Spooky Boring Stories

I’m not partial to ghost stories, but as I am attached to a Scout troop, the occasional demand for a good spooky story does come up.

So I was happy to see “Western Ghosts,” edited by McSherry, Waugh, and Greenberg, at the local thrift store.

I was a bit disappointed when I got home and looked further. The book isn’t full of “true” ghost stories, but short fiction. And then I got to reading and I was further disappointed.

Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, for example – my introduction to Harlan Ellison fiction – was a disappointment. Felt like it was written by that creepy yet somewhat-more-intelligent-than-average kid you knew in junior high school.

And story after story in this book were klunkers.

Then I got to Clark Howard’s “Custer’s Ghost,” and the book was almost redeemed.

Which is more ghostly? John’s leg pain, or the visions and memories he has of being a Native American at Custer’s Last Stand; of Crazy Horse egging him on to go back to Montana to avenge himself on Wendell Stuart, the soldier who caused his injury?

I won’t spoil the story. But this is the kind of ghost story I love to read, because, in a way, it’s the kind of ghost story familiar to most of us (not because we hear such good stories all the time, but because, in some ways, we’ve lived such a story).

“The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee,” by Arthur Burks, is also a gem of a tale. Again, no spoilers, but it’s the kind of story I could see myself in.

Nevertheless, the quest for a book of true ghost stories goes on . . .

Impeachment Predictions

So the House is (finally) opening an impeachment inquiry to see if President Donald Trump is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” or however that quote goes.

Going to make a few predictions:

9/24/2019 – Inquiry announced.

Sometime in December 2019 – Inquiry officially opens.

Election Day, 2019 – Inquiry ongoing. Democratic candidates boxed it out during the primaries, with winner and bloodied all beating the drum of IMPEACH TRUMP, leaving Elizabeth Warren as their nominee and It Doesn’t Even Matter as her vice presidential pick, because the headlines the day after Election Day scream TRUMP WINS SECOND TERM.*

Not that the inquiry, ongoing still after election day, won’t find that he did bad. That he doesn’t deserve to be in the Army. But because the inquiry, in the nature of inquiries, gets dragged on and on and on and on by politics and poker, politics and poker, shuffle up the cards and find the joker. But because the Republican base will always be able to do one thing that the Democratic base will never be able to do: No matter how rotten their candidate is, they will hold their nose and vote for that candidate.

So Mike Pence fills Trump’s second term after Trump is forced from office, sometime in August or September 2021.

It’s a full inquiry. Full impeachment finding him guilty. No resignations; that’s not his style.

And impeachment is what will demand full attention and energy of Congress. Not getting other stuff done. But impeachment and impeachment only. And they’ll still get paid, that’s the beauty of it. And they’ll all feel GOOD they did something RIGHT for a change and they’ll run TV ads saying YES YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL and give us contributions so we can KEEP ON DOING THE BUSINESS OF THE PEOPLE.

Or not.

*I’m NOT in favor of Trump. I’m just making predictions.

They Got to See the Beach. And Chase A Seagull.

We've never thought our two dogs, Daisy and Dottie, were all that good in the car. They both want to sit with the driver. They both get really nervous. So we had our doubts when we planned a quick family trip to the Oregon coast -- a trip of almost 2,000 miles -- that they'd survive.

But our dogsitters had moved. And we thought, what the heck?

There were times they didn't like the car. But they did fine.

And they got to play on the beach, near Face Rock at Bandon. And they had a ball chasing a seagull.

Dottie remains our miracle dog. She had IVDD a few years ago and was paralyzed in the rear end department. But she recovered. She still has a bit of a stagger, but can run. And loved running, chasing that bird.

Read Everything. Write Everything, Part 2

Today I stumbled across this.

The topic immediately caught my attention – I’m kind of a fan of aviation, aviation disasters in particular. And then I saw the author – William Langewiesche. I’ve read him before and know him to be knowledgeable on technical issues and an excellent writer to boot.

So I read.

And read.

And read.

I don’t pretend to understand everything, but I read enough to get curious about a few other things he mentions. Such as “Cockroach Corner.” That’s an appellation, as far as I can tell, given to a collection of cut-rate passenger and freight airlines airplane leasing agents, and airplane parts distributors that call a little corner of Miami International Airport home. It’s also called “Collision Corner.” There’s not a lot about either on the Internet, but I read a few things by the deeper aviation enthusiasts to know it’s a place where you can go see the history of aviation still trying to hold together and make people money.

I can find a United Press International article from 1980 that uses the term.

There’s also a blog about “Corrosion Corner,” but it appears to be pretty shiny about the place. Lots of McDonnell Douglas aircraft.

This one is a bit more, ahem, honest.

What does this have to do with me?

Well, I’m writing this book about a guy who makes his own spaceship, flies to Saturn’s moon Iapetus, and settles there. I’ve dodged the question thusfar about how he got there.

Now I see a way, or at least a starting place. A space exploration equivalent to Cockroach Corner. Sounds like it’s got a lot of potential. Potential for humor as well as drama.

So it’s important, boys and girls, for wannabe writers to read a lot. You never know where your inspiration is going to come from.

Read Everything. Write Everything.

I’m reading right now a little book that, in the wider publishing world, would probably never have gone to print.

Not that it’s bad. It’s entertaining. And educational.

But the storytelling therein isn’t a slick or polished as traditional publishing would have it be. So it wouldn’t be a go. It’s the kind of book some of the locals pick up and read because they or a family member or relative may be mentioned in it, but it might lack a wider audience.

Which is wrong. So wrong.

Because everything ought to be written down.

And even if the things written down aren’t as polished as they could be in the hands of another writer, what is preserved could be the germ of an idea. A springboard for a different kind of story. Or a mine for the little details that, say, a big-city writer might not know about small-town life. Or vice-versa.

The book in question is “Life Among the Lava Beds,” by Leonard Stephenson. I picked it up at a local thrift store because a quick glance showed me it was by a semi-local author (I live about two hours north of its setting, lava Hot Springs, Idaho) and I love to read bits by local authors. And in what pages I’ve read I can see a genesis of other Idaho writers, notably Patrick F. McManus, who made a great career retelling stories and exaggerations about his childhood. Stephenson, with a bit more practice and polish, could be southern Idaho’s analog to one of Idaho’s more famous and folksy writers. (The biggest flaw I can see is that there’s a lot of telling, but only a modicum of showing in Stephenson’s stories. With a bit more flair for presentation and a bigger poetic license, he could take his stories a lot farther.)

I’ve got settings and story ideas that could go somewhere. Except I don’t know where to take them. Looking at what authors like Stephenson write can open windows into a different world, one my characters could populate.

And I’m not talking about outright literary theft. That would be dishonest, and a disservice to this author. But I am talking about inspiration and ideas. What kinds of mischief could my characters get up to? So far, I’ve read about Stepehson’s experiences as an eight-year-old on a cattle drive, or being bored to tears helping harvest raspberries. Taken the general idea – cattle drives and berry-picking – gives my characters places to play and expand. Had Stepehnson not written them, and had I not been lucky enough to find his little book, I might not have thought of such ideas.

Is this theft? No. Because if drawing inspiration from other writers is theft, then Mr. Stephenson had better be ready to hear from a lot of other writers who wrote of cattle drives and berry-picking before him. Inspiration is drawing on the bigger ideas or themes. Theft is taking the little details.

It’s quite possible I’ll never be published. But maybe some writer will look at a useless blog posting of mine and find inspiration. That would be neat.

Toeing vs. Towing, and Avoiding Eggcorns

Read this today:

(And yes, I should be slightly embarrassed being caught reading at Reason.com)

Politics aside, let’s concentrate on the idiom: toe the line. It is not, nor has it ever been, tow the line.
Per Wikipedia, it’s a little muddled where the phrase comes from, but it’s clear in several possible examples that it refers specifically to toes, not the act of towing.

Which is apt. When one toes the line, one is meeting expectations exactly. Towing implies pulling the line, pulling it to a different place. The line the idiom refers to is static, or at least static in the instance one is accused of not toeing it.

It’s a subtle, homophonic difference. But it brings us to the fascinating world of eggcorns, which I’ve seen more and more as people, unfamiliar with idioms, translate them from speech to text without first seeing them in print. Phonics helps them get the sounds on paper, but not the words.

Not Quite Moses' Tablets

We used to poke fun at Dad when he'd take notes for brick jobs on slabs of brick or bits of wood. But it's a habit I picked up. Behold my Troop 1010 inventory list, partly written on a hunk of cardboard ripped from a box in the garage. . . 

Sunday Talk, 15 September 2019

I have here a to-do list.

It was presented to me earlier this year, by my request, by my wife. On it is a vast number of things that, at the time, needed doing around the house.

Now, many months after this list was presented to me, I look at it with satisfaction and regret. And some dread. I think you men out there know these feelings connected with your own lists, written or not.

I am satisfied because there are many things on the list that have been crossed out, completed, and I hope my wife is happier for it.

I look at it with regret for the things still on it that are not crossed out, the things I have not yet done, and I hope my wife still has the patience in her to give me a while longer to get to them.

Then there’s the dread. I know this list is months old. I know there are things that need doing that are not on this list, but, coward that I am, I don’t dare even write them down yet because of the great number of things still left to be done on the original list.

Sometimes, looking at this list, I feel like Mel Brooks’ version of Moses, who came down from Mount Sinai with three stone tablets on which God has inscribed the “Fifteen Commandments.”

Yet as he presents the tablets, he drops one of them, and it shatters. Only momentarily flummoxed, Brooks’ Moses intones, “the Ten Commandments!”

Sometimes I wish that same thing would happen with this list.

But that’s not the way of the world. The things that need doing still need doing.

I feel the same way when I’m listening to the prophets and apostles speak at Conference, or when I’m reminded of what they said at previous Conferences. Or what they’ve said in other settings. Or what they’ve sent to our stake presidents and bishops to say. They’ve offered us a lot of instructions. As I listen and recall, I take out my spiritual to-do list, and feel those same feelings of satisfaction, regret, and dread. Will what I have done feel overshadowed by what I have yet to do, and will I have to reprioritize everything to fit in the commandments our leaders pepper us with?

But that’s not the way of the spiritual world, either. The Ten Commandments are still the Ten Commandments. And aren’t we lucky to have modern-day prophets and apostles who know the commandments and have open communication with our Father in Heaven – as we do as well – to help us see and know how we can be obedient, humble, faithful, and repentant in our modern world?

I want to share a few brief moments when I feel I’ve been rewarded spiritually and temporally by obeying the commandments. That doesn’t mean I get to cross those obeyed commandments off my list – the list from our Father in Heaven never grows shorter, and the temptations never seem to stop. But with practice, I think we can see where obedience and faith and repentance can come easier with repetition to seeing how these commandments apply in our modern lives.

Commandment Seven advises us against committing adultery.

Easy, right?

Well. I look at what President Russel M. Nelson advised priesthood holders at the last April Conference and can see while I’m not an adulterer, I’ve got some work to do in the area of honoring my wife.

He told us:

Brethren, your first and foremost duty as a bearer of the priesthood is to love and care for your wife. Become one with her. Be her partner. Make it easy for her to want to be yours. No other interest in life should take priority over building an eternal relationship with her. Nothing on TV, a mobile device, or a computer is more important than her well-being. Take an inventory of how you spend your time and where you devote your energy. That will tell you where your heart is. Pray to have your heart attuned to your wife’s heart. Seek to bring her joy. Seek her counsel, and listen. Her input will improve your output.

Not committing adultery? That’s easy. But look at the seventy times seven admonitions President Nelson gives priesthood holders here. “Make it easy for [your wife] to want to be yours.” Suddenly, that seems a lot harder to accomplish.

Sometimes I succeed at this.

Other times, I fail.

I pray when I take that occasional inventory that my successes outnumber my failures. I can’t cross this one off my list. That’s up to my wife – and to God – when this life is done and we’re together in Heaven, looking at that heavenly to-do list to see how well I did.

But when I succeed, oh the feeling. I’m reminded of the lines from “Come, Come Ye Saints:”

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!

A happy wife is a true blessing. I hope I make her happy more often than I disappoint her.

The first commandment tells us we should have no other gods before God.

Easy, right?

Whenever that question comes up, I feel like responding as did Peter:

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?

Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.

(John 6:66-68)

Then the devil says to me, as is the way of the world, “To whom shall you go? Let me start a new list for you!” And that list is long and sometimes convincing. Those other gods don’t have to be the idols of old – they’re often things like social media, the internet, that pesky full-time job that keeps getting in the way of my relaxation sessions. So many other ways and means for me to spend my time and money.

So sometimes we look at what the Lord offers, and we doubt.

If I said I never had questions or doubts or felt like, “You know, if it were ever convenient to skip out on a Sacrament meeting, today would be the day,” I’d be a liar.

We all have doubts.

But, thankfully, God knows that. And so do his prophets, who tell us things like Dieter F. Uchtdorf said not too long ago:

It’s natural to have questions—the acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding. There are few members of the Church who, at one time or another, have not wrestled with serious or sensitive questions. One of the purposes of the Church is to nurture and cultivate the seed of faith—even in the sometimes sandy soil of doubt and uncertainty. Faith is to hope for things which are not seen but which are true.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters—my dear friends—please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Even Simon Peter, faithful Peter, had his doubts. If he walked imperfectly in the steps of the Savior – and Peter even briefly walked on water, as the Savior did – who am I to say I will never doubt? Our prophets admonish us to do as Peter did when he saw the storms about him and sank. He cried, “Lord, save me!”

And Jesus did, responding not with a rebuke – but with love: “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

(Matthew 14: 29-30)

Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I see the waves and feel the wind, and my faith wavers. I am, at times, weak.

But when I falter and fail, I’m often reminded of the words of another hymn, and here it’s difficult for the words not to come out in French, because the saints in France love this hymn, and we sang it often while I was on my mission:

Dear to the heart of the Shepherd,
Dear are the sheep of his fold;
Dear is the love that he gives them,
Dearer than silver or gold.
Dear to the heart of the shepherd,
Dear are his “other” lost sheep;
Over the mountain he follows;
Over the waters so deep.

Over the mountain He follows. When I wander, when I doubt, He is never far away. And when I return, He is happy. But he does ask, “wherefore did thou doubt?”

Remaining faithful is never something I can cross off my list because, like Laman and Lemuel, though I have seen miracles, I still have my spiritual struggles. But striving to be faithful is a true blessing from the Lord, and I’m grateful we have prophets and apostles who guide us in keeping the faith in the world we live in.

(Bear testimony; do soft-shoe shuffle off the stage.)

Together: Knee!

As we've been reading in First Corinthians about unity and becoming one in the body of Christ, I kept it all in the back of my head as I looked for real-world examples.

Because unity is hard. It sounds and looks great on paper, but to put it into action requires a surrender of the self, or at least of selfish interests. It requires risk.

And being selfless and being selfless in taking risks isn't something we like to do much anymore. I'm seeing this play out in the battle over Ammon's metered water. Those who are fighting against higher water prices basically want the old system back where they could use as much of a resource as they wanted and still not pay a penny more than those who were more conservative in their use.

Then I read Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes," and found two such examples -- and powerful ones.

The book has two climactic scenes that demonstrate how disparate people, working together for even the silliest of causes, can bring in the unity needed to accomplish a task.

First we see Charles Halloway taking on Mr. Dark and the Dust Witch during the amazing bullet trick, where only the baddies and Mr. Halloway, among everyone at the mysterious carnival, knows his only goal there is not to take part in a conjuring trick but to literally save the lives of his son Will and will's best friend Jim.

He's onstage, nursing a hand freshly-broken by Mr. Dark, listening to a hear pump, one that was nearly stilled by the Dust Witch, as his son and his friend lay somewhere in mortal peril. Mr. Dark himself points out the fact that with a broken hand, Mr. Halloway can't possibly hold the gun to do his part of the trick.

So:

"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway.

Mr. Dark stiffened.

"I need a boy volunteer to help me hold the rifle!" shouted Charles Halloway.

"Someone! Anyone!" he shouted.

A few boys in the crowd shifted around on their toes.

"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway. "Hold on. My son's out there. He'll volunteer, won't you, Will?"

The Witch flung one hand up to feel the shape of this audacity which came off the fifty-four-year-old man like a fever. Mr. Dark was spun around as if hit by a fast-traveling gunshot.

"Will!" called his father.

In the Wax Museum, Will sat motionless.

"Will!" called his father. "Come on, boy!"

The crowd looked left, looked right, looked back.

No answer.

Will sat in the Wax Museum.

Mr. Dark observed all of this with some respect, some degree of admiration, some concern; he seemed to be waiting, just as was Will's father.

"Will, come help your old man!" Mr. Halloway cried, jovially.

Will sat in the Wax Museum.

Mr. Dark smiled.

"Will! Willy! Come here!"

No answer.

"Willy! Don't you hear your old man?"

Mr. Dark stopped smiling.

For this last was the voice of a gentleman in the crowd, speaking up.

The crowd laughed.

"Will!" called a woman.

"Willy!" called another.

"Yoohoo!" A gentleman in a beard.

"Come on, William!" A boy.

The crowd laughed more, jostled elbows.

Charles Halloway called. They called. Charles Halloway called to the hills. They called to the hills.

"Will! Willy! William!"

A shadow shuttled and wove in the mirrors.

The Witch broke out in chandeliers of sweat.

"There!" The crowd stopped calling.

As did Charles Halloway, choked on the name of his son now, and silent.

For Will stood at the entrance of the Maze, like the wax figure that he almost was.

Charles Halloway had no idea what we was going to do to fight the evil of the carnival to win back his son. He'd assembled what he called a puny collection of weapons, including a broken cigarette lighter, a penknife, and a harmonica -- the contents of his pockets.

But here we see the power of unity.

For amusement, for laughter, for amazement, the crowd wanted to see the amazing bullet trick. And for that, Charles Halloway needed his son. So, unified, they called for him, calling him out of the Mirror Maze, his tomb.

Later we see something similar, more intimate, as Will and Mr. Halloway work their silly spell to bring Jim back to life, Jim stunned by a trip on the merry-go-round, half-grounded in reality, half in the empty world promised him by Mr. Dark.

Jim lies "as cold as spaded Earth, and Mr. Halloway is trying his best to help Will see that laughter, lightheartendess, might be the only thing to bring him back. Only when they whoop and holler together does Jim recover:

The harmonica tried a bad "Swanee River."

"Dad." Will shuffled, shaking his head, immensely tired. "Silly . . .!"

"Sure! We want that! Silly damn fool old man! Silly harmonica! Bad off-key tune!"

Dad whooped. He circled like a dancing crane. He was not in the silliness yet. He wanted to crack through. He had to break the moment!

"Will: louder, funnier, as the man said! Oh, hell, don't let them drink your tears and want more! Will! Don't let them take your crying, turn it upside down and use it for their own smile! I'll be damned if death wears my sadness for glad rags. Don't feed them one damn thing. Willy, loosen your bones! Breathe! Blow!"

He seized Will's hair, shook him.

"Nothing. . . funny . . ."

"Sure there is! Me! You! Jim! All of us! The whole shooting works! Look!

And Charles Halloway pulled faces, popped his eyes, mashed his nose, winked, cavorted like a chimpanzee-ape, waltzed with the wind, top-dance the dust, threw back his head to bay at the moon, dragging Will with him.

"Death's funny, God damn it! Bend, two, three,Will. Soft-shoe. Way down up on the Swanee River -- what's next Will? . . . Far far away! Will, your God-awful voice! Damn girl soprano! Sparrow in a tin can! Jump, boy!"

Will went up, came down, cheeks hotter, a wincing like lemons in his throat. He felt balloons grow in his chest.

Dad sucked the silver harmonica.

"That's where the old folks--" Will spoke.

"Stay!" bellowed his father.

Shuffle, tap, bounce, jog.

Where was Jim! Jim was forgotten.

Dad jabbed his ribs, tickling.

"De Camptown ladies sing this song!"

"Doo-dah!?" yelled Will. "Doo-dah!" he sang it now, with a tune. The balloon grew. His throat tickled.

"Camptown race track, five miles long!"

"Oh, doo-dah day!"

Man and boy did a minuet.

And in midstep, it happened.

Will felt the balloon grow huge within him.

He smiled.

"What?" Dad was surprised by those teeth.

Will snorted. Will giggled.

"What say?" asked Dad.

The force of the exploding warm balloon alone shoved Will's teeth apart, kicked his head back.

"Dad! Dad!"

They go on to sing, to dance, to cavort, and Jim comes around. They pull him up into the mad melee, and soon all three are dancing and laughing and they know -- for the moment -- they are happy and safe,

And unified. Which is what we should strive for. Before we ask if the new proprietors of the next carnival are already here.

Evil is Not Banal

If any man ever understood the nature of evil, it’s Ray Bradbury.

This, from “Something Wicked This Way Comes:”

We got to help her, Jim. Who else would believe? If she tells anyone, ‘I’m Miss Foley!’ ‘Get away!’ they’d say, ‘Miss Foley’s left town, disappeared! Go on, little girl!’ Oh, Jim, I bet she’s pounded a dozen doors this morning, wanting help, scared people with her screaming and yelling, then run off, gave up, and hid under that tree. Police are probably looking for her now, but so what? It’s just a wild girl crying and they’ll lock her away and she’ll go crazy. That carnival, boy, shake you up and change you so no one ever knows you again and let you run free, it’s okay, go ahead, talk, ‘cause folks are too scared of you to listen. Only we hear, Jim, only you and me, and right now I feel like I just ate a cold snail raw.

Eerie, that. “That carnival, boy, shake you up and change you so no one ever knows you again and let you run free, it’s okay, go ahead, talk, ‘cause folks are too scared of you to listen.”

Evil sees us. Evil uses us. And once our utility is gone, evil abandons us, and it doesn’t care in what form we’re left.

So we have to listen. We have to be not too scared to listen. We have to be like Charles Halloway, father to the boy speaking in this passage:

"Now look [he says to his son Will] since when did you think being good meant being happy?”

“Since always.”

“Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he’s covering up. He’s had his fun and he’s guilty. And men do love son, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit out appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn’t just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that’s your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two. I’ve known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it’s thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can’t let himself alone, won’t lift himself off the hook if he falls just a breath from grace.

“Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it’s hard, right? With the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? Do I need to tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and way off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that’s what the clock ticks, that’s what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay, but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don’t you? Don’t think of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you’ll go crazy. Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it’s a lot missed out on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more times in, the more times possibly drowned, or choked on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess, maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe.

“Look at me: married at thirty-nine, Will, thirty-nine! But I was so busy wrestling myself tow falls out of three, I figured I couldn’t marry until I had licked myself good and forever, Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. So at last I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book, and got me, instead. And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That’s you, Will, for my money. And the strange thing is, no, and sad, too, though you’re always racing out there on the rim of the lawn, and me on the roof using books for shingles, comparing life to libraries, I soon saw you were wise, sooner and better, than I will ever be. . . “

Dad’s pipe was dead. He paused to tap it out and reload it.

“No, sir,” Will said.

“Yes,” said his father. “I’d be a fool not to know I’m a fool. My one wisdom is: you’re wise.”

Those who are good don’t leave themselves alone, or those who struggle with them alone either. They see – eventually, as Charles Halloway sees, that together we make perfection, and not just in children. The sooner we learn and re-learn and apply that lesson, the better.

Roueche vs. Sacks

Working as a technical writer has, in many ways, opened my eyes to how writers of non-fiction and fiction can and should use the technical aspects of good writing to reach their audience and tell their stories.

This week, for example, I’m reading Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat.” I can’t exactly say I’m enjoying it. I have to blame Berton Roueche.

I found Roueche years ago at a thrift store, and after reading “The Medical Detectives,” I spent a lot of time looking for more of his books and devoured them.

Roueche, with the eyes of a journalist, found his niche in medical writing. But that kind of cheapens what he does. Because his real skills lie in interviewing, and in taking raw interviews and combining them into compelling tales.

That’s a skill Sacks, at least in the book I’m reading, appears to lack. Roueche wants his subjects and their ailments and detection of ailments to be center stage. Sacks appears to want his musings and interpretations to be center, and that makes for less appealing storytelling.

I was not surprised to learn, then, that Sacks describes himself as shy. That comes out clearly in his treatment of his subjects, whom you get the feeling he never interviewed, just observed. That may also be systemic of his position as a clinician, seeing the stories from the inside, rather than as Roueche did, as a journalist from the outside.

So what does this have to do with writing in general?

Writers need to keep themselves out of the story. It’s their characters who tell the tale. Throw in too much of what John Steinbeck describes as “hooptedoodle,” and it’s the writer who becomes the center. And it’s those kinds of writers who irritate me.

And I’m probably that kind of writer, which makes me say “Oh dear.”

So that’s another lens through which I should look at my writing. Am I character- and story-centered, or am I egocentric? If the latter, it’s time to pluck it out.

It’s Obama Water, Folks. Obama Water and Hubris.

You know what I’m seeing in Ammon’s metered water?

1. More expensive water
2. Hubris.

Let’s talk about them in that order.

Yes. Watering our lawns – and let’s face it, that’s where the money is going – is more expensive now that the city is metering water. Our bill, for example, reached $68.44 for using 38,440 gallons of water. Why, that’s . . . an infinitely small amount of money per gallon of water.

In fact, that’s just under two/fifths of a cent for a gallon of water. Mathematically, that’s 0.0017 cents per gallon. (That’s $68.44 divided by 38,440, for the mathematically impaired.)

I have on my desk, folks, 29 cents. That’s enough to pay for about 170 and ½ gallons of Ammon water. The average American, showering for just over eight minutes, uses 17.2 gallons of water. That twenty-nine cents is ten showers in my hand.

Granted, that’s a lot more than we paid when we first moved here in 2015. For the same month, we paid $37.25 for the water we used.

How much did we use? Don’t know. The water wasn’t metered then.

But it didn’t matter. I could run the sprinklers 24 hours a day on my watering days. Let the tubs and toilets overflow all week long. Washed every car in the neighborhood. And I still would have only paid that flat $37.25 fee.

And you may have noticed Ammon is growing? I lived in Lincoln when I was a kid, and remember Ammon having a population equivalent to Sugar City’s 1,242. We’re pushing 16,000 now. More than ten times the population. Probably using more than ten times the water.

And you want city responsibility? You want your elected leaders looking out for you? How about them looking out for us in making sure we have water in the future, enough water through the state’s byzantine water rights system so that when the time comes to take a shower or flush your potty, you’re not paying a hell of a lot more for the privilege?

Water’s not just this magical liquid that comes out of the ground. It has to get there first. And according to the Idaho Department of Water resources, the amount of water in that Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, the one the city draws its water from, has been on a downward trend since the 1950s. That’s almost 70 years, folks.

Yes, there’s been a recent – very recent – uptick in the amount of water in the aquifer. That’s thanks to a lot of farmers and cities and other organizations who looked at this precious, dwindling resource and said we’d better do something about it.

Now your city’s taking action, taking action to make sure you have water when you need it, even if you have to pay a little bit more for it. And you don’t like it.

That’s hubris, folks. Yours. Not the mayor’s. Not the city’s. Yours.

Because there’s certainly a lot more expensive water to be had out there, folks.

I could go right now to Walmart and buy 32 bottles of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water, 16.9 fluid ounces per bottle, and pay $1.17 a gallon for that water.

And I should add we moved here from Sugar City, where there were some summer months we were paying about $200 a month for that city’s metered water, and our lawns were a lot more brown than they’ll ever get at our house in Ammon.

There’s your expensive water, folks.

But that’s not important. What’s important is the hubris.

When I hear people say “I thought we elected you to protect the people” and the people are complaining about having to pay for more water, all I really hear the people say is “We want to continue getting free stuff.”

Because that’s what unmetered water is. Free water. Pump out all you want, and pay only a flat fee for it.

It’s Obama water, folks, just like those Obama cell phones. Your water welfare is getting cut off, and you don’t like it.

I’m not going to go further into why we should be paying for the water we use. Because it’s clear this argument isn’t about facts and logic – I’ve watched people on social media complain despite ample facts and logic offered by the mayor, the city, on why we have to pay for the water we use. This argument is all about emotion.

It’s all about a little corner of the Ammon Welfare State getting cut off and people not liking it.

Want a visual of what it could be like? Maybe watch the “Nurse Doctor” episode of MASH, where Major Charles Emerson Winchester the Puffed has his family mail him Vichy water to get him through a water crisis at the camp.

Why choose a fictional story?

Because it shoves the facts and logic away. It speaks to the emotions we’re all expressing.

Besides, real-world examples are too icky and filled with facts – and this one took place in Africa! Why, they’re all jungle natives there anyway, and back in the 1980s all the stars got together and sang a song and EVERYTHING WAS MAGICALLY FIXED. Such a water shortage couldn’t possibly happen here.

But of course it could.

Thinking otherwise? More hubris.

Fence is Done. Almost.

The fence looks done from our side, but there are still five panels that need staining on the others. A few gallons of stain and a Monday off for Labor Day will make short work of that.

It feels good to have the project done -- although this was supposed to be my summer of doing siding on the house. Maybe now that the fence is done I can get started on the siding. And I might have two months of good weather to do it in.

Then there's next year's fence project . . .