Mister Fweem's Blog

We're Out. Well, Almost.

2012-02-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

It’s official: We no longer reside in Sugar City. Though some of our stuff still does. Temporarily.

Frankly, with the amount of stuff we hauled out of our house, I’m surprised it just didn’t blow up with all of that crammed in there. We have successfully diminished a six-car shop until there’s barely enough room to park two cars in it, and we still had to leave some stuff in Sugar City with friends because we just didn’t have enough room in our two vehicles last night to haul it home. Lexie had to sit in the truck cradling a radio and with a plant dangling in her face. Liam rode with Isaac sitting on his lap. And Michelle had to unbuckle her seatbelt and lean waaaaay forward every time she wanted to check traffic at a stop sign to see if it was clear enough to pass.

Yet we all made it to Iona, our temporary abode for the next few days, unscathed, losing only the top of a shoebox in the voyage.

Today, Michelle goes back to Sugar to pick up a few things we couldn’t cram in the car: A mirror, vacuum cleaner, a garbage can, some stuff to give away and a few random empty boxes. Friday, I go up with her with the trailer to retrieve the swing set and one big garbage can. Then we’re done. And by Friday afternoon, we’ll be moving in to our new home in Ammon. Hopefully.

So what did we do last night? Clean and pack. I scrubbed toilet and cleaned out the fireplace and then spent a long time stuffing things into the truck and car while Michelle cleaned out the refrigerator which, I’m glad to say, stayed there.

Looking forward to a more relaxed few days between now and Friday, however. Riding the bus out to work after sleeping in an extra half hour was nice, and to add to the pleasure I’m able to get on a bus that takes me to RWMC without having to make a change at Central, and that’s nice. Though the seats are cramped. I may have to experiment, see if I can find some seats on the bus that are more suited to the fully-seated gentleman that I am.

Heads Up: Our Internet is Out

2012-02-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

Just a heads up that our internet service is out and won't be back until Friday or so. We should have intermittent contact over the next few days, but if you need to contact us for urgent matters, use the telephone.

How quaint.

Farewell, Mr Christopher

2012-02-13T14:54:00.001-07:00

Thanks to some Slate.com feminist who castigates John Christopher for not including strong female characters in his tripods trilogy, I know that the author – one of my favorites from childhood – passed away Feb. 6 at the age of 89.

I confess to being a man. I confess also to not really pondering the inequality of the imbalance between male/female characters in the books I read as a kid and the books I read now. Forgive me, feminists, for I have sinned: I have loved a trilogy of books (a love supplemented not by the atrocious British television series based on the books but by an atrocious comic book rendering done in Boys Life magazine) that has no strong female characters, though conversely I have loved other books, notably Melba the Brain and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which do have strong female characters. Bebother me for enjoying the former as well as the latter and not giving a tinker’s cuss for the difference in gender.

Torie Bosch, said feminist, would be good to read the obituary she links in her screed, in which she dismisses the influence of Christopher’s “lady editor” in a quotation-marked sneer. Says The Guardian:

[Samuel]Youd [Christopher’s birth name] had an unusual way of working. He did a quick first draft of the opening chapter, but for the remainder typed a "final" version, with several carbon copies. When he had completed the book he would go back and redraft the first chapter. He used the method when he wrote his first Tripods book, The White Mountains (1967). Almost at once he came into the charge of an American publisher's editor called Susan Hirschman. She ordered a rewrite before she would accept it, so he gamely redrafted the first chapter. Then Hirschman said the middle sequence was no good, so he reworked that. More followed. Afterwards, he reflected ruefully that she had made the novel much better than it might have been, as she did for the novels that followed.

I think I’d like Susan Hirschman: Focusing on making the story better, not getting into a fret because there were no strong female characters.

Anyway, off the feminist bit.

Christopher is a master of the genre, and not just because of the tripods. My favorite book of his is The Guardians, followed closely by The Lotus Caves. I like his spare approach, his limited focus on just a few characters and situations rather than making for a more complex tapestry. He leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination, and when he has to describe something in order to help the reader along, he does so in the fewest number of words possible so he stays out of the reader’s way. That’s a remarkable way to write a novel, and I think he does the process justice.

Hi, Atus

2012-02-12T00:12:00.001-07:00

We here at My Kids' Refrigerator are taking a well-earned sabattical this week as we prepare to move our headquarters from one site to another. There may be blogging here this week, and then again there may not be. Regular blogging may begin after Feb. 21, providing all goes well.

The Campus that Says Go Away

2012-02-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

BYU-Idaho, it appears, is continuing on its chosen path to be the campus that says “go away” to its host community.

Twice in Tyler Burgener and Tommy Bailey’s article “BYU-I Stamps on New Policy,” in the Feb. 7 issue of The Scroll, it is mentioned that the policy requiring a hand stamp as proof of payment to use sports facilities on campus was put in place in part “to keep community members who have not paid to use the facilities out” and to “filter out members of the community who don’t have passes.”

Nowhere, however, neither on BYU-Idaho’s web site at least under my powers of Google-fu, nor at either the Hart or the BYU-Idaho Center is the policy clearly explained, nor is it outlined anywhere I can see where these seemingly unwanted community members may go to get a pass or otherwise throw themselves on the mercy of the powers that be to get in a little walk out of the weather in order to stave off obesity and eventual mortality.

As an online adjunct faculty member, I believe I barely qualify to use the sports facilities on campus without having to pay an additional fee, but I have to confess if a BYU-I Center employee came up to me to ask for my I-Number, all they’d get is a stunned bunny look from me. My wife and I walk on the track at least three times a week, and I can recall once being asked by a pleasant-looking person holding a clipboard if either of us were faculty as we huffed and puffed along. I said I was, and that was the end of it. I figured they were taking a student survey or something. Maybe they were preparing to put us on a list of community undesirables.

I would hope to see this policy more clearly explained to the community at large so we may know whether or not we are welcome on campus. As it stands now, it appears we are not.

I understand that BYU-Idaho’s policy overall is that campus facilities are for student use first. Given the amount of money students invest in their tuition, it’s understandable that the university wants to make sure its facilities are available to those who are paying for them. But in the times I have been in the Hart or the BYU-I Center exercising (walking exclusively) I have not seen the facilities overwhelmed by unshaven, uncouth and unwelcome members of the community at large, who apparently are now going to be cast out of the synagogue due to the coarseness of their apparel, though their tithing money goes in part to build the campus that keeps pushing them away.

Real Oak Veneer

2012-02-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve said for a long time that I probably won’t get as excited about collecting ebooks until I can go to a thrift store and shuffle through them as I can printed books – and now it looks like someone’s trying to do just that thing. At least with music.

And the music publishers don’t like it one bit.

ReDigi, which bills itself as a modern-day used-record store, per Wired magazine, does just that with music. It lets music lovers sell their unwanted digital music files – deleting them from their hard drives once the download is complete – and then offering them for sale at discounted prices. It’s basically what happened with used books, records, CDs, cassettes, and such – and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. The first sale doctrine in action.

Not so with digital music, and not so with EMI Capitol Records. They’re suing – sofar unsuccessfully – to shut ReDigi down.

So enters the conundrum: If it’s okay for an individual to sell physical media, why not digital media?

Yes, digital media is easier to pirate than, say, physical media. And ReDigi confirms it has no way to guarantee that, once it deletes a song from a seller’s hard drive, that the seller doesn’t have another copy hidden away on a storage medium not connected to the Internet. So, what’s to be done?

The debate goes back, of course, to the definition of the first sale doctrine, which allows the sale or a lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work once it has been paid for. Lots of debate will swirl around definition of “lawfully made,” obviously – who is to say that a piece of digital music on ReDigi was lawfully made, i.e., the original copy purchased, without any duplicate having been made.

Technological solutions, perhaps?

Cloud computing, maybe – we may enter the era where we buy cheap leases on digital media, not owning the file outright but having rights to listen to it or view it via the cloud – bad news for people like me who aren’t tethered 24/7 to the Internet. A lease could be bought and sold, guaranteeing no unlawful copying.

But then comes the conundrum: a society shifting away from physical media wants still to physically own, possess, collect, buy and sell, not lease this kind of thing, or so it seems. We want our digital cake and to eat it too.

Proposition 8 Goes Down -- Conundrum Completed

2012-02-07T21:35:00.002-07:00

That the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s four-year-old ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional is not surprising. Since the measure was passed into law in 2008, I haven’t heard a single legal argument for it – and vague promises that the measure will protect “traditional” marriage don’t count as legal arguments.

Let us revisit the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads thusly:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This is typically referred to as the equal protection clause which, among other things, was used to combat laws in territorial and early statehood Idaho that prohibited Mormons from voting, holding public office, or serving on juries.

Equal protection, in my book, means equal protection. Prohibiting gay marriage is depriving people of their liberty and denying the equal protection of the law.

Says the court:

Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.

Yes, this puts me at odds with Mormon hierarchy. Does that mean I am not a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

I certainly hope not.

I have never felt my marriage threatened by gay marriage. There are plenty of other things that threaten my marriage (selfishness, petty jealousy, etc.) but certainly not the fact that a man and a man or a woman and a woman want to get married. Overwhelmingly, the threats I see to my marriage are internal, not external – though there are certainly external threats that we can legitimately combat on Constitutional grounds, ranging from pornography to whatever else have you. I’m busy enough working out my own shortcomings to worry about imaging up constitutionally-sound reasons to prohibit gay marriage.

We’re working with our soon to be 12-year-old son to memorize the Articles of Faith. Whenever the Proposition 8 discussion pops up, I almost always turn to Articles of Faith 11, which states:

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

This, in my mind, means that if people want to worship pond scum, they may. So why not gay marriage?

Yes, I know there is doctrine on that as well. I suppose I am at odds with that doctrine.

And from a doctrinal and spiritual sense, that homosexual feelings are sinful I can understand. I just cannot wrap my head around the legal trappings of a measure that would curtail liberty – free agency.

And yet.

In reading something completely disconnected from Proposition 8, I see someone else arguing for something that’s morally right, though legally defensible:

If Mitt Romney is right, and corporations are people, perhaps Marvel/Disney has the capacity to feel shame. In any event, a public flogging has already begun. Cartoonist and educator Stephen Bissette’s blog post calling for a boycott of The Avengers kicked up a lot of dust in the blogosphere. Tom Spurgeon, writing for his well-respected industry website Comic Reporter also framed the issue in moral terms, as did the cartoonist Seth: “The corporate lie about Kirby's role in the creation of all those characters is abhorrent. It's a bold faced lie. Everyone knows it's a lie. No one is fooled. Everyone lying for the company should be ashamed. Stan Lee should be ashamed. What the Marvel corporation is doing might be legal but it certainly isn't right.”

And then there’s this: The powers that be had absolutely every right to do a remake/parody/update of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for a Superbowl ad, though there are many willing to spout about the moral implications of doing so (This update violates the spirit of the original movie which is a classic that shouldn’t be tampered with, is the argument I heard most often.)

So, it’s a conundrum, this thing called life.

Spotty Blogging

2012-02-06T22:57:00.002-07:00

Blogging here at Mister Fweem’s Blog (and ancillary blogs owned and operated by Poop Soop LTD) is going to be spotty over the next two or three weeks as we complete a move of our corporate headquarters. We might say we’ll try to keep up with occasional updates and postings, but then again we’ve said that about our newest blog, Heinemakkefrau, since October and you’ve seen how well that’s worked out.

In other words: “Why must I fail at every attempt at masonry?”

We’ve simply got a lot to do over the next few weeks to get things ready to move into our new house and for the lady who bought our house to move in. Take yesterday, in fact – I spent several hours re-setting some tiles in the kitchen floor because the were coming loose. Got to finish that job this week. We’ve also got more packing and hauling to do. Not going to be fun at all. Add to that a drill at work on Thursday and a trip to the dentist Friday morning and the week’s stacking up with suckage.

Oh well. Stiff upper lip and all that.

Oh Boo Yourself

2012-02-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

So part of buying a house these days involves allowing one of the arcane entities involved in the process to see your last complete tax return. I duly signed and submitted the form to allow such to happen, and received it back in the mail today. Note I said received it in the mail.

The IRS' complaint? The address provided on the form did not match our records. Everything else, including names and social security numbers matched, but the PO box number was missing. So they sent a request for a new request to an address they believed to be suspect.

Only government thinks like this. Especially when my phone number was on the form as well and they could have called me. But they don't have a procedure for that.

Thanks, Dad

2012-02-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, Dad loaned me a scraper.

I was doing some plastering or something. I think. I don't remember. But I needed some tools and Dad said I could use his.

I got the work done and kept the tools at my house, thinking after a while I'd get them returned to Dad.

I never did get them back. Dad died in August 2000, and I still had his tools at my house.

I kept them and used them. The others, one by one, wore out or fell apart and had to be discarded. But the scraper. I still have it. Just used it today, in fact, to help me pull up some loose tiles in the kitchen floor, then to mix and apply some thinset so I could replace the tiles.

Every time I use this scraper, I think of Dad. The scraper was worn and rusted when I got it from him, and I've kept it in that worn, rusty state. But it's still useful. Whenever I plaster, or work with tile, or paint, it's right there with me, doing all sorts of useful things.

I'm grateful to a Dad who helped me learn how to work, though I'm sure there were times he rolled his eyes at the results of my work or wanted to stop his ears at all the complaining I did about having to work.

Maybe one day I'll be like this scraper -- like Dad: A bit worn, rusty, and showing my age, but always there when useful work needs to be done and always doing it without complaint.

Thanks, Dad.

Mind-Bending at the RWMC

2012-02-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

There is such a thing as a time tesseract.

Had the thought this morning as I went over a conversation I had with a co-worker the day before.

Here’s the story: We have an arcane process (imagine that: an arcane process in government work) we have to follow in order to ensure that the hazards workers would encounter when doing work are adequately identified and mitigated. It’s a flawed process, but one that is universally recognized as the best solution we can have right now that doesn’t need money to make it better. (In the best world, of course, that money would be there, but it ain’t, so we go with the best solution available to us.) I suggested a few days ago that rather than fight the system, this co-worker simply game within the system to his advantage, combining procedures that have similar hazard sets into one go-through of this arcane system, thus saving time and money.

But no. He and his customer spent two days looking for any loophole possible in order to avoid the arcane process, including going to the head of our health and safety org to find a way through the mess.

I get a call from the head of the health and safety org, and we talk about the arcane process and how it could be used to follow the letter of the law but at the same time save time the others don’t want to spend.

Still today I’m not sure I’ve convinced them that this is the way to go in order to avoid any audit fodder in the future.

Enter the tesseract.

Basically, I was offering them a way to enter a tesseract in the system to accomplish their work in the shortest amount of time possible. I guess, however, they decided they wanted to continue finding their own route. I may finally win them over yet, showing them that the best way is to fold that string so the ant can walk from one finger to the other.

I sound pompous here. It’s because I am pompous. But at least I can see the shortcuts – legal ones – that present themselves. That’s a government tesseract.

BYU-I Goals Progress

2012-02-02T19:18:00.005-07:00

NOTE: As part of my professional development as a nerdly instructor at BYU-Idaho, at the beginning of the semester I set two goals to help me become a better instructor. Here, by way of accountability to myself and others, are my goals, and how I'm doing on them at this point in time.

1) Compile and update a dossier of student feedback suggestions, lessons learned, and helpful tips from our teaching group to deepen my understanding of course content and strengthen my lesson preparation skills.

Lesson Learned One: Anticipate student difficulties. Students appear to have the most difficulties with assessments which, admittedly, can be a bit tricky if you rush through filling them out, which the majority of students do. At the first of this semester I offered my students a cautionary note to keep an eye on their assessment scores and to contact me immediately if they feel a score is in error.

Lesson Learned Two: Offering a forward view. Even though the syllabus and course schedule are available to students, I’ve noticed they tend not to use them, or at least not to consult them (especially the schedule) once the introductory week is over. To give them a heads up, I’ve been sending out announcements, emails and class postings in which I discuss, at the beginning of each unit, the expectations for the unit so they’ve got an overview of what’s going to be happening in the next few weeks. This has reduced the number of students “surprised” that, for instance, their belief statement is going to eventually become a podcast.

Lesson Learned Three: Stay abreast of grading, even the “little” stuff. The most persistent grade-oriented questions I received last semester were when I was going to grade them on updating their student profile and their discussion leadership. In the past, I had opted to leave that toward the end of the semester. This semester, I’ve graded their profiles up front, and am grading them on discussion leadership as the weeks end so they have a better feel for where they stand. This also gives me the opportunity to give those students who forgot about their leadership assignment a second chance to get the work done.

2) Compile as list of and analyze my distance learning and collaboration strengths and weaknesses, taking in experience from my full-time job, time spent as an online student, and in my role at Uncharted to improve my online learning facilitation skills. This goal will dovetail with the first goal.

Strengths:

• Familiarity with the online learning environment
• Dialing back on my in-class presence so the students don’t see me as a domineering figure
• Willingness to check into the class every day as a lurker to answer any urgent questions, and to check my email several times a day to field questions there

Weaknesses:

• Busy lifestyle on some nights lends to checking into class as a low priority, especially mid-week when work and family demands soar.
• Busy lifestyle has also left me easily putting off checking into the new online community for instructors where I anticipate there is a trove of information that would help me become a better instructor.
• Lack of follow-up on discussion leadership assignments. I think, perhaps, I depend too much on student memory to ensure leaders know when they’re supposed to lead.
• Lack of empathy for students who “disappear” from class. I am a highly-motivated student, spouse to another highly-motivated student. Neither of us understand why you’d pay to take a class you never attend. Need to develop more compassion, reach out better to these students, find out why they’re disappearing.

Javawocky

2012-02-01T21:23:00.001-07:00

So, a month ago when I signed up for a free online course meant to have me become a programming fiend by the end of the year, I was overly optimistic about the time I thought I’d have to devote to the lessons.

So far, of the four lessons they’ve sent, I’ve completed half of the first one. Had something to do with Java, something to do with strings. Or threads. Or something of that nature, though I could be confusing my lesson with the spool of thread that fell out of our antique sewing machine when I was trying to figure out how to get the cover off over the weekend.

What happened?

We’re moving, for one. Packing up every little bit of furniture and personal stuff in the house and gradually shipping it south towards our new house, which we should be able to get into on Feb. 17.

I still want to complete the lessons. They’re on a backlog of things to do once life settles down a bit more. As if that’ll happen.

Maybe I’m just easily distracted. Or fearing my mortality. Or just a wee bit distracted. And prone to repetition. I am working full time, teaching part time and, in between it all, trying to write novels and play with the kids and give my wife some attention.

Whither Areva?

2012-01-31T21:21:00.001-07:00

The on-again, off-again Eagle Rock uranium enrichment plant planned for Bonneville County Idaho appears to be on again, though construction again will be delayed.

The Post Register (via the Idaho Statesman here) reports today that Areva is still committed to the $3 billion plant, though construction may not begin until 2013 or 2014, depending on whether or not the company can find other interested investors and whether or not the world economy continues to fester in the crapper it’s been in since 2008.

Says the paper:

Areva already owns the land for the plant west of Idaho Falls and invested resources in planning and development. At one time, the company had hoped to begin construction this year to meet an opening date of 2014. The project, expected to create several thousand construction jobs and 700 permanent positions once operational, was viewed as a future driver of the eastern Idaho economy and a key component in Areva's plans to expand production of nuclear fuel for commercial power production in the United States.

This news is contrary to speculation by Dan Yurman over at Idaho Samizdat, who speculated that Areva’s investment in a uranium plant in New Mexico spelled doom for Eagle Rock. The newspapers report that isn’t the case.

I certainly hope Areva’s commitment to Eagle Rock is more than a paper commitment. The plant could be a significant economic driver in the Idaho Falls area and help absorb some of the folks laid off from the Idaho National Laboratory. The plant’s presence in the area could also act as a magnet for further energy development, as is the plant currently underway in Hobbs, New Mexico. Areva had also planned to ask some of its partners to co-locate in Bonneville County, per Yurman, further adding to the economic draw.

Can’t wait to see what Mr. Snrub says about this.

Ever Read 1984, Mr. Franzen?

2012-01-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

I admit to being a physical book hog. My wife and I have an enormous collection of books, made even more enormous by the fact we’re packing all of them up and moving them to a new house. All that packing has got us to thinking: How about if, at a minimum, we looked to replace our “classics” with e-books (at least until the Supreme Court renews all those expired copyrights)?

As an experiment this year, I’m going to read one e-book for every two physical books I read. Thusfar, I’m not doing well on that goal, having read only one e-book (Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows). I am on my second – Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. And so far, so good. As far as I can tell, there are no words missing. There is no advertizing shilling going on. Books are books.

So it’s with a bit of amusement that I read Jonathan Franzen’s little bit about e-books at Slate.com today.

This won’t be another boring physical-versus-e-books debate. What I find comical in Franzen’s critique of e-books is that he doesn’t feel e-books are permanent. Says he:

Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.

Really? Has he never read George Orwell’s 1984, in which Winston Smith specialized in eliminating the permanence of the printed word?

There are many arguments one can make for or against e-readers or physical books, but the supposed permanence of one medium over the other is about one of the weakest you could make.

I’ve never fretted over the permanence – or impermanence – of the books I read, electronic or not. The permanence, I feel, is in my head, with the images the author’s words help me create, not in the physical or electronic ink that conveys the words from the medium to the brain.

A Little Stalking

2012-01-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

Because the Internet now offers such capability, I’ve spent the last little while Internet-stalking the guy whose house we’re buying in Ammon.

We have, surprisingly, a lot in common.

We’re both corporate-world writers. He writes for a pharmaceutical company. I write for an engineering firm.

We’re both fans of board games, though his involvement in many game forums on the Internet reveals he’s more on the Brian Porter level than the Brian Davidson level.

We’ve both got kids. I think he and his wife have four, but I wasn’t paying that much attention.

He appears to be seriously active in a wide variety of social media, as am I.

We’re both 40 years old.

And soon, we’ll both have lived in Ammon, in the same house.

Hopefully, under better circumstances. There’s a divorce involved, or so I hear through the grapevine. That’s about all I know. And frankly, it’s none of my business.

But looking through the posts and photos on their family blog (to which I won’t link here; they deserve some privacy) I see they’ve had some joy in their lives. Lots of photos of the kids. The Christmas tree put in the spot in the house where I figure Michelle will put ours. They put in a garden, brought in the dirt to do it, and we’ll be there, gardening as well.

Stars Aligning Nicely

2012-01-27T07:14:00.001-07:00

If all goes well, we should have the finishing touches on our home loan done today.

That leaves us only three weeks – yikes! only two weekends – away from moving into our new house in Ammon. And though we’ve been packing furiously for the last little while, I’m beginning to think we’ll never get all of our stuff out of this house and into the new one.

Partially because I still have some repairs I have to finish on our Sugar City house before we can leave. There’s not much – putting a little bit of roof tar on and fixing the strike plate on the door; things from our inspection – and fixing three loose tiles in the kitchen. And I’ve got to seal the kitchen floor. It’s just that we’ve got an awful lot of stuff to haul away, including about half a winter’s worth of firewood. That will NOT be fun. We may end up stacking it neatly in the alley behind the Smiths’ garage so we can come get it after the rest of our stuff is moved. And we may end up hauling some stuff to the Harrisons so we’re not behind on getting things done. That all depends on how much we can get hauled out of the place this weekend. Plus all the food storage in the pantry. HELP! Feeling overwhelmed.

So, the goal this weekend is to continue hauling out as many boxes as we can, plus as much furniture as we can. That’s going to include every stick of furniture in the living room but the piano, a few desks and beds and probably a load of bicycles and other crud from the shed. That’s just this weekend. I’d like to see if we can’t do two loads Friday – maybe three, if the kids’ll let us do one after school – and another three on Saturday, with a follow-up load on Sunday. That’s in addition to giving me time to get the needed repairs done this weekend as well so we’re not stressed about them next weekend.

Ugh. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I may have to take a day or two off work in order to get everything done.

Some good news, for us at least: The house we bought is starting to look like more and more of a bargain than what we were counting on. Michelle found out this week through our agent that the folks we’re buying it from have to bring $11,000 to the close since the amount of money they’re getting for the house won’t cover what they owe on it. That’s a stinker for them, of course.

Mormon Lit Blitzed

2012-01-26T19:04:00.002-07:00

No, Virginia, I am not a finalist at the Mormon Lit Blitz competition, nor even have I won second prize at a beauty contest.

But that’s okay.

Part of me simply says what I entered didn’t tickle their brains enough for whatever reason. I refuse to believe my writing is so crappy that their sole reason for dumping my entries is for their craptacular level of stupidiousness. I have to find the right venue, the right eyes to read what I write, before I write myself off completely as a writer and go into things better suited for my talents, such as toothpick repair.

Come on. Tell me this or this is completely terrible. (Really. Tell me. I need some unbiased opinions on my writing. My wife is my best editor, but she's taking masters classes and is out of the picture now. Anybody? Hellooooooo?) Maybe they just didn’t like excerpts. Maybe they’re all toffee-nosed over at the Lit Blitz. No matter. I will continue writing.

Skip to 3:07 or thereabouts, for Colin's Sally Field mockery.

I simply don’t think I’m artsy or pretentious enough. My writing does not have that soupcon of apricot and toast and mind-blowingly-bad poet voiceyness these competitions look for. Sorry, folks, I just don’t write that way. I write like me. And, I suppose if the me I write like writes badly, then I will go proudly forward, writing badly, until I get to the point I write something badly enough it’ll get published.

Parliament of Whores

2012-01-25T22:35:00.001-07:00

Once our move is complete, I’m going to have to dig P.J. O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores” out of storage and read it again.

Frankly, it ought to be required reading for any high school civics class, including O’Rourke’s blue language, because in reading what O’Rourke has to say about government, we get a glimpse into what really motivates us as voters, consumers, and teat-sucklers.

Example: Not strictly governmental, but it is a symptom of the general malaise.

Consumerist readers are in a big hoo-hah over some clothing and accessory company appropriating an artsy image from a Georgia artist for consumer products without offering her recompense or at least asking permission.

http://consumerist.com/2012/01/hm-thinks-inspired-by-artwork-is-different-from-copied-it-exactly.html

Outrage is righteous indeed. But when it comes to individuals pirating movies, music, etc., from corporations, what we generally hear is crickets. Um, it’s perfectly all right, the message is sent, for individuals to steal from a company, but if a company steals from an individual, well then, umbrage must be expressed.

There is a glaring disconnect here, folks. Come on. Tell me you see it.

Additional example: Much a deal is being made of Mitt Romney’s taxes. It’s not that he’s evaded taxes. It’s that he’s not, by some peoples’ definition, not paid his “fair share” because (this will just absolutely stun you) because he’s rich.

Here’s a hint, folks: People like me, who are not rich, do not pay our fair share in taxes. We’re looking to get a refund this year that once again exceeds the amount of income taxes paid because (this will completely shock you) we’re playing by the rules the government has set for deductions and credits.

I’ll be the first to say it: I AM NOT PAYING MY FAIR SHARE OF TAXES. Truth be told, no one is. Because there’s always someone out there who says, “Damn, I’m paying way too much. There’s got to be a way to reverse the cash flow.”

Enter P.J. O’Rourke. We are a nation of whores. All of us looking to pay as little as we can but get as much as we can from the government, facts and deficits and budgets be damned. And by golly if we can’t do that we’re going to whine and complain about our perception that someone else isn’t paying the same thing while doing exactly what we would do in their shoes, or not seeing hypocrisy in the “do as we say not as we do” attitude we all cop when it comes to justice, money, and whatever da heck else ya wanna say.

What’s the cure? O’Rourke doesn’t know either.

Heavier Curatorial Control . . . Enter the Doublespeak

2012-01-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

Just last week, anywhere you went on the Web you found people griping about SOPA and PIPA, celebrating when Congress put the “internet-censoring” bills on indefinite hold.

Now today I read at Slate.com an essay from Evgeny Morozov endeavoring to encourage search engines “to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs.”

How is Internet censorship stopping piracy a bad thing, while internet censoring stopping fringe beliefs a good thing?

OK, so Morozov out-and-out says censorship won’t work. But then he turns right around again and proposes, well, censorship:

The second—and not necessarily mutually exclusive—option is to nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like "global warming" or "vaccination." Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.

Yeah, we get some doublespeak here: “heavier curatorial control” sounds pretty much like censorship to me. Yeah, we can still – maybe – see the results, but we’re flagged as a moron for going there.

And here’s another thing – anti global warming is pseudoscience, run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists? Who decided that? Oh yeah. Those whose orthodoxies don’t allow them to see the reputable science and scientists who cast doubt on much of the evidence presented in favor of global warming. Heavier curatorial control is going to flag stuff that’s out of the orthodoxy and label it as pseudoscience simply because it’s outside the orthodoxy? Who gets to decide what is orthodox and what is not?

This idea is as ugly as SOPA/PIPA could ever be.

The Permit Man . . .

2012-01-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

So we got more bits of good news this week, vis-a-vis the sale of our house.

The appraiser, to whom we need to deliver a large fruit basket, completed an appraisal that did not mention the exterior paint at all, so we DO NOT have to paint or leave money in an escrow account for painting. That is the best news we could have gotten this week, and it came in a week and at a time when we sorely needed a bit of good news.

So I have a few minor repairs to make on the house and we're good to go, and that's a good feeling.

Even better -- the lady who is buying the house is anxious to move in and wants to move the closing date up. We may not be able to move it much, as we've got an awful lot of packing and moving to do, but we might be able to move it a few days. We took three loads of stuff down to Iona this weekend, and will have to do another busy weekend of it next weekend as well. Not really looking forward to all of that, but, alas, that is what happens when you move a household and its accumulated detritus. We are learning, however, what we can get along without. But it will be nice to see all of our stuff again.

Layoff Watch: Final Thoughts

2012-01-19T21:19:00.001-07:00

Surprise!

Layoffs kind of ended oddly today.

We had a “stayers' meeting,” in which one of our higher-ups comes and chats a bit with those who kept their jobs. ‘Twas a good meeting, in which we got a little explanation on how subcontractors (like me) are ranked with the company employees, and how things work in general when someone has to be let go. All pretty straightforward stuff.

Then about a half hour after our meeting ended, one of the tech writers here, got a call from her employer saying her last day is Jan. 31.

That’s not all bad. She volunteered for it. So I suppose she got what she wanted; she and her boyfriend are headed to North Dakota to make their money in the oil fields.

That leaves two of us at RWMC. That could be both good and bad. They’re not quite certain how many writers they need here at RWMC, so we may find ourselves assigned part-time to other areas, as needed. Or let go in March or April or June. But it sounds like if we can make it through fiscal 2012, we ought to be safe for another three years. So here’s to keeping those fingers crossed.

The Bradbury Test, Revisited

2012-01-18T22:02:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: So I find out this book of Harrison’s isn’t one of his earlier ones, but came mid-career, and is meant as a parody of the “space opera” genre in which he ordinarily excels. Dumbass me. Still, the points I bring up are valid, even on a parody: Eeew. Bad writing demons, OUT!

I’ve written some on this blog about the so-called Bradbury Test, taken from a statement said by fantasy author Ray Bradbury, going something like this: Most of what we write is crap. You have to get the bad stuff out for the good stuff to follow.

I believe this test to be true.

I have evidence:

Right now I’m reading “Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers,” one of Harry Harrison’s earlier sci-fi works. It fits easily into what I call the “boobs and boots” niche of sci-fi and fantasy, in which nearly every quiet moment in the story is filled with the aforementioned articles. I may not finish the story due to the B&B quotient being high. But on top of that, this book feels written. It has a writerly stain about it; the same kind of writerly stain I notice about my own books at the moment. Harrison knows what he wants to write, but as he’s writing this story, he’s getting the bad stuff out of the way. The good stuff comes – witness his Stainless Steel Rat series – but the bad stuff had to come out first.

Same with another of my favorite authors – Terry Pratchett. I know among some circles it’s blasphemy to say he wrote anything that could be considered bad. But you know what? His early books, even the one that introduces my favorite character, Rincewind, is terribly written. It, too, falls into the B&B niche and feels written. Only in his later novels do we feel him capture his voice and become completely him, not some facsimile of previously-published authors that he emulated.

I’m not saying emulation is a bad thing – it can help any aspiring writer get the bad stuff out. Personally, I’m looking forward to that epiphanic moment when I, too, shed the Lloyd Alexanderisms and Aviisms that constrain my writing style and I come into my own. I imagine in the future, aspiring novelists will look at my early stuff and say, “Wow, that sucked. But he got better.” At least that’s the hope. The getting better part.

RD Loan = Pain in the Butt for Seller

2012-01-18T21:59:00.002-07:00

So we got the results back from the home inspection our buyer needs in order to get her Rural Development loan. Some of the findings are a bit laughable, and all but one will be easy to fix.

But that one. Well, we’ll see.

There is peeling paint on the outside of the house. We know this. It’s part of the long debate we’ve had on whether to scrape and paint or ditch the siding in favor of stucco. But it apparently has the potential to be a sticking point with the RD loan.

Whether it is or not all depends on the appraiser now, who came yesterday before we knew the results of the inspection. The inspector pretty much put it in the appraiser’s/lender’s hands to decide whether the painting has to be done to close the sale and get the loan.

Here’s to hoping there’s no painting to be done because, if you haven’t noticed already, it’s winter. Mid-January. Yes, we’ve had an amazingly mild, snow-free winter (up until this week) but I still think the chances of having a paint job look good when done in this kind of weather is slim to nil.

Of course the other option is to put money into an escrow and have the painting done when the weather is better. Hells bells, that opens up a conundrum for us. How much of the house would have to be painted? At a maximum, if I were to do it on my own, I’d paint the back of the house, and maybe the south side, where the peeling paint is the worst – and then again only those portions of the siding showing flaking paint. Frankly, if it were up to me and it were still our house, I’d just say screw it, we’ll either paint in a year or two or do the stucco thing. Half a job seems like putting lipstick on a pig.

But all of this anger upsets my stomachs. I suppose we wait to see what the appraiser says.

Weak Connections = Strong JuJu

2012-01-17T21:41:00.001-07:00

So it turns out that having a lot of friends on Facebook might actually be a good thing.

Farhad Manjoo, who is quickly becoming my go-to guy for current social media research, highlights a study released this week by Facebook’s research team that shows the personal echo chamber many worried about as this crazy Internet thing caught on isn’t as echoey or chambery as many feared it would be.

The echo chamber – for you troglodytes who have never heard the concept – is the feared phenomenon that the Internet would stratify society into groups of people who only shared or read news that already fits with their political or societal beliefs, while blocking out anything that might challenge their way of thinking.

According to Facebook’s study, that ain’t so.

Here’s what Manjoo says of the study:

But here’s Bakshy’s most crucial finding: Although we’re more likely to share information from our close friends, we still share stuff from our weak ties—and the links from those weak ties are the most novel links on the network. Those links from our weak ties, that is, are most likely to point to information that you would not have shared if you hadn’t seen it on Facebook. The links from your close ties, meanwhile, more likely contain information you would have seen elsewhere if a friend hadn’t posted it. These weak ties “are indispensible” to your network, Bakshy says. “They have access to different websites that you’re not necessarily visiting.”

Here’s a bit of explanation: Researcher Eytan Bakshy found – no surprises here – as he studied how people on Facebook share links that we tend to share links provided by those with whom we have strong ties, say co-workers, close friends, relatives, etc. He also discovered, as illustrated above, that we’re just as willing to share links from weak ties, and it’s from those weak ties that we’re most likely to read information that is outside our own echo chamber.

I’d be curious to read this study further, because I’ve got some strong-tie friends with whom I have widely differing beliefs, and I’m still as willing to read and share what they have to say as I am to share links from those whose beliefs are more like my own.

All of this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anybody. The Internet has evolved into something that felt echo-chambery (in the early years of my own Internet delvings, I found lots of people interested in Watership Down or the Secret of NIMH as I built my own fan sites and such) at the beginning and now is changing into something that reflects society as a whole – a mish-mash of people connected by either weak or strong ties, sharing differing beliefs but united by at least some tenuous connection (that we graduated high school in the same year, that we like technology in that creepy Kip Dynamite fashion and such). Those weak ties keep us bound socially and, as a consequence, expose us to beliefs we may not hold dear. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re reading and believing everything we see, but at least this research shows exposure to differing views, shattering once again the myth of the echo chamber.

So stock up on Facebook friends, even if they’re not near and dear to you – you’ll expand your view of the cosmos as you do it.

Layoff Watch: Day Two

2012-01-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

6:44 AM. Arrive at work to see lots and lots and lots of people milling about holding little packets from Human Resources. Not good.

6:47 AM. Arrive at my desk to see no one standing around waiting for me to arrive. That is good.

7:54 AM. Distracted by work (a good thing, right?) and forgot to think about this. That is also a good thing.

7:58 AM. Phone conversation with a co-worker: “It’s good to hear your voice. That means you’re still here.”

8:23 AM. Another phone conversation: “Oh, you’re here. That’s good.” And more work coming in. That’s even better.

8:25 AM. The phone calls are starting to remind me of Owen Lift from “Throw Momma From the Train”: “Mama! You’re alive! [Aside to a policeman] Old people. You have to reassure them.”

8:56 AM. A guy we work with closely just got laid off. I didn’t see him, but a co-worker did and said he was near tears. I can understand that.

9:08 AM. Advice from a co-worker also fearing the ax: “Don’t answer the phones. And hide.” Just speaking in general terms, of course. He hadn’t had any visions concerning me or anything.

9:57 AM. “All is quiet,” said the bird. “HOLY COW! A TALKING BIRD!” thought Peter.

10:52 AM. Just got the following email from my direct supervisor at North Wind (the company that subcontracts me to CWI): “Is everything still positive for you guys. Let me know if you've heard anything new.” I guess if my supervisor hasn’t heard anything, that’s good news. Unless he’s ordinarily out of the loop. This is so depressing. . .

11:31 AM. Eating a cookie.

12:49 PM. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

1:21 PM. Ugh. I’m not sure which is worse – the patina of doom that stains this week, or the fact that the heat in this building really doesn’t kick in until about 3 PM. I’m going to have to pick the doom. Though it is a chilly doom.

1:22 PM. Inevitable, this video is.

2:04 PM. Two more days of this? It’s going to drive me crazy.

2:18 PM. Unofficial reports are that we are in the clear. That would be good. The pessimist in me says to clench my buttocks at least until the close of business.

3:07 PM. Back to posting documents, since one of the guys who got it today did that for us. Not fun for him.

UPDATE: Layoffs are essentially over, and I still have a job. Thanks to all of you who prayed for me, and to all of you who paid your taxes so I can be gainfully employed. And thanks to those in DOE who suddenly realized that we were going to have to cut our work scope way too far in order to hit the budget numbers.

"I Have A Dream . . . "

2012-01-16T21:30:00.002-07:00

News from the Other Side

2012-01-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

I know it’s been more than five years since I left the news business, but I still think about it from time to time.

This story in particular got me to thinking about the news again, because it’s a story that affects me but from the other side – I’m not the one writing the news, I’m the one impacted by it.

As is often the case, those being impacted by the news know more about it than those reporting it. I know, for example, that the number being laid off is higher than what is reported here (still crossing my fingers I’m not one of them today). So as I read the story, I see the questions that the reporter missed, and the fact that not knowing the background to the story – or at least not reporting it here – is a hindrance to the reporter’s overall performance and the accuracy of the news being reported.

In the story, CWI mentions 133 people being laid off by the end of January. But from the inside, I recognize this as CWI talk – they’re talking direct employees only, not subcontractors and direct employees. That’s why the number of employees to be laid off in my mind is higher than that being reported. CWI here is telling the truth – but the reporter isn’t digging deep enough into the story to get the full picture. Yes, they are laying off X number of their own employees, but if the reporter talked with anyone else, she’d discover there are also X number of subcontract employees already laid off or soon to be dismissed. She allows for a rosier picture than the reality, which is too bad, because for those in the know, it hurts her credibility.

I’m sure I did the same thing as a reporter. So this solidifies in my mind the commandment that Reporters Shall Know their Beats. Granted, what’s likely going on here is that there are more general assignment reporters these days than beat reporters so they don’t have the inclination to specialize. I know I didn’t, even as a gar in Rexburg. That was my specialty, but I didn’t narrow it. Somewhat with BYU-Idaho, but that was about it. So yes, on my part, mistakes were made. Ah, hindsight.

Layoff Watch: Day One

2012-01-16T20:29:00.001-07:00

4:05 AM. This is the day. No weird layoff dreams involving Tony Randall, though I did have a repeat dream of the head lice currently making our lives an adventure chanting at me from the top of my head in the voice of Roz from Monsters, Inc.:

6:45 AM. Arrive at work. Card still works in the card reader. That is a good sign.

7:36 AM. Visibly startle when the new email chime sounds.

7:38 AM. Decide to hide in the bathroom for ten minutes to let the whole email scare thing blow over.

8 AM. That stupid song about Memphis is on the radio.

8:19 AM. A sudden upwelling of hope and relief. Don’t really know why.

8:43 AM. Return from posting documents in the ECC. Deathly quiet over in the OCB, but then again it’s been that way since the Great Confusion began just over a month ago. No one waiting at my desk for me when I get back. Relief.

8:44 AM. Eavesdropping on phone conversation concerning engineering group and layoffs. Speculation is that since subs were already let go, no CWI personnel will be impacted. As a sub, indignant at throwaway implication. But as a sub, also pleased to still be here. Seriously, though, SCC mentality exists here in full.

8:47 AM. If you ever get the feeling that I’m wasting too much time on this Layoff Watch, well, put yourself in my shoes. But right now, back to work!

8:50 AM. Eavesdropped phone conversation has now drifted on (ha!) to an impending blizzard heading our way. Must remind myself to batten down what hatches lay unbattened, and pat myself on the back for moving the camper to Grampa’s over the weekend.

9:24 AM. Return from second bathroom break of the day. As an old man, it’s my right to pee. A lot.

10:05 AM. Upwelling of hope and relief at 8:19 AM reinforced. For some reason. Maybe all those prayers that have been said. Many prayers. Was afraid that God was just going to say “Bust Everybody!” Just joking, of course.

10:23 AM. Heavy footfalls in the hallway make me cringe. But it’s just one of the analytical lab guys. Fears fading. CWI likes to do its layoffs in the AM.

10:32 AM. Looming blizzard is becoming much more of a worry than layoffs at this point. Another good sign.

10:57 AM. Heart attack. Phone call from an unknown number. Turned out to be from AMWTP concerning a document we’re working on. Heart may start beating again in a few minutes.

11:05 AM. Following conversation in the OCB while delivering documents:

Jerome Starks (SOM): Hey Brian, how’s it goin’?

Me: Pretty good.

Jerome: Yeah. We’re here.

Me: Yes, sir!

Also, a lab employee congratulated me for still being here in the cafeteria. Have to assume she’s talking about “here” as in having a job, not “here,” as in the cafeteria.

Life is good.

11:52 AM. Like Deccan Riobe from Terry Pratchett’s “Moving Pictures,” this is turning more into a chronology of my bathroom breaks. But I’m STILL HERE using the bathroom.

11:53 AM. Footsteps coming. And going.

1:05 PM. Another phone conversation. Periodic talk of layoffs. Nothing concrete. Nerves take a momentary jangle. It is eerily quiet here, though.

1:16 PM. Still eerie.

1:29 PM. Anxiety up a little. Rumor (damn them) has it that layoffs at the facilities will be spread through the week, rather than one day, one facility. That would break tradition from the past. Whistling past the graveyard.

1:34 PM. Boss says layoffs will continue throughout the week, and he got that from one of the higher-ups. So three more days of anxiety here. Not looking forward to that. Might reconsider hiding under my desk.

2:11 PM. Thought: Maybe less anxiety. There are many CWI complexes; they’ll work one a day, as was said earlier. Could still be some personnel shuffling, but if the ax doesn’t fall on RWMC’s day – today – chances of staying increase. So back to that roller-coaster euphoria. Wheeeeeee!

2:13 PM. Again, corporate communication is key. But they laid off one of the professional corporate communicators last week. So it goes.

2:15 PM. More slow, heavy footsteps. Another analytical lab employee. May have to get them bells.

2:37 PM. Vadinho on layoffs: “Don’t let them net me.”

3:01 PM. Trying in vain to overhear muffled layoff-related phone conversation involving my co-worker who last week said, among other things, “Well, you don’t have a mortgage right now, do you?” and “I hope you stay, because I don’t want to be here alone. We need two writers. [Long pause.] But, of course it could be me who goes . . .”

3:04 PM. Of course, I’m no better. Hearing that others have been laid off at RWMC today, my only thoughts: Well, they didn’t come get me. Selfish bit of scum that I am.

3:39 PM. During my fourth potty break of the day, I decided that if they come to lay me off, they’re going to have to chase me first. That’ll give me time to . . .

4:53 PM. Caught up in a document review (yay work!). Forgot to be stressed out about layoffs. Thus ends Layoff Watch Day One.

‘I’m Goin’ to Boise! Where’s A Map?’

2012-01-13T13:40:00.001-07:00

It’s almost officially official: We’re leaving Sugar City, bound for the mysterious burg of Ammon, Idaho.

To explain why: When we moved to Sugar City over ten years ago, we thought our current house was huge. Compared to the one we lived in before, it is rather big. But now with three kids rather than one, and heading into teenagerdom, we thought having a little bit more space would be nice.

We thought long and hard about adding on to our current house – but that presented some problems. First of all, the lot is narrow. Fine for adding an extra room or two, but we thought while we were adding on, we’d add a garage too. There’s no room for a garage on this lot.

So in early November, I dragged Michelle off to look at a “farmhouse,” as I called it, in the Salem area, north of Rexburg. It was spacious and cheap. That got her to thinking that maybe moving on would be a good idea.

That house sold a day or two after we looked at it. No matter. We had our house to sell. So shortly before Thanskgiving, we put it on the market. Had little interest until the week after Christmas break, when two different families came to look at it. The woman who is buying it left in tears – our agent said because the house “was so beautiful.” I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder, because we see its many, many flaws.

So we sold our house, after I spent Christmas break putting a tile floor in the kitchen.

This past week and weekend have been a flurry of house-looking. Two late nights after work, with the kids getting crankier and crankier. Then yesterday, as I was trying to work, I spent some time on the phone with the credit union and with the agent, signing papers to buy a house in Ammon, near Tiebreaker Elementary School. 540 Matchpoint drive, for those who want to drive by and throw eggs.

540 Matchpoint Drive

It’ll be nice to be back near home again for both of us – our families, with a few exceptions, are all in the Idaho Falls area. Things are looking good for us to be moved in towards the end of February.

Taking Social Too Far – Or Are They?

2012-01-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Since I’m an active social networker and partner in a tiny social network myself, I like to stay abreast of what’s going on in the social media world.

But like Farhad Manjoo over at Slate, I’m convinced this social thing can be taken a bit too far.

Manjoo is ranting about something I haven’t experienced yet: Google’s new “social search” feature which, by default, includes links and posts and babblings from your friends on Google+ for every search you do.

Since I have but few friends on Google+, I’ve not noticed the social interference yet. Manjoo has, and finds it maddening. Here’s the gist of what he says in his post:

I re-ran some of my old queries in two ways—first with Google’s new social-heavy service turned on, and then with it off. (Yes, thankfully, there’s a button to deactivate the new feature, which is turned on by default.) Among other things, I searched for Emo Philips, “hot mess,” Pakistani biryani, Mark Duplass, Dualit classic white toaster, Harold Camping, flourless chocolate cake, pardon pepper, child proofing, Jerry Brown taxes, Kia Soul, and Hawaii big island hotel. Several of these queries returned links that were shared by my friends, but not once did Google return a fantastic link on the social page that it didn’t also return on the non-social page. In most cases, the results were identical; in the few instances in which the social page returned additional links, those links weren’t what I was looking for.

If social search adds to the net benefit of searching, I’m all for it. But, if as Manjoo discovers, it’s not adding to the conversation, why bother?

I suppose I look at it this way: If I want information and advice from my social networks, I’ll pose questions on Facebook or Twitter. If I want general information or information I know isn’t likely to be found in abundance among our social network, I’m going to Google it.

There is some valuable crossover, however, that Manjoo may be missing.

Take, for example, this morning’s crisis: Head lice. My wife found head lice on two of our three kids, including the one who slept in our bed last night. She immediately went to her social network, via phone, to find out from others what they’ve done to combat the problem. She sent me to the Internets to find out supplemental information. Some of it is conflicting. Most of it, I’m sure, is valuable. In this instance, going social and going Google is valuable, because we hear from the experts via Google and we hear from the folks in the trenches, via our social network.

I’m not saying I want to consult my social network with every Google question I might have, but there are times when such in-the-trenches knowledge is far more valuable than what can be found via Googling. For instance, any plumbing-related question we might have goes to the plumber across the street, not to Google. If I notice someone in my social network has a vehicle like ours, I’m more likely to go to them with questions – “have you ever experienced X with your car before – before I’m going to those impenetrable automobile care forums online.

(This would work with Google social search if they included Facebook and Twitter results, rather than limiting social results to Google+, and if I had all of my social contacts on Facebook, rather than in a hodgepodge of sources from Facebook to Twitter to going out on the porch and shouting someone’s name.)

So how could social search be made smarter? Google’s gone one way by allowing users to turn it off or on. But it’s in the algorithm, rather than in a simple on-off switch, that social search could be made more intelligent. Google could train its algorithms to recognize when questions being asked or searches being undertaken are of the nature for which social answers would be an augmentation, not a hindrance. Google seems perfectly capable of sorting such algorithmic problems out, rather than turning social search by default on, like the sponsored links and such that I rarely click on.

Magic Santa Lice

2012-01-12T22:43:00.001-07:00

When your wife calls up at 8:24 am and asks how itchy you feel, you know it’s not a good thing.

We have head lice in the house.

My only comforting thought is that they might be Magic Santa Lice, but again I’m not sure that’s what’s going on.

I anticipate seeing lots of short hair and mounds of laundry when I get home tonight*. I’m actually going to request a bald head because after she posed the question, I began itching like mad. Psychological reaction, I know, but still. Yuck.

We’ve been warned that the schools are rampant with lice. Having lice is not a reflection on the personal hygiene of our children or the cleanliness of our home; it’s just an unfortunate occurrence.

So, any advice out there from people who’ve gone down this path?

*Very true. My hair -- so far, lice free -- is now also only poking 3/8 of an inch out of my scalp. Kind of like the bad missionary haircut I had in Tours.

The Hobbit and Mr. Deitch

2012-01-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

As cool as Gene Deitch's "Tom and Jerry" cartoons are, I have to think it was a good thing that this version of JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" never saw the light of day until now. The story is so altered. It's not the art that bothers me -- I realize this is a scratch film, used to show that perhaps those with the ideas could pull it off. It's nice '60s pop art. But they meddled with the story so much, it's disgusting.

Picked A Hell of a Time . . .

2012-01-10T21:32:00.003-07:00

(Note: I do not condone any of the activities Lloyd Bridges is trying to quit in this clip. Those who use drugs or jump out of control tower windows or pick their noses in church end up you-know-where.)

Even years tend to be pretty good for us, given our past track record, so I’m hoping that despite the whole Mayan calendar thing, 2012 turns out to be a pretty good year for us as well. Though it’s too early to tell, 2012 has all the auspices of being such a year, even with the employment turmoil I’m facing at the moment.

First: the turmoil. Still tumultuous, though we are now making steps to open up and dig in the new waste retrieval tent we finished late last year. That’s a bright spot in that it means not everyone will lose their jobs, just more than what was originally expected. I still have no idea whether or not I’ll be employed in two weeks or not. I am making inroads (I hope) with another local employer, though it appears if that pans out I’ll have to take a pay cut in order to get the job. I guess that’s better than not having a job at all. Right? RIGHT?!

On to the better news: After barely two months on the market, we’ve sold our house. The intention is to get one that’s slightly bigger – and by bigger we don’t mean ginormous, but one with an extra bedroom or two and a bit of property around it. We’ve been looking at homes in the 3,000 square foot range, with an acre or more. There seem to be plenty available, some at some pretty good prices that look relatively affordable. Bad news there is that there appear to be a lot of people out there looking at homes in this price range and configuration, so they’re going fast. We looked at one just before we listed our home in November, and it sold a day or two after that. So we’ll see what happens. We’re looking at everything from an art deco-themed fixer-upper in rural Bonneville County to one that’s way in the heck out in the boonies in Jefferson County, near Menan (OK, I’m the only one looking that that one, but it’s got possibilities, I think.) There’s also one in Ammon that I think we did some brick repair on many moons ago.

We looked at a few over the weekend, and are struggling to deal with real estate speak, or at least a general overselling of what’s out there. We looked at a remodeled farmhouse that had possibilities for rooms in the attic and basement until we got there and saw that there was no attic access and the basement is accessed through a trap door that leads to a room still occupied by a huge coal furnace. Another house in Idaho Falls inspired me to utter that famous Ghostbusters quote:

Oh, it wasn’t that bad. But it was filthy, owned by hoarders and home to a leaky water heater turning the basement to mush. And outside were a feedlot and a gravel pit. Yuck. Tawna, our agent, didn’t even ask us what we thought of that one – she just said as we left, “Okay, I’ve got more houses for you to look at.” Funny, that.

We’ll have to get serious over the next week or so and find something, because the lady who’s buying our house wants to close mid-February. We’ll see if that date sticks, and see how things go from here.

Comix Artists Take Note

2012-01-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

Though at times I think Scott Adams of Diblert fame is kind of a goober (sock puppeting certainly comes to mind), I have to admit that one of the things I admire most is that he’s allowed for the finest comic archive ever conceived by a comic strip artist.

I wanted, for example, to find two comic strips related to Dilbert’s company’s business plan being in complete disarray. Ordinarily, with comics like, well, any of them, I’d have to swim through years worth of archives if they’re offered online at all to find them. Not at Dilbert.com. I plugged “disarray” into their comics search engine and had the two comics pulled up in no time flat.

I don’t know if this comes through Adam’s genius, his clout in the industry letting him convince his publisher to offer all these goodies in an easily-searchable online database or if it’s something to do with the world ending in 2012, but I like it. Kudos to whomever came up with the idea.

Oh yeah. He’s got strips with “kudos” in them as well.

Older

2012-01-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

I am, like El Guapo, getting older.

I turned 40 today. Not that 40's all that bad. Though our oldest son Liam pointed out that since the average life expectancy of a man in North America is 80, so my life "is half over." A good laugh, of course. And not something I'd ever thought much about.

Perhaps it's all downhill from here?

Naw.

I'm not that worried about my mortality - the effects of finding out about my slightly elevated cholesterol level having worn off. I am walking a lot, I am trying to watch what I eat (usually as I'm shoveling it in) and figure since I don't smoke, don't drink, don't kiss no women, I ought to last for a while longer. Trying to remind myself of the things Ezra Taft Benson spoke about in his famous "digging our graves with our teeth" speech.

Brown Alert! Brown Alert! Evacuate the Lower Chambers!

2012-01-05T23:06:00.002-07:00

So we got a heartening, yet nerve-wracking memo from the higher-ups this week, viz:

I would like to update you on recent project changes. Based on competing funding demands in 2012, we received DOE direction to suspend work in some project areas. The suspension of work has resulted in reductions of force account personnel who were supporting work scope at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex and will affect workforce restructuring activities planned in January.

CWI has provided a preliminary impact analysis to DOE; however, final impacts have not yet been determined. I continue to work with DOE, the Idaho delegation, and others to find additional funding. I have meetings planned this week and next. I remain hopeful that our advocates will find supplemental funds that will allow us to continue the safe, efficient, quality cleanup work we have delivered over the past several years.

Again, I ask you not to speculate. We will not know the number of individuals who will be impacted by workforce restructuring until all meetings are held and work and staffing plans are finalized.

Remain diligent in your safety focus. I will update you as soon as new information is available.

In other words, clench your buttocks, folks.

I played hooky from work today so I could finish up the last details on our kitchen floor remodel, so I don't know what happened -- or didn't happen -- out at work today. I can assume that any bad news would filter through rather quickly, but then again you never really do know about bad news, do you? (My shaky theory is if I stay away from work for a while, they can't lay me off because technically I'm not there to get that little tap on the shoulder. Of course, this isn't a sustainable theory. Nor a very good one.)

On another front, I'm going to call a fellah tomorrow who might be able to help me get another job with another company. We'll see what happens. Details on that under wraps until, of course, I have something solid to report.

Until then: Brown Alert! Brown Alert!

Don't Worry, Just Wet Your Pants

2012-01-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

As is typical with cases like this, the time to worry has passed. It may indeed be time to panic.

But a rational panic. A pro-active panic. A Don’t-Worry-Be-Happy Panic.

Or at least a Bobby McFerrin-Falls-Down-the-Stairs Panic.

The chances that I’ll be unemployed in the next few weeks continue to soar. Just found out today (because I asked someone about the sudden lack of activity, not because anyone’s actually communicating) that we’ve got a $20 million budget shortfall going into the year and to make up for it the powers that be are pretty much considering scuttling any of our current workscope, at least at ARP. The money suck-hole that is IWTU will still get fundage because we’re contractually obliged to get that work done by the end of the year while at ARP, since we’re ahead of schedule and under budget we’ll be penalized since the scope of work under our current contract is completed.

I’m trying not to be bitter about this situation, but it is kind of comical in a way. As one of our engineers said today, it’s like we’re being congratulated for being ahead and under budget by losing our jobs. And with the layoff of some of our design engineers yesterday, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that most of the rumors that we’re hearing are going to come true and as the ol’ lady in “Ernest Scared Stupid” says, ‘Them that dies will be the lucky ones.’

And then again it may all go away and the rumors we’re hearing of a 600-body layoff mid-January may not come to pass. Then again, maybe it will.

So HELLLLLLLLLLP!

Why We Drill

2012-01-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

An interim report on the emergency response at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011 9.0 earthquake and tsunami paints a picture of poor human performance and emergency response conduct in the hours following the twin disaster that left four damaged reactors at the facility and spread radiation across a fair amount of the neighboring Japanese countryside.

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat offers a good summary of highlights from the 507-page report here. A full summary can be read here.

As I read it, I’m reminded why we drill, drill, drill, and drill in emergency response at the facility where I work. (Where I work is a waste dump, we have no reactors but are still cautious about safety and emergency response.) We see time and again as we drill where our human performance falls short and where we need to improve our ability to respond under pressure and in a timely fashion. We also see with each drill where our emergency planning may be lax and how we can fix it.

Now, I can’t imagine trying to respond to a disaster of the Fukishima-Daiichi magnitude, with an earthquake, tsunami and power outage all occurring near simultaneously. But I can also clearly see the necessity for planning a response to such events, given Japan’s proclivity to earthquakes, the potential for tsunami and the resultant consequence of having backup electrical generation systems washed away in a tsunami. Simply imagining that a disaster won’t happen doesn’t mean it won’t – you have to prepare for the worst. So the next time we have an outlandish emergency response scenario – say a plane crashing into one of our waste retrieval tents – I’ll remember this and think, well, sure it’s far beyond the worst we expect. Maybe that’s a good thing we’re drilling on that.

My thinking resembles one of the conclusions from the summary report:

It cannot be denied that viewpoint of looking at a whole picture of an accident was not adequately reflected in nuclear disaster prevention program in the past. The nuclear disaster prevention program had serious shortfalls. It cannot be excused that the nuclear accidents could not be managed because of an extraordinary situation that the tsunamis exceeded the assumption.

The Investigation Committee is convinced of the need of paradigm shift in the basic principles of disaster prevention programs for such a huge system, which may result in serious damage once it has an accident.

(The language is a little stilted; I’m assuming it’s just been translated poorly from Japanese to English, but the message gets through.)

LEGO Imbroglio

2012-01-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

So LEGO, it appears, has come out with sets now specifically targeting girls. Of course, there are people who take offense at this. Witness Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s piece in TIME Magazine.

I don’t disagree with her when she says that the LEGO world, as far as minifigures and marketing goes, is overwhelmingly male-oriented.

But I have a major quibble with this bit of her screed:

I have also been more than a little disheartened to see his younger sister initially drawn to our buckets of expensive plastic only to lose interest. I can’t say I blame her. I suspect that girls don’t like to play with today’s LEGOs because they so rarely see themselves represented in the minifigs, and because the events being reenacted — battles to the death, alien attacks — are unappealingly violent. (That and the fact that LEGO is routinely shelved in the “boy” section of the toy department in stores.)

I have two boys and a girl. We also have plenty of LEGOs in the house. And while it is true that my daughter has noticed that the majority of minifigures offered by LEGO are male, we have made efforts – and found it easy to do so – to find sets that include female figures, from Indiana Jones- and Harry Potter-themed sets to more generic pirate and LEGO City sets. Gender equity exists in the LEGO world, when you choose to look for it.

The latter part of Davis Konigsberg’s argument is hogwash, because my kids – and I suspect most kids are like this – liken their toys and the adventures they place them in to their own life experiences, not necessarily the marketing aims companies set for them.

A few days ago our daughter and our youngest boy were playing with their LEGOs while I washed dishes in the kitchen (not because I’m engendering a gender-bending role mixture in a progressive household, but because the dishes needed to be done). They had their Harry Potter and Star Wars minifigures engaging in the climactic and ultimately violent battle of a simple domestic scene, in which they’d go for a drive and someone would get hurt not because they liked the violence but because they wanted something for their Star Wars medical droids to do.

Same goes on with the Barbies and the GI Joes in the house. There are no epic gun battles in which Barbie is excluded or encouraged to participate as she wears her pink camo uniform with matching flower-bedecked Uzi. Just a batch of simple domesticity in which they all pile into their pink Barbie motor home or follow along in the purple convertible to go on a picnic or surf or whatever the hell else Barbies and GI Joes do when they go out together. The only distinction we have to be careful to make when they play is that the GI Joes are not dolls, they are action figures. Other than that, there are no gender-specific rules enforced.

I’m happy to see LEGO marketing towards girls, and I have seen our daughter ogling the girl-friendly LEGO displays at our local Wal-Mart. But I’m nowhere near ready to sign an anti-LEGO petition as Davis Koningsberg offers, nor am I overly concerned that the LEGOs offered to girls are marketed in a way that may pander to a stereotypical feminine meme. I’m just worried that they’ve eliminated the minifigures in favor of little dolls that look human and not like this:

That’s just as wrong when Fisher-Price stopped making their people look like this:

I guess what I’m getting at is this: Generally, when I see kids playing, I don’t necessarily see them playing with toys as the manufacturer markets them. Our daughter doesn’t play with Barbie dolls in a way that makes them stereotypically female or in a way that makes her play more progressive in the gender sense. She plays with them because she likes them. Same with the GI Joes. Same with the LEGOs. I think as long as parents don’t get all wound up over stereotyping and progressiveness (or conservatism, see, I let my boys play with dolls) and just let kids play, they’ll figure things out.

Read in 2011

2012-01-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

So. Fell 50 pages short of my 2011 reading goal -- had hoped to read 1,000 pages a month, but didn't quite make it there. Got distracted a lot, especially as the year went on. December was particularly dismal.

But life does go on, and there are still plenty of interesting books to read.

Here's what I read in 2011:

1066 and all That, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman. 116 pages.
5,000 Year Leap, The; by W. Cleon Skousen. 338 pages.
Big Nate: In A Class By Himself, by Lincoln Pierce. 214 pages.
Book of Mormon, The; Translated by Joseph Smith Jr. 541 pages.
Bullwhip Griffin, by Sid Fleischman. 193 pages.
Case of the Snowbound Spy, The; by E.W. Hildick. 132 pages.
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in A Connected Age, by Clay Shirky. 242 pages.
Consolation of Philosophy, The, by Boethius (Translated by V.E. Watts). 188 pages.
Coyote V. Acme, by Ian Frasier.118 pages.
Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi. 262 pages.
Dave Barry Turns 50, by Dave Barry (natch). 219 pages.
Dark Sun, the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. 731 pages.
Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, by Jeff Kinney. 214 pages.
Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, by Jeff Kinney. 224 pages.
FDR My Boss, by Grace Tully. 384 pages.
Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett. 248 pages.
Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat. 255 pages.
Halloween Tree, The; by Ray Bradbury. 145 pages.
Hitler's Social Revolution, by David Schoenbaum. 324 pages.
Hobbit, The; by JRR Tolkien. 290 pages.
How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space? by William R. Pogue, Astronaut. 178 pages.
How to Write, by Richard Rhodes. 229 pages.
I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett. 355 pages.
I Think, M. Kip Hartvigsen and Suzette Gee, Ed, 221 pages.
Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett. 295 pages.
Letting Go of the Words, by Janice Redish. 363 pages.
Melba the Mummy, by Ivy Ruckman. 135 pages.
Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett. 254 pages.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie. 224 pages.
Perloo the Bold, by Avi. 225 pages.
Recres du Petit Nicholas, Les; by J.J. Sempe. 181 pages.
Rumpole Rests His Case, by John Mortimer. 211 pages,
Secrets of Successful Fiction, by Robert Newton Peck. 115 pages.
Silmarillion, The, by J.R.R. Tolkien. 442 pages.
Snuff, by Terry Pratchett. 398 pages.
Song of Roland, The; translated by Dorothy Sayers. 206 pages.
This Book Will Change Your Dog's Life, by Charles di Bonio. 224 pages.
Treasury of Laughter, The; edited by Louis Untermeyer. 712 pages.
Wall and the Wing, The; by Laura Ruby. 328 pages.
Whoppers: Tall Tales and Other Lies, by Alvin Schwartz. 128 pages.
Why do Clocks Run Clockwise, and other Imponderables, by David Feldman. 251 pages.
Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. 272 pages.
Winston's War, by Max Hastings. 555 pages.
Yeager, by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos. 331 pages.

Page total: 11,950.

What's my favorite read of the year? Too many to narrow it down. I rarely read a book I don't like -- I started a few this year that I just couldn't finish because the writing style or the subject matter were just too offensive. And as people continue to smuggle books into my house baked inside loaves of bread, I have little choice but to continue reading in 2012.

Goal this year? Well, I've got a massively thick biography of Sinclair Lewis sitting on my shelf that needs a read. Also have a collection of biographical sketches of John Steinbeck that I need to read. And I've got at least two books I need to read so I can blog about them. More on those later.

Teaching Five-Year-Olds

2012-01-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

I started my third year in Primary today, moving down the ladder from the oldest group (10-11 years old) to one of the youngest: Five-year-olds.

My wife, and my teaching material, warned me that they have short attention spans. They were right. Right to the point that a few of these kids, bless them, didn't have enough of an attention span to finish making a drawing, let alone find the crayons they needed to do so. They're cute, they're well-behaved (well, I think they were scared of me, a feeling that I'm sure won't last) and they're pretty fun kids. But I definitely have to change my teaching approach, plan more hands-on activities -- at least two per class -- and make the lessons mini-lessons so I have enough time to get my point across but not much beyond that. They're also only emerging in literacy, so my practice of having the kids read the scriptures as part of the lesson will have go out the window.

My cheese has moved. Better be off to find it.

And, for what it's worth, here's the picture I drew during picture time. We were drawing things that make me happy. I drew a camping scene. Note it's not a getting ready for camping scene, just a camping scene. Getting ready to camp stresses me the heck out.

2011, Buh-Bye!

2011-12-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

A Cheer-Up from My Kids' Refrigerator

2011-12-29T22:53:00.001-07:00

You know, there are times I don't like to go to church myself, and, ironically, mostly it's when our 11-year-old isn't happy to be there either. So to cheer us both up, I draw silly little pictures. Here's the batch from Christmas Day.

This May Not End Well

2011-12-28T19:59:00.001-07:00

Okay. I know at least one person who is going to chuckle at this, but I'm enjoying my Kindle Fire.

I'm typing this blog entry on my Kindle now. Well, pecking. Text input is still tablet computing's Achilles heel, especially for a touch typist like me. My wife ~~git~~ got a ~~Bluetiith~~ Bluetooth keyboard for her iPad, and that seems to work well, though it's s not a full keyboard.

Another quibble: Apple's got the cut and paste and moving to text locations down better than Amazon. That's probably my fault; I'm just getting used to how Amazon does things.

So far, however, I think the Fire holds its own pretty well against the iPad. It's s certainly easier to hold. I can one-hand the Fire, can't do that with the iPad.

Lights, Please?

2011-12-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

Die, Bookstores, Die, Part II

2011-12-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Slate’s Farhad Manjoo took a righteous drubbing over the past few weeks after he suggested online book-seller Amazon was eating independent bookstores’ lunch. He’s back now, thankfully unrepentant.

Here’s the best part of his new screed:

Many defenders of bookstores countered that by focusing on dollars and cents, I’d missed the whole point of these establishments. Bookstores, it turns out, don’t primarily exist to sell books—instead, they’re more like bars for readers. “Bookstores provide a space to meet friends, cruise for a date, and hide out when you have nothing to do on a Saturday night,” Will Doig wrote at Salon. I suspect that many bookstore lovers agree with Doig, which is exactly why many of these shops are going out of business. Bars can survive because alcohol is an extremely profitable good. Books aren’t—so if you think of your favorite bookstore as a comfortable spot to find well-read potential mates rather than as a place for commerce, you’re not helping its owner.

His solution? Brick-and-mortar stores need to embrace smartphone technology (he apparently forgets that while smartphones are ubiquitous, not everyone has one. I don’t; I’m not willing to shell out the cash for a monthly data plan, let alone the cell phone plan the damn things come shackled with). He suggests bookstores create their own apps to help their customers find books through recommendations or simply educate staff on Amazon’s endless pit of reviews to help customers find books they might like to read.

I guess I’m not as tech-heavy as Manjoo would have me be. The sole reason I like bookstores is that the shopping there is visceral; I can feel the books, handle them, read the blurbs and see what might be on the next shelf without having to sort through a bunch of shill reviews or reviews by folks intent on panning everything in the universe. And I have to confess that one of the reasons I like shopping in thrift stores for used books is that sometimes there’s a bonus inside the books I buy: odd bookmarks, autographs, etc. All I get at bookstores is bookstore propaganda.

So what would I look for in a book store app? Nothing. I doubt I’d use one. I’m just not that shackled to technology.

Entry Two: The Orderville Pants Rebellion (Excerpt)

2011-12-19T21:35:00.003-07:00

The little boy ran out of the twilight, stomping clouds of dust from the road.

“Scoot ‘em, Pa!” he yelled as he ran. “Scoot ‘em, Pa!”

He ran at random down the road, weaving, bouncing from one side of the street to the other, here turning a block, there returning, darting down a side street, reappearing on the main, darting again, all the time calling “Scoot ‘em, Pa!”

The sunset, a smear of light behind the hills, brighter at the end of the long valley.

As the boy passed, calling, there were other footfalls. Quieter, heavier footfalls also stomping the dust from the road. Men. Men with bundles, leaving homes quietly, latching gates. Men with dark lanterns, some running, some walking swiftly, walking, running from the town, up to the canyon, up to the canyon called Skutumpah.

Two men rode into the town.

“You hear it, right, Thomas?” one asked the other.

At the other end of the tiny town, the voice still shrilled in the darkness: “Scoot ‘em, Pa!”

“Damn,” the other said. A badge on his lapel caught a bit of moonlight.

“They run like rats,” the first said. “Ever chased them?”

“Yeah,” the other said. “Doesn’t do much good. They know the land here better than we ever could. Chased one up the canyon a few weeks ago. Was on horseback and lost him in a stand of brush you couldn’t hide your mustache in.”

I leaned against the side of the Fort, in shadow provided by the roof and rain barrels. The two men sat on their horses not thirty feet from me. From where I stood I could see two, no, three, men of the order also hiding in shadows. Priddy Meeks hunched on the porch of the Big House. President Chamberlain watched the Big House – his house, home to his five wives – from the Relief Society Hall. Why he had not fled I could not know – but the call had been late in coming. And Alma Porter lay in the shadows near his forge, and from the smell of it, his leather apron was beginning to char.

“Ready here, Amos.”

That was HK – H. Kimball Leithead, my best friend in the priesthood and in devilry. We blessed the Sacrament on Sundays and the rest of the week, well, did things. That tonight’s thing should involve white robes we made from linen we stole from the laundry and a few pounds of gunpowder probably should tell you something about the things we did.

I pulled a robe from my vest, quickly put it on and clambered to the top of a barrel of flour HK and I had moved to the square a half hour before the marshals rode into town. The marshal with the mustache must have heard my feet scrape the barrel as I climbed it, because he turned to look at me about half a second before HK set off the first pile of gunpowder.

“Holy, holy God,” I shouted” -- it would have been better had my voice not cracked, but the marshals didn’t seem to notice – “we believe that thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy!”

More gunpowder and the marshals’ horses were jumping in panic. They tried to rein them, but the noise HK and I were making grew worse.

More gunpowder and there was HK and a few of the other boys he’d been able to round up, all clad in white robes, all parroting my speech.

“Holy God, we believe that thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by the wrath down to hell; for which holiness, O God, we thank thee!” I shouted. My acolytes intoned my words.

“Hell’s bells!” the marshal with the mustache shouted as his horse whinnied and pranced, backing slowly out of the square. “Thomas, we –“

Marshal Thomas’ horse had already bolted. The marshal with the mustache wheeled his horse around and they pounded out of the square.

“Amos,” HK said.

“Wait, HK, wait until we know they’re gone!”

“Amos!”

“Shut up, HK!”

Someone pushed me violently from behind. I picked myself up only to be dragged across the square by HK and another boy in a white robe as the rest of them scattered.

An explosion behind us rattled windows.

I turned to look.

The barrel I had been standing on was shattered in pieces, most of them burning.

“Sorry, Amos,” HK said. “That last bit of gunpowder caught the barrel on fire. Flour inside it blew up.”

“Fire! Fire!”

President Chamberlain and Priddy Meeks appeared in the square with buckets. They doused some flames, calling “fire!” all the while, and soon others came with buckets, forming a line from the well to the square, dousing flames. A few of those with buckets, I noticed, had white robes stuffed into the backs of their trousers.

I still had my white robe on when President Chamberlain stomped up and ducked me with a bucket of water.

“Amos Cox,” he said, “That was a foolish thing to do. And nigh on blasphemous! The Rameumptom speech! Amos, if those marshals knew the rest of it, why, they’d think we’re more devils than they think already!”

I smiled despite his anger, despite the water dripping from my hair.

“They’ll tale more wild tales, down in Kanab! ‘Those wild Mormons in Orderville, they’re the worst of the bunch! Polygamists and devil-worshippers besides!’” President Chamberlain wailed.

“Don’t they say that already?” I asked.

President Chamberlain sucked in a great breath of air and his face grew even redder. Then he expelled his breath and a smile cracked the corners of his round face. “I suppose they do,” he said. Then laughed, slapping me on the back. “Yes, I suppose they do.”

Entry One: Hermit of Iapetus (Excerpt)

2011-12-19T21:30:00.001-07:00

I have stopped going to the Alamo.

The Alamo: A slab of rock perhaps left over from an asteroid strike, perhaps popped out of the moon’s surface like an enormous green-grey zit. Blockish, with dark portholes and a roundish peak. Ice and dust sublime down its surface, creeping pillars dribble like candle-wax. It is a startling sight on the regio, standing out in the blight, where else on Iapetus there are craters and dust and mountains and crunchy crystals of ice.

But the song follows me. The song follows me. A song of old San Antone . . .

Deep within my heart lies a melody,
A song of old San Antone.
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
Beneath the stars, all alone.

Well it was there I found, beside the Alamo,
Enchantments strange as the blue up above.
For that moonlit pass, that only he would know,
Still hears my broken song of love.

Enchantments strange as the black up above. As Patsy sings, they come over the horizon. The squirrels in cowboy hats, riding saddled steers, their horns wider than the arc of Saturn’s rings, in the black up above. They pour over the horizon, whistling at their mounts, pulling on the reins, pirouetting and dancing beneath the Saturn-shine. When they see me, they tip their diminutive ten-gallon hats. And wink. And when the steers defecate, their dung leaves fresh craters on the blasted soil.

Moon in all your splendor, known only to my heart,
Call back my rose, rose of San Antone.

Cacti spring from the dung-craters and their needles grow longer than the steers’ horns, longer than the great horn in the black sky up above. They are thick, ghastly things, yet the steer rub against them.

They do not pop.

They inflate, and soon the sky is filled with steer satellites, each mounted by a ten-gallon-hatted squirrel, riding rodeo-style, as their mounts careen and buck and cavort and drop more bombs, more bombs, to the surface, where the cacti blossom into roses.

Broken song, empty words I know,
Still live in my heart all alone.
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo,
And rose, my rose of San Antone.

Now the steers are dancing and the squirrels are screaming in delight as the rodeo numbers on their backs flap in zero-gravity. Occasionally, one of the squirrels loses its grip and flies off into the black, drifting among the other steers and still-riding squirrels to float across the face of Saturn, to occult the stars shining above, to eclipse the sun to cast their furry shadows on the surface of the moon where the Alamo lies, slowly melting, slowly melting.

But it is not until the aardvarks appear over the horizon, somberly pushing their handcarts, that I concede I might possibly be mad.

In their carts, no provisions. But pump-organs, grandfather clocks, cook-stoves and other great hunks of carpentry and iron-mongery that my ancestors bore over the plains to bring joy and warmth and time to their pioneer homes in the wastes of Utah and the cold of Wyoming and the sagebrush of Idaho. The aardvarks – they sing, and lustily, their eyes proud, their armor clattering, their claws wrapped around the handcart pull bars.

They sing as the squirrels on their cows float above:

We’ll find the place which God for us prepared
Far away, in the west.
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid
There the Saints will be blessed
We’ll make the air with music ring
Shout praises to our God and king
Above the rest, these words we’ll tell:
All is well, all is well.

They waddle like ducks, the lean forward like old men walking. Never fast in their march, but never ceasing. Over the horizon, they swarm like a flood, those behind never following in the tracks of the others. Foxes leap into the carts to play the pump-organs. Coyotes leap into the carts and strum the grandfather clocks like cellos. The song of the aardvarks and the foxes and the coyotes melt together with the song of the squirrels and the roses on the cacti sing along.

The roses on the cacti sing along.

They sing along.

They sing along.

Broken song, empty words I know,
We’ll find the place which God for us prepared
Still live in my heart all alone.
Far away, in the west.
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid
And rose, my rose of San Antone.
There the Saints will be blessed.

I step back so I do not interrupt their revels. Amusement is spare on Iapetus; I have to let it come when it is willing. It is as the prophet Jacob wrote: Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy. And joy is watching a man watching the squirrels chase their untethered mounts through the starlit sky as the aardvarks toil and sing below, leaving handcart tracks in the virgin soil, howling, howling and barking with the foxes and coyotes as they sing and bay at the moon-like thing cradled in the arms of its rings above, above, above.

And rose, my rose of San Antone
There the Saints will be blessed.

Flirting with the ‘Mormon’ Label

2011-12-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

Part of me is almost ashamed to admit this: I’m two-thirds of my way to having three pieces ready to submit to a Mormon-themed literary contest.

Why the shame?

Well, read any Mormon lit lately?

So it’s not the label. Maybe it’s not the label. I’m treading on eggs here. I guess some of it is the subject matter. Poetry is fun and all, but it’s a literary dead end. Close your eyes and spit and you’ll soil a Mormon poet, albeit probably not a very good one. I fit in that category, Mormon poems or not.

Novelists don’t tend to fare that much better. But that’s what I’m most interested in, so that’s where I’m going.

Two entries so far for Mormon Artist’s Mormon Lit Blitz. I believe my writing to be up to par with the writing that’s winning the contests. But it’s the genre, the subject matter, the approach – not the writing itself – that sinks or swims you in this business, Mormon lit or not. But this is a niche way, I suppose, to get on the radar, so I’m going to try it.

So, entries here and on my writing blog where you can read even more of my banalities, soon.

A New Project

2011-12-17T23:36:00.001-07:00

So I'm researching a new novel.

I should be continuing the Hermit of Iapetus, but I got a feather in my ear about another book I got the germ for earlier this year: The Orderville Pants Rebellion.

This one focuses on a true story that took place in Orderville, Utah, in the early 1880s. Orderville, of course, is where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tried living the United Order, in which everyone held all their property in common and all received the same wage no matter what kind of work they did. Pioneer Communism, in other words. The pants rebellion comes about when a young man decides he can't wait for his pants to wear out before he gets a new, more fashionable pair and thus takes wool to the market to buy a new pair of pants.

I've been doing some reading of pioneer journals and other documents on the period and it's pretty fascinating. A lot of fodder for a good historical fiction novel, which I'll orient towards young adults, along the lines of Lloyd Alexander's books. I think this is a good niche for me.

Learnt some interesting tidbits:

Those who joined the order were re-baptized.
At the communal commissary, it was the men who baked the bread and bottled the fruit.
Only kindergarten-age kids went to school. The rest worked.
Side jobs were discouraged -- unless all the proceeds were given to the Order.
Pride did them in.
They moved about, leaving behind malcontents just like the Nephites did.

Pretty interesting stuff. Should make for a fun book.

I Just Remember Me Dad . . .

2011-12-16T19:08:00.003-07:00

Count Your Blessings: One, Two, Now I'm Done . . .

2011-12-16T17:16:00.001-07:00

Not appreciated for what I know.

Spent a good portion of the day feeling sorry for myself.

Found out today, for example, that I won't be considered for a job I applied for at BYU-Idaho, nor was I picked for a job at AMWTP. Kind of a double-whammy on a day when I'm already feeling a bit down and nervous because the company I work for is laying off technical writers in January.

How did Dad do it, I wondered. Then the thought came to me: Like he always did: Head down and hands busy.

I know he went through a bad patch when I was a kid, because suddenly he was gone a lot, laying brick in the likes of Nevada and California because there were few to lay in our own neck of the woods. He also played with driving a truck for a living, but quickly found out he didn't much like that. Yet we always had money in the house. I don't know how much, because as a kid you never get told these things. You hear whispered conversations and overhear things and sometimes pick up on the worry, but Mom and Dad just turn around and say, "We're just discussing things, and you figure, well, if they're talking about it, they're talking about it so we must be doing OK." They never tell you because they don't want you to worry, not that you're really smart or aware enough to worry anyway.

So I guess what happens happens. That's what God keeps telling me. Also keeps reminding me that my patriarchal blessing says I'll always be able to provide for my wife and family. That's of some comfort. But I guess I need to bolster my faith.

Die, Bookstores, Die

2011-12-15T21:33:00.001-07:00

Yes, Occupy Amazon. Because no one is original any more.

Here’s a little follow-up to a little news item I placed on my Facebook page earlier this week, in which Slate’s Farhad Manjoo righteously slams the illogic of supporting independent bookstores over buying books from Internet behemoth and serial tax-dodger Amazon.com.

First, my little list of caveats:

I buy lots of books. Way too many books. And what books I don’t buy get sent to me by friends and family, or are somehow baked inside loaves of bread and smuggled into my house. But here’s the deal: Buying a new book is a rarity for me.

I’ll tell you why: Expense. New books are flat out expensive.

I am an aspiring author. I want to write books that people want to read. I am also a realist who knows that the chances of me getting rich off the books I write is slim. So if I had the opportunity, say, to publish an ebook (I’m looking forward to learning over my wife’s shoulders this next year as she takes a masters class on ebooks from Utah State University in which the class itself will write and publish an ebook) I’d do it in a heartbeat, not worrying about making scads of money.

So where do I get most of my books?

Not from Amazon.com. Nor from the local brick-and-mortar bookstores, independent or not.

I get them from thrift stores. I can go into Deseret Industries, say, and buy a bag of books for less than $10, and add them to the furiously-growing piles of unread reading matter I have at home.

I find no romance in physical book stores. They are, in fact, a hindrance, not a help, in adding to my collection of books. Manjoo illustrates a bit of why here:

Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?

He adds:

What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of bookstore cultists like [novelist Richard] Russo, especially when they argue that readers who spurn indies are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most local bookstores. Unlike a farmers’ market, which connects you with the people who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your house, an independent bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community. Sure, every local bookstore promotes local authors, but its bread and butter is the same stuff that Amazon sells—mass-manufactured goods whose intellectual property was produced by one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan. It doesn’t make a difference whether you buy Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs at City Lights, Powell’s, Politics & Prose, or Amazon—it’s the same book everywhere.

I don’t buy a book because it’s sold at a twee little shop around the corner, or at a discounted, mailed-to-me-free price from Amazon. I buy a book because it interests me. And I’ve grown so accustomed to sorting through the eclectic detritus of books discarded by local readers (who tend to read a lot of romance novels and Rush Limbaugh and Jan Karon and whatever the latest book was from the community-we’ll-read-a-boring-book month. Sorting through the shelves of the DI looking for a hidden treasure (I’ve got an autographed copy of Ivy Ruckman’s “Melba the Brain,” for which I paid $1; try getting it for that anywhere else) that visiting a bricks-and-mortar store or trolling Amazon just doesn’t attract me.

And the indie bookstore tirades against Amazon’s efforts to publish a mobile phone app to help them comparison shop? Please. Get a new hobby. Typical is this screed from Betsy Burton, indie book seller writing in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Urging our community members to spy on us? Paying them to do so? Isn’t it bad enough that in addition to supporting a bricks-and-mortar establishment and being active and actively contributing members of the community, we have trouble competing against Amazon because they don’t have to collect sales tax and we do? This gives them a grossly unfair 10 percent advantage off the top (a practice that we hope our legislators address). Add to this insult the injury of corporate spying and it seems our task is insurmountable.

But here’s where community comes into play. Have our customers come into our store and clicked pictures of our inventory? No. Have strangers? No. Happily, thankfully, we haven’t seen a single person engaged in corporate espionage in The King’s English.

Why? Because of community. Because everyone understands that we all live here together, all contribute together to this city we all love. They understand that engaging in shady corporate tactics to save a buck or two in the long run hurts the place they live.

Betsy, people have comparison-price shopped before Amazon put their app out. Other stores have price-matched before Amazon came up with the idea. If I can find a book for a less expensive price at The King’s English, you bet your boots I’ll buy it from you. But you know what? I never will. Because you can’t beat the DI’s prices. Or selection, for that matter.

And community? Barf bag. You’ve obviously never shopped the Rexburg, Idaho, Deseret Industries, where I can see the same people perusing the bookshelves on a weekly basis. And you want community? I found a copy of C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” while chatting with a fellow book-browser about the thrill of the hunt as we picked through a gigantic crate of books at an army surplus warehouse in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The book cost me a paltry 50 cents – available by itself for $16 at your store, Betsy, or in the Space Trilogy collection (not on shelves, available for special order) for $15.75. Tell me, which one should I buy?

Glad I bought the one at the surplus warehouse. I got a great read, met an interesting fellow buying lots of used textbooks, and didn’t have to step foot in yer snooty little store.

So, Ivy Ruckman’s Melba the Brain at The Kings English? No.

John Christopher’s The Guardians? No.

Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb? Yes. For $21. Special order. I got mine for $2 at a Catholic thrift store in Jackson, Wyoming.

I don’t dislike bookstores. Or Amazon.com, for that matter. What I do enjoy is the thrill of the book hunt – and knowing if I carry a stack of books to the register, I’m out less than $10 for a good pile o’ readin’, not $50 or more because I indulged in the “community” of the shop around the corner while enjoying the community of used-book scroungers I can find just about anywhere.

Pinning Hopes to A Falling Star?

2011-12-13T20:25:00.001-07:00

I was pretty jazzed, I’ll have to admit, a few months ago when I submitted a resume to Areva, the French company planning to build a $3 billion uranium enrichment plant near Idaho Falls.

But now I’m glad nothing came of it – the company announced today that while design of the plant will move forward, construction is suspended indefinitely.

Not good news, obviously.

There’s a lot of spin going on. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is saying the situation isn’t that dire and that Areva is still retaining the 300-some engineering and design jobs already in place, fully intending to fund them through 2012. That’s good news.

Still, it remains to be seen what will happen with the plant as time goes on. Dan Yurman over at Idaho Samizdat does a much better job explaining it all than I ever could. Read his post.

Areva itself has a spin on the project that is rosier than even what the state is saying:

EREF is a solid project. We received our construction license from the NRC in October. We currently have approval for a conditional loan guarantee. The U.S. enrichment market is strong and is expected to grow. We have contracts in place for a significant amount of the output from this facility. In summary, we have a sound project, a proven technology, an NRC license, and off-take contracts with investment-rated customers. We are confident that capital solutions will be found in a timely manner.

What do we need to move forward? We need the $2 billion loan guarantee from DOE and solutions to reduce our near-term capital expenditures.

Also is important to note that the Areva plant is oriented towards the American market, and that events in Japan (and, presumably, Germany) aren’t having in impact on Eagle Rock plans. That’s comforting.

The job thing on a micro level isn’t frustrating to me. What’s frustrating is that eastern Idaho needs to build its technological and industrial base to provide more opportunities for the people who want to live here. I spent a frustrating year underemployed, and am facing a few rounds of layoffs next year starting in January. Having Areva here would be a good addition to the local economy, and act as a magnet for other tech- and nuclear-oriented jobs, for which we have tons of local expertise and experience.

I’m hopeful that as the economy brightens, things will look better. But at the same time given Germany’s pending exit from the nuclear power industry and France’s reconsidering of the industry, I don’t know what’s likely to happen. So perhaps pinning our economic hopes on nuclear isn’t the best thing to do after all. Still, Areva’s presence here would add cachet to the area’s small but growing alternative energy sector.

Another Anne Elk Idea

2011-12-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

Inspiration struck this morning: PoopMob.com.

It actually started here, with a silly idea called cashmob, in which Twittered or beFacebooked people organize themselves through a set of convoluted rules to do something that's actually rather simple: Spend money at locally-owned businesses.

It is, of course, at its roots a sensible idea. But it's in the rules that things go crazy.

One rule: The business you patronize has to be within a block of a bar. No exceptions. Because, of course, the social aspect of cashmob is that once you've spent your $20 (or whatever you want; the rules are pretty lax there) you have to go out for celebratory drinks to congratulate each other for spending your money at a soulless, locally-owned establishment rather than a soulless corporate-owned behemoth, neverminding that what you buy at the local store costs probably twice as much as any other place you might want to visit. Because everything has to be social these days. Even your self-righteousness.

So in comes the idea for PoopMob.com. Here's the setup:

We all know how hard it is to find clean public restrooms. So with PoopMob.com, one of our fellow Poopers indicates when he or she has discovered a quality establishment. One week prior to the PoopMob, we coordinate our efforts. Here are the rest of the rules:

1) At least an hour before the Poop Mob, consume vast quantities of your favorite beverage.
2) At least six to eight hours before the Poop Mob, eat lots of high-fiber foods.

Those rules, obviously, will help you be supercharged for the Poop Mob. More rules:

3) The restroom to be used for the Poop Mob must be a public restroom in a place that expects a lot of public use (in other words, not at one of these tetchy places where there's a militant sign up somewhere that says "Restrooms for use of customers only." Exceptions will be granted, of course, if the Poop Mob, in turn, patronizes the business after the Poop Mob is finished. One negative word from the proprietor, however, will negate any shopping at said establishment.
4) Establishments not in the public domain will NOT be warned beforehand.
5) No one-ply paper allowed.
6) If the restroom proposed for the Poop Mob is found to be disgusting by the first few Poopers to enter, the Pooper who suggested the location will be ejected from Poop Mob.
7) After the Poop Mob is finished, there shall be pie.
8) I mentioned the one-ply paper, right?

If you're interested in joining, drop me a line.

'Great Mother Machree, I Think I'm Gonna Die!'

2011-12-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

But of course it was old age, not shaving cream in his toothpaste, that did MASH actor Harry Morgan in. He died today at age 96.

I still maintain that no actor can yell quite like Harry Morgan, who as Col. Sherman “Don’t Forget the Swoop in the T” Potter did his fair share of yelling.

Or sing like him. And get away with it like him.

Manuscript Prepped

2011-12-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

So, I had an e-mail exchange (briefly) with Editor Kathleen, referred to me by a BYU-Idaho colleague.

Not quite what I was hoping for – she doesn’t do her job for free, dammit – but a bit more than I expected. She’s actually done work with Orson Scott Card, which can be both good and bad news, depending on if you like OSC’s work. (I’ve never read any of his stuff. Well, brief little excerpts here and there, but nothing complete.)

So while I haven’t launched gung-ho into anything, I have kept the door of communication open – after all, she could be the bridge I need to get from aspiring author to published author. Also have to remember I’ve got someone at Stevens-Henager College in Utah who used to work in publishing and who might also be able to assist me in some minor ways. But it’s always good to have as many ins as you can get.

And oh yeah – I’ve got Query Shark where I can submit my query letters for the merciless yet beneficent ministrations of the literati there. Oh, so many tools at my disposal. It feels good.

So what’s next? I’ve got “Yershi the Mild” now in a standard manuscript form, and I need to read it again. And again. Just in prepping the manuscript yesterday, I made a few notes in spots where I need to add more story, more character development (especially character development, since I had no idea who my characters were at the beginning). Plus some plot holes to fill in with hot mud before the freeze comes. This is where writing a novel transitions into editing a novel, and I’m not as good at that. I may pick up where I left off with the “Hermit of Iapetus” as I edit Yershi, just to keep my interest up.

Speaking of the Hermit, I wonder where I left him? As I recall, it’s a novella now, not a short story. But how long? Ah. Just over 8,000 words. That’s not a bad start, as I’ve got lots of ideas and backstory I can use to flesh it out.

Writing as Melville

2011-12-06T22:03:00.001-07:00

So, here’s proof of what we’ve expected all along: Good authors don’t let pesky things like symbolism get in the way of a good story.

As I understand it, then sixteen-year-old Bruce McAllister sent a survey to 150 well-known authors asking if they intentionally placed symbolism in their work. He figured, as Sarah Bunke Butler writes, that by conducting the survey, he could “settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren’t lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery.” Really. If he could catch authors saying there’s no overt symbolism in their work, he could singlehandedly bring the world of English commentary to its knees.

He got back some pretty interesting responses.

My favorite, from the immortal Ray Bradbury. In response to the question “Do you have anything to remark concerning the subject under study, or anything you believe pertinent to such a study?” he wrote:

Not much to say, except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a writer of fiction in the future. If you intend becoming a critic, that is a whale of another color. Still, your own opinion, finally, when you have read and re-read is what you must earch for. When I wrote the screenplay of MOBY DICK for John Huston, I asked him if he wanted me to read all the critical studies of Melville. Huston wisely cried “NO! I want YOUR creative re-creation of the Whale! To hell with the critics!!! Pretend you are Melville and write me the Whale into screenplay form!” . . . which is what I did.

Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story. . . humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing. . . and just as unobtrusive.

Also, an interesting tidbit from Ayn Rand, in response to the question “Do you consciously, intentionally plan and place aymbolism in your writing? If both yes and no, according to instances, please give an example of each. If yes, please state your method for doing so”:

Yes – I have no method; there is no method in writing fiction; you don’t seem to understand.

I kinda like that approach.

So here’s another’s interpretation of Moby Dick, via a Tom and Jerry cartoon. No symbolism here. Just a good story told by someone who understands both Bradbury and Rand: Gene Deitch.

A Prediction

2011-12-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Here’s my technological prognostication for the tail-end of 2011: Sometime, say, within the next ten years, electricians will begin hard-wiring USB ports alongside standard electricity plugs in new and remodel construction, to keep up with our demand for electronic gadgetry that recharges through USB ports. This will also lead to better in-home hard-wired networking, which is of course already being accomplished through Ethernet ports and such.

With wi-fi, of course, the networking thing might not be as obvious or necessary. But I can see the USB-for-charging ports becoming commonplace. Though part of me still thinks there’s an application here for those fools who went out and bought “Internet-ready” refrigerators and other kitchen appliances.

Of course, who needs a hard-wired fridge when you’ve got that little man in there to turn off the light?

Suckage Potential: High

2011-12-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

So, the potential for this week to suck at work is pretty high.

Why, you may ask? Well, we're starting and finishing an assessment this week to decide whether or not we're ready to open up a new waste retrieval facility, and the people coming to do the assessment are, shall we say, nit-picky.

That's their right and their due; that's why they get paid, and it all helps us do our jobs in a more professional manner.

Still doesn't mean it ain't gonna suck this week.

But ya see, Johnny, here's da ting: We'll get through it. We'll have some bumps and lumps but we'll fix everything and get it right and then move on to opening the facility before the end of the year. What we'll face will be minor hiccups on the road to success, rather than big roadblocks that will stop us completely from getting on with life.

And then they'll lay me off in January. Or June. As a thank-you, you know.

Yes, I'm cynical. It pays to be.

But here's my plan of attack: Whatever happens, we attack it as a team. There'll be none of this "that's your document, this is my document" kind of thing. It's all or nothing. That'll build better team spirit through this tougher time, and maybe that'll help us all pull together. Failing that, I'll just hide in the restrooms next door at AMWTP all week long and hope they never find me.

Nah. Won't do that. I'd reach my Maximum Allowable Hoop Stress in notime flat.

Navel-Gazing

2011-12-03T22:59:00.002-07:00

NOTE: I got the following email from one of my students today. My response is below.

Hey Brother Davidson-

Sorry to bug you... again! If it's any consolation, it's not related to any English 101 assignment.

So, I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what I want to study here at school. I've gone back and forth between multiple majors and can see the pros and cons of each, but I can't seem to come to a conclusion. This semester has added to the confusion because now I'm interested in being an English Major! So I thought I'd come to you and get an insider's opinion before making any decisions. So let me explain what my game plan is and see if that changes your thoughts on being an English Teacher.

I plan on being a stay at home mom, but I will have my degree on hand just in case something happens to my husband. I realize that if something did happen to him, my family wouldn't be millionaires but we'd make it work.

So! Here's my questions:

-If you had to go back and do it all over again, would you still choose to be an English teacher?

-Do you think I have a "knack" for English? Or should I not even waste my time? (Please be honest; I've got tough skin!)

-Is the job satisfying? (I enjoy writing a lot! Is it the same kind of satisfaction as writing a great piece of work or not so much?)

-Would you recommend teaching on the high school or college level?

-Have you found English skills helpful in your family life?

-Is the job demanding of your time? (Does it take away from potential fun recreational activities with the fam?)

I hope this isn't too personal or offensive. I would just really appreciate an honest answer straight from the source!

Thanks so much for your time Brother Davidson!

Let me start out this way:

When I look back on my “career,” I wonder how in the world I could change it if I went back and started all over again.

I do know this: I’ve always been writing. Even as a kid, I made up stories and wrote them down. So when a high school English teacher suggested I join the school newspaper staff, I figured, what the heck? I found there the opportunity to write and get grades for it and school credit and all. I decided I liked journalism. So when high school was over, I decided to take on journalism as a major in college. At the same time, I took a lot of English courses simply because they gave me the opportunity to write. I worked on the staff of The Scroll at Ricks College, then the Argonaut at the University of Idaho. I also continued writing “creatively,” short stories, poems and such, and found an outlet to get them published (I have no idea on quality; they published anything, frankly).

I graduated in 1997 and also got married in 1997. My wife was teaching high school English at Sugar-Salem High School in Sugar City, Idaho. (More from her later.) I was lucky enough to get a job at a local newspaper.

Fast-forward a few years. I’d switched newspapers, going from a local paper that published a few times a week to a daily. My wife had left teaching because, well, I’ll let her tell you in a bit. Still happy writing, having fun.

Fast-forward a few more years. In 2005, I decided the last thing in the world I wanted to be was a journalist. I left the paper and spent a year “underemployed,” working in construction, at Target, and at a call center. Two words best describe 2005-06: It sucked.

Then in May 2006, I got a job offer – as a technical writer. Still writing, yes, but certainly not writing in the same style as a journalist. Loved it. So in 2007, I found an online program that would let me earn a masters degree in English with an emphasis on technical writing, so I jumped into that, working full-time as well. Finished that program in 2009, just in time for my wife to decide she wanted to do the same thing. At about the same time, I joined with a group of college friends writing at uncharted.net, a travel and photography social networking site that we started on our own.

The company I work for is on a government contract with a finite end to it – meaning they go through rounds of layoffs. I’ve survived a few, face a few more next year. Because of the uncertainty, I’ve kept my eye open for other work. I’ve tried a few times to get on full-time at BYU-Idaho (not as a teacher, I don’t have a PhD, which is generally what they want in a teacher), but on staff in some capacity. No luck there, though I pestered them with resumes. I did get on as an online adjunct faculty member, teaching English 101. Obviously, they thought I was a good fit for the job, given my background. So to sum up: I became a part-time English teacher in kind of a backwards way, starting out with a career in journalism, moving over to technical writing and then falling into teaching as well because the opportunity arose.

Would I go back and still choose to become an English teacher, if I had the opportunity?

If circumstances had not changed, probably.

But if another job opportunity had opened and, say, I were working at the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Utah (where I’ve also applied) or if I were still in journalism and not disenchanted by the industry, I don’t know. Circumstances, not a concrete plan in which I said I’m at Point A and will arrive at Point B, led me to the jobs I’ve got today.

What I’m saying is this: Get an education, but remain flexible. You don’t know where you’re going to end up. At least I didn’t know where I was going to end up. Some people pull a plan and stick with it and accomplish what they want. That’s great. I guess for that I’m saying this: What “works” for one person may or may not work for the next person to come along. I only know my circumstances. I only know how I approach life. I only know how I might react in certain situations under certain conditions, and then only conditionally – maybe I’ll react in a completely different manner when the moment arrives.

Is the job satisfying? That depends. It is certainly satisfying in that my part-time job and my full-time job give me the opportunity to feed my family and give them a house to live in. There are many aspects that are soul-satisfying as well (this email being one of them) but I’ve got to confess that for writing that is soul-satisfying, I’ve had to find time outside either job to pursue the dream of writing and publishing a novel. I’ve started several, just finished the first draft on a second, but am still groping into the darkness trying to figure out where to go from where I am now. Goals now are to revise these two novels (an entirely different task than writing one) and, to keep the soul-satisfaction going, start on a third.

Is the job demanding on my time? Any job will be. I put in 40 hours a week at my full-time job and about ten hours or so a week into teaching – that’s spread over two sections of 101. I’m “lucky” in that at the end of each work day I have a two-hour commute to get home, so I use that time to do a lot of paper-reading and grading and such. I don’t take a lunch at work, so I’m able to slip in some BYU-I time there as well. I’m also a night owl, and am up late doing teaching-related things.

That said, no, it doesn’t take away family time. I’ve tended to online classes while we’re at the beach, and my wife tended to classes while we took a tour through Nauvoo this summer. We just find ways to fit things around what we normally do. There may be weeks where I put in more time with English 101 than in other weeks. There are weeks when the family comes first. We just roll with what happens.
What I’m saying is this: Satisfaction comes in different shades and flavors, and you’ll find it if you look for it. Additionally, if something is important, whether It’s family-related or work-related or satisfaction-related, you’ll find ways to make everything fit.

Now – do you have the “knack for English”? You write that you enjoy writing. Yes, you have the knack. There’s only one way I know to get better at writing – and that’s to keep doing it. Fantasy author Ray Bradbury once said something that I think is excellent advice for writers: Write all the time, because about 99 percent of what you write is going to be not so good. You have to get it out of the way so the good stuff can come.

It’s pretty difficult to look to employment for satisfaction – the soul-satisfying kind – in writing. I wrote a lot as a journalist, but it was rarely the kind of writing I really wanted to do. My current job now has me writing a lot less than I did as a journalist, and it’s rarely the kind of writing I really want to do. The writing I really want to do comes in the inbetween times, on the bus, at lunch, on the weekends, the weeknights. I’ve written two novels as blog entries. I’ve collected information that I want to use in other stories. I read a lot and fret a lot about my writing, and then I set down to write again and think maybe in a while I’ll get good at it.

As for teaching high school versus college, well, I can’t say. I’ve only taught at the college level, and only just – I haven’t been teaching at BYU-I for more than a year.

My wife, I mentioned, taught high school English. She loved the students, but had more than enough headaches with administration and parents that after three years we decided she’d be better off doing something else. We’ve talked about this, and have concluded that part of what happened was that she got into teaching young, didn’t have time to develop a thicker skin. Looking back, she thinks that if she were to back into teaching now, she’d be better prepared. So I’m going to give a weasely answer to your question – I don’t know. Depends on a lot of different things, and how you’ll react to students, administrators, parents, etc., is likely to be different than my wife or I.

Have I found English skills to be helpful in my family life? Yes. And in some strange and interesting ways. First, the mundane – it keeps food on the table, in full- and part-time jobs, in occasional freelancing. It keeps me sane. And as my kids get older, I’m able to pass on a love of reading to them. Our oldest is an avid comic-book reader and has started writing and illustrating his own comic strip. I like to think seeing Dad writing gets him to thinking about it. I know he tries to read my novel blog posts over my shoulder and wants to read my latest book when it’s done.

It also gives my wife and I some additional common interests – we’re both writers, both going through the technical writing program at Utah State, both curious about writing theory and social networks. We’ve come closer together as a couple as we read and talk about things and write or create together. Right now I’m writing this message. She’s scrapbooking. We’re together in the same room. Once and a while we ask each other what we’re working on.

I think I’ve run out of gas. I hope this helps. Feel free to ask any more questions, or just share your thoughts.

Another Experiment Coming to A Close

2011-12-01T21:13:00.001-07:00

As my second semester teaching at BYU-Idaho comes to a close – we’ve got about two weeks left – I’ve got to say my lesson learned from this semester is that the more I participate in class as an instructor and fellow student, the more connected and empathetic I feel towards my students.

I really got involved that first semester, completing assignments alongside my students. Some of them appreciated that. Some of them did not – they felt I dominated the conversations too much. So this semester, I ramped down the enthusiasm – I think to mostly deleterious effect. Now the secret, I see, will be in finding a balance between twinkling with mirth and burning with Satanic rage.

Bringing in more empathy is key – that’s what we’ve been asked to do time and again by our online overlords (that we’ve also been advised to “dress the part” when holding office hours and such is something I’ll roll my eyes about). As a likely Asberger’s Syndrome sufferer, I have to do what I can to build empathy. Taking a back seat to the discussion isn’t helping me do that at all.

Being in class more – because I’ve got something to say – will also draw me more into the conversations and help me be more on top of questions the students pose. I’ve slacked off on the whole house-lifting thing, and some of my students have noticed. I’ll also want to ask future students to pose questions in the forums and then follow up with an email question for anything that’s really tickling their brain – as I’m more prone to checking email than I am to read every single class post.

So what’s my big experiment for next semester? HOFRS. Harking back to my missionary days, that means Helping Others Feel and Recognize the Spirit. Meaning I’ve got to do more to motivate students who start out in class and then gradually fade away. Got to find out why they’re doing that and what I can do to get them more enthusiastic about sticking it out.

NaNoWriMo: It's Done

2011-11-29T20:30:00.002-07:00

It's done. The easy part. Now on to the editing . . .

A Concern

2011-11-29T20:29:00.002-07:00

Again, and against my better judgment, I’ve spent some time in the NaNoWriMo forums. I have a concern:

Many of my fellow NaNoWriMos are terrible spellers.

I don’t mean the occasional typo. We all do that, and that’s both understandable and forgivable, since most of what is put in the forums (and on blogs such as this) is fungible writing, here today, meant to be disregarded tomorrow.

I’m talking down-right terrible spelling.

Like what’s an “epilongue” – which is what one NaNoWriMo recommends to another for getting to that critical 50,000 word count. Scary. He or she admits the spelling is off – but is it really that hard to spend the few minutes finding the word in a dictionary?

Then there are the confused homonyms, the phonics-reliant spelling and other errors that just scream out to me “Whatever you do, don’t read their books.”

Then I take a deep breath, and realize that, hey, I’ve got my own writing hang-ups. I’ve got that terrible first-draftitis too. Maybe they’re lousy at spelling but better at storytelling – and spelling errors you can fix. Of course, bad storytelling you can fix too, through revision. And revision. And revision.

Still, first impressions . . .

Yershi the Mild, Another Update

2011-11-28T22:00:00.001-07:00

So I've changed a bit in this ending sequence already. That's fine.

Four thousand words short of my goal. I'll get there.

Here at the End of all Things

2011-11-27T20:16:00.002-07:00

NOTE: I've done something here I typically don't do. I've written a bit of my novel out of sequence. I don't like doing that, because then I feel like a moron trying to connect the ongoing thread with this -- especially since I feel like this is the ending of the story. I guess we'll see how it goes. Why did I do it this way? Well, this part of the story kept nagging to come out. And NaNoWriMo pressure is building.

“Guilt,” Yershi said.

“Long ago, long before I met you, I had a dream. A series of dreams, but all the same dream. I stood in a graveyard. There was no church nearby. It was an old pagan graveyard, long abandoned, in a forest clearing filling with creep. I had a vial of elixir in my hands. I thought, with the sun shining brightly overhead, it would be good to use the elixir, to test it on the corpses lying buried under the stones with the curled carvings. So here and there, I sprinkled drops of the elixir on the ground, which soaked it up. Soon the curls and filigrees on the stones began to spark and glow with that purple-silver glow we know so well – yes, I may have forseen that much,” he said.

Then he frowned. “I did not forsee enough,” he added.

“Next I switched to a churchyard at night, but under a friendly yellow moon smiling down on the lightning-bugs. Again, the vial. Again, I ran through the churchyard, gay as a schoolboy, sprinkling the elixir where I would. The busts of Christ opened their eyes and smiled on me, the stone angels flapped their wings. All seemed right. All seemed well.”

“Then I found myself in a dark alley of a city I knew well. In my hand, a bloodied knife. At my feet, a cooling corpse of a man I had just killed. One I was hired to kill. I remembered him well: A prosperous merchant of fruits and vegetables, named Arthur of Kent. A rival paid me five hundred groats to kill him, for he could not bear to see the other selling his turnips and carrots at prices below his own costs. I do not remember any special feelings in killing him. Sometimes, you see, I feel pity, or understand the envy, or relish the thought of dispatching a character even the mildest bit offensive. But for Arthur of Kent, there was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but a slit and spilt his blood quickly as he stared up at me, puzzled, trying to speak, but fading, fading. Fading.”

“To him, I fed a great draught of the elixir, in this my dream, in this my nightmare,” Yershi said. “He swallowed and sighed with his last breath. Some of the elixir bubbled out of the slit in his throat. But as it bubbled, it sealed and healed the wound. I sat there a long time, twenty, thirty, forty minutes, watching the still figure of Arthur of Kent as his breath and pulse came back. Soon, under that yellow moon, his eyes opened. He stared up at me uncomprehending. His voice caught, he coughed. His hand reached up to feel for the wound in his throat, the wound that was gone. He realized what had happened.”

“Was he happy?” I asked. “To return to life?”

“No,” Yershi said solemnly. “He burst into tears.”

“He wept bitter tears, tears I could not fathom,” he said. “’Why do you weep, man, you’ve come back fom that place many visit but from which they never return,’ I said to him. He looked at me though teary eyes and wept more.”

“I sat on the ground with him, sat in the pool of his own life blood, and comforted him. I cradled his heat in my arms as he wept. The moon continued its journey in the sky and soon passed behind the buildings looming over the alley, casting us both in shadow,” Yershi said. “When the light dimmed, the man spoke.”

“’You see the dimming of the moon,’ he asked me. ‘You feel the absence of the light.’”

“’I do,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’”

“’You killed me, that I grant you, and for that I hate you,’ the man said. ‘Though that hate will fade in time. But then you brought me back to life. That, sir, is the cruelest trick of all.’”

“He wept a while longer and in shadow, in darkness, all I could do was cradle his head and watch the line of moonlight march up the walls of the house across the alley, up onto the roof and finally up the chimney until the moonlight climbed up the smoke pouring from it,” Yershi said.

“After a while, I found the courage to ask the question: ‘Why the cruelest trick?’”

“The man coughed and wheezed, waved his arms, tried to stand. I helped him to his feet. He was a bit wobbly. Once or twice, he slipped on the blood spilt in the alley. ‘I was with Martha,’ he said. ‘I was with my mother and father,’ he added. ‘I was with my brother Francis, my brother Albert, all passed on before me. We were in the greenest of meadows, dancing, shouting, hugging. A reunion. True, I had life left to live here, but with my wife gone, my family gone, and only the street urchins whom I fed on vegetables and bread to keep me company, I rather looked forward to a bit of rest. It was warm there. And pleasant. And you took it from me as easily and in the same cavalier manner with which you took my life. For killing me,’ he said, ‘I now find the strength to forgive you. But for bringing me into life again while tantalizing me with a vision of the life to come, I spit at you, sir.’ He stumbled off, supporting himself on the shadow-dappled buildings, coughing into the night.”

“My dream then shifted back to the pagan yard, to the church yard, where other souls, many long since unburdened of life, wept and wailed and screamed in torment as life flowed back into their limbs but the veil of forgetfulness refused to close to conceal to them once again the pleasures and restfulness of the life that follows the one we call so precious.”

“We do not know what we do not know,” Yershi said. “As the last Roman said: ‘Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing.’ I know how to dispatch God’s creatures into death. To bring them back to life, that I also know. But it is beyond my knowing, perhaps beyond all knowing, to understand what it is like to be dead yet brought back to life, without that veil closing. Only the one knows that, and he knows all.”

Rell and the Lady wept silently as Yershi finished his story.

“The abbot seemed happy to be restored to life,” I said. “What you experienced is just a dream, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Yershi said quietly. “Perhaps. But perhaps just as easy as it is to take life, we should not make it as easy to restore life again. We do not always understand fate, nor the will of God.”

“It is time for you to leave,” the guard said.

Rell leaped from her seat and climbed up in Yershi’s lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. He looked surprised, then patted her on the back. “I’ll miss you, father,” she said as she wept.

He returned her embrace. “You I shall miss, my little squirrel.”

Yershi the Mild: An Update

2011-11-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

I'm behind.

As of today, right now, I'm 4,992 words behind.

But I'm still going, and that's what counts the most.

Hit 40,000 words today. That feels great. I'm trying to make every word count, but I know I've got a lot of work to do in that direction. I've got five days. Just under 10,000 words to do. I think I can do it.

The Writing Process

2011-11-25T22:17:00.001-07:00

Most days, when I sit down to write, I end up feeling like Jeremy the Crow here from "The Secret of NIMH." First, I'm all tied up by the Muse. Then, someone comes along to set me free. I babble. Then my liberators decide the world was better off with me all tied up.

Beating down Ophelia, or Standing up to my Own El Guapo

2011-11-22T19:23:00.001-07:00

Growing up, I continue to discover, is hard work.

Consider this: I’m a teacher. I teach. I teach online classes at Brigham Young University-Idaho. And I am at best, right now, a mediocre teacher.

Why is that?

Well, in our teaching group forums, we’ve focused a lot on curriculum: The rubrics are too vague. There is weak emphasis on revision in our student writing. Some of the assignments make no personal connection to the student, and are thus regarded as useless at worst or busywork at best.

There is, perhaps, a more fundamental problem. And Clay Shirky (yes, I write a lot about him, but that’s fine as he has a lot to say about such things) is coming to the rescue once again. But he’s only opening the door. I’m the one who has to walk in and fiddle with the bits to see what wobbles on the outside.

I’ll have to set this up a bit: Back in 2008, the government of South Korea faced unprecedented protests over reinstating US beef imports after a mad cow scare. People were out in Seoul in droves, protesting against their government’s forgetfulness in consulting them on the issue, Shirky writes in his book “Cognitive Surplus.” The people were sending a message:

In Seoul ordinary citizens used a communication medium [Internet forums] that neither respects nor enforces silence among The People Formerly Known as the Audience, as my NYU colleague Jay Rosen likes to call us. We are used to the media’s telling us things: the people on TV tell us that the South Korean government has banned US beef because of fears of mad cow disease, or that it’s lifted the ban.

With the Internet, with cell phones, and with ubiquitous user-generated content no longer controlled by the gatekeepers, Shirky says, the game has changed. He continues:

The old view of online as a separate space, cyberspace, apart from the real world, was an accident of history. Back when the online population was tiny, most of the people you knew in your daily life weren’t part of that population. Now that computers are increasingly computerlike phones have been broadly adopted, the whole notion of cyberspace is fading. Our social media tools aren’t an alternative to real life, they are part of it.

What does this have to do with teaching and, more importantly, with me being a mediocre teacher?

I’m still at the top, delivering thunderbolts, expecting students to toe the line, without really doing much asking of them, well, what do you want to get out of this? Part of that rigidity comes through the curriculum, which we are endeavoring to fix. But the lion’s share of it comes down to me as a teacher, being willing to participate more, up front, and to listen more to what my students are saying and not saying.

So part of me wants to go back to that first semester, where I interacted with the students a lot more. I felt like I was doing something for them, something with them. I was participating, not just being a blurker.

But it’s more than that. I have to remember that this class is part of their real life, and make it more a part of my real life too. And I have to foster their desire to make what they’re learning more valuable to them.

But that is a two-way street.

Early on in the course, the students read Thomas G. Plummer’s “Diagnosing and Treating the Ophelia Syndrome,” in which he urges students to develop the ability to think for themselves, rather than waiting for those thunderbolts from the teachers on high. He also offers this bit of advice for teachers:

In that same spirit, Wayne Booth in his book, The Vocation of a Teacher, asserts that regardless of whether a teacher lectures or runs discussions, the “teacher has failed if students leave the classroom assuming that the task of thinking through to the next step lies entirely with the teacher.” To this point, Booth adds three more principles that will help teachers and students avoid the Polonius role. Addressing instructors he writes,

1. You gotta get them talking to each other, not just to you or to the air.
2. You gotta get them talking about the subject, not just having a bull session in which nobody really listens to anybody else. This means insisting on at least the following rule in every discussion: Whether I call on you or you speak up spontaneously, please address the previous speaker, or give a reason for changing the subject. 3. You gotta find ways to prevent yourself from relapsing into a badly prepared lecturette, disguised as a discussion. Informal lectures are usually worse than prepared ones.

This is what I need to do more in class to encourage my students to realize that this class isn’t s separate space, but their reality, and that they are a part of it. How can I do that?

Beef up my weekly presence. I don’t have to dominate the conversation as I was accused this summer, but I can do some digging and sharing each week, preferably through a discussion post in a spot where they can’t ignore it, sharing some insight into the reading that week, or some outside source, to get them thinking and talking.
Get to know the curriculum better. That is self-explanatory.
Help to improve the curriculum. I’d like to see more real-life examples brought in, more multimedia (maybe one of Shirky’s TED talks).
Promise myself that next semester I won’t give up and quit the job, but strive to do better.

I also need to do this: At the beginning of the semester, ask my students: What do you want out of this class? Then at midterm, ask them how am I doing? Are you getting what you want? What can I do to improve and to help you along on that goal?

Teetering on the Brink

2011-11-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

I’m close to giving up on NaNoWriMo.

Not that I’m giving up on “Yershi the Mild.” I still like the story, and think I can carry it to an acceptable conclusion. Just not on the NaNoWriMo timeline.

My writing tends to come in spurts, with a strong bout of writing stretching over days or weeks ending in a time when I do little or no writing on a piece. I call this percolation, because the story and the characters are always at the back of my mind, sending me little messages which I duly note in my notes and then, when the muse strikes again, I’m back at it, working away.

I’ve hit that familiar ebb with “Yershi the Mild” at just under 32,000 words in.

I have the familiar excuses: I’ve been doing a lot of remodeling at the house – we replaced four windows and I ended up having to do some wall repair, drywall, plastering and painting as well to make up for the mess discovered once the windows were removed – and that’s eaten up way too much time at home. And though I confess I do sneak some writing time in at work, we’ve been busy enough with official work stuff that the unofficial stuff has had to slide. And I’m also teaching two courses, which take up a lot of time as well. So what time I get for writing comes intbetween things, and I haven’t had much inbetween time lately.

To my credit, I did do t a3,600-word writing sprint over the weekend which helped bring my NaNoWriMo numbers back up, but I’m facing another such sprint today. Time will tell on that one.

And oh yeah. I’ve got another blog I want to start as well, been promising that for a month now and set a Dec. 1 deadline for myself. So whee I’ve been busy.

Wanna Buy A House?

2011-11-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is Michelle’s observation from the weekend:

“If you ever want to become the center of attention, or if you ever feel you’re being neglected [in the ward] just put a for sale sign in front of your house. I couldn’t get home after choir practice.”

We do indeed have a for sale sign in front of the house.

Insanity has led us to this. And led us to other things which I will discuss in a minute.

Why sell the house?

We’re squeezed. When we bought it, 1,800 square feet seemed palatial after our 1,020-square-foot home in Rexburg. Now it feels small. We’ve got two boys stacked like cordwood in the smallest bedroom in the house, and they’re both ready for something new to happen. We’ve got three computer desks shoved in the study, plus a closet overflowing with Scout-related stuff.

Honestly, I look at what we have and don’t feel like we’re conspicuous consumers. We don’t have the toys that many have. We do indulge in books and movies, that is true, but I’ve put a self-ban on new books until I figure out what to do with the ones I’ve got. (Neither one of us are willing to go digital, and since 99 percent of the books we buy are used, going digital just isn’t an option until a vast used e-book market springs up somewhere.)

So we’re looking for something somewhat bigger. With a garage. We haven’t had a garage on either house, and we’d like one. Our top pick got sold over the weekend, which is a shame, but there are others in the area that still catch my eye. They’re not palaces. Mostly they’re fixer-uppers with possibilities. I can handle that.

Speaking of handling that, the other insanity this house-selling has led us to includes remodeling. Over the past two weeks, I’ve installed four new windows in the house, with associated painting, drywall, repairs and other such mess to go along with it. Most of the work is done now, thank heaven, because I’ve blown two perfectly good weekends on it. I’ve got more painting and other touch-up to do throughout the house this weekend, though. Not looking forward to that. But that’s one of the hazards of selling and remodeling to sell – you have to do the work. Paint on one new wall makes the rest of the paint in the house look dingy.

We’ll have to see what happens.

Selling the house now gives us an out that could lead in a few different directions as well. First, a new home locally. Also, if I end up getting laid off in January, then having the home on the market and repaired will put us that much further ahead if I have to look elsewhere for employment. Either way, not looking forward to having to deal with that if that eventuality comes to pass. Hoping I can stay employed right where I am, though I am throwing out applications all over the place. Well, mostly Utah, which seems to be the hot market right now. Sigh.

So if you know anyone looking to buy a house in the Rexburg, Idaho area, you know where to find one.

Mount Hebron Dead, From That

2011-11-16T22:28:00.001-07:00

Yershi smiled over the pile of roots, berries, bark and herbs on the table. “With this, and with what we’ve brought, we have enough to try yet again,” he said. Out of his bag came the cooking-lantern, the mortar and pestle, other oddments of tools he would need.

He set me to drying and grinding. The Lady juiced berries, extracted seeds. Rell watched at the door, ostensibly for intruders, but she watched so much over her shoulder and cried “What are you doing now?” often enough a herd of cattle could have clambered into the ravine and become trapped and bellowing and she would not have noticed it.

At the end, solemnly Yershi took his crucible and lantern and the final ingredients into an alcove hidden by a woven mat. “This is the part where I have failed in the past,” he said. “Betimes the fumes are nearly overpowering. I do this concealed so if something goes amiss, we might not all succumb.” His words spoke fear and caution, but his eyes, his round, moon-like eyes, shone bright. He darted behind the mat.

We heard the clink of glassware, the gentle swish of a stirring rod and then with a clap of light that stopped our ears without sound and seared the eyes without pain, a deep silvery-purple glow sprang from behind the mat and filled the cave. It must have been a sight, the hill punctuated with pinpricks and day-shots of light in the starry gloom.

Yershi emerged, holding the crucible in his hands. The glow was brilliant yet gentle, illuminating his face without obscuring his features. He moved the crucible around slowly in the air, the shadow of his nose darting across his face like the needle on a sundial. “I think,” he said, “it is ready. Now, to test it.” He placed the crucible on the table. From his pocket he pulled, gently, a small brown sparrow, still, lifeless. He placed it reverently next to the crucible. He gently prised the bird’s beak open and, with a bit of the elixir on the end of a stick, coaxed a drop down the dead bird’s throat.

When it touched flesh, the elixir seemed to jump off the stick, leaving no residue behind. A tiny spark, a silvery-purple glow, started, then grew, in the bird’s eyes. The body twitched. A claw clenched and unclenched. Rell gave a startled yelp when the bird flapped one wing, snapping it quickly to its side. Yershi beamed down at the bird on the table like an oak watching an acorn sprout its first leaf. The bird chirped.

Then it leaped.

It leaped into the air, singing. It flapped its wings and took to flight, whirring in circles around the cave ceiling, swooping and dancing through the purple light that seemed to trap the white of the lanterns and candles and the orange of the fire to keep it from leaving so only the silvery-purple could part. Flying faster and faster, chirping more loudly, the bird burst into song and seemed, for a time, that it would explode. Then with a final pump of its wings, it shot out of a hole in the ceiling into the night.

“Yershi,” the Lady said, tears in her eyes. “It seems to have—“

“That is but the first test,” he said. “Now, the next test. He thrust a larger stick into the elixir, stirring it up. The stuff climbed up the stick as he swirled it like honey. He put the stick into the Lady’s hands. “It worked with a bird,” he said. “Now we shall see if it works on human flesh.” He turned to me, a knife suddenly in his hands. With the purple-silver light behind him, I could see but shadow on his face. “Shadow,” he said, “pray.” He thrust the knife into his stomach, yanked it upwards then collapsed, flinging the bloody blade away.
The Lady screamed. Rell screamed, too, and ran from the cave. I moved towards Yershi.

“Stop,” he said. “Do not help me. You saw what I did with the stick, with the bird. When I am dead, you must do the same” he coughed and spat up blood, with more of it dribbling down his chin. “You must do the same for me.”

He slumped to the floor, breathing heavily, a froth of blood at his lips.
“So this,” he said, “is what it is like to be murdered by Yershi the Mild,” he said. The Lady knelt down, cradled his head in her arms. He reached up to pat a hand. “It is more painful than I led myself to believe. Perhaps I am losing my touch. Others have passed – have passed more quickly than this.” He looked at me. “You know what to do, Shadow,” he said. “You must do it. I would prefer if you wait a day, but I understand if you do not.” He breathed more shallowly, his face pale in the purple light. “I understand if you do not. Oh.”

Silence.

“Oh.”

More silence.

“Oh,” he said, his eyes wide. “I see. I see. I see it all.”

His breath ceased.

Silence. The only sound, the light coruscating from the crucible the Lady set on the table, and from the elixir clinging to the end of the stick in my hand.
“He is dead,” the Lady said.

I thrust the stick into his lolling mouth. As with the bird, the elixir leaped from the stick, sloshed into his mouth and disappeared down the dark bloody hole that was his throat.

Silence.

Silence.

“It was fast with the bird,” I said. “But he is much larger. And died, perhaps, a more violent death.”

Costly Solar

2011-11-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

Solar power is on my mind a lot these days.

We’ve looked into a simple solar kit for our camper, and think we could get into one for less than $500. It wouldn’t be the same as plugging into an electrical outlet, but it certainly would help us keep the battery charged on a long-term vacation, if ever such a thing were undertaken.

Solar for the house is something else. To be able to generate that kind of power, we’d have to install a roof-full of solar panels. And they simply cost just too much at that scale. I’ve seen prices ranging from $20,000 to $35,000 per home – and that’s just for one house. Can’t imagine being a utility and trying to install a massive solar project and recoup the costs. On an individual basis, even with the potential savings in electricity, it’s a no-brainer: It would take longer than your typical 30-year mortgage period to recoup the solar investment.

Once in a while, I get excited when I read something like this, one of a trickle of stories I see on companies like SunRun, which installs solar panels for you without an up-front payment, but then trickles the money out of you and subsequent homeowners over time. I suppose it’s good that the up-front costs disappear, but when I read things like this . . .

In Buller's case, his new solar panels (which SunRun paid for entirely) cut his $200-a-month electricity bill by $140, or 70%. Buller gets to keep $50 of the savings and pays the balance to SunRun, which uses it to cover the cost of buying the solar system and hiring a contractor to install and maintain it.

. . . I get less excited about the concept. How hard, I wonder, is it to “maintain” a solar panel system? I guess I’d have to find that out.

And as for leasing the equipment – that’s just trading paying money to the electric company to the leaseor. That’s not saving me money. I guess it’s a feel-good thing, however. And you avoid the up-front costs. But the up-front costs demonstrate how horribly expensive it is to “go green” on the individual scale.

So perhaps the idea is to start small – as with the kit we’re looking at for the camper. If that works out well enough, then we get a similar kit and hook it up to the house. If that works well, another kit. Bit off the energy savings a bit at a time, rather than trying to do everything at once. That’s slow-term energy independence, but at a much more manageable, incremental cost.

NaNoWriMo Forums: Terrible Advice for Writers

2011-11-16T19:53:00.001-07:00

The best writing advice I’ve ever heard comes from science fictionist Ray Bradbury, who basically said that you’ve got to write a lot of crap for the good stuff to finally make it out.

If I’m ever a famous writer, I’ll pass this advice along, but add what I call the Nefario Principle: It’s got to be good crap.

Here’s what the Nefario Principle means: You’ve got to be trying hard to write the good stuff even when you’re writing the crap, or else all you’ll ever be able to produce is crap.

Point in favor of the Nefario Principle: Much of the advice given in the NaNoWriMo forums, most particularly those focusing on the magical 50,000-word count necessary to “win” the contest. I learned a lot more about writing a novel churning out 120,000-plus words which I took seriously in “Considering How to Run” than I ever would learn using the language-inflation tricks proposed even tongue-in-cheek by those in the NaNoWriMo forums. Here’s a sampling:

I know you have them, what are your down and dirty tricks (without cheating) to reach 50k. Last year I wrote out the full names for EVERYTHING.

A persons name. Instead of Dr. Pascal, It would be Doctor Pascal Jonathan Himes
+3 words

I had a company named Shilo but the full name was Shilo Helping Hands Psychiatric Care and Rehabilitation Facility. Ridiculous to write each time, but I did.
+7 words

It got annoying but my main character worked in the hospital so the name was mentioned oftened and he ran into a TON of people so it was + two or three words all the time.

No, no, and no. I know the ethic here is “edit later,” but I’m kind of in the Richard Rhodes/”How to Write” camp when it comes to thinking why should I purposely load my writing with crap I know I’ll have to edit out later to meet some artificial word count total when I should instead concentrate on making my writing better, economizing on time in the process?

Do I have such tricks? Yes. I’ll do a little Virginia Woolf repletion once and a while – but it’s for effect – I hope – rather than word-count padding. Or word – count padding, I should say, increasing the word count in that phrase from two to four in the process.

Then there’s this, which is even worse:

Over complicate everything: "And he did then, with much gusto, verily grip his fingers around the weisswurst, a german sausage made from the meat of veal, otherwise known as baby cows or calves."

(This isn't mine, but a firend of mine's) Complain: "I hate so and so. She ticks me off so much. She's always telling me that I have to edit instead of rewriting everthing. I don't want to edit. I want to rewrite it. And who is she to tell me to edit? She's not an editor."

Flower language: make a character that sort of rambles on and on "Her hair was every color imaginable--blue, purple, red, green, black, brown et cetera (always two words--it's proper and boosts your word count), et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, amen."

This leaps right over John Steinbeck’s desire for occasional hooptedoodle right into the poodle factory where you’ll find yourself concentrating too much on mundane details and forgetting that your reader wants your characters to tell the story – and even tell them what they look like through action rather than description. A good writer gets out of the way of his or her characters. This kind of writing just puts the writer in the way, like my kids in front of the TV when I’m trying to watch.

I know the joke here is that the word count is an illusion, but they can’t track stats on NaNoWriMo if they’re saying “At the end of the month, have written a good book.” No. That’s too subjective. It’s easier to build little bar charts focusing on word count rather than on quality – though they can tout that “Water for Elephants” was a NaNoWriMo originee, so quality is there! Meh, I say. I’m only doing NaNoWriMo this year for fun anyway. The word count is secondary. I’m a lot more worried about getting my characters to the final destination than I am about how many words I can use to get them there.

Yershi the Mild, Falling Into Place

2011-11-15T21:35:00.001-07:00

Those of you familiar with my writing style know I do little to no outlining. I just start where I left off and then, at the end of the day, decide if I like where the story has ended up. I may get an inkling here and there along the way of what needs to happen next, or where my characters may end up.

Writing today, that happened with Yershi the Mild. In a loose sense, of course. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but there are many exits from this book as it stands now. I may turn in another direction, face the darkness again, only to see a different point of light somewhere else along the way. I’m not worried. I’m having fun.

NaNoWriMo Update: I’m just under 26,00 words in, or nearly a thousand words above par. And I like the novel still. I like it a lot better than the other stuff I’ve written, and I hope this isn’t just the “I’m in love with what I’m writing” phenomenon, and that the writing is actually good. That’s my wish. Now, lemme see if I can find some rich stuff with a picture of Martin Sheen on it . . .

[Gulp]

2011-11-14T20:22:00.002-07:00

So, it may be that after nearly six years at the RWMC, the fat lady is singing.

CWI, our main company here, announced today that up to 600 employees will likely be laid off next year, starting with at least 200 in January and June of next year.

That’s par for the course. But this time around, technical writers are on the list of targeted work discipline codes.

Don’t know what my chances are of staying on. I’m feeling numb about it right now. In this economy, I do not want to be looking for another job. Scares the hell out of me, to tell you the truth.

I know losing a job does not the end of the world make. But it sure feels like it. That stint of underemployment between 2005 and 2006 really wore me out. Yes, I had work. Yes, we were able to pay the bills. But hells bells, it was not the most pleasant part of my life and I do not, repeat, DO NOT, want to repeat it.

So what to do?

Pray, first of all, that though technical writers are on the list for January that I get to keep my job. I have fulfilled some valuable roles here at RWMC since Danny left (temporarily) to IWTU, but I don’t know if that kind of thing will be evaluated when the bean counters do their counting. I am a subcontractor after all, subject to the whim of the main employer.

Second, continue looking for alternatives. Found a job today to apply for with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Maybe other recent events are preparing us for a move in physical location as well as from job to job.

Keep pushing my foot in the door at BYU-Idaho, third. Teaching there has been a blessing, and it could be a godsend if the right opportunity opens up. Chances there are bleak, however, as many people apply for the vacant positions there.

Fourth: Retire to that poker shed in the swamp.

Fifth, breathe through my nose and relax a little. We still have plenty of work scope to accomplish at RWMC. Two more waste tents, plus the shutdown afterward. I probably shouldn’t get too paranoid right now.

That won’t stop me, however, from going through at least one through three a few more times between now and January 2012.

Stay tuned.

Just One of Those Things

2011-11-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

I recently decided to put a passcode on my iPod Touch because, well, it's kinda cool. Not that I have any deep secrets to hide, but I liked the idea of behing able to lock it from idle passersby (I'm sure there are ways around it, so it wouldn't keep out the determined individual).

Something about the design of the passcode page, however, nagged at me. It seemed really familiar.

Just this weekend, the familiarity hit me. Here's the passcode page.

And here are the two likeliest possible inspirations:

And that leads me to this: Enjoy.

Yershi the Mild: 20,000 Words

2011-11-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

As with past novels, I've got a love-hate relationship with Yershi the Mild. It's good in that I've got a sustainable story, but bad in that I tend to wander down one path without really having a destination in mind. I need to do more pre-planning, but part of me believes that really robs a novel of its spontaneity. Of course, spontaneity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I do like the story and characters, though. That helps. And that has helped me hit a milestone: 20,000 words in.

So how is Yershi the Mild doing at NaNoWriMo? Slightly, ever so slightly above par. Of course the only par NaNoWriMo is interested in is the word count. I wish there were more about quality there, and that's a possibility given the writer's community, but I'm not one much for the community thing. I should be.

The Story of Dottie

2011-11-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

Our oldest put this photo story together as he works on his Photography merit badge. Hoping that by posting it here I can avoid having to bring a thumb drive with us to the merit badge pow wow today.

Arthur Godfrey

2011-11-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

I have a series of cassette tapes that have songs from the 1940s and 50s on them This is one of them:

Long live the novelty song.

But this is more than just a novelty song. This is an Arthur Godfrey novelty song. And it's hard to believe, but Mr. Godfrey had quite a number of novelty songs that were quite popular. I can't imagine songs like these being popular today.

And who can forget this one?

Dragon Dust

2011-11-10T21:57:00.002-07:00

NOTE: For those of you not following my NaNoWriMo progress over at the Targhee Writers Blog, here's a bit more from "Yershi the Mild." I've shifted gears a bit from the last installment here. Enjoy.

“Tomas,” the Lady said. “Tomas.”

She looked at me, guiltily. “A name. I love names. Tomas. Tomas.”

The Lady looked uneasy when Rell rose from the mat and joined us at the table. “I remember,” Rell said. “You’re Shadow. Though your real name is James. I like James better. Shadows are all dark and all they do is follow you except when you go into dark scary places then they wait outside and won’t ever go in with you.”

“But they will walk with you in the moonlight,” I said to Rell, teasing. The Lady looked slightly more at ease.

“But then they’re always hiding in the trees and they jump out at you and scare you. I don’t like that,” Rell said.

I laughed. “Squirrels should not jump at shadows,” I said. “Squirrels should be asleep in their trees when the moon is out.”

“Rell isn’t my real name,” she said. “I have a name like James. Do you know how I got my name?”

The Lady’s face paled.

I thought instantly of Jans – his old superstition that one should never tell another his name unless they were close friends. “Witches,” he said, “can use your name to cast spells, to harm you from great distances. They will employ many tricks to get you to reveal your name. Have a nickname, Shadow, have a nickname. That is important. With a nickname, the witch is less likely to succeed.”

Agatha. The name too witchy, she’d said.

“How did you get your nickname?” I asked.

“My mother. She said when I was a baby I tried to climb the trees to play with the squirrels. Every morning, I went outside to watch them, and she said I cried when I couldn’t climb the trees. She called me squirrel, but I couldn’t say all that. I said rell. So she called me Rell. My real name,” she whispered, “is Marta.”

I smiled at Rell and tried to look less like a warlock than I have ever tried to assuage the ashen countenance of the Lady.

“Jans called me Shadow because at the mine, when I first got there, I followed him everywhere. He reminded me of my father. Everywhere Jans went, there I was, like a Shadow. And I followed him into the mines. Into the dark scary places where ordinary shadows won’t go,” I said.

Rell smiled. “You’re a brave shadow,” she said.

“And you,” I said, truly can climb like a squirrel. And play the harp like I have never heard. Where did you learn that? From the squirrels?”

“No,” Rell laughed. “I just know how to play. The Lady sings, and I play the notes. It’s easy.”

“She has a gift from God,” the Lady said. She appeared much more composed, relieved that the conversation had shifted from names to music.

Rell picked up the harp and stroked the strings. The Lady began to sing a familiar tune about a creek filled with spring water, flowing over rocks and tree roots, splashing the fish and carrying leaves filled with fairies to the ocean. Rell played and the music tumbled from the cave like falling water.

That is how Yershi found us.

Hollow of eyes, thinner, still a bit weak from the broken fever, Yershi the Mild awoke in our shelter at the river, restless, legs twitching. Still a bit wobbly at first, Yershi found a stick to help him walk. He hobbled to the river for a drink and a splash of water on his face. He found a bit to eat then sat in the shelter a while, feeling his strength slowly return.

Restless still, Yershi walked. Strong enough to leave his stick behind, he walked. He followed my footprints up and down the river bank but saw they were not fresh. The freshest ones led up into the ravine, and he followed. He stopped to rest frequently, panting, wishing he’d brought a bit of water to sip. But as he walked strength poured back into his limbs and he felt ready to walk to Venus.

In the ravine below, he heard Rell play, he heard the Lady sing. And as the final vibrations from the harp faded into the wind, he called “Who is it who sings so beautifully and plays so well, among the rocks in this wild place?”

Rell set the harp gently on the table and raced to the cave entrance.

“Wait, Rell, wait!” the Lady called. Rell, in her rush, did not heed.

“Oh dear,” the Lady said. “Would this be –“

“It is Yershi,” I said. “I know his voice well.”

“Yershi the Mild,” she said.

“Again, the names?”

“I know I have not fooled you,” the Lady said. “But perhaps, for Rell, you can remain in feigned innocence?”

“Innocence of what?”

“We shall soon see, Shadow.”

From the outside, we could hear Rell chattering, and Yershi responding. “Yes, yes, child,” he said. “Surely, I have not smelt lilac as strongly as this in an age.”

They clambered up the rocks. Yershi, though more hale now the fever was gone, was still weak, and Rell went down several times to encourage him in his climb. Finally they entered the cave through the carpet of morning-glory, Rell red-faced and wondering at the chance of two guests on the same day, Yershi puffing, pop-eyed, knees shaking at the sudden burst of work.

His breath caught when he saw the Lady. “Agatha,” he said. “Yet something else I have not seen as strongly as this in an age. You still retain your comeliness.”

Rell looked puzzled, but remained silent as the Lady spoke.

“It has been too long, Yershi the Mild. Too long since the last fare thee well,” she said. She pulled at a strand of her long auburn hair. “But then eight years is not that long, in the eyes of God. But an eternity in the eyes of a child.”

“God watches long,” Yershi said, as if giving a countersign. “But the eyes of a child young eight years past were not yet opened.”

“You talk funny. Just like Shadow,” Rell said to Yershi.

Yershi smiled, glanced at me, unsurprised to find me inside a green grotto with a lady he seemed to know and a young fairy harp player. “I do indeed,” he said. He got down on one knee, lifted up Rell’s chin. “You must be the young harpist,” he said, looking Rell in the eyes. “That is not a young girl’s voice, but that of a siren, that drew me here.”

“All those big words,” Rell said as she pirouetted on her toes. “I know what a siren is. A scary, ugly lady who sings beautifully but eats the people she traps with her song. Yuck. The Lady isn’t ugly. Or scary.”

“Agreed, she is neither,” Yershi said. “Agatha –“

“Perhaps we should go for a walk, Yershi the Mild,” the Lady said. “We can leave Shadow and Rell here. We have much to say to each other that will be boring to young ears.”

Rell rolled her eyes.

“She must be in love with you, Yershi,” she said. Yershi’s eyebrows rose. “She always says it’s boring talk when she wants to talk to a man she likes. I don’t think it’s boring. You can stay. I want to hear. Sometimes the men say funny things about the Lady’s thighs.”

The Lady put her hand to her mouth, stifling a laugh.

Yershi blushed. “A walk,” he said. “A walk. A short one. I am still ill. But perhaps a bit of water before we go.”

“Or a sip of wine,” the Lady said. “Follow me.” She led Yershi toward the other end of the cave, toward another dimpling of greenish light.

“So,” Rell said after they left. “What should we do?”

I looked at the table, my hands, the floor. All my life I had dealt with adults. Even when there were other children at the mine, I did not associate with them, especially the younger ones. I never knew childhood. I did not know what to do.

“I could show you a trick,” I said.

I took a small bag off my belt – a bag of oddments and herbs and stones I always carried for when Yershi wished to test a potential ingredient for his elixir. From it I pulled a bit of brimstone and a few vials. Rell watched as I ground the brimstone in a small mortar and pestle, then piled a tiny pyramid of the yellow dust on an earthenware plate. To the brimstone I added a pinch of bitter salt and another pinch of powdery metal.

“Here be dragon dust,” I said with a flourish of my hands.

Rell watched, silently.

“Dragon dust is the fiery breath of the dragon distilled,” I said. “When the dragon wishes to spout his flame, he breathes out first a pinch of this dust and grinds it in his molars. Like so!” I took a flat rock in my hand and smashed it onto the plate. The dust burst into a quick, snapping flame that sent the odor of brimstone in the air to battle with the lilac.

Rell shrieked and clapped her hands. “Again! Again!”

“But no, milady,” I said dramatically. “Dragon dust is difficult to obtain and has many uses. I cannot use any more here.”

Rell’s eyes were wide and shining. Her nose wrinkled. “It smells like fart,” she said.

I laughed. “No one ever met a fair-smelling dragon.”

Professional Development Goals, BYU-Idaho Style

2011-11-08T22:11:00.001-07:00

Tyler,

After a lot of thought and consideration, I’ve identified two goals that I will focus on to help me better realize my obligations under the second, third, and fourth obligations of my Online Instructor Agreement:

1) Compile and update a dossier of student feedback suggestions, lessons learned, and helpful tips from our teaching group to deepen my understanding of course content and strengthen my lesson preparation skills.

2) Compile as list of and analyze my distance learning and collaboration strengths and weaknesses, taking in experience from my full-time job, time spent as an online student, and in my role at Uncharted to improve my online learning facilitation skills. This goal will dovetail with the first goal.

We’ve been reading in Mosiah in our family scripture study, and are currently reading about the people of Limhi. I’m going to take some inspiration from Gideon, captain of Limhi’s army, when he says to Limhi “If thou hast not found me to be an unprofitable servant, or if thou has hitherto listened to my words in any degree, and they have been of service to thee, even so I desire that thou wouldst listen to my words at this time, and I will be thy servant and deliver this people out of bondage.” (Moshiah 22:4)

I hear myself and my students in Gideon’s words. In the midcourse feedback, my students have offered some constructive suggestions on how I may improve. I need to listen to their words and remind myself that they have been “of service” to me. Compiling the dossier of student feedback and other suggestions will be a concrete way I can remember their words so I do not find them to be “unprofitable servants.” Additionally, I need to remind myself that I am my students’ servant and that I have the obligation to “deliver [them] out of bondage” as I do what I can to help them understand the assignments, deadlines, and other ins and outs of this online course environment.

Let me know what you think.

Nerdlings, What is Uncharted's Job?

2011-11-08T22:07:00.001-07:00

Dan and Chip Heath, two young nerdlings writing a piece at Slate.com on the demise of Second Life, say things.

They say things like this:

But what “job” did Second Life perform? It was like a job candidate with a fascinating résumé—fluent in Finnish, with stints in spelunking and trapeze—but no actual labor skills. The same was true with the Segway. No one was interested in employing a $5,000 walk-accelerator. (Though, to be fair, Segway eventually got a part-time job saving tourists from exercise.)

What about the Apple Newton, the first widely hyped PDA back in the 1990s? It was clearly applying for the right job—to give us mobile access to our calendars and to-do lists and such. But it was a lousy employee, with notoriously poor handwriting recognition and a limited attention span (from low battery life). PalmPilot got the job a few years later.

So, as a former Second Life devotee (I took a semester-long masters degree course that was pretty much held in Second Life; my conclusion: There are more efficient ways in both time spent preparing and bandwidth hogged to hold meetings) and as vice president of Uncharted.com, I have to ask:

What is Uncharted’s job?

I’m afraid my conclusion is thus: Doesn’t matter. Right now, that job is being taken by the likes of Facebook, Flickr, and even my own humble blog, thank you very much.

And, just as importantly, what first impressions are we making? Given a faulty photo-uploading module and a consistently flaky story-upload module, that first impression can’t be good. And that’s bad, according to Farhad Manjoo, Slate.com’s in-house nerdling. Here, he speaks of the decline and fall of Google+, another, much bigger social network that is looking for a job but really hasn’t found one yet (it’s comforting to see the big boys stumbling at this just as we are, by the way).

Why am I so sure that Google+ can’t be saved? Because there’s no way to correct Google’s central failure. Back when companies were clamoring to create brand pages on the network—or users were looking to create profiles with pseudonyms, another phenomenon that Google shut down—the company ought to have acceded to its users’ wishes and accommodated them. If Google wasn’t ready for brand pages in the summer, it shouldn’t have launched Google+ until it was. And this advice goes more generally—by failing to offer people a reason to keep coming back to the site every day, Google+ made a bad first impression. And in the social-networking business, a bad first impression spells death.

And yet another Slate.com nerdling – Erik Sofge – reminds us all that while one thing may do a job – and do it well – when that thing is moved to another job, often it fails.

I’ve long whined that my iPod Touch is a less handy music-listening device than an ordinary iPod, because with the iPod, I don’t even have to take the thing out of my pocket or bag to make musical adjustments (OK, some I do, such as changing albums, but for the simple task of skipping a song or shutting the thing down altogether, I can do it by feel.) Not so the iPod Touch – it’s a series of three or four steps to shut that thing down, and it requires all my attention. Enter Sofge:

An outstanding interface separates the products you love from the ones you simply use. In the Nano’s case, the touchscreen works. There’s nothing broken about it. But it’s clumsy and ill-conceived, given the uses for which it's supposedly designed. To put a touchscreen on a Nano presumes that a touchscreen can be a universal interface, and that all devices aspire to do all things. But people don’t buy a Nano because they want a mini-iPhone or a micro-iPad. They want something they can shove in their pocket or clip to their shorts when they take a walk or go for a run, a device for playing music on the move. In those scenarios, a touchscreen doesn't help at all.

So back to Uncharted. Does all of this mean Uncharted is dead in the water? Not necessarily. We just have to figure out what job Uncharted should apply for, and in what way it can fit the users’ needs in a way that nothing else fits. Social networking, I’m afraid, is not open to entry-level groups like Uncharted. Unless we find a job that’s vacant somewhere, waiting to be filled.

One thing I thought of: Uncharted could become a haven for writers looking for a space to share their unpublished stuff privately in a community where people would give them good feedback. Probably services like that out there somewhere, but it’s worth a thought.

Another thought: Stellar writing and photography on travel. But you know what, there are others doing that just as well on Facebook and Flickr. Not a good thought at all.

Other ideas: I don’t know. This is why I’m not an entrepreneur.

Stroking Cats

2011-11-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Well, I still suck at action. But I figured out how to turn action into kind of a Cyrano de Bergerac fight scene, so maybe this works.

Arthur screamed like a bull and shoved Gwendolyn from him. She spun, tripped, and would have fallen to the ground had Yershi not caught her. “Harlot!” Arthur yelled, blood dripping from his lip.
Yershi helped Gwendolyn to his seat by the hearth. “Harlot, he says,” wrapping her in his cloak. “And who is the one doing the kissing?”

“Whose business is it of yours?” Arthur bellowed.

“It became my business when you threw the young lady in my lap,” Yershi said.

“Fool!” Arthur shouted. His bloody torn lip flapped as he spoke.

“Fool I am? I’m not the one with the torn lip,” Yershi said.

Blood and saliva trickled from Arthur’s mouth. The crowd in the pub, never silent, had lessened its noise and formed a slowly widening circle of faces around Arthur and the slight, mysterious black-clad man who had been so gentle with the lady, sobbing and holding her head, still wrapped in the man’s black cloak.

Arthur balled up his fists. “You talk smart, but I’ll pound the smart out of you!”

Yershi looked at Arthur from toes to head. “You probably could,” he said finally. “If you could land a blow. I think I’ll not allow that.”

“A brave one this,” a woman in the crowd said.

“Soon a dead one,” Arthur bellowed. And he swung.

Yershi moved. Quick as a cat blown by a breeze, and Arthur punched the air and swung a quarter turn, startling those in the edge of the circle as the unstopped fist swished by.

“I’m not much at hand fighting,” Yershi said. “My hands are far too delicate.” He held up is smallish hands to show the crowd as Arthur held his lip. “I will throw a punch if I have to, but it hurts the knuckles so. I don’t like it.”

Arthur swung again, missed as Yershi leaped to the side. Arthur’s fist smacked into the mantelpiece, knocking brass plates to the floor. Arthur shrieked.

“That is why I do not throw punches,” he said as Arthur examined his cracked, bleeding knuckles. “Too much hurt, and the hurt even comes from striking soft things. Ever stroked a cat for hours?” he asked the crowd. “You may not think it, but I am a man who enjoys striking cats. But after a while, the fingers throb at the repeated motion and the feeling leaves them. I have rubbed myself raw on cats, and I advise against it.”

Slivers of laughter wove through the crowd.

Arthur put his head down, held his hands out wide and charged at Yershi the Mild.

Yershi dropped to a crouch and carried Arthur over his back, crashing him onto a table just as the crowd parted. Plates and mugs clattered, wooden spoons bounced off the ceiling as Arthur fell and sucked air into his lungs where it had been forced out.

“I am sorry about this, Arthur. Your lip must hurt something awful,” Yershi said. “If you’ve a mind to stop fighting, I might be able to do something about it. I am quite familiar with the knife.”

A knife appeared in Yershi’s hand. Short, sharp, black of blade and handle.

Some in the crowd whispered. With the blade in his hand, Yershi suddenly looked menacing. There were always stories. And rumors. The name of Yershi the Mild was known, though perhaps his face was not.

Arthur sat up on the table, still breathing hard, rubbing the back of his head. His bit lip flapped as he breathed. In his eyes, fear and pain.

The blade in Yershi’s hand disappeared as quickly as it came. From another pocket, he pulled a small black packet, walked to Arthur’s table, unrolled the packet. In it, surgeon’s instruments, needles and thread. “I can repair that lip,” Yershi said. “Given your breath, I’m not sure any more alcohol will be necessary for anaesthetic, but you may take some more if you wish.”

Arthur looked at the instruments, the wickedly curved needle hung with thread in Yershi’s hand. His eyes rolled, and Arthur flopped back onto the table.

With the barman helping and with others fetching towels and hot water, Yershi deftly sewed the lip, using small, neat stitches. “He will have a scar, and I’m not sure his mustache will grow back in that spot, but he will be in much less pain. And he will be able to eat without dribbling.”

Gwendolyn, as Yershi worked, removed Yershi’s cloak from off her shoulders, folded it, then watched as Yershi laid his stitches. When the work was done, Yershi rolled up his packet, nodded at Gwendolyn, and returned to his table.

“I thank you, kind sir, for your service,” Gwendolyn said as Yershi sipped from a beer provided gratis by the barman.

We've Got Enough Paneling -- Let's Go to Mars!

2011-11-06T01:11:00.000-06:00

A truly noble experiment, this group of astronauts isolating themselves in a Mars mission simulator outside of Moscow for over a year and a half. Wrapping one's head around the idea of living in a small, closed space with the same people for days on end is an excellent way to figure out whether astronauts -- or anyone, for that matter, because I'd still like to go to Mars as a non-astronaut -- can stand being with each other for that period of time in such a small space.

But wood paneling? Really? If Mars spaceships can't look any better than our 1970s family room downstairs, I don't want to go.

I know: It's a quibble. What matters is that they did the experiment, not what the experimental space looks like. Maybe that's all they had -- trying to save money on materials in building the setup so they could spend more money on experiments and the like.

But still: Wood paneling? Where's the steel plate with the huge rivets in it? Where's the aluminum and glass and other elements that make space-ships look, well, space-shippy, not like somebody's outdated basement?

Action Sucks

2011-11-05T23:55:00.001-06:00

Once again, I'm at the point of a novel I'm required to write action, not exposition. And action is one of my weaknesses. I'm good at exposition. I can explain just about anything. But characters aren't static. They don't just sit there, contemplating with their coffee. They DO things. And now these damnable characters of mine in Yershi the Mild are going to have to do something, and I'm stuck.

So here's the cure:

Read lots of action. I've got to read lots of action and figure out how the authors do it. Of course, that may not work with my characters; I have to figure out how they'd do it, and to do that, I have to figure out how I'd do it. So yikes. But at least I recognize the problem. As Lucy Van Pelt would say, that means I am not yet too far gone.

Hatches Firmly Battened

2011-11-05T00:08:00.000-06:00

Oh, today.

I guess I should count it as a lucky day. Lucky in that the weather held until I had finished everything I set out to do. And just in time -- finished up the final get-ready-for-winter chores just as the first snowstorm blew into town.

Here's what got done today:

Replaced the windows in Lexie's bedroom.
Removed and replaced a bit of drywall in Lexie's room, after cleaning up the mold behind it.
Cleaned up my massive window-replacement mess.
Cleaned the chimney.

A little story about that before I continue. I wanted to clean the chimney last weekend, because the stove has been really stubborn and smoky and not really cooperative in letting the smoke go where it wants to. In fact, when Isaac got home from school on Thursday he had to run across the street to the Rhotons because both our smoke alarm and carbon monoxide alarm were going off because the chimney wouldn't draw properly. But I couldn't clean it last week because I couldn't find my brush. So this weekend I looked again. STill couldn't find it. So I improvised a brush: I taped a gallon milk jug to the pole, after I cut an X in the bottom of the jug and turned the corners inside out. It worked like a charm. And since it worked, you know right away that ten minutes after I got off the roof, I found the damn brush on the woodpile. Oh well.

Back to the list:

Stuffed the playhouse full of stuff from the shed.
Moved the swing into the shed and basically got everything into the shed that needed to go in the shed.
Stowed the camper, including putting the tarps on it.

I didn't want to do the tarps, but the thought of Michelle coming at me with her lucky machete because the chore wasn't done got me motivated enough to finish. The boys helped. They didn't really want to at first, but once they figured out that rope was involved, they got a bit more excited about it.

Still not done with my window project -- got to do the caulking and the trim wood on the inside, but at least that's something I can do while it's all nice and snowy outside. I've got some outside caulking to do, but that'll have to wait until I've got warmer weather. I did fill all the gaps with Great Stuff, so that'll help keep the moisture out.

The mold, I have to say, was gross. When I poked the moldy bit of drywall with my finger, it crumbled. So I pulled a big slab of it out and wiped things down. It smelt like 17-Mile Cave, mixed with bleach. The good news is after the bleach smell wore off, the musty smell didn't come back, so I think I got rid of the stuff. Time will tell tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Got to put the plaster on the bit of drywall, put up the trim wood, then paint. I may not paint until next weekend, as I had Michelle get too little of the trim wood to finish the job. Don't know what I was thinking, and you can't find a No. 1 1x4 in Rexburg for love or money, so it's something we'll have to pick up in IF. Maybe I should try Stock Building Supply tomorrow . . .

This is What Midterms Look Like

2011-11-03T22:17:00.000-06:00

Just in case you were wondering what goes through me pointy little head the week I'm trying to get midterm grades and midterm conferences done with my students, behold:

I blacked out their grades to protect myself from revealing too much information in this public forum. And this, dear folks, is only the front of my first worksheet. Here's the back:

Messy, yes. This represents two sections of BYU-Idaho's Foundations English course.

A while back I commented that for students to learn to write better, they need to write more in class. I'm crazy enough to think that I'd still like to stick with that theory. There's enough busy work in this curriculum (stuff that we're trying to sort through as a teacher's group right now) that we could do more writing and revision (which is just as important as writing in the first place) if we got rid of some of the theoretical stuff. It could be an interesting challenge to build an online course from the ground up. Maybe some day.

A New (to Me) Comic: New Adventures of Queen Victoria

2011-11-03T22:10:00.001-06:00

How might the staid Queen Victoria react to, say, George Lucas’ latest batch of edits to the classic Star Wars films?

Thanks to Pab Sungenis and his funny comic New Adventures of Queen Victoria, we know. Like this (and, frankly, not at all well):

I have to wonder – how does Mr. Sungenis get away with this? Well, part of it’s easy – the illustrations (and, I can assume to some point) the personas involved are in the public domain. Kinda sorta on the personas, definitely on the illustrations. The rest is just a few deft strokes with what I assume is a computer stylus, combined with a lot of wit on the part of Mr. Sungenis, and there you go, that’s how he gets away with it.

The humor is contemporary, but always focused through Victoria’s Victorian lens. I’d like to think royalty is as human as he makes them out to be, but part of me also wants to be able to flap my arms and fly to the moon as well.

Sungenis is liberal and not afraid to share that in his comic, so true conservatives beware. For those of us who sag in the middle, it’s pretty good entertainment.

Here are a few more recent ones that tickled my funny bone:

Older

2011-11-02T20:42:00.000-06:00

Creative Poison

2011-11-02T19:34:00.004-06:00

Here’s the Catch-22 of the day: What to do with your own mediocre writing efforts when you read something of such great stature and storytelling that your own stuff pales in comparison?

That’s happening to me right now as I read Walter Wangerin, Jr.’s The Book of Sorrow, sequel to his equally lyric and spellbinding The Book of the Dun Cow.

I’ve read the first chapter, which contains passages like this:

The season is autumn, cool and clean. Beyond the willow, the land rises up into hills all covered in an evergreen thicket. The sun slants down behind the two Hens white, in a golden field. Blue, green, golden, and here a feathered white: it’s a lovely day altogether. And they have arrived below the willow.

So much detail and description packed into such a tight space. And such sentence structure variation: The complex joining of clauses. The fragments. The alliteration, subtle, yet present.

How can I hope to equal such majesty?

I am reading creative poison.

But I will continue to imbibe. I will self-administer the poison then put in on the shelf, next to the other vials of poison from which I have drunk deeply. There is no sipping of poison in this library. It is all taken in, to the last draught. Only to have the bottles fill again as they sit on the shelf, waiting for me to drink again.

Bottles like Felix Salten’s Bambi. Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Lowis Lowrey’s The Giver. And so many others.

My own poison is wan, weak, consumable by the gallon though you’d hardly think of anyone bothering to take a sip. Theirs come in small bottles, potent bottles, wicked bottles. I have many on my shelves. I find them at thrift stores. Dear ones mail new poisons to me. I continue to take them in.

The only antidote is crap writing. So much like my own.

Make the Pie Higher vs Poli Sci 101

2011-11-01T19:56:00.001-06:00

I sympathize with those occupying Wall Street. But as with any movement, any push for social change, any organization at all, once and a while they’ve got to listen to themselves and get a reality check: Is what we are doing really working?

Take, for example, Robert Tracinski’s piece at Real Clear Markets on the #OWS movement. Though I don’t agree with everything he says in this piece – the bit on tents being unoccupied during the night at #Occupy London have been proved false, for example – he does bring up a fairly good point in considering whether, in their utopian dream, the #OWSers are actually emulating Ayn Rand more than anyone else:

[Y]ou have to sympathize with the cooks who have been besieged by moochers. Behind the hypocrisy, there are real lessons to be learned: lessons about the relationship between productive people and freeloaders. About the need for police to protect decent people from criminals. About how con-men and power-lusters always take over utopian schemes for their own benefit. About the taxing power and unaccountability of central authorities.

The spaghetti Bolognese incident sums it up. The workers who provide the goods everyone else lives off of are going on strike to protest against their exploitation by freeloaders. Has anyone noticed that this is the basic plot premise of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Yet that is the story line they are unintentionally acting out. Call it Occupy Wall Street Shrugged.

It’s a shame to see all this polarize around a Get Bootstrappy/Make the Pie Higher mentality versus the Hey Now People, Smile on Your Brother/Each According to His Need mentality – because both mentalities have good aspects about them. The sooner any political movement looks at itself to see what is working and what is not working, the better.

Same goes for the Tea Party. They may have gone the Poli Sci 101 route and gotten some of their people into positions of power. They may be a guiding force in GOP politics at the moment. But they, too, should listen to what they’re saying and really consider: Is this working? Poll after poll shows the more extreme views of the Tea Party are driving the all-important center away from the GOP.

But at least they got people vested in their interests into positions of power. That’s gonna beat street theater and drum circles any day.

RIP, Sound Guy

2011-11-01T18:54:00.000-06:00

Seems the main reason I had to continue listening to Garrison Kellior’s “Prairie Home Companion” has passed on.

Tom Keith, long-time “sound guy” for the radio show, died Sunday at age 64. Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio has posted a fitting tribute here.

I’ve long been a fan of old-time radio – a fandom started by my mother, who found cassette tapes of the old “Fibber McGee and Molly” and “Amos ‘n’ Andy” radio shows to listen to, harking back to her own childhood. And even before that, using a home tape recorder, we three younger Davidson siblings recorded our own shows, complete with shrieks, slamming doors, footprints and, as I recall, one taped “murder” in which I playfully wailed on my younger brother who snatched the recorder away while it was in use.

Radio sound fascinated me. Forgetting the script, the actors emoting – for me, what brought the world of radio to life was the sound, from the creepy footsteps in some of Vincent Price’s or Peter Lorre’s pieces to the clamorous clatter that was Fibber’s famous closet.

Tom Keith understood that world. So to listen to his horse whinnies, exotic animals, gunshots and footsteps during Kellior’s rather moribund radio program helped keep the show alive and interesting for me. Don’t know what I’m going to listen to now.

Yershi's Going to NaNoWriMo

2011-10-31T19:44:00.003-06:00

So, perhaps it’s not cheating to have a nearly 8,000-word head start heading into National Novel Writing Month. At least that’s the implication I get from Nathan Bransford’s post on the topic, so I’m going to go with that feeling.

Can a book be written in thirty days?

Better yet: Can a good book be written in thirty days?

It’s possible. The first one at least seems achievable. The second one, well, there’s the real challenge, isn’t it?

I’m going to do it, though. With Yershi the Mild.

So maybe I feel a little guilty, coming into it with that 8,000-word head start. Should I? It doesn’t appear I should. NaNoWriMo’s Codes of Conduct is explicit about explicitness and not feeding the trolls and such, but they don’t say I can’t come into this with a head start. So I’m gonna.

Why?

For the challenge. For the fun. For the opportunity to kick myself in the butt and actually get Yershi the Mild into nearly-done territory by the end of the year. See, I was in this same kind of situation this time last year with “Considering How to Run,” which I decided to write and edit at least once in 2010. I did that. But it’s not gone beyond that, given that it’s crap and the first novel ought to sit on the shelf for a while anyway while the second novel comes out and is much, much better. So that’s what I’m telling myself.

And I’ve got to confess I’m on a little bit of a writer’s high right now. Reading Terry Pratchett novels will do that to you.

Thys Endris Nygth

2011-10-30T20:50:00.002-06:00

“You have a choice,” Yershi said. The first snow of winter fell that morning, portending a long winter as it fell before the last of the apples dropped from the backyard tree. He at the washtub cleaned the breakfast dishes. He never let me wash dishes. He did them in a certain order: cups, bowls, plates, earthenware; and in a certain way: dip, scrub, dip, scrub, dip, rinse; and with a certain swishing motion in the water that he did not have the patience to teach another. For him I chopped the wood and fetched the eggs and water.

“Your choices are these,” he said. “You leave” -- this he said every morning – “second, you hide in the woods nearby for a fortnight, or, third, you pretend to be a mute while my guest is here.”

He would not tell me who the guest was to be. When I pressed, he raised his eyebrows and pointed out through the back door to the world.

I went mute that morning.

At dinner, he said, “You are a good mute. Not a sound. You would do better to lower your eyes, to shuffle rather than stride. To be more meek. My guess, I surmise, will expect such from a mute house-servant. He is an insufferable fop, I am sure. Do not look him in the eyes. If he kicks you, just get out of the way. You do not need to suffer a beating, but striking servants is what he is used to. I will know what he does, how he behaves, even if I am not around when he mistreats you. Fear not,” he said. “He will not be here long.”

That night, Yershi unrolled a thick bearskin from some hidden corner and spread it on the floor, covering the trap door that led to his den below. Daggers and a crumbing mace appeared on the mantelpiece. He silently rolled my bedding and bade me stow it in the chicken coop, where I knew I would be spending the nights while his guest slept on my pallet.

I grumbled a bit as I shoveled manure, spread straw in the coop.

“I hear you,” Yershi called from the darkened house. “He will too. A mute is not allowed to grumble.”

He fretted over his squirrels. For weeks now, he tied apples and small pumpkins and squashes and carrots from strings and dangled them from the branches of the apple tree. The squirrels came in droves, leaping from the tree branches to the ground to snuffle among the snow and leaves to eventually find the vegetables and fruit and dance and stretch and strain and climb to eat what hung there. Many mornings he sat at the table staring out the open Dutch door to the apple tree, laughing at their antics.

“He will not understand such frivolity, from a killer,” Yershi said. “What credibility I have could flee with those squirrels. Cut the strings.”

I cut the strings and tossed the fruit and vegetables to the pigs. The squirrels scolded from the treetop, but soon turned to the apples still on the branch.

A grand carriage arrived as the sun set. I watched from a naked beech across the lane; Yershi bade me disappear until morning. The carriage was black and trimmed with gold and burgundy. The horses, too, were black and clad with black leather. The footman was silent, obsequious. He thrust a wooden step below the carriage door, adjusted it, adjusted it again, then rapped smartly on the door three times. A voice from within shouted. The footman pulled the door open. After a long pause, a figure emerged. Tall. At least a head and a half taller than I. He would tower over Yershi, squat and fat. He stalked towards the house, crunching leaves and twigs under his impossibly small feet. The footman and carriage-man lowered bags and a trunk from the roof of the carriage, carrying them one at a time into the hut so as not to soil their bottoms in the dark snow.

The conversation was quiet, but I could hear the occasional shouted word or phrase. Rough road. Slow. Complaint. Tell. Never. Hanging.

There was much going back and forth from the hut to the carriage. Packages and bags, boxes of stuff. Yershi might have to roll up the bearskin and sleep in his den for want of space, I chuckled from the treetop.

With a trot of hooves and rattle of livery, the carriage left. The footman calling loudly to the carriageman: “This Yoshi will have a rough time with The Pup, no question of that.” They both laughed.

A cat wandered down the lane, sniffing at things, stepping over the frozen ruts.

Though it was cold, I stayed in the tree, silent as an owl, watching the stars come out. That milky band of stars and dust stood out like salt poured on a black cloak. The Evenstar rose, higher and higher. My breath came in billows, but still I perched in the tree, recalling the lullaby, the lullaby I know my mother sang to me as a babe:

Thys endris nygth
I saw a sygth,
A stare as brygt as day;
And ever among
A mayden song
Lullay, by by, lullay.

As I hummed the words silently, another voice joined in. The voice rose and fell, gentle as a mother cradling her infant. The stars seemed to jump and dance at the melody. The cold fled.

“Hush that row, fool! I’ve had a long day!”

The voice stopped. A breeze rattled the bare breech branches. Owls hooted to each other in the distance.

Yershi emerged silently from the front door of the hut, stared up into the sky. He glanced this way and that, then stared up at the beech, at me, through me. In the cold night, I heard him whisper: “That is one.”

Always Steel and Glass is Future . . .

2011-10-30T19:22:00.000-06:00

I, for one, have my doubts about the future. Oh, it'll arrive; we can't stop its arrival. I just have to wonder: Why does the future always involve so much stale, sterile, glass and steel?

Irony: I've tried to watch this Chef of the Future video, but it keeps skipping, getting stuck, playing the music without the video and otherwise being stubborn to play.

I see the future still looks pretty much like today: Zoned-out zombies staring into computer screens or walking around not interacting with anyone around them but using their smart-whatevers to grok all the announcements and things around them. All the while talking about some expensive green wall thing meant to improve hospitals and office buildings without realizing that, hey, we've had this green wall technology since caveman days -- it's call the outdoors. Or houseplants. Really, the future is just as wasteful with its resources as is the world today? Yeah, yeah, I know: Urban. Everything is urban in the future as well. Well, the future can stuff it.

Technology is great, that I will admit. Just today, in fact, while I was in church, I tapped out a few paragraphs for the novel I'm writing. And emailed them to my desktop where i can do some real wordsmithing. But I could just as easily have written those paragraphs out longhand on a bit of paper and then moved them to computer via the magic of the keyboard -- or just write those novels longhand, in notebooks. Would technology have made the plays of Shakespeare better? (Not that I'm a Shakespeare.) I don't know. But the future is just that: The future. The passage of time. What we do with that time, whether it's spent with smart-thingies surrounded by greenwalls in a bleak steel and glass urban landscape, or sitting in the half-basement of an old-fashioned dumpy old house in the sticks, is what matters.

Stifling Creativity

2011-10-28T22:35:00.000-06:00

So, how creative do you feel?

Once I'm done with this blog post, I've got work to do on a novel I'm writing. "Yershi the Mild," of which I've posted a few samples here, is my latest creative endeavor. I'm having a ball writing it. I know I"m having fun because I've got ideas for it flying at me constantly, and I have to find little bits of paper or my iPod Touch so I can write them down before I forget them.

I've already written one complete novel -- it needs a serious edit; anyone out there interested? And I've started on a third novel, with the fourth and fifth also started or in the developmental stages. I don't know where all this energy is coming from, but I'm glad it's here.

So I want to talk about creativity. This talk right now is making the rounds:

I won't argue with the premise that much of what goes on in school stifles creativity -- attention to standardized testing, the ungodly urge to complete world history from Cavemen to Eisenhower by the end of the year (at least that's how it worked when I was in elementary school) and other pressures are shoving creativity out the door at school.

So I have to wonder: What's the problem? Encourage creativity at home.

No one at school is teaching my kid about comic strips. They don't even have much of an art program at the intermediate school he's at. But at home, once the rote learning is out of the way, he's drawing away, making new comic strips, reading my comic books, and doing whatever he can to absorb the world of comics. He just started a new comic adventure today:

I would love to see him encouraged in comics and art at school. But we're not going to wait for that to happen. We'll provide that creative atmosphere at home.

Does that work for every kid? No. It works for ours, though, so we'll encourage it.

Encouraging creativity at school and freeing students and teachers to take on creative pursuits -- from art to writing or whatever -- is a great thing. Encouraging creativity at home is just as good, and since that's where we can have the most control, that's what we're doing.

Profit$ in Prote$ting

2011-10-27T22:40:00.001-06:00

A Conundrum

2011-10-26T21:46:00.002-06:00

I do not pretend to understand politics or people who vote for politicians.

I do understand some salient facts, however:

Gallup tells us in September that job approval ratings for Congress is at 15%, up – if you can call 15% up – from a tying-record low of 13% in August 2011.

Approval by party is equally dismal. In September, only 13% of those polled had favorable views of Democrats and Independents, with 19% approving Republicans.

Sixty-five percent of those polled by Rasmussen Reports predict politics in Washington will continue to become more partisan and believe that both parties are to blame – with 51% saying the Democratic agenda in congress is too extreme, and 47% saying the same about the Republican agenda.

Yet there is ample evidence that when it comes to picking politicians, factions of these same voters tend to want candidates and elected officials whose loyalties lie more with toeing the party line than actually doing anything to end partisanship or make Congress more effective.

Witness here liberal grousing over the independence of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has the temerity to talk with and – gasp – endorse Republican candidates, though he hails from a “blue” state that has elected him as an Independent since 2006. Here’s what Lieberman has to say:

“My ultimate loyalty is to do what’s right for the country. I don’t mean that to be self-righteous; I just think that’s what my job is.”

Witness here conservative grousing over the party-crossing of Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, who dares – gasp – work well with those of different political beliefs and look for ways the parties in Congress can work together to make things better. (By the way, it’s interesting that the names that come up in this column: Hawkins, Rammell, and Heileson are familiar to many in the area as strictly conservative individuals, unwilling to be less partisan. I think Eastern Idaho’s sending Mike Simpson back to the House since forever indicates how well partisan politics is appreciated in this neck of the woods.

We want one thing: Less partisan, more effective government. Yet the parties, the national media, and certain groups of partisan voters on both sides of the blue/red fence seem bent on making sure we have more partisanship – and thus less effective government. What is wrong with this picture?

Oh yeah. This:

Nevertheless, they did not long maintain an entire peace in the land, for there began to be a contention among the people concerning the chief judge Pahoran; for behold, there were a part of the people who desired that a few particular points of the alaw should be altered.

But behold, Pahoran would not alter nor suffer the law to be altered; therefore, he did not hearken to those who had sent in their voices with their petitions concerning the altering of the law.

Therefore, those who were desirous that the law should be altered were angry with him, and desired that he should no longer be chief judge over the land; therefore there arose a warm adispute concerning the matter, but not unto bloodshed.

And it came to pass that those who were desirous that Pahoran should be dethroned from the judgment-seat were called king-men, for they were desirous that the law should be altered in a manner to overthrow the free government and to establish a king over the land.

And those who were desirous that Pahoran should remain chief judge over the land took upon them the name of freemen; and thus was the division among them, for the freemen had sworn orccovenanted to maintain their rights and the privileges of their religion by a free government.

All of this seems pretty familiar, doesn’t it?