damns and hells aren’t as naughty as they used to be. I understand that rough, coarse language is more the norm than the exception in our world, but I won’t write offensively realistic language; however, I do think some parents don’t know that’s how their children might talk to each other when adults aren’t around. But it isn’t always the swearing that offends. Some bright LDS teens who vetted my book told me that the scene of teenage girls at a slumber party discussing birth control was tame and didn’t sound the way girls really talk. This is an adult book, not YA, and it’s the ideas rather than the language of minor characters that might offend in this scene which is central to the subplot; it also includes some girls who are horrified at the careless attitude of others in the discussion – the point being that having opposition in all things means having choices.

Writers of realistic LDS fiction have a particularly difficult time locating potential publishers, and even if they do find a publisher, distribution of books with realistic subject matter is a monstrous impediment since the only LDS bookstore chain, Deseret Book, will not carry them. In fact, books published by the few small publishing houses willing to take on realistic topics are often skillfully written and edited, often receive high praise from critics and recognition for excellence. As an 18-year-old writer friend of mine observed, not everybody is into perpetual sweetness and light because that doesn’t reflect real life. LDS books with realistic subject matter will often not be reviewed by the major media, further widening the gap between authors and their potential readers. This kind of disconnect in the LDS market needs to be addressed. Perhaps, the way things are going in the publishing world, there’s an electronic solution to the problem for some genius to discover.

Years ago, someone who read an early short story of mine asked if I aimed to be the next Carol Lynn Pearson. As much as I admire that icon some saw as a leader in LDS literature at the time, I respect even more – and she would, too – the potential of each writer to make a unique contribution. My reply: “No, I thought I’d take a shot at being the first Pam Williams.” I know I’m a good writer; I've won contests, for whatever proof that may be. I pray my way through every phase of the writing process; that isn’t to say that I should be published because I’ve been inspired. It just means that I had some moments in the process that told me to keep going despite the rejections.

Serious readers who didn’t find past LDS fiction satisfying, and therefore don’t read what’s being offered now, still want to read something meaty that doesn’t have crude language in every other sentence. They should give current LDS fiction another chance. In passing my manuscripts around, many readers respond that they don’t normally like LDS fiction, but did enjoy my books, wondered why they aren’t published, and asked if I had any other manuscripts to read. However, because of the realistic nature of the stories I wrote, I’m having a hard time finding a publisher, and yet I know somewhere out there is an audience for my books, people who need additional insight and encouragement to keep trying, those who want to be taught out of a good book written by a source they can trust.

But where is the publisher who is the essential broker? And where is the bookstore that won’t pre-determine our LDS reading choices?

LDS Fiction: A View From the Fringe, Part Two

2010-11-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

WHY ARE WE HERE?
Some critics think that having “all the answers” through revelation to modern prophets robs us of available conflict and prevents us from acknowledging anything ugly in the world. That’s an oversimplification, but if LDS authors are thus painted into a corner because of accepting certain doctrines, then the question is how an LDS insider/writer can get out of the corner and find in the Mormon milieu the conflict essential to page-turner fiction.

A critic who read my unpublished contemporary novels about marriage suggested I remove all the LDS references and sell them in the larger national Christian market. In pondering that advice in light of what I believe my purpose as a writer to be, I realized that my compulsion to write for the LDS audience is driven by my knowledge of being LDS and my desire to comment on issues I know my own people struggle with. I do not worship at the feet of the New York Times best seller list, or even the Norton Anthology of Literature. I think of the circle of priesthood holders participating in blessings or ordinations, or a prayer circle in the temple, and find in them a symbolic safety net of mutual support. That same kind of power is available in the stirring prose of well-conceived stories.

Some LDS writers and critics may disdain my view as too narrow, aiming too low when there’s that big wide national market out there, and if we can just conquer that, we persecuted Mormons can prove we’re just as good as anybody else. But that begs the question. Did we not arrive here with gifts and powers to be exercised for the benefit of each other? We who have the Mormon experience need to speak out on uniquely LDS topics; the secular world can’t do justice to our story. No one understands the expansion of the American West the way pioneer descendents do if they know their own family history. Readers will be moved by a great story, no matter who has written it, but they won’t stand for being manipulated, and LDS readers won’t stand for their doctrines or their history being distorted by someone who doesn’t know our world from the inside.

Conflict is the basis for story, and because contention is evil, Mormon Times columnist Jerry Johnston doesn’t think we will ever produce a writer who can write a nitty-gritty book; we’re too isolated from pure evil to wrestle with it the way secular literature does. However, choices aren’t always clearly between good and evil; the more difficult choices may be between two good things. With human beings, the natural man is the ever-present universal conflict. Some of us come from shakier starting points than others, and many forces try to pull writers away and make us lose focus, or keep us from finding our purpose, or lure us to abandon our personal and literary standards. Those daily challenges to live the gospel more fully ARE large issues, for ourselves and for our characters, and are just as valid as any lofty Shakespearean theme.

Is it possible to be a believing, striving Latter-day Saint and still be acquainted with the level of evil that truly explores the heights and depths of the human soul? As with non-LDS writers, most of us will probably never be tempted to commit murder or betray our country or engage in great evil, even though we may create characters who do. Considering the damage it could do to their spirits, most Latter-day Saint writers aren’t willing to test that side of the spectrum of experience simply to explore a writing topic. It requires meticulous personal attention to meet all the requirements of our Christianity as writers and as individuals. That matters. Like our readers, we aim for perfection while dealing with the realities of the world that intrude on our goal-oriented focus of trying to live up to high standards. We are blessed, but as Brigham Young said, many of us don’t live up to our privileges. Therein lies the essence of scintillating fiction.

In every issue of The Ensign we find examples of conflicts Latter-day Saints confront daily, hourly. To me, the never-ending struggle of good but flawed Latter-day Saints is compelling because it’s also my experience. As a reader, I personally have a hard time willingly suspending disbelief for a vampire story, but show me real but flawed Latter-day Saints trying to live the gospel and that’s where I find my touchstone. No matter what genre we choose to write in, we can connect the unique voices of LDS authors and “teach one another” from a number of platforms.

Story still connects with us, and though we live in the Age of Instant Everything, storytelling is usually an unhurried activity. As author Robert Coover said, “The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it… We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.” Vicariously, through fiction they can relate to, readers can grapple with the daily challenges of outsmarting the natural man. And yet readers today are not like readers of even ten years ago. Editors now tell us tag lines except “said” and “asked” are passé, adverbs are literary suicide, and long descriptive paragraphs even brilliantly written will lose the average reader. In Dickens’ day, when there were no electronic devices to depend on for entertainment, people read to each other in the evening, enjoying the language, the adventure, and the descriptions of Little Dorrit or David Copperfield. Readers today are sometimes too impatient to meander through a story and savor the richness of its nuances or the subtleties of storytelling.

Perhaps our LDS paradigm can begin with the way LDS artist John Hafen said it: “The highest possible development of talent is a duty we owe our creator.” We have this talent because the Creator thought it was necessary at this time for us to use it for someone’s benefit, to create through literature a circle of support. Some LDS writers don’t care about the LDS market and others don’t care about the national market. Regardless of the pendulum swing, we’re heading toward different heights more open to that necessary new paradigm, not so confined by the conventions of the past. We each have permission to define that new paradigm for ourselves.

Monday: Part Three

LDS Fiction: A View From the Fringe

2010-11-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

PART ONE - WHERE DID WE COME FROM?
Jennie Hansen’s recent Meridian Magazine assessment of the state of LDS fiction shed positive light on what faithful Latter-day Saint writers are producing these days, but it didn’t go far enough. Likewise, Jerry Johnston’s Mormon Times column last year about LDS fiction, questioning whether there will ever be a great Mormon novel, was too dismissive. Improvements in this species of literature are evident with every crop of books released. In fact, LDS writers, and especially Mormon-oriented fiction, have grown in significant ways since 25 or 30 years ago when I gave up trying to find something meaty in it that fed my soul.

Recently I’ve tackled it again. My personal project for 2010 was an unscientific survey of chiefly adult-oriented LDS fiction and I learned that the high quality work coming out now is the majority of LDS output. I think it portends many great Mormon novels, which could be written by Latter-day Saints for the LDS audience, or by Latter-day Saints for a general audience. We aren’t there yet, but our writers are well equipped and we’re on our way. Readers who didn’t like it 25 years ago, or even ten years ago, are shooting themselves in the foot if they don’t give it another chance.

I’ve often pondered with curiosity the scriptural edict to “teach one another out of the best books.” Church leaders attending the school of the prophets in Kirtland received that injunction, but like most scriptures, it has multiple applications. Teaching one another out of the “best books” implies, first, that good books are out there, and second, that we can be the authors of high quality material whether fiction or nonfiction, generating from whatever we have learned “by study and also by faith.” There’s power in teaching one another through fiction because our common belief system facilitates communication. We’ve all had the experience of sharing an incident from our lives and having a listener say, “Aha, I see what you mean.” That should be what we experience when we read LDS fiction; it’s one way writers can connect with readers on a personal level to bear one another’s burdens. If “write what you know” is the standard, the field is wide open for writers with knowledge of non-fiction topics, as well as those with astute observations about the daily effort of living the gospel and insights into the complexities of human nature.

“Teach one another” means it’s okay for LDS fiction to be instructive, as any literature can be. Nobody wants to be preached at but it’s a given that a novel has a theme, a personal take-away for the reader, and that take-away can be offered in an absorbing, entertaining, appealing way without crossing the line into tedious didacticism. Many years ago I heard about a ward roadshow depicting the story of Romeo and Juliet pretty effectively in twenty minutes, followed by a person coming out to address the audience: “This would never have happened if they had been married in the temple.” Now THAT’S didactic and quite oblivious of Shakespeare’s intended take-aways. Our up and coming LDS writers are too smart to fall into that trap. Wouldn’t we rather a good Latter-day Saint teach our children’s Sunday School class than someone off the street who doesn’t know the doctrine or have the Spirit? It’s the same principle with LDS fiction writers. Our purpose as writers shouldn’t be to preach; it should be to represent who we are, and how and why.

Some people don’t mind a steady diet of literary snack cakes, but eventually most readers want substance. Latter-day Saints are much more sophisticated now, on the whole more highly educated than the general population, and educated people want a commensurate literature. An old maxim that told us we should write to the eighth grade mentality is no longer true, unless we’re actually writing for eighth graders. As a writer, I believe in that educated audience and I respect their intelligence. When I couldn’t find meaty LDS-oriented literature 25 years ago, I decided to write the kinds of books I wanted to read, to give other readers rich vicarious experience through compelling stories. An influential college professor once said to me, “If what you write is good enough, your work will find an audience.” This is probably the opposite of what editors would advise me now, but following that recommendation I have spent more time on perfecting my craft and less time on marketing the product.

Motivations differ, but our LDS worldview makes us who we are and puts us at a different starting place from other authors. We are a peculiar people intellectually because our cosmology of pre- and post-mortal existence is so non-traditional. We know the rules of Christianity through the Book of Mormon, and the guidelines for this dispensation through the handbook that is the Doctrine and Covenants. As with secular writers, it’s inevitable that who we are will underpin our writing, even though not all of our characters will believe as we do. Our LDS concept of the necessity for opposition in all things overarches our work, and the axiom that wickedness never was happiness undergirds it. Alma the Younger experienced a taste of hell before he repented and knew the sweetness of heaven, and it all happened in three days. That’s drama. All of this leads me to think that we should develop out of our uniqueness a new paradigm in literature that sets us apart.

Saturday - Part Two: Why Are We Here?

Avalanche of Choices

2010-11-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

About this time of year the volume of catalogs coming in the mail each day increases and threatens to become overwhelming. Christmas is coming, after all, and every merchant wants his share of the pie that is my budget. While I appreciate offers of new products that could make my life simpler or more fun, the demands of making so many decisions can make you feel like you're trying to outrun a locomotive.

Not all catalogs are bad, just most of them. Living in rural Utah for more than 30 years, where the shopping opportunities and product choices are limited, I have made a habit of shopping from catalogs, but I quickly became very discriminating about the options I took. It was so much easier than going out in the weather and having to listen over PA systems to all that poorly performed Christmas music at holiday time. Even now that I live in metropolitan Utah, I continue to shop from catalogs because the shipping costs are less than gas for the car to drive to the mall, not find what I want, drive several other places and not find it there either, and then try to find an alternate item. I could google it and just drive to one place, but there's that crowd hassle to contend with, too.

Some of my catalog shopping experiences have been less than pleasing, but the vast majority have been positive. It's so nice to find all my Christmas shopping delivered at my front door. I've found some unique gifts that way which would otherwise have required a lot of serendipitous searching to locate. Now, for instance, my son has a tee shirt he wears proudly which has a name tag printed on it that says "HELLO my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed me father. Prepare to die." (The Princess Bride is one of our favorite movies.)

What makes catalog shopping even easier is that I can order everything from the catalog website, and maybe even find some other treasure while I'm at it in the specials for online customers. I know immediately if the item is backordered, out of stock, no longer available or doesn't come in the color I want. And there aren't any snippy sales clerks to contend with. Rarely have I received the wrong item or had to send anything back.

By the way, the items you order are not kept in a warehouse until the purchase is made. They are in the order fulfillment center. That's how much catalog shopping has changed since I was a little girl and spent hours choosing what I was going to ask Santa to bring me from the Montgomery Wards catalog. They had an actual warehouse and they weren't afraid to call it what it was.

However, catalogs breed like vermin. Buy something from one catalog and you're suddenly on the mailing list for their seventeen sister catalog companies. It's like being besieged by dozens of greedy children all yelling "Gimme!" We thought moving to a new place last year would get us off some mailing lists, but alas, they have found us anyway, and have redoubled their efforts. For example, we have started receiving unsolicited catalogs for pet products - you know, cute clothes for poodles and adorable designer doggie beds and monogramed water dishes. This is annoying on several levels because we don't have any pets and being allergic, don't intend to get any. It annoys me that marketers assume that people in our demographic, i.e. people our age, all have pets. I've heard about people who treat their pets better than they treat their kids, but I'm not one of them.

If we want to cut the nuisance factor, we will have to ask these people to take us off the mailing list we didn't want to be on in the first place, which, they will tell us, will take four to six weeks. Labels are printed that far in advance and like the next crop of American Idol losers, there's no way to stop them. Somebody at a computer could easily delete my name and address from the data bank today with one key stroke, but apparently that person doesn't show up for work regularly. I once began receiving unsolicited catalogs of skimpy lingerie and sex toys. I wrote letters to the company and asked them to remove my name from their mailing list. However, I kept getting catalogs I couldn't refuse because, of course, the Post Office is obligated to deliver to me whatever has my name on it. Apparently the company thought I was just kidding. After all, who wouldn't want to engage in a little S and M fantasy now and then. It practically took an Act of Congress before they got the message. I had to file an official complaint with the Post Office to put an end to it, and I had to do it twice to prove I was serious because the catalogs kept coming.

Some catalogs can cause an instant guilt trip. Especially at Christmas time, you get offers you don't get any other time of year. Just this week I received one that invited me to forego buying gifts for all my privileged family and friends and instead purchase an animal, or a herd, for a poor family in some destitute country. It's unfair to be burdened this way with a choice that could mean life or death to an unschooled boy in Africa. I can't deal with that kind of pressure, and I'm an extraordinarily generous person. If I give a goat to one child, they'll all want one, and I can't afford that.

Over the years I've become more discriminating, and each day when the mail comes, I dig through the avalanche and make three stacks: catalogs I have no interest in, catalogs that I'll read for amusement, and catalogs I might actually want to do business with. More and more the temptation is less and less, and it is a most liberating feeling on the day I can fling them all into the recycle bin.

This Just In: Halloween Scrooge On the Loose

2010-10-27T22:16:00.000-07:00

This week I've been amused by the anxious hand-wringing on the LDS blogs about how to celebrate Halloween when it comes on Sunday like it does this year. Duh! Aren't the concepts of the sabbath and Halloween rather oxymoronic? Why is this even a point of discussion? It's just so blindingly obvious - You. DON'T. Celebrate. Halloween. On. Sunday. In fact, we personally don't celebrate it any other day of the week either.

Halloween is a ripoff, emotional blackmail to force you to buy something they don't need for somebody you don't know. When the kids left home we opted out of Halloween. Instead, we usually made plans to be somewhere else on October 31, like the temple, where we actually found a lot of other people who were there for the same reason - to avoid answering the doorbell – while accomplishing something truly worthwhile.

Roger accepts the premise of the holiday and is easily guilted into things. When he was teaching, he even buckled to pressure for all the faculty to wear costumes for Halloween, but he took it as a challenge to make his costume something that didn't interfere with the purpose of school. One year he simple put a bandage on his forehead and went as Gerald Ford. He liked to think big. Once he pinned a tin foil "C" of his shirt pockets and went as the North American continent - from "C" to shining "C." Another time he wore a blue shirt and a shell necklace and went as the Pacific Ocean.

I, however, do not buy into the myth; I will not make a social contract I don't intend to keep. Sometimes when we'd leave town or go out to dinner and shopping on Halloween, he was overwhelmed by visions of heartbroken sobbing children pounding on our abandoned front door, alas, to no avail. So he'd wimp out and put a bowl of candy on the porch for the poor little starving ragamuffins to help themselves while we were gone, a pathetic surrender to social pressure. When they came around selling things for a school fund raiser, I was a little more sympathetic, but when they came begging at my doorstep on Halloween, I refused to get sucked in. Well, I could probably deal with a couple of little ones, but it's the big ones with pillow cases setting their sights on a big haul that really make me want to chase them off with my broom.

I know, I know - what about all those darling little witches and goblins and hobos and space men whose mothers put so much thought and effort into their costumes, and the dads who braved the cold to accompany them around the neighborhood. Well, I think by mutual consent we could agree not to go through this charade again and we probably wouldn't miss it. After all, we probably won't be celebrating Halloween in the Millennium, and they'll have to change their traditions then. Personally, I'm already over it.

If I could, I'd deal with Halloween the way my grandmother often did - she'd stick out her false teeth and waggle them at the unsuspecting little beggars. Very often the kids would bolt off the porch forgetting the candy part of the "trick or treat" proposition. Yeah, that was one of many reasons why I loved my grandmother.

All my life I've been puzzled over the idea that getting your pants scared off was a good thing. I have never been a fan of being terrorized. My heart rate is just fine as it is, thank you very much. Vampires bore me, werewolves disgust me and Freddy Kruger needs to be institutionalized. Scary movies are a waste of time. What's the point in scaring people, or wanting to be scared? What does it prove or accomplish? I once parted company with a young suitor whose goal was to take me on the Wild Mouse roller coaster at Lagoon because it would scare me so much I'd no doubt be inclined to turn to him for comfort, and he'd be willing to comfort me, and, well, you get the picture. Not a very original ploy, but every dork-faced guy is willing to try the obvious things first. I realized that if that was his idea of thrills, we had had nothing in common.

You want to get really scared this Halloween? Think about voting two days later. Think about raising kids. Think about paying the bills. Now I've done it - I've scared myself.

What does thrill me? Certain kinds of music that touch my spirit, written words that lift my soul, works of art that please my eyes, raspberries, a Northwest forest, Mt. Hood, chocolate, a Pacific sunset, the faces of my grandchildren, hugs from people I love, words of gratitude and appreciation, reaching a long-worked-for goal, composing a finely-tuned sentence. That's probably enough sweetness right there to compensate for all that candy on all those holidays from October to February.

But Halloween? A cheap, trifling substitute for the real thing.

This Nearly Was Mine

2010-10-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

To look at the trash file in my email inbox, you'd think I've missed out on a lot of great stuff by so mindlessly tossing away all that spam.

Why, if I were only smart enough to see the possibilities, I could have had successful careers in photography, medical billing, paralegal, nursing, accounting, criminal justice, graphic design or religious studies. Probably not all at once, but the way the economy's going, I could choose one from Column A and one from Column B and make a pretty decent living.

Daily I'm offered social networking options from eharmony, bigbeautifulwomen, singlesnet, Christian singles and speed dating. With the click of a button, I could join the Disney movie club, arrange for laser eye surgery, get a free trip to Las Vegas or a great deal on life insurance. No wonder my head's all awhirl.

Orchard Bank wants to be my financial advisor, somebody else is ready to arrange a loan, and the payment committee of some vast fund that gives money away is trying desperately to contact me. Prizes are still "pending" from several other incredibly generous sources overburdened with aggravating amounts of extra cash. Dell wants to send me a free laptop, and everybody from Pizza Hut to Walmart wants to give me valuable gift certificates if I'll simply participate in an online survey. That's all they're asking.

I could even get a free tarot or palm reading if I simply go to a certain website. Sheesh - what was I thinking when I trashed that offer?

Oh, by the way, I know a great place you can get such a deal on a forklift rental.

And that's only the highlights of this week.

Spam is a curious name for electronic junk mail. People my age remember Spam as a kind of food that can only be described as canned "meat product" which had some popularity when we were children. On the label the product ingredient list was always rather vague. I remember it as a food that had to be creatively doctored up with something else, like pineapple or barbecue sauce, to make it palatable. Even in the early days of our marriage, my husband liked Spam as an alternate sandwich meat. (His philosophy: if you can't put it between two slices of bread, it's not real food.) Spam fell out of favor for a while, during the economically robust Reagan years, but it's making a comeback again. Does this mean Spam sales can be a reliable economic indicator? Now there's a subject for a master's thesis for some enterprising economics student.

But I digress. Non-food Spam is also a form of harassment, the gnats and mosquitoes of our lives that infect our electronic conveniences. Apparently the marketing guys who dream up this stuff have never been bothered by annoying insects. Either that or they don't understand the implications of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." There's a special rung in Purgatory for spam marketers.

So many voices out there want my attention, and they're all dumping stuff in my inbox. And what will they do if I give them my attention? They'll be so grateful they'll continue their effort to engage in a long-term relationship with me no matter how many times I decline and put them in the "delete forever" box. A few times I've found something valuable inadvertently dumped into the spam file, but rarely. What we learn from this is that "delete forever" really means "change the access codes and try again next week." But I would worship at the feet of the person who could actually delete my email address from these mailing lists.

Still, the one spam message that stirs my curiosity simply says "Beyond the Rack" repeatedly, not giving me any clues in the subject line about the nature of the product, service or information being offered. Is this about getting a great deal on clothing? A sale on Medieval torture devices? You wouldn't think there's be much of a market for that. Or maybe it's about those metal devices you strap on your car to transport your skis. Maybe it refers to hunting, as in a rack of antlers, or a great cut of meat, like a rack of ribs. Might be about wall-mounted book shelves, or a place to display magazines. It couldn't be an invitation to something sado-masochistic. No, that's unthinkable.

I could find out easily enough if I just clicked on the link. Maybe...

A Little Introspection, Perhaps Unfinished

2010-09-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

As far as I can tell, this is the last poem I wrote, dated 2008. Since then I've been concentrating on novels and no idea for a poem has grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention. Chiaroscuro (kēˌärəˈsk(y)oŏrō) is a lovely Italian word that means "clear or bright and dark or obscure." It's a term used by artists to describe the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting; it's an effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something. But you probably already knew that. I suppose this poem is my co-opt of "through a glass darkly," Paul's phrase in Corinthians that has always fascinated me.

Chiaroscuro

Like cataracts on ancient eyes,
like frost obscuring the windshield,
a transparent panel opaque with mineral salts
prevents my clear vision of the world.
Can I say to my soul
I don’t do windows?

Writer as Reader

2010-08-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

Reading for fun is actually hard work when you're a writer. In fact, I find it very difficult sometimes to read what other people write without reaching for my red pen. If the errors are minor bumps in the road and can be easily forgiven, it's easier to stay in the role of reader. At other times it's harder to put the red pen away, kick back and pretend I don't know anything about dangling modifiers, confused pronoun reference, or periodic sentence structure.

However, sometimes those dangling modifiers, confused pronoun references and weak sentences cross the line into - frankly speaking - bad writing. Three books I read recently took me twice as long because I was editing in my head whole paragraphs that offended my sensibilities. It's very frustrating because when I stumble over a rough sentence, I go into teacher mode and look for three or four ways to suggest revising it.

Why do I read a book that isn't well written? Ultimately I have to decide whether I want to spend time reading for the story and the characters or being offended by Amelia Bedelia usage and badly written prose. In another way, a badly written book can be very instructive. When I see what the author was trying to do and didn't quite succeed at accomplishing, I learn how to avoid those same mistakes. Sometimes it's easy to overlook rough patches and sometimes it isn't. When I decide to read a book, I just open up the place in my brain where I keep my willing suspension of disbelief, shake it loose, and plunge full throttle into the story.

To my great delight, I have found a few well-written books lately, and reading them has been immensely satisfying in all the important artistic and technical aspects. I don't even think about my red pen. My taste runs to character- and idea-driven stories, but I'm not much for murder and mayhem. Occasionally I like fantasy but dystopian worlds are annoying rather than exciting or challenging to me. A few of my recently read memorably written books:

Counting the Cost by Liz Adair - A New Mexico cowboy who loves the land and adheres to a strict code of personal behavior falls in love with the beautiful but abused wife of one of the ranch management team.

To Have or To Hold by Josi Kilpack - What begins as an unconventional bargain between two people who each need what the other has to offer turns into a gripping story of honor and commitment.

Rift by Todd Robert Peterson - A story of stubborn men who take a personal grudge way too far, this takes place in Sanpete County, Utah, a place I'm somewhat familiar with, which adds to the enjoyment. One LDS reviewer said this is how LDS fiction ought to be written, so naturally I had to read it, being a purveyor of LDS fiction myself. I didn't like the way the book was marketed, however; it made it sound like it was going to be racy or daring somehow, but it was an endearing story that made me feel I should be sittin' and whittlin' and spittin' with the main characters out front of the barber shop.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - This is, to use EnglishMajorSpeak, an epistolary novel, one written in the form of letters to and from the characters. It takes place on the Island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands (that's in the English Channel between England and France, and although closer to France belong to England) and reveals what happened when the Germans occupied it during World War II. It's funny and dramatic and has all the elements of a very satisfying novel.

The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas - A "friends staying loyal to friends" story turns into a mystery, but you have to be tolerant of the 1930s social values a group of quilters in the Dust Bowl of Kansas. Sometimes it seems to wander a bit. All the women had their charming eccentricities, but I really got interested when the main character's husband appeared. He's a guy I could really like.

Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys by Janet Kay Jensen - An award-winning novel about two medical students at the University of Utah who fall in love - he committed to his LDS faith, she committed to returning to provide medical services to her polygamous community. They break up when they graduate and each has a job to go to, but things change and when their paths cross again, they realize they still are attracted to each other. Polygamy is incidental to the story, a vehicle for motivating the character to action, without being a central focus. Folk music is important in the story, which is where the title comes from.

I'm off to immerse myself in another book, hoping that this one won't require any rewriting as I go.

How I Write, and Why

2010-07-24T19:12:00.001-07:00

My writing process has evolved over the years, but when I first got some ideas that turned into novels, I had an experience I didn't expect. With every novel I've written (6 so far) each one starts with characters and a vague plot line, and then as I'm thinking about how the story will unfold, a scene flashes in my head - sometimes with dialogue, sometimes not - and I quickly write it down before I lose it. In each case, this scene has become the pivot point in the story, and then a more specific plot line begins to fall into place. I write this down and weave it together with a time line so I know the exact sequence of events. For this reason, I don't think in terms of chapters. I think in terms of events that happen in a character's life on a particular day. That helps me determine what led up to that moment in the story and what consequences will come after that moment. If I know what's going to happen in a scene, I write that scene, but if I need to think about it a while or do research to add authenticity and believability to the scene, I might put it off until I have the other scenes written that are still bouncing around in my brain. As a sort of 'place holder,' I write notes in the manuscript of what will need to happen in this yet-to-be-written scene so I can go back and fill it in later. Fortunately, I'm at a place in my life where I can write all day and all night if I need to get essential scenes on paper, and then ponder and brood over scenes that need more careful attention.

Sometimes some of my best ideas come when I'm in church. Insights and ideas in a talk or lesson relate to something my characters are experiencing, so I make notes and add those ideas later. I don't expect inspiration to plant something in my brain without effort on my part. I seek inspiration and expect it to poke and prod and move forward ideas that have already been generated. If no inspiration comes, I take that to mean the idea isn't worth following. This whole process is a fascinating exercise in the way the right brain (creativity) coordinates with the left brain (analytical). When I'm writing it's all right brain all the time, and when I'm revising, it's left brain.

Once a rough draft is on paper, I start combing through the tangles to smooth it out, making sure the sequence of events is accurate. My goal is polished brevity - saying the most in the fewest words. One of the things I comb out is sentences written in passive voice unless there's a particular plot- or character-driven reason for keeping it passive. I also comb through and revise all sentences that start with 'the.' That sounds quirky, but it makes the prose really sing with a brighter, tighter, more readable way of saying something.

Also, I'm the queen of tweak, and the longer the plot and characters "brew" in my brain, and the longer the manuscript remains in my possession unsold, the more subtleties and refinements I find that add richness to the story and the people.

While writing, I also listen to good music - without words - that stimulates my brain. I pray my way through every project. Above all, it's essential to have readers who will tell you the truth. In my previous writers group, everyone loved me and everything I wrote was wonderful, just wonderful, so I didn't get the feedback I really needed. Now I have several good critics who love me enough to tell me the truth.

A few years ago I interviewed with an editor who asked me why I write and who my audience is. I told him I can't NOT write, but apparently that wasn't good enough. I guess he expected me to say, "LDS women between the ages of 24 and 65 who have a college education and always get their Visiting Teaching done." I can't think in such marketing terms. My mindset comes from what a college professor once told me: "If what you write is good enough, your work will find an audience." I write because it appeals to the crusader in me. I write because I see things being ignored or swept under the rug in our LDS subculture that we ought to be discussing openly among ourselves. If the emperor is naked, I notice and I tend to mention it, and that makes some people uncomfortable, but very often those are the problems we've been in denial about. I write because lives and marriages are falling apart and not very many writers are addressing those issues in fiction. A writer's responsibility is to shine a light, and sometimes that light illuminates dark corners. I write because characters come alive in my brain and won't go away until I've written their story. I write because I have a talent and not to use it would be disrespectful and disappointing to the Creator who gave it to me. Even if I never get published, this exercise enriches my spirit.

For probably 25 or 30 years I've avoided reading fiction by LDS writers because most of it didn't have substance or depth, which left me still hungry. I know other LDS women with that same complaint. So I decided to write for people like me, who are looking for soul-satisfying, sink-your-teeth-into stories that touch our common core values. For that reason, I haven't written fantasy or escape so far. In the last six months, however, since I've started reading more contemporary LDS writers, I'm finding quite a few that I like very much, and I'm recommending them to those friends who gave up on finding good LDS-written fiction. We've come a long way, baby, and that's good.

That's my writing process and my philosophy. All I can say to recommend it is that I have a manuscript pending with a publisher. Talking about this reminds me how very much I miss teaching writing!

Confessions of an Incorrigible Book Buyer

2010-07-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

Hi. My name is Pam and I buy books.

I often describe myself as an old broken-down English major because I learned to love and appreciate literature at that impressionable time in my life, and although my tastes have changed over the years, it's a habit I can't break. There's something compelling about a story, but really, as someone said, the meaningful experience in all literature takes place in the white spaces between the words. Maybe that's where story and reader connect.

A defining moment came the day AFTER graduation. I'd been through the English majors reading list, passed the exam and had my diploma in hand. As I passed through the campus bookstore and looked down that long line of racks and racks of paperback novels, I nearly swooned. I could read! I was literate! More importantly, I wasn't tied to a list of books somebody else required me to read. At last I could choose for myself. It was in the days when an expensive paperback might cost as much as $3, and those were no-nos for me, but I remember taking eight books to the checkout and spending a whopping, unheard of, budget-busting $12. This is significant because I was blissfully unemployed at the time.

Nevertheless, I went home and began to devour my treasures with the degree of self-indulgence one can only know when one is bone-weary of doing what other people want and expect one to do. These were all the best sellers that I'd agonizingly ignored while I was finishing the reading list to pass the test and graduate, but now it was my turn – nay, my right – to get caught up with the world of popular fiction.

In the years since graduation, I have not been inclined to borrow books from the public library because it's too restrictive; it puts me again on somebody else's timetable. I want the freedom to put a book down for a few weeks and pick it up later when the mood strikes again, to glance at it occasionally and know that inside the covers is a treat waiting for me. I have a reader friend who sometimes has as many as five books going at once, fiction as well as non-fiction, and she keeps them nicely balanced in her mind.

No, I'm the kind of reader who must possess books. When we moved last year after 33 years in one place, we passed a lot of our books on to other people because we knew space would be limited in our new place. In fact, in our old home, the bathrooms were the only places that didn't have bookshelves. In our much smaller new place, our books nearly filled the three big new bookcases we bought, but I still buy books. I'll decide later which ones are keepers and pass the others on to friends who will appreciate them, where they'll have a good home and be loved.

Unfortunately, or fortunately if you're the author of books I buy, I have what I'd call story staying power. I like books that go on into sequels and trilogies. I'm even into one series that goes to a fourth book, and another series that's supposed to have seven eventually. It's like making new friends.

As for the classics, I like Dickens, the Brontes and Austen interpreted and illustrated for television – perhaps it's due to a shrinking attention span no longer compatible with that prose style – but the characters are always welcome in my imagination, and I don't feel compelled to possess these volumes in my own library. My favorite novel, which I cannot do without, is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I purchased a new copy recently because I'd worn out the original I'd had since college. No one writes more luscious prose.

In our new place, I've found a home in our local book club, reading some books I probably wouldn't have chosen for myself, and being pleasantly surprised. I'm just glad I don't have to analyze the plot and the characters and the subplots and the socio-political influences and write papers about them and worry if I've second-guessed the teacher sufficiently to get a good grade. I can simply enjoy them as new friends. On second thought, maybe I should have majored in something I didn't love so much. It was a lot of hoop-jumping to fit somebody else's view of what an English major should know.

But that's another thought for another time. For now... My name is Pam and I buy books.

My Romance With Words

2010-07-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

When I was in the ninth grade, Mrs. Breckenridge assigned us to write an essay every week. She evaluated our work, consulted with us, handed the papers back, and we would revise. It was where I learned the joy of writing the perfectly honed sentence. Occasionally, since then, I’ve written a few more, and the hope of achieving a well-written sentence keeps me going. When the mind is as blank as the page. I discovered that the real writing comes in the revision. In fact, the word “revision” means to look or see again, and in that process, re-thinking also takes place; careful writing demands careful thinking.

One of the joys of the language is the fun of spoonerisms (saying blushing crow instead of crushing blow), malapropisms (“We get along so well; we have a great repertoire…”) and other “in” jokes language lovers share. I love puns. Once my college roommates mounted on one of the odd ceiling angles in our attic apartment a bigger-than-life-size poster of a famous Russian ballet dancer. They were all waiting to see my reaction to this handsome bigger-than-life-size face with piercing eyes greeting me as I walked in the door. Their conversation stopped as I stood and frowned at it for a moment. With one hand on my hip, and in mock disgust, I said in frozen tones, “Well, you’ve got your Nureyev!”

My mother’s use of mind-numbing clichés is legendary in our family. She had them all in easy reach in every conversation, including a few she made up. She never swore, except to declare, “Son of a biscuit-eater!” When she sometimes stumbled over words, she described it as saying things 'bass-ackwards' or 'getting my tang all tungled up.' Whenever we drove anywhere, she narrated. If there had just been a heavy rain, she’d say, “Boy, they’ve sure had a gullywasher through here.” She knew the names of all the wildflowers, the history of the town we were passing through, told her previous experiences there, and named people she knew who lived there, or had lived there, or planned to live there. Because it was endlessly interesting, and always hilarious, we learned to forgive the clichés.

In our family we have developed a few twists and turns in the language, too, especially regarding names. It makes us unique, binds us together, and is one way our children tolerate their old broken-down English major parents. Our son Jordan has become Fjord, and in the spirit of 'right back atcha,' his sister Jennifer is Fjen. Our non-‘J’ daughter Elin has even become Fjelin. Jordan’s blog name is fjordypants. They have come up with dozens of names for me, probably because Pam is an easier name to play with; therefore, Dad – Roger – is always Dad. They tried once to refer to us affectionately as their pets – Rogerbil and Pamster – but only my nickname stuck. When I’m not Mom, I’ve also become Pamalamadingdong, Pamalino, Pammie-Wammie, or any number of variations on the theme. When Elin married, her intended asked me if I wanted him to call me Mom or Pam. I said either was fine, but Chickie Babe was probably not appropriate. Both our sons-in-law call me The Pamster.

In our conversations, and as we play games together, we fondly recall common experiences, stealing phrases from a movie or video that we can remake to suit our circumstances. With us, Star Wars, Singing in the Rain, The Great Race, The Farley Family Reunion or other favorite movies are part of the language smorgasbord we nibble from. Ultimately there is a right and wrong to grammar, although some of us have been known to reply, when asked a preference, “It don’t make no nevermind to me.” Strangers listening to us might think we’ve developed our own language, or just arrived from another planet.

When I teach creative writing, I always read from The Great Gatsby the description of the parties Gatsby throws. It’s as thrilling a passage of prose as a person can find in American literature. Fitzgerald describes the people and the scene without using the words spoiled, lavish, excessive, or prodigal, and yet the reader comes away thinking those words. That's fine writing. In the spirit of saying it that way, I once wrote an essay on the perils of being short without using the word ‘short.’ It reads pretty well.

I love the sounds of words as well as the meanings. On my blog I have a list of my favorite words, and although it’s incomplete, it still tells a great deal about me and my brain: wonky, imprimatur, absquatulate, crapulence, rendezvous, fracas, ephemeral, ethereal, cinnamon, carbuncle, polliwog, murmur, tarnation, chiaroscuro, credenza, glissando, ubermensch, summer afternoon. And I’m just getting started.

Some language-poor readers of one of my novels, reading a manuscript copy, didn't get the humor of the malapropisms used by one lovable character with a penchant for mangled language. She says, for instance, her daughters’ homes have leatherneck furniture and granola countertops, while her big old Victorian home has become a milestone around her neck. Her cruise ship passed through the Panama Corral, and she describes the food as laminated in honey and soy sauce. She got a nasty garfunkle on her foot and almost missed the dance. We should understand when she says to her niece, "I'm glad you found your glitch in life." I was surprised that some people reading a manuscript copy of the book have written corrections in the margins. I feel sorry for people who can’t or don’t have fun with language.

Words can thrill – “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” – or frighten – “We regret to inform you…” or send chills – “I am the light of the world.” To master the use of words is a great gift, but to appreciate words is an even greater gift. And I salute Mrs. Breckenridge for being the kind of teacher who could put me on the path to a language-rich world.

Plotting the Next Move

2010-06-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

Having done it myself, I know the mechanics of plotting a novel, but when I read someone else's work I marvel again at the genius of different authors to make plots airtight, believable, and compelling.

Josi Kilpack has done it so well in her Sadie Hoffmiller culinary mystery series. In Lemon Tart, English Trifle and Devil's Food Cake, things happen fast, which is what keeps mystery readers involved. I've never been a great mystery fan, although I'm married to one, so this normally isn't my genre. However, these are published by Deseret Book so they're clean, and I appreciate that. It's one thing to go for gritty realism, but it's such a relief to read a good story without foul, offensive language.

Sadie is fastidious almost to a fault, and that's what makes her such a good detective, albeit amateur, able to know what to do when she finds herself in situations where the police may be absent or incompetent or resentful of her involvement. She doesn't really try to inject herself into police work, but somehow things happen to Sadie that keep her life from getting dull. Once involved, she knows when to dance around the truth and when to be unrelentingly honest.

Usually the surface is calm for Sadie, the 56-year-old widow just trying to keep up with her two college-age children and her charity work, but underneath is a layer of uncertainty and impending catastrophe that keeps a mystery reader going. There's a good balance of dramatic tension to move the story along and laugh-out-loud humor to give relief and keep the characters interesting. Although I haven't tried any of the recipes scattered throughout the text, some of the less caloric have practical appeal for my lifestyle. These dishes are an integral part of the story.

There's also an ongoing hint of romance, although that isn't as important as the food. Sadie knows some interesting men and isn't entirely opposed to having a close relationship again, but even after twenty years as a widow she hasn't forgotten her first love. Her ambivalence gets in the way at crucial moments.

Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people in these books, and that's the subtle brilliance of plotting an imaginative piece of fiction. I look forward to the next in the series, Key Lime Pie, which is due out in the fall. In the meantime, I'm going to pick up another Kilpack novel next time I'm in the bookstore.

Sailing Away Again

2010-06-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Well, they talked us into it. We thought he was kidding when a brother-in-law, Gary, asked us if we were going on the Panama Canal cruise with the rest of the family. But he wasn't. Howard, the other brother-in-law, is really good at finding deals and doing all the business end of things for us, so he's booking it this week. They already have 50% occupancy. We're going to get veranda staterooms this time. Howard's parents are going, too, and he's notifying the rest of the family. Six of the seven Williams siblings and their spouses went on a one-week cruise a couple of years ago. For me it was BKRS (Before Knee Replacement Surgery) so I did okay on the ship but not so much on shore, especially in the heat. (HATED Jamaica!) Now I'm doing really well and will probably get along much better with various activities, so I'm looking forward to it. Isn't this what people are supposed to do when they're retired?

Here's the rundown:
Friday, April 29 - depart Miami FL
Saturday and Sunday - at sea
Monday, May 2 - docked at Cartagena, Colombia
Tuesday, May 3 - docked at Colon, Panama
Wednesday, May 4 - cruising through the Panama Canal
Thursday, May 5 - at sea
Friday, May 6 - dock at Puntarenas, Costa Rica
Saturday, May 7 - at sea
Sunday, May 8 - dock at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala
Monday, May 9 - at sea
Tuesday, May 10 - dock at Acapulco, Mexico
Wednesday, May 11 - at sea
Thursday, May 12 - dock at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Friday, May 13 - at sea
Saturday, May 14 - arrive at San Diego CA

We'll need passports, and new luggage, and… Excuse me while I start making lists.

Moving On

2010-06-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, folks, move along, nothing to see here.

Yep, the surgery came and went, annoying while it lasted. Waiting is the worst part when television is boring and you can't concentrate to read. All I could do was stare at my toes and contemplate the terrible pedicure I had. It was supposed to be at 3:30 Monday but I finally got into the OR about 5:30, out by 8 or so, and left the hospital at 3 Tuesday afternoon pain free. Still a little swelling in the throat and some hoarseness but nothing serious. Haven't tried to sing yet, although while in the hospital I had a dream about singing – remembered the alto line of The Lord is My Shepherd, but not the right sequence of verses.

Having been from my primary to a specialist to a surgeon in this little adventure, I have to say I'm very impressed with the quality of medical care I've found here. If I still lived in Sevier Valley, I would probably still not yet be diagnosed. My primary saw the bulge on my neck the first time I consulted with her. She sent me for tests, palpated, and recommended an endocrinologist. It took me two months to get in to see the specialist, but she did an ultrasound and needle biopsy to diagnose toxic multinodular goiter. Nodules sometimes develop in the thyroid and start sending out mixed signals. Mine were huge. So the endo sent me to a surgeon, and less than three weeks later I was in surgery. Today I go for a post-op checkup and expect to get onto thyroid hormone treatment soon. Then we do the dance of getting it balanced which takes a few weeks or months.

For my next feat of derring-do, I will conquer the known world.

A Cut-Throat Business

2010-05-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

Eighteen months ago I had two total knee replacement surgeries, and now, much too soon, I am facing another surgery, on June 7. A thyroidectomy has become necessary since the diagnosis of toxic multinodular goiter. My thyroid is toxic, apparently, because nodules of varying sizes (the largest being 15.8mm) have developed there, and they're each doing their own thing which is very confusing to the rest of the gland, so it just says "What's the use?" and stops trying. I am told, however, that it's a minor blip on the radar screen. This is now considered same-day surgery, so I won't be in the hospital very long, and I'll have a sore throat for a few days, but within a couple of weeks I should be back up to speed. That's good; I've got stuff to do and miles to go before I sleep. A needle biopsy revealed no malignancy, but that's to be expected in 95% of these cases. I kind of like singing in the church choir, and I hope I can still carry a tune and sing alto when this is over. If I've become basso profundo, however – looking on the bright side – I can sit next to Roger.

Help! The Retaters Have Overthrown King Helignat!

2010-05-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

Those word verifications you have to interpret so you can comment on someone's blog have always fascinated me. I'm sure they are created by random selection, but to me they have great potential for writing science fiction.

Satire, as the Broadway saying goes, is what closes on Saturday night, but for seven years satire was alive and well and playing out weekly in the social commentary known as the television space fantasy, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. If you ever watched it you'll know what I mean. Those plots were either comedies or high minded allegories or parables based on stirring universal truths like "hubris will be your undoing every time." The science jargon is deliciously baffling, something like computerese, educationese, or Tim Geitner explaining the economy to a Congressional committee, only more believable, more fascinating, and less confusing. A battle scene might be accompanied by talk about forward shields, impulse speed, warp drive, plasma fields, tractor beams, warp core overload, cloaking devices, ion particles, phaser banks, photon torpedoes, spatial anomalies, reconfiguring the power grid, and Klingon warbirds. It’s yummy, campy stuff. It was all great fun, made more so by the incomparable names chosen for the characters, planets and races. I love to watch the re-runs.

First you had to understand the myth, which is essential for science fiction. There’s this space station, see, Deep Space Nine, and it’s next to the wormhole, that shortcut across the galaxy that Einstein always suspected was there. If the wormhole fell into the hostile hands of Cardassia, Romulus, or the Dominion, there would be dire consequences for all the good guys. I think of it as the Panama Canal, and the Delta Quadrant on the other side as something like Hong Kong. Also near the station is the planet Bajor, recently liberated from the occupation of Cardassia, another nearby planet whose citizens, with their exoskeletal appearance, have an insufferable superiority complex. In fact, DS9 was once Bajoran, but is now in Federation hands. That’s the United Federation of Planets – home base: earth – and who else but Terrans, those once known in 50’s sci-fi movies as earthlings, could have the savvy to run the place and keep the peace.

Here's where the names come in: Jadzia Dax, Kira Nerise, Nog, Odo, Jem Hadar, Worf, Ferengi, Klingon, Garak, Ezri Dax, Quark, and that's just the first episode. Are you having fun yet? These names, I suppose, could be interchangeable with the word verifications. All you'd have to do is capitalize them.

"Yes, Captain. The Bricsmo have landed on the planet Spushan and found friendly inhabitants. The Fibitic will supply all the Flogen we need for the squif drive in the engine. If we can just keep the Plualp from discovering the mining operation we'll be able to keep the Munder from rebelling. Then we'll go on to Cattive next week and deliver the Ismakit prince back to his parents King Shecar and Queen Hytoe."

There you have it - the plot in one paragraph. It's very reminiscent of the Lewis Carroll poem, The Jabberwocky. The meaning of his made-up words is perfectly clear if you understand what part of speech the word represents. "Brillig," for instance is obviously an adjective, as in "frabjous," the description of a beautiful day. It's also clear what a vorpal sword is, and that the "beamish" boy who came "galumphing" back was successful.

I love playing with the language this way and admire anyone who can do it believably. Although I've never written science fiction and don't intend to, I see those word verifications as a great resource for someone who does.

Walking Around with Richard Paul Evans

2010-05-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished reading The Walk, by Richard Paul Evans. I met him once when I introduced him as a speaker at a League of Utah Writers conference in Park City, and I've seen him interviewed on TV here and there. He appears to be a man with many layers and complexities that even he finds amusing, as if every day is filled with self-discovery.

Whatever else he may or may not be, he is a solid storyteller, and I'm amazed at how quickly he pulls the reader in and holds attention. He does that with several effective devices. He uses the character's journal entries to tease the next chapter, which he has done in previous books as well, and it hasn't become tiresome because it isn't pretentious. His chapters are usually short, and that makes his books easy to pick up and put down when life is busy, and yet when you pick it up again, you're immediately drawn back into that compelling world he has created. He devises solid plots, believable characters and uses a "telescope" writing style – that is, he can focus on minutia when it reflects the character's state of mind and then he can pull out and look at the big picture. It's something like getting into the "zone" where the left and right sides of the brain are working together to write and revise, and creativity is pouring out of the keyboard from your fingertips. His writing is seamless, apparently effortless, and that's what tells me that he worked hard to achieve that flow of ideas and action.

Most fascinating to me is that he uses first person POV to tell his stories, and that requires becoming the character mentally and emotionally during the writing process, sort of like an actor creating a role for stage or screen. I have never written in the first person, but I think I've had a similar experience when a character comes alive in my imagination, telling me his or her story. It's like taking dictation. They tell me their story and I write it down. When the story has been told, the characters go away. Recently I had the startling experience of coming to the end of a book and saying goodbye to the characters, but they wouldn't leave. It was as if they were saying, "We have a story to tell and we choose you to tell it, so get busy." So I listened to them and wrote another book.

Evans always has his characters dealing with thought-provoking moral and religious issues, meaning his books are character and idea driven. That's what I write, and reading another author's take is very satisfying. I'd recommend The Walk, and hope the other three volumes yet to come in the series will also catch me, pull me in, and make my stay worthwhile.

It's Only a Paper Moon

2010-04-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

A charming old popular song says "It's only a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sky." That metaphor goes through my mind as I reflect on my experience at the LDStorymakers conference this past weekend. That's LDS story makers. I don't know why the cutesy way of writing it. Maybe that's what attracted some of the air kissing wannabes I saw there. Networking is one thing but I saw so much sucking up you'd have thought it was a lemon festival. Among about 450 people from Utah, Idaho, California, Arizona and Colorado, I knew three. I wanted to be a part of this group because I'm a writer, I'm LDS, I've been married 40 years, and so I write about being LDS and being married. That's what my writing teachers always taught me – write what you know. And I thought that's probably what motivated everybody else to be there.

However, I'm not a mainstream LDS writer, and perhaps that's why I felt alien. At meals and in conference lectures, people very often introduced themselves as writers of science fiction, mystery/suspense, fantasy, historical fiction, Young Adult (YA) fiction, or romance. I didn't hear another person introduce themselves as a writer of contemporary drama. In fact, I didn't even know that's what I wrote until I interviewed with an editor from an LDS publishing company who said that's what he'd call it. The best part about that is I have less competition and potential for a bigger place in my own genre.

All or most of these writers are aiming at commercial success on the national scene, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I have a different view of my purpose. I write LDS fiction for a general adult LDS audience because I have something to say to them. I particularly appreciated Anita Stansfield's discussion of her life as a writer, the sacrifices she's made, and coming from someone whose 47th book will soon be out, that was important. It was particularly pleasing to hear her refer to her talent as a gift. Obviously she has respect for it, and that respect has driven her career. I don't read everything she writes, but I was impressed with that attitude.

On the other hand, I heard nationally successful writers discuss only the need, or not, for an agent, and the circuitous twists on the road to success. No references to gifts or reverence for their talents. The contrast with Anita's attitude was stark. There was something a bit smug about them, something of the "nyah, nyah, I made it and you didn't" from a few of them. Presenters who give their spiel with a "Gol, how can you be so stupid as to not know this" tone were more than a little abrasive.

This whole idea of writing for a particular niche audience is new to me. When I was in college, one of my writing teachers said, "If what you write is good enough, your work will find an audience." Consequently, I had no answer for an editor I interviewed with several years ago who asked me who my audience was. I didn't understand the question. I write for people who read LDS fiction, particularly adults. In fact, a male friend of mine who has read my contemporary fiction particularly enjoyed it because it wasn't like most of the books out there that are loosely referred to as "women's fiction." I hate that designation. Men who read what women read are more likely to understand the women around them.

That same editor asked me why I write, and my answer – "I can't NOT write" – apparently wasn't good enough. My books were rejected by his company. But I have never stopped thinking about the question because some day I hope to come up with a satisfactory answer. I write because, like Anita Stansfield, I have a gift and not to use it would be a sin, regardless of market trends. I write because I have a story to share with my LDS people. I write because I can't edit what I say once I've said it. (That's why I can write brilliant dialog.) I write because I love the language. I write because it's thrilling to make both sides of my brain work together.

And so I go back to my own basic motivation: When LDS lives and marriages are falling apart all around us in an environment where values are slowly corroding, why are we writing about vampires and the housewife from Orem who's secretly a CIA agent and saves the world while still getting her visiting teaching done? I'm just sayin'.

Ultimately, the irony of art is that it IS only a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sky, but the story that takes place there tells vitals truths about life, exposes significant insights, and gives readers Aha! moments they might not get anywhere else. Artists create an artificial place populated with artificial people in order to reveal truth to real people in the real world. I love irony. That's good enough for me.

By the way, after reading the first five pages of my manuscript and and discussing it with me for ten minutes, the editor at Covenant asked me to submit the entire manuscript. That made up for everything else about the conference that didn't sit well with me. But now I'm chewing my fingernails for the next few weeks until I find out what the verdict is going to be. I hope they agree with me that this is a book whose time has come.

Another Oldie But Goodie (from 1996)

2010-04-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Tee Shirt Philosophy

It's amazing how our instant society can boil everything down to a few words or phrases easily proclaimed on our tee shirts. Attitudes – good, bad, indifferent – as expressed on shirts, can save a lot of conversation time when you meet new people. No one will misunderstand your self concept if you're wearing one that says 'All I ask is that you treat me no differently than you would the Queen,' OR 'There's nothing wrong with me that a little ice cream won't fix,' OR 'Plays well with others.' It would certainly make you stop and think if someone strolled toward you with a shirt reading 'The road to enlightenment is long and difficult… bring snacks and a magazine.'

You can immediately warn people of your life status by wearing such shirt inscriptions as 'I can handle any crisis – I have children,' OR 'I'm not having hot flashes, I'm having power surges,' OR 'First National Bank of Dad (sorry, closed).'

Middle aged or retired people, whose status may be changing, can come to terms with it by wearing the declaration 'If things get better with age, I'm approaching magnificent,' OR 'Looks too young to be retired.' Others might get right to the point with the hapless 'Over the hill? What Hill? Where? I didn't see any hill,' OR the defiant 'I'm not over the hill – I'm older than the dirt.'

Explanations about interests become immediately clear if a shirt says 'Built for comfort not for speed,' OR 'Can be bribed with cookies', OR 'So much chocolate, so little time.' You could never be confused about a person whose shirt says 'Beer is the reason I get up every afternoon.'

Even your marital status can be evident if your shirt says 'One good turn gets most of the blanket,' OR 'My wife says I never listen to her – at least that's what I think she said.'

Cat lovers can proudly declare 'You're nobody till you've been ignored by a cat,' OR in a more whimsical vein, sport a tee shirt with a cat dressed as Santa that says 'Buster patiently listened to what the mice wanted for Christmas and then he ate them.'

Sports fan(atic)s can make their propensities known with 'Sweat is nature's way of showing you that your muscles are crying,' OR 'Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, I gotta golf.' If they're completely honest, they might go for 'I fish, therefore I lie,' OR 'Hunters will do anything for a buck,' or my personal favorite, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you get rid of him for the weekend.'

Personality shirts might help you know who to avoid, or who to make friends with. You'd think twice about the person wearing a shirt that says, 'If all the world's a stage I want better lighting.' When his shirt says 'A legend in my own mind,' it doesn't leave you with any questions about his ego. 'I get plenty of exercise jumping to conclusions, pushing my luck and dodging deadlines,' OR 'I have not yet begun to procrastinate' say more about a person than a resume' ever could.

In my housewifely role, I am amused by these slogans: 'If the world were fair, VCRs would program themselves, chocolate wouldn't be fattening, and men would have babies'; and 'Does vacuuming count as aerobic exercise?' I can also relate to 'I am woman, I am invincible, I am tired.' When I try to balance my checkbook or plan a budget, I sometimes think, 'Please Lord, let me prove to you that winning the lottery won't $poil me,' OR 'Money isn't everything – usually it isn't even enough,' OR 'When all else fails, manipulate the data.'

Life is easy when lived by a tee shirt philosophy – no responsibilities, no consequences, and none of the dimensions that make life and people interesting. Fortunately, a tee shirt is a cartoon, not a portrait, and that gives us permission not to take them too seriously.

Reflections

2010-04-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

We visited Richfield recently for a day, the place where we lived for 33 years, and went to church with old friends. It was wonderful to renew acquaintances and to reflect on new friends who appreciate us for who we are. That reflection broadened and I thought about other things I love about my life.

• Being with extended family more often and being able to entertain them – It's so much fun to plan and give a dinner party! These are wonderful people we haven't been able to see very often in the last 33 years, and it's great to have them in our home.
• Having a pedicure - Since it's so hard to coordinate my bifocals with the bending of knees and the placement of a nail clipper, I'm grateful for people willing to clip my toenails. Of course, I love the leg massage that goes along with it.
• 12 other people in my family - That number will probably be growing, now that Jordan and Heather have decided to adopt, and I'm thrilled at the prospect of having a new baby to love.
• Getting into the creative zone - There's nothing to compare with the moment a new idea dawns. A thought attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson: "I hate to write, but I love to have written." I've found a marvelous critique group here who have helped me make real progress on writing projects.
• Living in Provo - I love our sweet new manageable home and especially love having people visit. We are in a quiet neighborhood ten minutes from everything and I look forward to being able to get out and walk as the weather improves. We've been to art shows, plays and concerts since we moved here, and movies. It's nice to be able to go out in public and not be shouted at by students who recognize us. At last we are anonymous.
• Flowers in the house - Since we've been here, and for a little while before we left Richfield, we started buying flowers more often, and it adds a dimension of civilization that I hadn't fully appreciated before. Something about having a bouquet of flowers on the table inspires me to keep the clutter cleared away.
• My wonderful husband - He took such good care of me last year when I was recovering from knee surgeries, and he's still in the habit. It's great to have the companionship, the stimulating conversations, the hearty laughs together. And the love.
• Feeling valued by people I respect.
• Seeing Mt. Timpanogos out the kitchen window every day.
• Hearing the train whistle in the distance.
• As spring emerges, discovering what's planted in the yard - Today some brave little daffodils along the back fence tried to hold their heads up as spring snow fell. Globe willows are greening up all over. And my spring allergies have arrived.
• Serendipity – discovering "omelette night" at the hospital cafeteria. We had a "girls night out" Tuesday and enjoyed the company as much as the food.
• Decorating our new home and exploring new styles, creating the comfort we want to live in.
• Tackling new projects and having time enough for everything.
• The prospect of filling our guest room with family and friends this summer – bring 'em on!
• The stimulation of reading and writing, the fun of sharing my experiences and talents with others.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it comes from a grateful heart, and it's a good place to begin. What do you love about your life?

Spring Fervor

2010-03-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

Spring begins at sea level and moves upward about eleven miles a day, according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon. It is a transition time when the natural life cycle begins again, when I watch a bee exploring the throat of a daffodil and catch my breath in astonishment at how and why this happens, and who makes it happen. Spring brings a sense of freedom, a feeling of newness, an urge to be creative.

One morning in the spring I was sixteen years old, I sat in my room watching the mild sweet Oregon rain fall on the riot of irises outside my window, explored the Roget’s Thesaurus my parents had given me for my birthday that winter, and decided that I would be a writer. That decision has spared me from the ordinary and made the unconventional common.

My odyssey began in high school. Theater has been in my blood since the spring of my senior year when I auditioned for a part in The Diary of Anne Frank. Although I didn’t get the part, I was assigned to the costume crew, which took me backstage where, for the first time, I inhaled the instantly addictive and nearly palpable scent of creative energy, and I knew this had to be a part of my life.

As a college student, my best learning moments, some even life changing, came when I was involved in plays. I’ll never forget the only applause I ever received as an actress – in my acting class, playing Amanda in a scene from The Glass Menagerie. My interests remained back stage, however, as part of the decision-making that went into the preparation, and I left the acting to people who could memorize lines and control their stage fright.

In the spring of 1967 another rich memory was born. I was the assistant to the faculty member directing a premiere production of a play written by the campus poet in resident, my creative writing teacher from the English department. The author would come to rehearsals to watch the progress of his “offspring,” and consult with the director on production details. It was instructional to listen to these two intensely creative men. I became a sponge. Sometimes when they disagreed about some detail they would turn to me and say, “What do you think?” At first it seemed ludicrous that my opinion should count for anything; I was just happy to be there, absorbing the creative energy and facilitating the activities of all those other creative people involved in the production. Sometimes I had an opinion, and I was grateful for the chance to offer it. Ultimately the collaboration was thrilling.

This spring I’m reminded of fourteen years ago when one of my creations, a play, was brought to life on stage by a group of talented people who gave me the priceless gift of their time to do for me what I couldn’t do for myself. A poet once described birth as “Trailing clouds of glory do we come, from God who is our home.” But as I watched and participated in the development of talent by gifted people around me, I concluded that the clouds of glory we trail after us must be the talents we bring, probably a spiritual inheritance from Heavenly Parents. Somehow when talents are used and shared respectfully, with deference to the Giver of the Gift, there’s inevitably a feeling of renewed life, the return of spring.

Can We Wish It Here Faster?

2010-03-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

It's still a few days away officially, but here are some haiku poems...

MOODS OF SPRING

I tripped and fell in
the pond last night because the
stars were beguiling.

Shall I wrap this warm
breeze, or would you prefer to
wear it home in style?

Shadows float as trees
yawn and nod with the wind. It’s
tired out tonight.

The sad newness of
spring brings wistful smiles of hope,
the soul’s camouflage.

This warm night and that
full moon remind me that spring
is for stargazing.

The Dog Ate My Homework - Really

2010-03-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

One of my most anticipated advantages of living in Utah Valley was being able to get my stories out there, and since I write about being LDS, I was most looking forward to participating in the LDStorymakers conference which is being held in Provo in April. It's a two-day conference at the Marriott where successful LDS writers will share their experience. The prospect of going to this conference added to the "died and gone to heaven" feeling I've had since we moved here.

Since there is a contest associated with the Storymakers conference, I decided to go for it and enter my trilogy in the "first chapter" contest. Almost giddy, I registered for the conference and sent the entries electronically, following the rules as I remembered them. Alas. I was wrong. When the contest chair got around to distributing the entries to her judges, she emailed me with the startling information that I had A) left my name on the entries, and B) the entries were too long, over the limit of ten pages.

Yikes, says I.

I will insert here a little backstory. On the last Tuesday of February, Roger and I were asked to speak in church that Sunday. It was short notice, but we are new in the ward and expected the invitation would be coming, since others new in the ward have been speaking recently. I wrote my talk on Wednesday, and then while Roger was gone Thursday night to do his tutoring, I sat down to check email before tackling a rewrite of the talk. Imagine my heart-stopping horror when suddenly the computer screen went black. I could still hear audio, and see a shadow, but it was too dark to see the cursor. Friday morning we went out and bought a new computer (part of a planned future purchase now accelerated by desperation), asking if they could please print out my talk, which they did, and have the data transferred from the old computer to the new one before Sunday, which they also did.

In the meantime, I had revised my talk and was ready to revise and print Saturday when I discovered the printer wasn't hearing what the computer was telling it to do. A sweet kind man from our ward came over and did his best, but after an hour we decided I could email the document to him and he'd print it out and bring it to me. Which he did. At 10:30. On Saturday night. I have always depended on the kindness of computer geeks, and I always will, but this fellow didn't have Mac experience and apologized all over the place for it. (On Monday I talked to a Mac techie half an hour on the phone and got nowhere, so I went online to the HP website, downloaded some new drivers, and voila - printed material. Happy ending there.)

Back to the contest entries. Maybe since I was new to the contest, the chairman allowed me to A) take my name off the entries, and B) shorten them before re-submitting. So I did. Four times. She kept emailing me back as if I were deliberately causing her great grief and frustration by ignoring her instructions. Which I wasn't. It was that darned new word processing program that I didn't know how to use, which came with the hard drive on the new computer. It repeatedly DID NOT save the changes I made, and the unchanged document was transmitted four times.

Add now the complication that Elin and Randy came to look for a house. They are moving from Illinois back to Utah this summer and stayed here while they conducted their search for a few days. I thought the contest entry problem was solved, but on Tuesday, I kept sending as requested the documents without my name on them. That evening about 9, after I got back to the computer, there was a stern email from the contest chair that said the entries still had my name on them, and if we didn't solve this problem by 6 p.m. my entries would be disqualified. I emailed them once more without my name on them, explaining that I hadn't been at my computer all day to get her deadline, and that I had really been sending them as she requested but my new program was apparently sabotaging me.

That was the last time I heard from the contest chair. I hope she finally found some white-out, or a marker with which to blot out my name. Maybe not. I'm probably disqualified. She warned me. If I'm going to get my trilogy published, it won't be because the first chapters made a big splash in the LDStorymakers contest as I had hoped and dreamed.

I bought a Microsoft Office program the next day and now everything is just fine fine fine with my word processing capability. Changes stay changed. I will now sign up for the three lessons I'm entitled to as a new iMac owner and learn how to use the other features built into this new contraption.

My one consolation about the contest is that I have paid for a consultation with the acquisitions editor at an LDS publishing company who will be at the conference in April. I have pitched books to editors before, and perhaps I can present myself and my work in our best light without having to plead for mercy because the dog ate my homework.

Coming and Going

2010-03-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

At the funeral for Roger's Uncle Ross a few weeks ago someone sang the old funeral favorite "Goin' Home," and did a fine job of it, but it made be think about the difference between going home and coming home. It depends on the point of view I suppose. Going is a journey, but coming is the arrival.

When we started looking for a home in Utah Valley, our realtor said, "I'll show you the houses and the Lord will put you where he wants you to be." In that sense, we have just come home. Our new house and the neighborhood in Provo is a little ordinary in terms of similar dwellings and yards, but a lot extraordinary in terms of people. These are deep-down decent people with generous hearts who strive to do good and be good. That's what I want to be when I grow up, so I like being a part of them.

But we like our ordinary house, and lack of stairs is just one of its compelling attractions. It's small enough for two people to take care of, and big enough to accommodate visitors. It was practically the definition of "move-in ready." We had to buy furniture to replace the old stuff that had outlived its usefulness, and we had to replace some 12-year-old carpet and a toilet. We will also replace one window treatment. But we didn't have to paint one wall. We didn't have to buy new drapes. We won't have to landscape anything. All the tchotchkes fit, and I've even found some new ones to keep the old ones company. My tiny art collection is on the walls, like old friends bringing happy memories. One of our Richfield friends said, when she visited us in Provo, "This is YOUR house. This is where you belong."

With not a little guilt, I admit that I already love this house more than I loved the house where I lived for 33 years in Richfield, where I raised my children and wrote my plays and books and got my first gray hair, where I celebrate anniversaries with my husband and greeted a new century. I loved all the shade trees around it, but not the stairs inside it. The house hasn't sold yet, but it will, to some energetic family whose children will add life to the neighborhood, and I won't feel sad. Moving on is what life is all about because there is only one place where we should feel truly at home, and that is with our heavenly parents.

Going and coming are always accompanied with a sigh. Whether we're leaving one place to journey to another, or arriving at a long-anticipated destination, there are tender mercies from above that we must acknowledge, as if we've just been given a little gift of approval, like a pat on the shoulder or a wink or a smile, to let us know we're in the right place at the right time ready for another task that will help us grow and stretch to become what we were meant to be. Going and coming make life rich and teach us to depart from and arrive at the temporary destinations on this serendipitous journey.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

2010-02-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

We are having fun discovering restaurants in Provo, and so far we have been to more Italian places than any other kind. We are too late for Ottavio's. I read the reviews about how good they were – even included it, though not by name, in one of my novels – but before we got here they closed to focus on catering, so maybe some time we'll still get to sample their food. Gloria's Little Italy was our kind of place - cloth napkins and music on the PA system that we recognized, not to mention the marvelous food. It's right on the corner of Center and University in downtown Provo, and there are three or four other Italian restaurants on the same block.

Last week we went to Carrabba's and were totally charmed. This is a rung above the Olive Garden experience. They start with a little dish of herbs the waiter sprinkles some olive oil on, and then you dip bread in the mixture. The bread was crusty and dense and wonderful with the herbs. At Tuscany, the fabulous Italian restaurant we like so much in Decatur, they combine parmesan cheese with oil for dipping breadsticks. When I told the waiter that, he said next time we should request the cheese. Anyway our waiter was delightful, especially when we told him this was our first trip to Carrabba's. He was very knowledgeable about the menu. I asked him what herbs were in the mix and he could list them all. I commented that although there were red pepper flakes in it, it wasn't overly hot. He said he liked that, too – "I'm a sad excuse for an Indian," he said. "I don't like hot food and I'm not in medical school." Later someone else came by and talked to us, who we assumed was probably the manager. Nice touch.

Today for lunch we went to the Pizza Pie Cafe, an Italian buffet. For a very reasonable price we had a salad bar, variety of pizza, pasta, and sweet pizza desserts. A good subtitle for this place would be Carb City. It was quite tasty, although the music was too loud and not to our liking. They had at least ten kinds of pizza, including cheese sticks to have with your pasta, and eight kinds of pasta, although whole wheat pasta wasn't included, and six kinds of sauces. I had spinach fettuccine with a very delicious carbonara sauce. Their dessert pizza flavors were raspberry, apple and peach cobbler, oreo crunch, cookie dough, and cinnamon strips. The crust was chewy and substantial, although some of the toppings were skimpy, i.e. one piece of chicken on a whole slice of pizza. All in all, kids would really like this place.

Our fall-back option is often plain old ordinary IHOP. I love their design-your-own omelet, which for me is usually bacon, fresh spinach and fresh tomatoes, and which is great any time of day. My guilty pleasure on the menu is chocolate chip pancakes. I often order them with a meal and then take them home for breakfast the next day. Their whole grain pancakes are also great. Instead of using syrup, I get the waiter to put a spoonful of strawberry topping on the pancakes instead. When I'm in a hot chocolate mood, I like IHOP.

Our exploration of local restaurants meanders on. There are a couple more Italian places to discover, and we haven't started in on the Mexican or Chinese food places yet, so we will continue to enjoy the serendipity.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2010-01-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg decided recently in a conversation on national television that it's been a traumatic year for white people in America because they haven't got used to the idea of having a black president.

Talk about a credibility gap. Having these two beans-for-brains women give political commentary is like having Betty Crocker and the Pillsbury Dough Boy analyze a Shakespeare play. You have to be as dumb as a box of rocks either to believe them or to listen to them in the first place. To chalk up the “trauma” to racism or skin color is worse than shallow; it’s political attention deficit disorder. “Deep thoughts” from Joy and Whoopi are about like “Deep Thoughts” on Saturday Night Live.

If you want to talk about trauma in America in the past year, acknowledge that during this period of time there has been a concerted effort by this administration to dismantle the Constitution and fundamentally transform the country; it’s only coincidental that the ideologue behind it is black. He told us that’s what he wanted to do; and now people are shocked that he's doing it. And he lies. That tends to destroy trust, too. Furthermore, he doesn’t believe militant Islamic terrorists hate us enough to want to kill us. You can’t solve that problem with the kind of head-in-the-sand denial of reality that our foreign policy has become in the hands of this administration. Charm and charisma don't constitute dynamic leadership. We are in trouble. We need informed vigilance in the population and in elected officials. And we need to pray for our country daily.

Coming Soon: Dancing in the Aisles

2010-01-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an anniversary of sorts. It's been one year since an orthopedic surgeon opened my left leg, removed the arthritis-damaged knee joint and put in a prosthetic. Now I can get around pretty well on my own, having advanced from walker to cane to independence. Walking is easier than standing, but Sunday I stood for half an hour to give a lesson. Shopping isn't that bad, and neither is walking through parking lots or the halls at church. On February 17 it's the first anniversary of the right knee, which turned out to be the more difficult of the two surgeries. I still haven't gotten used to being aware of the prosthetics. They are heavier than the bones they replaced, and I can still feel them. I still walk "older" than I am, but I'm so much better than I was a year ago. Continued exercise (all rehab all the time) will change that over time. I found out about a therapy pool near the hospital that's available to us for a slight membership fee, so we're going to check that out.

Oldie but Goodie #6 (holiday edition)

2009-12-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

This essay from December 95 was years in the brewing. As a cautionary observation, it covers all holidays for which gifts are appropriate.

On Giving Gifts

Our discussion today, class, centers on the theory and practice of gift giving.

First, it’s important to recognize why you are giving a gift. Some gifts are given because the giver knows the recipient will allow the giver to use it - sweater, XBox, motorcycle. It’s multi-purpose, and therefore a great bargain. Giving something because you want your recipient to be delightfully surprised is another theory, but sometimes that can backfire on you, as was the case when my friend’s husband bought her a new house she neither needed nor wanted.

Yet another possible reason for gift giving is merely so the giver does not arrive empty-handed. That seems a harsh assessment perhaps, but I speak as a person who once received for my birthday, from a husband who shall remain nameless, two nail clippers, one for fingers, one for toes. It took my breath away. For some reason, Robert Burns’ observation from his poem To A Louse crossed my mind:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us…

Later I marveled that it must have taken seconds of careful deliberation to make this decision, considering that one finds nail clippers displayed next to the checkout stand, along with flashlight batteries, tire gauges, breath mints, and Super Glue. With that in mind, I counted myself blessed, but you’ll understand why eight months later he received from me for his birthday a padded toilet seat – symbolic as well as useful. I also began to understand why the first Christmas gift he ever gave me was an apron. It was terry cloth, and domestic, which I was not, at the time, perceived as being. A new theory now emerges: gifts are sometimes hints, however broad or subtle the giver may want to be. It should be noted here, in the name of historical accuracy, that we were married a year later, five days after Christmas. Though I am now quite domestic, I still have the apron, but it’s rarely used.

Still another theory of gift giving, one I tend to embrace in most situations, is that the perfect gift is something the person needs and can or will use, but something they wouldn’t necessarily buy for themselves for whatever rational or irrational reason. I remember going Christmas shopping as a little girl with my grandmother, a skilled homemaker, to find something just right for my mother, a woman who didn’t have expensive possessions but appreciated beautiful things. With my limited spending potential, I looked for something pretty as well as useful. I found a miniature ceramic vase with purple pansies painted on the side. It cost 50 cents, right in my price range. Mother loved it for all the reasons I knew she would, and it fit nicely on the knickknack shelf in the kitchen where I often dusted it. It broke eventually, and we were both sad.

Years later, remembering that little purple pansy vase, I bought another vase for my mother, this time without pansies, but purple, and very tall, which I thought would be perfect for displaying a sample of the irises she grew in her yard. More years later, as she was cleaning the house in some hopeless attempt to sift out her packrat excess, she found the purple vase in the back of a cupboard, and since she hadn’t used it for a while, she gave it back to me. A big purple vase in my bland beige family room was hard to explain, but I didn’t really try. It was just there, and it made me smile. Corollary One of this theory now emerges: What goes around comes around, but the value increases with the miles and the years.

We’ve never had extravagant Christmases, either as children or in our marriage. In my husband’s family disappointment became an issue because expectations were too high, resulting in a knee-jerk bah-humbug attitude when the children became adults, at least the one I married. Maybe that’s because they always gave their gifts in the shopping bag in which they had carried them home from the store, perhaps the easier to return them should the need arise. This super-practical Scandanavian thrift, modest though it is intended to be, can admittedly take the starch out of special occasions.

In my family, Christmas was for surprises, thrills and heart-fluttering delights. Deep down I knew the chances were slim that I’d get anything from the list I made after hours spent poring over the Montgomery Ward Wishbook that arrived in October, full of tantalizing possibilities. I desperately wanted that bride doll, but other traditions usually took precedence, and my attention was diverted. Mother was busy making pfeffernusse and Mexican Orange Candy, and meticulously planning the Christmas dinner menu to include something we would all love, like raspberry punch. For our part, my sister and I usually made and decorated dozens of sugar cookies in endlessly dazzling ways. Our four younger brothers would hang around the kitchen door, saying they wanted to help, but we knew they really just wanted to snitch a cookie when we weren’t looking. We also tried to wrap gifts creatively and attractively, even the candy bars we put in our brothers’ stockings.

Dad would take us out to choose the Christmas tree on the afternoon of the 23rd or 24th, and Mother would decorate it after all the children went to bed so the first time we saw it was on Christmas morning. It was the kind of thrill so many of today’s jaded children have never known.

All that was in stark contrast to what many other families did. I’ll never forget, as a teen in the 1950’s, the day my mother came home from church shaking her head in disbelief at one of her friends bemoaning the fact that her husband’s business hadn’t done very well that year, and he was only giving her $5,000 to spend for Christmas on their four children. We rolled our eyes and wondered if we should notify the Salvation Army of this needy family.

Speaking as a person who does most gift shopping online from catalogs, or with gift cards, I sometimes think those wise men weren’t very wise to bring such expensive gifts; but on the other hand, we aren’t very smart when we don’t recognize the tradition as a symbolic gesture with deeper meaning. Too often we choose instead to race in a panic through a mall and land on whatever can be packaged suitably and will qualify as a gift – something, anything, even toenail clippers.

Happy gift giving this year. Keep it in perspective. Remember the padded toilet seat.

A Hearty Laugh

2009-12-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

This morning I went for an EKG to see if the heart murmur my doctor heard is indicative of anything more serious. Roger did some errands, and when he picked me up, the conversation went like this:

ME: Well, the technician says I have the heart of an 18-year-old.

ROGER: Is that good or bad?

ME: I think it's good.

Roger: As long as it doesn't mean you're fickle...

My Two Favorite New Recipes

2009-12-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the holidays. Both are great with turkey.

CRANBERRY CHUTNEY makes 3 C
In lge kettle bring to boil stirring constantly 16 oz. cranberries, 3/4 C packed bn sugar, 3/4 C raisins, 1/2 C chopped celery, 1 C chopped apple, 3/4 C water or OJ, 1/4 C coarse-chop walnuts, 2 T lemon juice, 1 T grated orange peel, 1/4 t cloves, 1/4 t cinnamon, 1/4 t allspice, 1/4 t ginger. Simmer uncovered 15 min, stirring occasionally. Store in fridge. Keeps several weeks.

CRANBERRY MUSTARD
Combine 12-oz pkg cranberries, 1-1/3 C sugar in saucepan, stir over med heat till sugar dissolves. Cook, stir till cranberries pop, about 5 min. Cool completely. Stir in 4-1/2 T Dijon mustard, 2-1/2 T whole-grain Dijon mustard, pinch of salt. Can make up to a week ahead. Cover and chill.

And now for a long winter's nap...

2009-12-18T14:37:00.000-08:00

(Dec. 8) We are finished trippin'! It was fun while it lasted, but we're home and burrowed in while the snow piles up in the yard. It was so nice to get home in one hour instead of the usual three it takes to drive to Richfield. All the boxes were waiting for us, as promised, so we have tackled a few today. New furniture comes Thursday and Friday.

Our luggage got through seven trips to six airports in a month, but didn't get off the plane with us in Salt Lake. We reported it
missing and they tracked it down in Portland. I guess it just got used to going there. But Southwest rerouted it and delivered it
this afternoon. Oh, great. Now I've got something else to unpack. Actually, I might just toss it out. It's fairly traveled this year
and might like to be released with a vote of thanks.

It was a month full of activity. We saw hilly Morgantown, West Virginia (six miles from the Pennsylvania border - Roger's
brother lives there; there's one mile of road that's straight)... ate lunch at an Amish restaurant in Maryland near a stone bridge
built in the 1700's as part of the first national highway (discovered in the restaurant gift shop an Amish romance novel and
couldn't resist buying one)… flew out of Pittsburgh on a commuter plane, climbing up five steps from the tarmac to get in,
sitting on row seven of nine rows… interesting (bumpy) experience… waited in Cleveland longer than we were in the air both
legs of the trip, took another plane (a little larger) to Rochester, where Jen met us… went to the Sacred Grove, the Smith
family home, saw the Palmyra Temple, drove to the (almost) top of the Hill Cumorah, had lunch at a local restaurant next to
the Erie Canal, and then visited the EB Grandin building in Palmyra – completely fascinating…in Jen's ward, introduced
ourselves for the first time as being from Provo – it's beginning to sink in… went to the George Eastman house to see a display
of gingerbread creations… fabulous place… went to Wegman's, a huge grocery store where the deli has about 100 kinds of
cheeses… saw Lake Ontario, Seneca Lake, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home in Seneca Falls where the women's movement
began (Bedford Falls, the town in "It's a Wonderful Life," is said to be patterned after Seneca Falls – totally charming)…went to the Whitmer farm in Fayette...shopped at an Amish store, ate dinner at an Amish restaurant… fed ducks on the Erie Canal and found a pizza joint loaded with local color and great food… drove to Buffalo in torrential rain… sat in the airport an extra 45 minutes due to the computer glitch in Salt Lake that messed up the whole flight schedule across the country… met Randy and Elin in the Chicago airport; they went to school board meetings while we drove their car back to Decatur, stopping along the way to meet Roger's brother Loren and his wife for lunch… did what I have not done since 1961 - got up for early morning Seminary; I drove Kayla there and waited for her, then took her to school while Roger got Courtney up and out the door for the school bus… I drove to Bloomington to pick up Randy and Elin at the train, which was an hour late because it hit some debris on the tracks and couldn't go fast… got a perm… helped Elin get ready for Thanksgiving… Jen and Kevin and kids arrived Wednesday… Jen and Elin went to O'Hare to pick up Jordan and Heather on Thursday while the rest of us (well, some) fixed dinner… had a fabulous meal… laughed ourselves silly… the kids all got along well… had "Christmas" on Saturday, which means listening to Christmas music while decorating the house, then eating Danish rice pudding and opening the resulting pudding prizes… Jen and Kevin left Sunday morning… wandered through furniture stores in a little Amish town about 40 miles from Decatur, marveling at the craftsmanship, bought some pumpkin bars and cheese at a local bakery and cheese shop, found the sequel to the Amish romance novel, went to the Amish bulk foods store where Elin gets so many of our unusual Christmas presents – ever had peach flavor Danish Dessert, or apricot or blackberry Jello?…got up early to go with Elin to take Jordan and Heather back to Chicago, dropping them off at the el station in the heart of the South Side, a pretty scary place, but they were together, and it was daylight, and it was quicker than fighting traffic to drive all the way to O'Hare on the north side… bought a new coat… attended the Millikin College Christmas Vespers on Sunday night… got out of Midway Airport ahead of the blizzard, but got into some serious weather at the Denver stopover… de-iced, got to Salt Lake an hour late, got the shuttle and were delivered on our doorstep (covered with 5 or 6 inches of snow) at 9 too keyed up to sleep.

We didn't get to do everything we wanted to do – Jen planned to take us to Niagara Falls but the kids were sick so we changed
the itinerary – but now we have an agenda for our next visit. I love upstate New York so I expect to be going back a lot. Jen is
in the Palmyra Stake and lives 40 minutes from the Cumorah Pageant locale. We want to go back in good weather, but we
would also like to do a fall color tour in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. Falling Water, the famous home designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright, is in the Pennsylvania hills a couple of hours from Morgantown. It was Monday when we visited, and the
place is closed on Mondays. Next time for sure.

Christmas Lights Extraordinaire

2009-12-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

Only in Utah Valley... A house on a street near us had a row of blue lights around the eaves, and in the window... wait for it... a white block letter Y. Don't know if these people are in our ward, but they are not ashamed of partisanship. Hey, they could leave them up all year.

Oldie but Goodie #5 (holiday edition)

2009-12-14T21:24:00.001-08:00

We have moved into music heaven. Not only do we have a huge ward choir, but the stake also has a spectacular choir, as evidenced by the marvelous Christmas fireside last night which featured stellar performances and excellent selections. It renewed my faith. In fact, I was needed in the choir in our Richfield ward, but here I may be substandard. I'm a wobbly, insecure alto at best, with a vibrato that grows wider every day. We went to choir practice Sunday and the performance is next Sunday, with a practice/social event (i.e. breakfast) Saturday morning. If I stand next to somebody good, I can manage, but I'm still not sure about standing there with so many who are really good at it. I feel like a fraud. Roger, of course, is a marvelous singer and will enjoy making his considerable contributions. I'm thrilled about that.

In the spirit of Christmas music commentary, here is a rerun of my slightly revised essay from last year which contains large quantities of exaggeration and irony, and which goes down easier if taken with a grain of salt:

CHRISTMAS MUSIC: THE HEAVEN AND HELL OF IT

My husband and I were on a phone call recently that required us to wait on hold for about half of the total one-hour time it took to complete the transaction. While we were on hold, we were subjected to the torturous sounds of New Age ‘music,’ put there by some well-meaning person convinced we needed to be entertained while we were waiting. Running barefoot on broken glass would have been infinitely more satisfying. I am convinced that New Age ‘music’ diminishing brain cells and breaks down resistance to truth, logic and common sense, leaving people believing that evil is good and good is evil. It dissolves any conscience a person may have hitherto possessed. Suddenly everything is hunky-dory for these people and they think all the problems of the world will go away if we all just sit around listening to and grooving on this foulest form of air pollution. New Age ‘music’ is the sorry consequence of bra burning, free love, and Woodstock.

That’s one way of saying I’m picky about music, especially now that it's Christmas time and there's more questionable music in the air. My eclectic musical tastes were formed in a radio-oriented home where we listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturday mornings, and ended the day with both the steel guitars, sweet harmonies and ukuleles on Hawaii Calls, and the authentic Western sounds of Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch. It was pure and never Osmondized.

Because music has such power, my deeply personal celebration of Christmas very often centers on great music inspired from a heavenly source, and its effect on me is profound. Most especially, probably because I pay close attention to the precise meanings of words, my soul yearns to hear or sing appropriate lyrics from significant texts, paired with satisfying and spiritually rewarding melodies expressing the deepest meaning of Christmas. Let me worship through reverent music in the most sublime, eloquent way, as the Savior of the world deserves. My heart is touched by so many inspired works – Handel’s Messiah, O Come O Come Emmanuel, O Holy Night, Lo How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming, Mary Did You Know, O Come All Ye Faithful, Angels We Have Heard on High, Once in Royal David’s City, much authentic folk music and many heartfelt spirituals.

However, there is some Christmas music so patently offensive that I want to wipe out all memories of ever having heard or sung it. I want to slink, Grinch-like, into all the music stores, radio stations, private collections and sheet music publishers and obliterate some sounds I hear over public address systems in stores during the holidays. You don’t have a choice when you hear this drivel in a shopping mall. They mean well, but it doesn’t entertain. It inspires my inner Scrooge, making me want to buy less so I can leave the premises as quickly as possible and try once again to obliterate from my memory Elvis Presley's version of White Christmas. That’s how I first heard the number one selection on my Top Twenty List of Christmas Songs I Never Want To Hear Again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the complete and generous list of losers with the heartfelt scorn and derision each so richly deserves:

20. It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas – …to which I want to respond, “Well, duh! What was your first clue – sundown on Halloween?” It sounds like the guy who says during a heat wave, “Hot enough for ya?” This is something clueless Goofy would have said to patient Mickey, who is far more tolerant of stupid remarks than I.

19. (tie) Winter Wonderland/Marshmallow World – Ain’t no time nowhere winter is a wonderland for me; I cannot celebrate the charm I do not find. Winter is a slip-on-the-ice, sprain-your-ankle, freeze-your-tushie-off, endlessly boring season broken only by the sweetness of celebrating a sacred holiday. Don’t let’s confuse the two.

18. I’ll be Home for Christmas – Total schmaltz when you first hear it, mind-numbingly dull after that. So you’re not going to be there except in your dreams – boohoo. Get over it. I spent a lot of unconventional Christmases out of the country and I've found my own way past the sentimentality.

17. Let it Snow – This is nothing but a seductive (you’ll excuse the expression) invitation to use bad weather as an excuse for someone to stay over at his sweetie’s house, a one-of-a-kind gift that can only be given once. It's deceptively cute, but if you listen to the lyrics, it makes no sense.

16. Have A Holly Jolly Christmas – Actually, this sounds like the worst kind of Christmas to have, completely unrelated to the real meaning of the holiday. This song hits another set of cliches the others have missed.

15. Jingle Bell Rock – Social events at holiday time are nice, but this lyric is unencumbered by logic or a description of an appropriate observance of a sacred day, and it's musically boring.

14. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – See #15 and #16.

13. Frosty the Snowman – Christmas is not mentioned in this ludicrous winter legend and after you’ve heard it once, subsequent hearings are migraine-inducing torture.

12. The Christmas Song (you know… chestnuts roasting… yada, yada, yada) – Nothing is more offensive than clichés, and this one is loaded with them. In fact, Santa has loaded his sleigh with toys and goodies. Isn’t that what’s wrong with Christmas in the first place? We don’t need more things.

11. White Christmas – Another string of clichés. What’s the big deal about snow? What about Christmas in Australia that takes place in the summer? Huh? Did you ever think of that?

10. Silver Bells – Not much wrong with this one if you like a boring melody and totally mindless lyrics. Can you say platitude?

9. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Really? You love spending too much money, eating too much rich food, going to parties you don’t want to go to with people you don’t really like? What’s wonderful about that?

8. Twelve Days of Christmas – Repetition is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Again, we’re stuck on using things to express love, a pitiful substitute for the genuine article.

7. Deck the Halls – Nonsense lyrics are Exhibit A in the case against this song. I don’t drink, but I should think that drunk would be the best way to find meaning in it. Far more appealing, rewarding and cogent was the Mad Magazine version of this I read in my youth, which began, “Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla Wash and Kalamazoo…”

6. (all songs referring to reindeer with or without red noses) – completely idiotic, without redeeming value or even a modicum of charm. Lord of the Flies teaches kids to play nice together, too.

5. (all songs referring to Santa Claus) – He sees you when you’re sleeping? Really? He knows when you’re awake? Really? Isn’t that what God does, and didn’t He do it first? How can kids NOT get confused!

4. Jingle Bells – Here’s another mediocre winter tale with no connection to the holiday. Translation: people with the IQ of pinecones ride around in the snow apparently unwilling to take refuge from the weather and protect themselves against frostbite.

3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Nobody even knows what figgy pudding is anyway, and simply repeating the sentiment ad infinitum doesn’t make it more intelligible.

2. Feliz Navidad – If a guy sang this to me, I’d poison his eggnog. I do not want this derivative, dreary rubbish stuck in my head for the month of December.

1. Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time – No, we’re not. We’re paralyzed by the tedium of this inferior music and pointless lyric written by Paul McCartney in a fit of acute uninspired tastelessness. The last chorus repeats ad nauseum until you think you’ve entered a new rung of Purgatory Dante must have created just for shoppers, as if another were necessary. If Christmas shopping doesn’t trigger insanity, you haven’t spent enough time in the Walmart listening to this on the PA system.

And while I’m on a roll, here’s a bonus: I never want to hear another roomful of third graders shouting I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas, or Up On the Housetop, or I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, or All I Want For Christmas is my Two Front Teeth. It’s only cute once.

It’s true of music no matter what time of year it is, but especially at Christmas you’ll have a deeper, richer spiritual experience when you’re more careful with what you choose to think and sing about during the holidays. When your spirit is fed with spiritually nourishing music, you grow closer to the reason for the season.

And by the way, Merry Christmas. Celebrate it with GOOD music that lifts and inspires

Golden Oldie #4

2009-11-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

We're moving to Provo on Wednesday and flying to Pittsburgh Saturday on the first leg of our month-long trip, so here's something seasonal I wrote about gratitude. Looking back over the thirteen years since this was written, clearly I'd make a different list now. How about you? I'll be back in time to post some essays about Christmas.

Thanks, But Gimme
November 1996

Confession time: I’m a compulsive list maker, a trait I modestly associate with my ability to organize, anticipate, and shepherd a project through to its successful conclusion. I even keep lists of topics to write about. My daughters are both list makers, which is how I got through two weddings in three months with a minimum of stress. Lacking a day planner, my husband makes lists on odd pieces of paper which he somehow keeps track of. My son is beginning to get the hang of it, if the notes he writes on the back of his hand are any indication. My mother used to make grocery lists and keep household accounts on the backs of used envelopes.

Some people make lists to give the appearance of being organized, but nothing ever really gets checked off. Some people, knowing the theory but not the practice, make lists and then promptly lose them – motivated forgetting perhaps. Others are so brilliant they can remember everything and get it all done without benefit of a visual reminder. My experience in life is this: Blessed are the list makers, for they shall inherit all the responsibility for keeping the world going.

This seems to be the time of year for lists. We make lists of neighbors or friends to recognize with a special gift, some of them more out of obligation than feeling. We search the address book for people to send Christmas greetings to, and check who sent cards to us last year. We list on the calendar all of the school, community and church events we want to, or are expected to, attend.

Ironically, we make lists of things we’re thankful for at Thanksgiving, and then, apparently unsatisfied with those blessings, a week or so later we make lists of things we want to get for Christmas. That’s the human race for you – never satisfied. If I were tempted to buy into that “thanks a lot but gimme more” trap, my list would be tempered with realistically knowing that I’m not the center of everybody else’s universes. On the other hand, my self-indulgent self would make a list like this:

I’m thankful for the mild fall we’re having, but I know it won’t last, so I’d like a new bathrobe, full-length and fleecy, please.
I’m thankful for my computer, but I’d like to upgrade to a newer model, with a color laser printer, and some software, especially an electronic cookbook, please.

I’m thankful for the wherewithal to be adequately clothed, but I’d really like a tee shirt that says Give me all your chocolate and no one will get hurt, please.

I’m thankful for my house, but I’d like to build a deck/sunroom/hot tub onto the back of it, please. (My husband would certainly be grateful for having less lawn to mow.)

I’m thankful for our fuel efficient, dependable automobile, but I’d sure like one that’s also comfortable on long trips, please.

I’m thankful for music, but I’d really like the new CD just released by the Anonymous 4, please.

I’m thankful for my ability to write, but I’d like the time to finished the three or four plays I’m working on and get them published and/or produced, please.

But enough of this self-gratifying pleasure seeking. It’s spiritually and mentally a lot healthier to make lists of things to give other people. Whether or not it’s in our power to give them things we wish they could have, going through the exercise fosters the kind of insight about the human condition that selfish, greedy people never learn. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn on Judgment Day that those whose hearts have been generous and grateful, who have not measured life or people in terms of things, will qualify for the best seats in the house; they’ll go straight to the head of the line. And if God makes lists of his favorites, I wonder how long that list would be, and if I’d be on it.

Golden Oldie #3

2009-10-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

Since I'm going to be away from my computer and blogging for a while, I'll put some relevant seasonal essays up. In Utah, the deer hunting season begins at dawn tomorrow, so I'm…

Goin’ Huntin’
By Pam Williams
September 1995

My only experience with hunting has been by observation and association. Back home in Oregon, some of my dad’s friends convinced him to go with them one chilly fall, assuring him they knew where to find the best game. They went to somebody’s mountain cabin the night before so they could get an early start, and they were back at the house before noon the next day because Dad – a former Military Policeman – shot his first deer right through the heart. I remember that he retrieved the bullet, now a crumpled blob of metal, showed it to all us kids, and then paced restlessly through the house grinning to himself for hours, reliving the moment.
Having venison on the menu for a brief time was an opportunity for Mother to tell us how she arrived, nine years old, with her family in the back woods of Southern Oregon in 1930, where her father intended to live off the land and wait out the Great Depression. Due to setbacks on the trip from Southern California, they arrived with literally two cents in their pockets. Grandpa took a rifle and found a deer to shoot. After gutting it and hauling the carcass back for Grandma to salt down, he went out behind their cabin and vomited repeatedly.
My dad kept his mangled bullet trophy in a drawer of my mother’s jewelry box, but a deer head mounted on the wall in the den was somehow so self-congratulatory, not like Dad at all. Though a skilled marksman, he never went hunting again. After hitting his target the first time so perfectly, what would be the point?
During our first autumn in Richfield, 1976, I remember the horrendous traffic jam downtown on the day before the hunt began. It was in our pre-traffic light days, and the party atmosphere at the intersection of Main and Center was unlike anything I had experienced before. It took ten full minutes to get across Main Street. I went straight home, made a cup of hot cocoa and worked jigsaw puzzles until the traffic cleared a week later.
At that point we began to wonder if we really belonged here. My husband Roger, the only middle school faculty member without hunter orange clothing, reported the phenomenon there. On the day before hunting season began, everybody came attired for the occasion, including the women. Many had driven their loaded campers to school so they wouldn’t waste a moment when the last bell rang. And there was Roger in his three-piece suit.
In fact, some have asked why we moved here if we didn’t hunt or fish. Answer: owning guns or fishing poles has never been a requirement to teach English. Thoroughly devout hunters speak of the experience in hushed tones and are quick to sermonize about herd control and the Bambi syndrome, while others say it’s family reunion time, and declare their love of the outdoors as the chief motivation for going hunting. I have taken the high road in these conversations, not mentioning the cost per pound, the macho factor, the very real potential for truly nasty weather in October, the danger, or the rubber ball qualities of badly cooked venison. We tried to look interested, nodding and smiling when friends reported their hunting adventures, but the stifled yawns gave us away.
Part of our skepticism about watching people go out in the hills armed to the teeth was that the frenzy transforms apparently normal human beings, and during that week in late October, the hills come alive with a mob mentality and itchy trigger fingers. My brother-in-law told of a friend, dressed in hunter orange, riding a Tote Gote (forerunner of the four-wheeler) down Provo Canyon dodging bullets. In addition, guys who don’t usually drink often take cases of beer on the hunt, claiming that the alcohol would keep them warm out there in the wilderness. As firm believers in the value of thermal underwear, but that ammo and alcohol are not a good mix, the logic of that rationale escaped us.
For some families, the hunt is a test of the marriage vows. Some women really enjoy stalking the prey right along with their spouses, uncles, dads and cousins, while others, the true saints, simply turn up the corners of their mouths in August when their husbands start talking about buying a new rifle. Some men may be oblivious to the fact that it takes a week to plan, shop, and load the camper. If the hunt is successful, it’s usually the women who have to figure out what to do with all that meat, although some actually like making venison salami, an acquired taste if there ever was one. Wildlife trophies are anything but subtle, and women willing to coexist with a rack of antlers on the family room wall should be considered the best trophy of all.
From that first autumn, seeing the near-fanaticism with which people prepared for the hunting season – it was bigger and more important than Christmas – we began to refer to what the school calendar euphemistically called “fall vacation” as the local religious holiday. We have been glad over the years to meet people who will, once we have declared ourselves as non-hunters, admit that they don’t see the sense in it either.
Indeed, that hunting season traffic jam in 1976 was an epiphany. It was the day I realized that living in a small town was going to be neither simple nor easy because I deeply need the trappings of civilization which are not as obvious or readily available here. That explained why for the first several months we lived here, I cried myself to sleep most nights. To satisfy my need, I imagined a classy alternative event, a non-hunter’s ball. We arrive in limousines. Searchlights in the sky show partygoers the way, and television reporters breathless with excitement cover the event. After a seven-course meal (the menu never includes duck, pheasant, elk or venison), elegantly dressed people progress to dancing – a live orchestra, waltzes, fox trots, big band music, maybe even a schottische. Halfway through the evening, everyone adjourns to an adjoining theater where a delightfully comic production aids our digestion by making us laugh. Then we return to the hall and dance till midnight. In my mind, I attend this event every year during hunting season, and I’m always safe, warm and happy.
Maybe seeing that hunting season fanaticism is why I have spent the ensuing years trying to create civilization in my external environment and nurture it in my own inner landscape. We all have ambitious quests and goals we pursue in life, noble causes we give ourselves to, and unquestionably there are trophies to be earned and claimed at landmark moments along the way. However, these accomplishments are often intangible memories, and to hunt and acquire them we need neither a weapon nor a license.

How Monkish Are You?

2009-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

If you've ever watched 'Monk' on the USA network, you know that Adrian Monk is a fastidious former San Francisco police detective and ace crime-solver who is a genius, but who is now a consultant because after his wife was killed in a car bomb his obsessive compulsive disorder got worse, to the point where it interfered with his work. On a case it often works for him, however, but his personal life is a mess. He has phobias about milk, rats, water, germs, order, cleanliness, the size and organizations of the vegetables on his plate, and 314 other quirks. The writing on the series is brilliant. One of my favorite lines is something he says to a girl he's taking out to dinner. They are walking up 70 flights of stairs because the restaurant is on the top of the building and he's too claustrophobic to ride the elevator. It takes quite a while and to make conversation on the way he asks what her religion is. He says he was born naturally but raised caesarean. This is the last season of Monk and we're watching eagerly to see that all the threads of his life come together. When we want another dose of Monk, we put on a DVD or watch reruns on the USA network or Sleuth, the mystery channel.

It's said that everybody has a little OCD and it shows up in various behaviors that may seem strange to other people. For instance, my Monkishness manifests itself in the way I eat M&Ms. I take a handful, spread them out, notice the colors and start eating the color that is represented by the fewest candies. Say there are three red, seven blue, five yellow, three green, etc. I'll start with the reds, then go to the greens. If two colors have the same number, I'll eat them alternately. As my family can tell you, I have many more Monkish behaviors than that, but it's typical.

So what's your Monkish behavior? It can't be stranger than mine.

In One Era and Out the Other

2009-08-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today we listed our house with a real estate agency. There's a sign in the front yard.

We've lived here for 33 years, raised our kids here, watched trees grow, planted flowers and shrubs, entertained friends, watched neighbors come and go, endured vandalism, held family parties, repainted, redecorated, recarpeted, planted and harvested garden produce, complained about the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter while we tried to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. We've grown, struggled, had our share of triumphs and met our share of challenges.

It's a nice house. We added two feet onto the south end when we built it so the living room, kitchen, family room and storage room are bigger than they might have been. Nobody who lived here had the kind of temper that put holes in the walls or shattered glass. It has plenty of space, nice bathrooms, and closets where my dad put in shelves and insulated the storage room so it's like a walk-in refrigerator in the winter. The kitchen is big, and the appliances are all fairly new. It's a comfortable place, and we've been here long enough to make our grooves in the carpet. We're in a great neighborhood with lots of friends. Then the kids left home and it was just the two of us again.

However, there is one drawback that outweighs all the attractive features – stairs. Our house has a split entry so when you come in the front door you have to go up or down. Although I have new prosthetic knees, I'm done with stairs, just plain DONE. I want to live on one level now, where I don't have to plan my ascent to the kitchen from the family room or the office.

Yes, we have lots of memories, some bitter, most sweet, but all an enduring part of us. Now it's time for the "us" we've become to move on. We're looking at properties in the south end of Utah County where we'll be closer to the airport since two-thirds of our kids now live east of the Mississippi. We have a good support system here, and we'll find another one there without losing the friends we have now. It's good. It's right.

We know that the Lord directed us here to Richfield (even knowing that, I was the one kicking and screaming about it) and we're confident that He will lead us to where we need to be next. I suppose, when all the considerations are thought through, that's the bottom line.

Oldie But Goodie #2

2009-08-11T22:03:00.001-07:00

Our granddaughters from Illinois were here for an all-too-short visit a couple of weeks ago, and I remembered an essay I wrote about one of their previous visits:

SUMMER VISIT
2005

How quickly grandmothers forget what young mothers know.

A nine year old who constantly dreams up pranks, and a very independent three year old have taken over our house for three weeks. They are our granddaughters from Illinois, away from home with their mom but without their dad, and because we don’t see them very often we are making a lot of exceptions to rules their mother, our daughter, grew up with. In the give and take and push and shove and ups and downs of life, Grandpa, their mother and I have a daily reminder of the wisdom that says children should have two parents. Sometimes the three of us are outnumbered by the two of them.

Kayla, the prankster, has a wacky sense of humor. She is a fair skinned blonde who knows dozens of jump rope rhymes, but can’t always grasp the logic of picking up a glass of milk before trying to drink out of it. She played games at my computer, and later while doing a project of my own, I reached into the computer desk drawer for a paperclip to find that she had hooked them all together in a chain. Make that three chains. Everything in the house is a toy, far more interesting than the baskets of toys in the closet for children to play with.

Courtney, who can solve any logistics problem if there’s enough furniture to climb on, leaves a path of destruction that should qualify us for federal disaster relief. All those uninteresting toys in the closet seem to be steppingstones to something more interesting that was never designed to be a toy. Courtney has big brown eyes with a Shirley Temple twinkle, blonde hair, and skin that tans rather than burns in the sun. Her favorite “blankie” is actually an envelope her mother made to cover the mattress in her crib when she was a baby. It’s multicolor polka dot flannel stitched to a blue backing on three sides. She has other more functional blankets, but she likes being able to put her feet inside this one when she sleeps. I’m picturing her as a newlywed some day, trying to explain that to a bewildered husband.

During the day the odd blanket becomes a part of her imaginative play. Her favorite joke is to put it over her head and yell, in her sweet soprano voice, “Hey, who turned out the lights?” Yesterday for a while the floor fan that cools us in the living room became an old fashioned box camera, and the blanket was the cloth over the photographer’s head. Courtney took the pictures and Kayla developed them for us all to see.

I am not beyond participation in their silliness. One stuffy, sticky night boredom drove us to paint each other’s feet with watercolors the girls found in the game closet. Not even in my most carefree childhood moments have I ever had green toenails, or red zigzags around my ankles, but now we have the pictures to prove it. Even Grandpa laughed.

Despite their age difference, the girls get along famously, and sometimes that’s a problem. They go from one chaos-creating activity to another faster that anybody can keep up with them, but I am grateful that their mother insists that they put things away when they’re finished.

In a couple of weeks they will fly back home to the normality of their usual family routine. Despite the order that will fill the vacuum, I know that the quiet will sometimes be painful. What is there now but to anticipate our trip to their house at Thanksgiving, where we know we will be romped on, and tugged over to a chair to read a book, tricked by one and twinkled at by the other?

Oldie But Goodie #1

2009-07-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

I lost a disk full of essays when I got my new computer early in the decade, and I'm just getting around to typing them into my permanent files. Some are not so bad.

Spring
April 1996

Spring begins at sea level and moves upward about eleven miles a day, according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon. It is a transition time when the natural life cycle begins again, when I watch a bee exploring the throat of a daffodil and catch my breath in astonishment at how and why this happens, and who makes it happen. Spring brings a sense of freedom, a feeling of newness, an urge to be creative.

One morning in the spring I was sixteen years old, I sat in my room watching the sweet Oregon rain fall on the riot of irises outside my window, exploring the Roget’s Thesaurus my parents had given me for my birthday that winter, and decided that I would be a writer.

This spring, one of my creations, a play, is being brought to life on stage by a group of talented people who are giving me the priceless gift of their time to do for me what I can’t do for myself. Theater has been in my blood since the spring of my senior year in high school when I auditioned for a part in “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Although I didn’t get the part, I was assigned to the costume crew, which took me backstage where, for the first time, I inhaled the instantly addictive and nearly palpable creative energy in the air.

As a college student, my best learning moments, some even life changing, came when I was involved in plays. I’ll never forget the only applause I ever received as an actress – in my acting class, playing Amanda in a scene from The Glass Menagerie. My interests remained back stage, however, as part of the decision-making that went into the preparation, and I left the acting to people who could memorize lines and control their stage fright.

In the spring of 1967 another rich memory was born. I was the assistant to the faculty member directing a premiere production of a play written by the campus poet in resident, my creative writing teacher from the English department. The author would come to rehearsals to watch the progress of his “offspring,” and consult with the director on production details. It was instructional to listen to these two intensely creative men. I became a sponge. Sometimes when they disagreed about some detail they would turn to me and say, “What do you think?” Sometimes I had an opinion, and I was grateful for the chance to put it into the mix. At first it seemed ludicrous that my opinion should count for anything; I was just happy to be there, absorbing the creative energy and facilitating the activities of all those other creative people involved in the production.

Now it is another spring, many years have passed, and it is my own play that is being prepared for performance. This is the fourth production I’ve directed of a play I’ve written, so I have heard applause before. If you aren’t careful, it can go to your head, and a person could become confused about what it means. A poet once described birth as “Trailing clouds of glory do we come, from God who is our home.” It occurs to me that the clouds of glory we trail after us are the talents we bring that are probably a spiritual inheritance from the Creator. When talents are used respectfully, with deference to the Giver of the Gift, applause takes on a much different meaning.

It is appropriate that as I have watched the tulips and daffodils bloom in my yard, I’ve been watching some wonderful talents bloom, too, at rehearsals. Flowers fade, but those talents will continue to grow. I watch them unfold and I catch my breath in astonishment at how and why it happens, and who makes it happen. That, for me, is another wonder of spring.

What I Learned on my Summer Vacation

2009-06-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

You CAN go home again, but it might not be there.

On the afternoon before we left Vancouver to return to Richfield, everyone indulged me as Jen drove us over to Portland to find the house where I grew up. I wanted my grandkids to see the lovely idyllic place on the outskirts of town that influenced my life so profoundly. We had a GPS to guide us, but it didn't turn out as I hoped it would. There was nothing left to recognize. Gone was the quiet neighborhood and three little rows of houses on two short streets. Gone was the dairy and the pasture beyond where we chased the cows in for afternoon milking. Gone was the farm land and the wild blackberry patches and the little stream where we found frog eggs in the spring to take home and observe their metamorphosis into tadpoles. Gone was the 50-foot row of irises on the north side of our house, and the roses that lined our driveway, and the ten cottonwood trees in the back yard where we played ball and the silver leaf maple in the front yard that overlooked my mother's rock garden. Gone was the quarter acre of garden space that fed us from year to year. Gone was the house, half of which my father built, where we ate breakfast every morning watching the sun come up over Mt. Hood.

But things changed. In its place was an industrial park of staggering dimensions - acres and acres of semi-trucks lined up in place of all that had been familiar, now guarded by miles of chain link fences, a testament to the power of change.

Disappointing though it was, in a way I was glad. I am secure in the memories of childhood that shaped my life. They are always mine, always available, always part of me, and I can paint the picture in words whenever I want to. It is enough. I am content.

Top Ten People I Won't Spend Time/Money On

2009-06-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Help me out here. I've come up with a list of nine of the top ten people I won't waste my time or money to watch either on the big screen or the little one. The fact that I've never seen their movies or TV shows doesn't prevent me from making a value judgment just from the previews. Can you add the tenth to the list?

10. (your suggestion)
9. Larry the Cable Guy
8. Chuck Norris
7. Cameron Diaz
6. Paris Hilton
5. Drew Barrymore
4. (group) 4 of the five women on The View
(I watched this show once and I want that hour of my life back.)
3. Adam Sandler
2. Mike Myers
1. Ben Stiller

I'll Take Stupid Dreams for $1000, Alex

2009-05-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

It isn't often that I have a dream I remember, but a couple of mornings ago just before I woke up, I dreamed that my big idea for a retirement activity was to open a game store. It would have board and card games of all kinds except those associated with gambling and those depending on electronics. Kids would flock here after school to play board games with their friends. The store would sponsor tournaments in Scrabble, Monopoly, Boggle, Battleship, etc. and even teach people how to play bridge so they could get together and make friends with other bridge players. This place would be all about having fun.

But the really big draw would be that it would sell snacks for you and your guests to eat while playing the games either at home or at the store. There would be a taffy pulling machine in the window to attract customers featuring a flavor of the week, a big popcorn wagon with a flavor of the day, candies of all kinds, plus baked (NOT packaged) goods like doughnuts, muffins, cookies and cupcakes, made by me personally. Customers would love the free samples.

Never mind that a game shop in Richfield opened and closed within six months a couple of years ago. Never mind that I don't know anything about running a business. Never mind that I'm too restless to be tied down like that. Never mind that it's totally illogical as so many dreams are. For a minute or two it made perfect sense, but I'm not going to do it.

What do you think this dream says about me?

Happy Birthday, Son

2009-05-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is the 30th anniversary of our famous recording for posterity when Roger tried to prove that Jordan's first word was "light."

We had the big party and dinner for the one-year-old and Dad turned on the tape recorder and asked Jordan what that thing was above the table. "Can you say light?" Silence. He had said it before, but not on tape for posterity, and Roger was determined to prove that his child was sophisticated enough to say this word instead of the usual ma-ma, da-da. "Say light." More silence. It went on for several minutes like this.

So after much coaxing and no response, the conversation went on with Jen and Elin talking about other things Jordan could do, and what the family was doing. When the attention left him, Jordan decided to "perform," but the rest of us were so busy with our conversation that we didn't hear him. Only when we played it back later did we realize that in his background babble he was actually saying "light." We were talking about something else, and his little voice can be heard repeating, "Yite, yite, yite." We have laughed about it over the years and tried not to ignore him anymore when he finally does what we ask him to do.

He is the light of our lives, and that's one reason I sent him a lamp for his birthday. It just seemed like the thing to do.

TV or Not TV

2009-05-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

We have been keeping a viewing diary for the Nielsen TV ratings organization since last Thursday and while it's annoying and such a big hassle, it also tells us a lot about our viewing habits. It amused me to see that there are two columns to mark – one for when the TV is on, but another when it's off. Logic would tell us that if it isn't one it's the other, but the Nielsen people just want to be sure. Of course there isn't a lot you can view when the set is off, but I guess that's beside the point.

Full disclosure: my favorite channels are the Food Network and HGTV. I've learned a lot about cooking, even tried some of their recipes, and a lot about home decorating, and I've exercised some of those principles in redecorating my home, quite successfully, I might add. Sometimes Roger watches those shows with me, and we critique as we go. It's nice to learn, after all these years, what his tastes are in food AND home decor.

While I am one to sit down and watch specific shows, Roger tends to have the TV on ALL. THE. TIME. To him it's background music. He's a genius, of course, being able to correct papers and watch Poirot or Sherlock Holmes at the same time, and then tell you the plot, the red herrings, and who after all done it. This is amazing to me because otherwise this man has a one-track mind and is easily thrown into a heart-stopping dither when multitasking is required. But that's another story.

When he doesn't have a second task, TV dial spinning is a form of recreation. He starts at one end of the dial and channels up or down, stopping sometimes for several minutes on programs I know he doesn't care about, like baseball or a countdown of the top ten submarines on the military channel. Soon he moves on, lingering again at some other channel with an odd topic he isn't interested in. And he does all of this with the sound muted. That's right, muted. Even if it's a channel and topic he might be interested in, there's no sound. He stares at it, trying to figure out if maybe it's something he might want to watch, and doesn't turn the sound on.

He kind of does the same thing when an unexpected piece of mail comes. "Wonder who that's from," he'll frown. "Read the return address," I'll say. "Who do we know that lives in Provo," he'll puzzle. "Maybe your sister," I'll say. "Oh. Maybe it's a birthday card," he'll say. "The only way you'll know is if you open it," I'll say.

Since most of daytime TV is insanely boring, like pouring wet cement into your brain, the diary shows the TV is usually off more than 12 hours a day. If I'm suffering insomnia I might watch late shows or movies to bore myself to sleep, but there's nothing worth watching during the day before Glenn Beck comes on in the late afternoon. I'm done with the TV when that's over, but when Roger gets home, the dial spinning begins. There aren't many shows we watch in the evening, outside of cable news shows, and I have a short tolerance for those. Roger can always find something. Today it was an documentary on the history channel about the dark ages. Fascinating, but I'd seen part of it before.

From past experience, I know the TV is on much more during the day when Roger is home than when I'm here alone. I think the TV is on too much, but he is a local news junkie, especially weather reports. Local news makes me crazy. I have to leave the room. I can foresee a problem with this when he retires (in two weeks) and we're together all the time. We will have to have a discussion about this if I expect to maintain my sanity.

It's quiet now. He went to bed an hour ago and I can enjoy the silence or play music of my choice on my computer if I'm so inclined. We will mail our TV viewing diary on Friday, and the Nielsen people will probably draw the conclusion that anybody who watches Fox News that much is probably a scary freaking redneck. I'll be glad not to have to keep track anymore. But it has made me think about what I do with my time.