Sunday, December 15, 2013

Raising chickens continues to be an avocation laced with travail.  After the Grizzly Bears destroyed the chicken pen and ate all but 3 of the 14 chickens summer before last, my enthusiasm for hen fruit had diminished, but last winter I continued to feed and water our remaining two hens (the rooster was picked off by another predator) along with 4 hens given us by a friend.  Only two of those made it all the way through the winter.  We came home from a few days away to find a trail of feathers (or maybe 2 trails as the varmint came back for seconds) leading from the chicken coop up the stairs and around to the front of the house, disappearing in the more commonly traveled area.  By late spring, I found the last headless hen with the crop gone. 

At that point, I had pretty much decided that chicken ranching would not be my niche.  My daughter Carolyn, however, decided that it would be hers. She ordered some meat hens along with a “Surprise Special” consisting of an unknown number of chicks as well as geese, ducks and turkeys.  All told, she had upwards of 40 birds when a little girl she babysits killed some of them.  The mother was so apologetic that she ordered another “Surprise Special” which booster her numbers to around 70 birds.  The attrition rate was pretty dramatic with all of the young children, dogs, and predator birds around, and by the time they butchered the meat hens, they only had 35 or 40 left.  A friendly fox would come visiting a couple of times a week and carry away one bird on each trip, so their feed bill decreased a bit, but they were still left with 2 geese, a turkey, a duck and a flock of chickens. 

Carolyn asked if I would like some of her birds and, after careful consideration, began recouping the chicken pen.  (OK, only a small chicken joke)  I decided that to stand up to the bears, it needed to be a sturdy pen, so I put an 8 foot chain link fence complete with a top rail all the way around the coop and began to cover the roof of the pen with chicken wire.  Sadly, I ran out of chicken wire and left a few holes in the top, but I judged that it should be sufficient protection. 

It actually takes from about April to November for hens to mature enough to begin laying.  The investment in birds and pens and feed and water make it only attractive if you aren’t concerned with the per-egg cost.  Buying 5 dozen eggs at a time from Costco is far cheaper than raising your own, and you don’t even have to walk in the chicken poop, but since Carolyn had already borne the expense of raising them almost to laying age, I gratefully accepted 5 hens and rooster from her and put them in my new safe-and-secure chicken enclosure.  A sweet lady at work had grown tired of her declining flock, and gave me her last two hens, so all told I had 7 birds.

Three nights ago I put on my snow boots to wade through the icy accumulation and down the hill to the chicken pen to bring the anxiously waiting chickens the kitchen scraps.  I opened the garage door and cackled to the silence, but got no answer which was unusual.  I looked down the hill to see a large black shape in the corner of the pen.  I took a couple of steps in that direction, and a huge owl tried to fly out of the pen through the unfinished roof.  He finally succeeded and landed in a Cottonwood tree, silhouetted in the moonlight, and grudgingly watched me remove the two headless hens that he had killed. 

I locked the other chickens in the hen house and the next day in 15 degrees and 10 inches of snow, finished the roof on the chicken pen.

I believe they are finally secure, but the owl has put a little fear in them and they have only been coming out far enough to eat a little snow before retreating to the safety of the hen house.  The temperature is dropping and there were no eggs tonight, so I had a serious talk with the girls.  They need to do their part in all of this effort.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The day before Thanksgiving, my sweet wife and I went walking in the woods searching for the perfect Christmas Tree.  The Christmas Tree, in our family tradition, is cut and erected and decorated within a few days of Thanksgiving, and since half of the children and their families were coming for dinner on Thanksgiving, that seemed the perfect time.  Erected is the appropriate word because our tree is always a big one.  We set it up in our atrium which faces the front of the house and is two stories tall.  The tallest tree we could have is 24 feet, but this year we marked 3 prospective candidates in the 21 foot range. Curtis, my son-in-law, and I, with assorted grandchildren tagging along for moral support, chose the one furthest away, but it was downhill clear back to the road.  I fired up the trusty chain saw and in a moment, our tree was lying on the ground. 

            Ordinarily, I wrap the tree with a tarp before hauling out of the woods, but there wasn’t a lot of room and we quite handily carried it down to the road where the 6-wheeler awaited us.  Snow was only about 6” deep and the day was gloriously beautiful.  We wrapped the tree and then, instead of hoisting it on top of the 6-wheeler, elected to drag it along behind.  Towing the tree proved quite easy, and we deposited it outside the front door of the house. 

            After dinner, the time was at hand to bring the tree inside. Wrapped as it was, there were few handholds, and the motive force was provided by Robert, Curtis and I.  We could see that we didn’t have enough oomph to squeeze it through the door, so we asked our wives to help and they pitched in on their way out the door to engage in the other tradition of commercial exchange. 

            I knew we were in trouble because the tree was just stiffer than normal.  Of course it was frozen, but that was usual.  As we pulled it in through the doorway, audible and heart-rending cracks emanated from beneath the tarp as the branches broke instead of bending.  We laid the tree in the atrium and began untying the tarp to reveal many of the largest branches that would normally extend from the trunk in the bottom 6 feet of its length laying forlornly next the tree.  I applied the stand and a rope midway up the trunk and with a cooperative effort, hoisted the tree upright. 

            Its shortcomings were immediately obvious.  The tree in an unbroken state could not be charitably called “full”, and disabled as it was, appeared quite sad.  Branches on one side were easily 3 times longer than on the other, and if it could have walked, it would have done so with a decided limp.  The discussion among all was whether it was better to haul it back out and make another attempt in a few days, or to salvage what we could of the ignoble spruce. 

            I decided to wait a day to make a decision.  There was no big hurry, and maybe the light of day would improve the appearance.  It did not.  Not willing to give up on the homely specimen, however, I got out my trusty drill and bored several holes into the trunk where I could situate the broken limbs and restore a modicum of balance.  I know from previous experience that the “grafted” limbs will not make it ‘til Christmas, but I am willing to replace them as the need arises.  The limbs in the forest that need pruning abound.  Lit and ornamented, the tree is not the most beautiful we have ever had, but it is beautiful, and it teaches a profound lesson.

            Each of us is like the tree.  We have so many faults that our Father In Heaven likely wonders, at times, if it is possible to put us to rights.  But he loves us, broken limbs and all.  And because he does, he has provided a Savior for us, a Master Gardener that has the ability to graft us and shape us and help us to grow to perfection, if we but desire it. As we prepare to celebrate the Christmas season, let us remember our Savior, Jesus Christ, and the price he has paid to see us return to live with our Heavenly Father in eternity.

Monday, July 29, 2013

And now for a winter break…..At about 18, I went on my first ski trip with my friend, Steve.  We drove to Snow Bowl outside of Flagstaff where we rented ski equipment, bought a lift ticket, and headed for the slopes.  I had no idea what I was doing except to say that the skis clamped on the ski boots and pointed downhill, and you went along for the ride.  In fact, that is just what happened.  After putting on the skis and shuffling to the rope tow, I made my slippery way to the top of the bunny hill and then headed down.  As an invincible teenager, I figured I would pick it up on the way and because my progress was accompanied by several spills, I wasn’t in much danger of being out of control.  Stopping, of course, is the problem.  Controlling speed is a corollary. I finally got the skis under me and began to slightly understand turning and continued downhill past the lodge.  I looked around and saw no  way to get back up the hill and noticed I was accelerating down the hill, and so not completely understanding the theory of the snow plow technique, I did the only thing I could figure out at the time, and that was to wipe out.  In those days, ski brakes hadn’t evolved, and a safety strap was fastened around each ankle to prevent the ski from running away.  My wipe-out had seemingly spun the skis around each other and were so tangled that the only hope I had of sorting them out was to take off one of the straps.  I was attempting to accomplish this in thigh deep snow, and when I finally got one strap untangled from the other and put the ski aside, the unsupervised ski took off down the hill like a bullet.  There I was, buried in the snow, still fastened to one ski with the other leaving a thin but distinctive track down through the woods.  Skiers will tell you that this is very poor etiquette as an out-of-control ski can hurt someone that it happens to run into at high speed.  That realization began to come to me as well as the fact that I had to retrieve it.  I got to my feet, stuck the other ski in the snow tail down, and started following the track.  Circumstances could have been much worse, I now realize.  I might have actually pointed it down the ski slope and it might have been gone forever, or the police might have shown up looking for the idiot who had killed someone by sending a ski down the hill alone.  Fortunately, I had inadvertently pointed the ski to the side and it made its way through the woods for an interminable distance until it came to rest against a blessed tree.  Post-holing all the way, I followed the track to the tree and recovered the ski, and then set about climbing back up the hill carrying the ski through thigh-deep snow in uncomfortable and hard to walk in ski boots.  I thought I was in good shape, but when I got back to my lone-standing ski, I was completely exhausted.  That didn’t really matter though, because, exhausted or not, I still had to climb the slope back up to the lodge carrying both skis.  I finally arrived at what seemed to be a level path and not wanting to appear to be the complete idiot that I was, I put the skis back on and coasted to the rental return and figured that I had gotten my half-day’s use out of them and I was really just contented to collapse.  The valuable lesson I learned is that lessons really do have a purpose, whether you are an invincible teenager or not.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

In 7^th grade, Mrs. Douglas decided that we would individually memorize and recite 36 lines of a poem of our choosing.  Mrs. Douglas was a pretty woman, probably in her late 30’s.  She drove a sporty white car and gave me a ride home once.  It was the first time I had ever ridden in a car that you almost sat on the floor with your feet straight out in front of you.  The plan was that we would memorize 12 lines and say them in front of the class.  2 weeks later we would recite 24 lines, and 2 weeks later we would deliver all 36 lines.  The choice of the poem was ours.  I am pretty literal when it comes to poetry.  Reading all the hidden meanings that the poet obviously had when he wrote the poem is often beyond me. It is sometimes beyond the poet, I suspect, but never beyond the Literature teacher presenting it.  I chose a poem that told a macabre story: The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.  Memorizing the poem was only the first obstacle that I had to conquer.  I had a deathly fear of speaking before the class and I knew that I would be a spectacle, but I crammed in the lines of the poem and gave them in front of the class, and no one laughed which gave me great relief.  Two weeks later I related 24 lines for my peers and finally, at the appointed time got through 36.  The repetition was effective.  I can still recite the same 36 lines of  The Raven.  In fact I learned 42 of the 108 lines, but have never gone on to finish the poem.  The repetition was so effective that after my classmates had recited their poems, I had learned some of them, and can still remember 17 lines of Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride  and 16 lines of Poe’s Annabelle Lee, which were, by far, the most popular choices. 
For me, Mrs. Douglas was inspired in her choice of instruction.  I learned several things by the exercise.  First of all it taught me that I could memorize, which has become a valuable skill I have used all of my life.  It also helped to allay my fear of speaking before a group, and did give me some appreciation for poetry, albeit a small sample.  Lyrics of songs, it seems, are easier to memorize as the music helps to propel the words, and while I appreciate the music, I have to hear the lyrics.  The lyrics are what make the song meaningful to me. I understand that this varies between individuals.  My wife seldom knows what the lyrics are, but hears the music.  She loves the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but I don’t because I only hear a blur when they sing. The lyrics are often smothered by the many voices singing. 
Through the years, I have sometimes decided to memorize a poem that has appealed to me.  I’m not sure how to define my selections except to say they are eclectic.  I memorized Jabberwocky from Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and while it is a song, I would count Modern Major General from Gilbert and Sullivans’ The Pirates of Penzance.  Recently I wanted to see if my older brain still was capable, and I have always admired several of Robert Frost’s poems, so I learned Mending Wall, The Road Not Taken, and Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.  When my friend, Richard, and I worked in Boy Scouts, he had offered a Big Mac to any of the boys that could recite The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.  Over many years, only one boy took him up on the offer.  I saw Richard the other day and told him I was ready to collect, but I still haven’t gotten to perform for him. 
I have come to appreciate that the brain really has no practical limit.  It can hold as much as we are motivated to fill it with.  We (I) are (am) naturally lazy so fail to challenge ourselves (myself), so if you see me walking around with an intense look on my face and a vacant stare, mumbling to myself, you might guess I am working on a poem.  Or maybe my senility is just kicking in.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

My very first watch was probably a Timex.  We had neighbors two doors down, the Reeves, and Fern and Orrin were like grandparents to us, by proximity anyway.  Our natural grandparents lived in Iowa when we were small, and the Reeves were very much family.  Orrin was a watchmaker and worked at Rosensweig’s Jewelers in Phoenix.  He had a little magnifying loop on his glasses and in the evenings would work on the watches he brought home with him to repair.  He had a workbench in the back bedroom with a pull-out drawer that would fit tight against his stomach so when he dropped a part, it landed in the drawer instead of the floor.  The area was well-lit and I remember watching him for hours as he teased apart the inner workings of watch mechanisms.  To the youthful that might read this, you may be unaware that all that we had were wind-up watches, and their exactness was not based on the atomic clock or cell phone time.  Orrin didn’t have much good to say about my Timex, despite that fact that he gave it to me.  One problem that applied then, and still does almost universally, is that if you give someone something you’ve repaired that fails, you are likely to see it again- to re-repair it.  Orrin cleaned and oiled and gave appropriate CPR to that watch and kept it running.

 I ran cross-country and track my freshman and sophomore years in high school, and Mom and Dad gave me a stop watch that I could run with.  It didn’t tell time, but got a lot of use anyway.  My junior year I got a job in a salvage store.  The boss would occasionally bid on the returned items from Fed-Mart.  They would come in huge boxes, 6 foot square and 2 feet deep.  Among all of the other goodies, I found several watches that had been returned and that didn’t work.  The boss gave them to me as they weren’t salable like they were, and my first watch repair adventures began.  These were pretty cool because they were self-winders.  Instead of having to wind the watch every day to keep it running, there was a little centrifugal weight inside that was geared to wind the mainspring.  Moving your arm would make the weight spin and keep the spring wound.  Orrin was fairly respectful of these mechanisms, and I cleaned and oiled them and was able to resuscitate three out of four, with a little cannibalization.  I wore them for years, and then after Beverly and I were married and moved off to Boston to go to school, she bought me one of the new LED digital watches for my birthday. To see the time, you had to push a button and the red LED display would glow with both the date and time.  I learned a valuable lesson that every young husband should appreciate from that watch.  The watch she bought me wasn’t exactly the watch I wanted, so I returned it and got the one I did want.  Big Mistake.  And men, I know you can’t see the problem with that (and I’m still a bit unclear as well), but that doesn’t make any difference.  If your  sweetheart goes to the trouble of finding out what you want and shopping for it and wrapping it up and giving it to you as a surprise because she loves you, just suck it up and love it, whether or not it was the one you wanted.  Peace and love at home is much more important than how the time and date are displayed on the face of the watch (or whatever).  Anyway, I wore that watch until all the chrome wore off and the buttons didn’t work any more, and finally the LCD watches were born.  Their display is continuous, and you only need to push the button to light the display when it is dark; a big improvement.  I had a series of Timex and other LCD display watches over the years, and they were only $25 or $30 dollars (actually quite a lot at the time), but one might last for several years with an occasional new battery.  I have had some much nicer watches, but I’m not smart enough to take them off before I begin a project in the garage, and the cheaper models hold together better  and aren’t such a loss when you break them. 

My current watches are the $5-$10 variety from Walmart with a Velcro band and LCD display.  I have stuck with the same model now for 5 or 6 years, and while I’ve had to modify them a bit (the pins that hold the band pop out, so I have just heated up a paper clip red hot and melted it through the same place the pins would fit, and then cut it off to make it permanent), I feel just fine about throwing them away every couple of years.  As the Timex guy might say, they “Take a lickin’ and keep on telling accurate time” (they don’t actually “tick”).  So what does that say for the watchmakers of the world?  I guess there are still some higher-end watches that a watchmaker may be needed to maintain.  Orrin passed away just after the digital revolution in watches began, so he didn’t get to witness in person the decline of his trade, but I still feel a little guilty when I strap on my cheap digital watch. 

Monday, July 08, 2013

Monday, July 08, 2013

A week ago a got a nice letter from my medical insurance company.  My policy is a group plan through the American Association of Orthodontists that I have had since 1997.  As you might expect, my premiums have risen at an incredible rate, and my last 6 month premium for Beverly and I was $13,791.  The policy is for a high deductible ($6,000)  and PPO plan, which means that the insurance pays nothing until I have spent $6,000 out of my pocket each year, and that I agree to use providers in their preferred group for which they would pay 80% of reasonable and customary.  If I go out of their preferred group, they only pay 60%.  Since 1997, we have only exceeded the deductible 3 times, which means for the approximately $193,412 we have spent on premiums, they have paid approximately $10,000 total.  This is clearly a policy designed for catastrophic illnesses or injuries, and since we have avoided them, we just get to pay the premiums and feel lucky. 

 It is usual for me to receive a letter a month or so before the premiums are due.  The letter generally tells me that expenses are very high and that they have been able to hold the premium increase to only 11%.  Imagine my surprise that this time the letter informed me that they (New York Life) is pulling out of the medical insurance market because of Obamacare.  Since they would have no choice about accepting clients with pre-existing conditions, their actuaries could not accurately predict what their expenses would be so they are leaving the market. To me it feels a bit like a slap in the face.  I suppose lots of other participants in the plan have been able to have their claims paid with my premium dollars, but I want my chance!  Sort of.  The point here is that they are not the only company with the same hesitation who will be leaving the medical insurance market in the near future.  For me, if the group doesn’t come up with another company, I will be hitting the insurance exchanges with the rest of America.  But look at my premiums for catastrophic insurance…..How can an employer be forced to pay as much for his employee’s medical insurance as he might pay them in wages.  Or how can an individual who makes $20 an hour, or $41,600 gross per year assuming 40 hours per week/52 weeks per year be forced to pay half of their gross earnings in medical insurance. Oh wait, I forgot…..WE are going to subsidize their policy. To the tune of half of their gross wages?  Can anyone with a calculator see how this can work without accelerating the spinning feeling we already are experiencing as we head down the drain?  

Saturday, July 06, 2013

Saturday, July 06, 2013

About a year before the fall of Hosni Mubarak, former President of Egypt, Beverly and I traveled to the Mid-East and toured Israel and Egypt.  It was a fascinating and life-changing trip that we were grateful to have made, especially as it became apparent that casual trips by Americans to Egypt were going to be put on hold for a while.  We saw the pyramids and the Sphinx and most of the popular tourist sites like the Valley of the Kings and Memphis and Karnak and Luxor and Cairo.  We spent about a week on a whirlwind visit and last night I reviewed the pictures again.  What the ancient Egyptians accomplished 4,000 years ago without heavy equipment is still a construction marvel.  One of the highlights was a walk Beverly and I took through Cairo, only a mile of so from the pyramids at Giza.  We met a young man, probably 18 or 20 who walked with us.  He spoke good English and volunteered to be our guide.  We had been there long enough to understand that he had an ulterior motive, but he was still a personable fellow that we enjoyed talking with.  Visitors to Cairo are inundated with very sneaky solicitations to buy gold and silver jewelry, essential oils, papyrus artwork, and rugs. Guides from travel agencies or those you hire on the street will have a relationship with shops in one or all of these trades and will stop at those shops whether you want to or not to give you the opportunity to buy their goods.  We wandered into a papyrus-art shop on our own one evening and somehow our travel-agency guide got wind of it and demanded of the shop owner a cut of the sales.  The vendor was angry since the guide had nothing to do with our visit and refused to pay her.  We talked to him for quite a while and he finally told us that between the guide and the agency, he would normally pay them 50% of the sales total.  Anyway, our young friend had a “brother” that sold essential oils and he eventually guided us to the shop where we sat through a long lesson on oils and actually bought some (surprise!)  Background on Egypt:  Mubarak was Egypt’s 4^th President and was a largely benign influence to US interests.  Growth occurred under Mubarak, but most of the money (maybe 75%)  that should have gone to the poor wound up with those higher in the socio-economic strata.  He apparently enriched himself as President and was overthrown in violent protests on February 11, 2011.  The Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate was Mohamed Morsi who was elected with 51.7% of the vote on June 24, 2012.  The Brotherhood has long been involved in Egypt’s politics, having unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the second President, Abdul Nassar in 1954.  Morsi has just been overthrown by widespread protests and Adly Mansour, former chief of  the Supreme Court, is now acting President.  The unrest, in conjunction with news reports of rape and murder of western visitors has made Egypt a less-than-ideal tourist destination.  This is a great misfortune to the average Egyptian, because tourism is the #1 source of income, with taxes on Egyptians working outside the country #2, the Suez canal #3, and oil and gas revenues #4.  With all of the media-time that Islam has gotten in the past several years, we begin to assume that the average Moslem is quite devout.  In Egypt anyway, that was not the case.  In talking with our young guide and observing the populace at large, we began to realize that in Islam, just as in Christianity and Judaism, much of the population is not devout.  There was a range of devotion which in Egypt which one could see by observing the dress of the people.  A woman particularly might be seen in a full burqa covering her entire body except for a transparent veil over the eyes riding on a motor scooter behind her husband, or she also might be seen dressed like western women everywhere, unaccompanied on the street and working on her own.  Our guide was engaged to a Christian woman and was looking forward to marriage.  We asked him how this would work and he said that it wasn’t a big deal in Egypt.  With Sharia law invoked, however, it would become a big deal, and you can begin to see why the general population rose up in the world’s biggest protest to give Morsi the boot.  When Mubarak was overthrown, we were so grateful that we had had the opportunity to visit when we did, because we understood that it might be years before westerners would again feel safe in Egypt, and we felt very sad for the people in general, because as in so many poverty-stricken countries in the Third World, they would be the ones who would  suffer.

Friday, July 05, 2013

Friday, July 05, 2013

My beautiful wife has embarked on a venture of the greatest virtue.  She has a combination sewing area/crafts area/desk that has been accumulating invaluable objects for the last nine years.  The problem is that it has also been accumulating valueless objects for the same period of time and the mix ratio has gone way to the side of the eminently discardable.  For years when our homes did not afford her of the luxury of a large space all her own, it could frequently be heard as a direction to children,“Put it on Dad’s desk”.  Now the children are off making their own messes in their own homes, and while I still find spurious objects on my desk, many now land on hers.  She is a selfless woman with a willing hand in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, our church Young Women, children’s organization, women’s organization, the school choir, and the family, so she has had much cause to accumulate the detritus of the current emergency, with a follow on so quickly that there is scarce enough time to declutter.  Yesterday, I am happy to say, she found a fabric repair kit that I have been looking for since we moved into this home.  I did throw away the pair of pants I intended to use it on, but next time……  If the pictures she posted are evidence, my daughter, Jennifer, has independently begun the same task.  The clutter gene is one she has come by honestly, as I am not blameless in this regard.  My desk isn’t always tidy, but because it has been my responsibility to pay the bills and do the income tax return, I have been forced to go through the stack of paraphernalia in my office on a more regular basis, say a few times per year.  I have more room to put things than Beverly, however, and having never met a tool I didn’t like nor a building material I could see no future  use for, I have managed to accumulate a few odds and ends of my own.  My garage was envisioned as three bays with room at the end of the bays for shelving and a workbench on the far side of the shelves.  We planned the three-car garage so there would be room to park a sand truck in the garage in winter to keep the sand from freezing.  The sander has only been needed once or twice each winter, and maintaining it has become such a hassle, that applying it with a shovel from the back of a pickup has become easier and I have not used it for the last few years.  Consequently, the third bay has become one of the storage and work locations for materials and projects I might want to work on when everything else is beneath the snow.  I won’t even mention in detail the 20 foot shipping container, the 10x10 shed full of lumber, and the various other stacks of lumber and steel that is of incalculable value.  It wasn’t always like this.  During the 5 years of our marriage while I was in school and the 16 years of our military life together, we moved sometimes annually and at least every third year.  Moving is a great motivation to separate the “wheat from the tares”, and I developed a system that was quite efficient.  I would list every item in and around our residence on a tablet and categorize each item into one of several.  There were those things that would go with the  Movers, Hold Baggage (a smaller shipment that only took a month to move rather than several), Professional, Storage, Luggage, Yard Sale, Salvation Army, Return of borrowed things, and of course Trash. The Army allocates a weight allowance that it will move for the service member based on rank and family size.  As a Captain, I was allowed 11,000 pounds exclusive of Professional goods.  As a Lieutenant Colonel with 6 children on our final move, I was allowed 18,000 pounds.  For overseas tours, a smaller amount could be shipped to the duty station and the rest would be stored by a commercial moving company.  Because paying for overweight items was roughly $1 a pound, there was clear motivation to downsize.  We entered the Army from Boston and when we arrived there, everything we owned (except for a few things my Dad stored for us and which he assured us we would throw away when we returned, which we did) fit in the back of a ½ ton pickup with a shell camper.  When we left Boston, we had just 11,000 pounds, and we haven’t looked back.  My sister’s boyfriend, while looking around my parent’s home, asked my Dad who was going to take care of all this “junk” when he died.  He smiled and replied, “My heirs.”  I asked my son, Robert, if he was a little nervous looking over my collection, and he said, “Don’t worry about it, Dad”.  I’m not.

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

One of the challenges of living in the Land Of The Midnight Sun is the midnight sun.  The long days of summer are invigorating and I look forward to them every year, but like the vegetation at the end of the season having had all that daylight to grow in, I start to look a little worn.  Sleeping is a bit of a problem, if you crave darkness to sleep in.  Funny how taking a nap doesn’t really require a moderation of the light, but sleeping at night wants dark.  Our home has a wonderful view and we (Beverly) has chosen to do without “window treatments” in favor of the simple straight lines of the windows and walls; nothing to obscure the endless visual treat through the glass.  The obvious problem is the midnight sun.  The window style doesn’t lend itself to venetian blinds because the windows rotate in, hinging on both the side and the bottom,  and blinds would obstruct their movement.  Some people we know have used aluminum foil and blacked out the bedroom windows, but that is a full-time solution for a part-time problem, and there are times when you want daylight in the bedroom.  Our daughter, Rebecca, made us some cloth window covers that attach at the top with suction cups and are easily placed and removed.  They do darken the room somewhat, but at midnight, it is still lighter than a bedroom is supposed to be.  We are not the only ones with these problems.  Imagine 4^th of July fireworks in the light.  The annual fireworks show doesn’t begin until midnight, and while we do lose light quickly after the summer solstice on June 21^st, it is still brighter than optimum for proper celebration. Much easier on New Year’s Eve.  When we first moved to Alaska, I would find myself at Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage at 3 a.m. fishing for King Salmon and realizing that I had to go to work the next day.  I no longer have that disease, fortunately, but know many who do.  Midnight runs to the Russian River for Red Salmon are common among the sufferers.  I do, however, frequently find myself outdoors working on one project or another and realize that it is already 10 p.m. The long daylight hours instill in you an energy that is absent during the winter months.  After fall equinox when the days become shorter than those of points south, it seems that the time between coming home from work and going to bed has barely enough space for dinner, and by the winter solstice on December 21^st, it is only a blink.  Mid-February starts to pump the energy back into your body as the days begin to lengthen 4 and 5 minutes per, and you begin to plan all those things you will do as soon as it is warm enough to do them.  Like May.  Sleeping in the summer does have some solutions.  Some swear by Melatonin, but like all drugs, natural or not, has unintended consequences.  Steady use depresses your own natural Melatonin production which may make it hard to sleep later.  Our solution has become a sleep mask which works pretty well, as long as it stays on.  As time has gone by, we have added ear plugs for real isolation.  I suppose a sensory deprivation tank might be the ultimate solution, but that may be going too far.

Monday, July 01, 2013

Monday, July 01, 2013

At our ward’s Girls Camp, I was asked to speak at one of the devotionals, and I chose to speak on the topic, “Don’t Settle”.  I believe that the subject is important enough to reprise it here.  There are pressures all around us to “settle”, to go with the flow, to choose the easy path, but       little in life is gained without effort and consistency.  The “If It Feels Good, Do It” generation has marred the integrity and morality of our country as it has matured, observing and even encouraging the immoral to become mainstream.  That is not to say that evil hasn’t been with us always; it has. The barefaced prominence with which it now masquerades as commonplace and normal is new, in my observation.  The ease with which students and their teachers are prone to cheat to pass tests, the blatantly immoral excuses and actions some corporate executives use to  justify creating shareholder profit, and the steady decline of decency in media are only a few examples.  The decline of sexual mores has resulted in soaring rates of unwed motherhood, poverty, abortion and divorce.  Our faith puts great emphasis on the avoidance of premarital sex, and any sexual relationship outside of marriage.  We believe that the sexual relationship is a sacred one and is reserved for marriage, rejecting infidelity, pornography, promiscuity and the sadness and heartache that they eventually bring.

My message to the girls is that it is theirs to choose the higher path and to not settle for the baser level that society seems to sink to.  We can choose to do our best in school, in our employment, and in our moral behavior in general, or we can settle for pleasing only our ego and sensual self.  The great commandment that Christ gave us was to love God and to love one another as we do ourselves.  To put others above ourselves is the very definition of Christian charity.  Pleasing only ourselves puts us at odds with God.  True joy in our lives is the result of loving others and not ourselves.   It is their, and our, choice to settle for the mainstream and join society and all its ills, or strive to rise above, and find joy in our families, our friends, and our God.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

I have camped with both girls and boys.  There is a difference.  I might start with the obvious….girls smell better.  More than this, however, is an attitude.  Boys are rough and tumble and often try to out-macho each other with the faster climb or the heavier carry or the more dangerous passage.  Girls are just more into being together and having fun together and enjoying the relationships that they have and that they build.  I just returned from our ward’s annual Girls’ Camp. 

The camp was held at Caines Head, Alaska with a total of 18 girls ages 12-17.  7 of the girls completed an overnight hike requirement this past Monday, hiking to Lost Lake, while the other 11 began their experience on Tuesday.  I met them in Seward on Tuesday where they had arranged to have their gear hauled out to the camp site on a water taxi.  A member of the ward with a boat ferried the girls and their 5 leaders to the beach and I rowed them ashore in a rubber raft.  Later in the afternoon, the overnight hikers showed up.  The gear had been deposited on one end of the beach and the camping site was on the opposite end, so we cheerfully hauled many hundreds of pounds of ice chests and tents and cooking paraphernalia about ¼ mile round trip down the beach.  And I mean cheerfully.  Bill, my compatriot in chaperoning the exercise, and I were among the first to arrive and by the time the second boatload of girls appeared, most of the gear had been moved.  The only one grumbling was me, and I kept that to an internal roar, but the girls were happy to help.  I tried to manage one joke per trip just to pass the time, but with chattering girls, the time passed quickly anyway. 

After everyone was present, tents were set up and dinner was cooked and the evening ended with a devotional around the campfire. Boys can have a spiritual devotional, but girls really set the example, and every evening was a spiritual treat.

Caines Head is about 6 miles out of Seward Harbor and features magnificent views of glaciers and the mountains of Resurrection Bay.  The beaches are covered with round flat black shale rocks that have been tumbled by the ocean and make excellent skipping stones. 

The highlight of the second day was sea kayaking.  The girls had prepared by practicing in a swimming pool, but were a little awed by the freedom out on the ocean, and of the whales that were surfacing as little as 50  yards away.  Bill and I had been tasked with building a sauna and then heating rocks up in the fire and transporting them to the sauna so that the girls could get in a little “pamper-time”. The Bishop joined us in the afternoon and was able to stay until Friday.  The evening ended with a campfire and devotional.  

Boys pride themselves on culinary delectables when camping like “suicide stew”, but the girls eat as well as I eat at home.  They helped prepare the food, purified the water with water filters and washed the dishes without complaint. 

Caines Head is the site of the ruins of World War II defensive emplacements that protected Seward from the Japanese.  On top of the point, about 2 miles up a trail from our camp site, is Fort McGilvray. It originally featured 6 inch guns and was the destination of our hike on the third day.  After we arrived at the fort and had a chance to look around the pitch black tunnels, a group of younger kids showed up with their leaders.  Our girls “adopted” them and spent the next 1 ½ hours playing games with them in and around the fort. We held another campfire sing-along and devotional that evening, and  Friday the girls worked on their camp certifications. Bill and I heated up the sauna again and the girls had  another steam bath. 

After dinner around the campfire, camp awards were presented, a devotional was held and the evening ended with a testimony meeting followed by Dutch oven peach cobbler.  The spiritual level and the love the girls expressed for the Savior and for each other was humbling and impressive.  The nurturing they have received at the hands of their parents and their young women leaders is preparing a generation of women that will be dynamic leaders as well as wonderful wives and mothers.

Saturday morning consisted of breaking camp, hauling the gear to the other end of the beach, and hiking the 4.5 miles back to the cars for the drive home, with an ice cream stop in Seward.  I don’t love smelling like smoke and going showerless for a week and living in a tent like I did when I was a bit younger, but I do love being with these beautiful young women.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Digital is the buzzword of the times.  Analog equates to a backward way of doing things.  Digital, when not applying to fingers, refers to a way of describing things with digits, i.e. a group of 1’s and 0’s that, according to a given pattern, represent the “thing”.  This representation (data) is made of of bits (1s and 0s) which are arranged in groups called bytes.  The bigger the byte, the more complex the arrangement of 1s and 0s possible and the more information it can store, transmit, or process. Analog, in electronics, refers to adding frequency or amplitude information to a electronic carrier wave to represent a “thing”.  A digital representation is generally much more accurate than an analog and has the advantage of being able to be altered with a computer to change the essence of the “thing”.  A digital photograph can be “photoshopped” to change everything about the photo, including the content.  Digital music can be altered by using a computer to change the music itself.  An analog copy can’t be predictably changed (a phonograph record can be scratched, but only improved by re-recording from an original) In dentistry, the digital revolution has impacted us in many ways.   We now have computerized recordkeeping, digital x-ray (the image is 1s and 0s arranged by an algorithm to show an image like a traditional x-ray film on a computer monitor) and digital photography.  The latest addition to our armamentarium is a digital scanner.  Traditionally, we have made an impression of teeth with an impression material, and then either poured the impression with plaster to make an analog plaster model, or in the case of Invisalign, we have sent the impression to the Align Technology lab where they digitally scan it and then they return the 3-D image to us.  We then make the changes that will be translated into a series of clear plastic trays (aligners) that fit over the teeth, putting pressure on them and causing the bone around them to remodel and the teeth to move into a better position.  Every 2 weeks, another aligner continues to move the teeth toward a final position where the teeth fit perfectly.  The good news now is…..No More Impressions For Invisalign.  Our scanner allows us to scan the teeth in the mouth so that we can have the 3-D image immediately.  This saves us time and saves our patients from having to have very precise but gooey and not-so-tasty impressions made of their teeth.  We are excited to have this new tool available so that we can be of better service to you, our patients.  Incidentally, for over a year we have been using a different scanner to make a digital record of the archived pre-treatment and final models we have been storing for 15 years.  As we scan those models, we are attempting to contact the patients to offer them those original plaster casts, so if you get that call, come and get your piece of personal history.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

It was all our daughter Rebecca’s fault.  She worked as a biologist on the north slope of Alaska 10 years or so ago counting birds.  It’s tough work, but I guess someone has to do it.  She has also counted birds in Prince William Sound and assisted in dissecting dead Sea Otters, but when she wasn’t counting birds in Barrow, there wasn’t much else to do, so she watched television. When she came home, she told us that we really needed to watch  “24”.  At that time we really weren’t TV watchers.  We get only sporadic and poor broadcast reception, and have resisted cable or satellite because we didn’t need a reason to watch more TV.  Whenever a TV would go on in our home in the past, you could hear a loud sucking sound as the time and brains were sucked away together.  We didn’t start watching “24” immediately, but after her occasional admonitions, I found the Season 1 set at the library and we began watching it.  We were indeed sucked in.  At that time, 3 seasons had been released on DVD and we set about watching those three seasons.  If you haven’t seen the series, the concept is that an anti-terrorist team with the reluctant help of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) has to alleviate a crisis in 24 hours.  Since most seasons of regular programming have about 24 episodes, it is convenient to show one hour of the crisis per week.  When you cheat, however, and have the entire season on DVD, you can watch more than one hour a week.  And if you are truly inspired, you can veg away an entire day and see the entire crisis resolved in the same time period.  Now I don’t know that we ever devoted an entire 24 hour period to a single season, but we did watch Season 3 in 48 hours.  Okay.  I’ve confessed.  We became addicted.  But because we didn’t get broadcast television and were without cable, we would impatiently wait for the next season to be released on DVD, and then buy it and watch it.  And then while we were waiting for Jack Bauer’s exploits in a new season, we began to sample other shows.  We watched all the seasons of Jennifer Garner in Alias.  Then we tried Grey’s Anatomy and are still hooked on it as Season 9 just finished.  The girls in my office got us watching White Collar and Castle and Psych, and we follow Grimm and Once Upon A Time, watching them online and after the fact.  Now we really don’t waste time that we would be doing anything productive to watch any of these shows. Only sleeping.  We usually don’t even start watching until about 9 PM, but then the sucking noise is just the juice we would normally have the next day leaving our bodies.  Or rather,  leaving my body.  I start seeing patients at 7 AM while my beautiful wife has a little more recovery time in the morning. And that is why she is always so beautiful….she is entertained in the evening and rejuvenated through the morning.   

Monday, June 17, 2013

Why would anyone want to write about the weather?  Well, the weather makes a big difference in our lives, and in fact often drives our lives in one direction or another.  For example, my Dad was raised in rural Iowa, and helped a friend drive his belongings to Arizona where he was relocating.  He had a revelation in Arizona, and hurried back to Iowa to let my mother know that it was warm in Phoenix year round, comparatively.  No more shoveling snow or sliding around on the ice or shivering in your snow filled boots.  Mom must have loved Dad, because she packed up the house and my sister and I and we were off to Phoenix.  The trade wasn’t without sacrifice, however.  I’m sure my Grandmother only let her go kicking and screaming (not really, Grandma was pretty sedate), but the house we moved in to had only a swamp cooler and, in case you were unaware, Phoenix is HOT in the summer, from May to October.  Some might argue that it’s a “dry” heat, and it is, again comparatively, because Iowa in the summer is not only hot, but dripping with humidity which does suck the juice right out of you.  The “dry” heat you always hear about isn’t quite like that, but when the temperature is over 110 degrees, hot is hot.  Beverly and I have been privileged to enjoy many different climates, from the desert weather in Tucson to the snowy winters and humid summers in Boston, to the bone-chilling cold and hot and humid summers in  both Georgia and Kentucky.  The Kanto Plain in Japan boasted fairly temperate weather, and Mannheim, Germany was very similar, except for the noticeable lack of sunshine.  When I was at a dental meeting while serving in the Army, I met an orthodontist who was stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska.  He pulled out a picture of himself,  beard and hair frosted white, standing next to a thermometer which read -30 degrees.  I was stunned that people lived in those conditions by choice.  I didn’t realize that temperatures in Minnesota and Iowa and Michigan sometimes get that cold, and have since been educated by former residents.  According to my friend from the Great White North however, temperatures will stay colder than that for a couple of months.  (In fact after we moved to Alaska and I took a temporary job in Fairbanks 3 days every 3 weeks, I used to run after work at -40 and woke up many mornings to -50, but that is another story)   I asked him what they did with their cars and he said that have electric heaters in the cooling system and that they plugged them in and used thinner lubricants. Stores and workplaces often have plugs in the parking lot so that you can plug in your car while inside.  When they don’t have plugs, people will often either leave their car running or have a remote start with a timer that will restart the car on a schedule of your choosing to keep it warm.  Driving at -50 is a bumpy experience as it takes a while for the portion of the tire that is flat against the ground to round out again.  I had heard only great things about living in Alaska, and  I put it at the top of my assignment preferences while we were in the Army, but when we finally got an assignment, I called my assignments officer in a panic, because after talking to my Fairbanks friend, I only wanted to go to Anchorage.  Fortunately, that is also what he had in mind, and when Beverly and I arrived in Anchorage on a house-hunting trip in July, we discovered a beautiful land, cool and green and vast.  We bought a house and flew to Arizona to pick up the family and, with my parents in their 5^th wheel and us in our Suburban, drove the up the Alcan.  We arrived a few weeks later, moved in, and by the first of September, Dad was anxious to drive south because he was afraid of the snow arriving too early. Now, 20 years later, we can speak with a little experience.  We’ve decided that there really is no typical weather for Anchorage.  Summer can be cold (40s and sometimes 50s) and rainy and cloudy like it has been for the last 3 years, or it can be 70s and 80s and beautiful like it is this year and was only one other year that we can remember.  Winter can start in September, or not really arrive until almost November.  We have years with almost no snow until after Christmas and years with lots of snow before Halloween.  The mean temperature in January is supposed to be 10 degrees, but sometimes is -20, and sometimes 20 above with sunshine.  A few days after most snowstorms, we get a Chinook which is a warm wind that melts the pretty snow in the trees and makes the roads icy to drive on.  April usually hosts one last big snowstorm with a foot or more of snow, but this year we got that storm on May 18, and now, a month later, it is 90 degrees and people are complaining that it is too hot to sleep in the house. The weather is always something for some of the folks to complain about, but it is always another beautiful day in Alaska, rain, snow, or shine.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

As my Dad tells the story, they didn’t know what my name would be.  Dad came home and said, “We’ll name it Eldon.”  And that is my first and longest lasting contact with my Dad.  After that, of course, he became my idol. Anything Dad did, I wanted to do too.  Working on a car or building something or fixing anything, there was nothing that he couldn’t tackle, and that is how I modeled my life’s outlook. Because he was raised on a farm in rural Iowa in the 1930’s and 40’s, he learned how to do it all.  There weren’t a lot of options, and if you couldn’t do it, then it probably didn’t get done.  If you met his brothers, you would not be surprised that they are proficient in mechanics and construction and farming.  It would be convenient to say that those abilities are inherited, but it is much more realistic to believe that they are learned by observation and by instruction.  Working beside my Dad while he rebuilt the engine for our truck gave me the confidence to rebuild the engine in my motorcycle.  Confidence, practice, and common sense go a long ways in developing abilities in most fields of endeavor, and because Dad had those in spades, I developed them too.  I look at my sons and the men my daughters have chosen as their husbands and I see with appreciation those same attributes and skills being developed and honed.  By the time I took a firearms safety course, I had been hunting with Dad most of my life.  I saw the care that he exercised with his guns and developed the same respect.  I saw the patience that he demonstrated in training our dog as a hunter and the patience he showed in raising his children and it gave me a pattern to follow in raising my own.  I saw the curiosity and appreciation he had for the beauties of God’s creations as we traveled around America in the back of our shell camper on vacation each year, and have striven to give my own children the same sorts of experiences. If report cards mean anything, he wasn’t a straight A student in school, but in life he has proved to be worthy of straight A’s.  Dad recently celebrated his 86^th birthday.  Over the last several years as his health has declined, I see the challenges he has had to face as his abilities have lost acuity.  He works in his garden and around the house some, but I am still surprised to see that he has called a plumber or has had his oil changed at a garage instead of doing it himself.  I see in him the decline that all of us will face, and the sadness and frustration that it engenders.  When I was young, I thought that living ‘til 80 meant that I would have years and years after retirement to do the things I had put off doing.  Now that I am nearing 60 with the incumbent aches and pains, I realize that the worthwhile part of living has to go on every day.  There’s no saving it up, and in fact, the most worthwhile part of living is in raising a family.  It is an honor to be a father, and it is a privilege to have been raised by a great one.

Friday, June 14, 2013

About 3 weeks ago, Beverly started Invisalign treatment.  We have discussed her orthodontic treatment many times in the past, but she wasn’t a great candidate for braces because of the complexity of her malocclusion.  Treating her to an ideal position with braces would require either extraction of two teeth and completely changing her facial appearance-not for the better-or bringing her lower jaw forward with jaw surgery, also making a less-than-desirable change in facial appearance.  We finally took some impressions, had them scanned, and then played with the tooth positions on a 3-D computer model.  Using Invisalign aligners (a new one every two weeks as calculated  by the computer model) and a combination of “slenderizing”some teeth and wearing rubber bands from the top aligner in front to the bottom aligner in back to shift upper teeth back and lower teeth forward, we can straighten out her teeth, intrude the upper front teeth so that she has more teeth and less gums in her smile, and shift the upper teeth back so the front teeth don’t stick out and she will, for the first time in her life, be able to bite with her front teeth.  Beverly is maximally, almost neurotically, compliant.  I have to be careful what instructions I give her because she will follow them to the letter.  This is actually what we want with Invisalign patients (22 hour-a-day wear), but aligner kisses just aren’t the same.  She is also the most physically sensitive person I have ever treated, so I hear about every discomfort she suffers.  In this regard, I guess it’s a rare opportunity for me to be able to observe, first hand, Invisalign treatment day-by-day.  You might say I’m living with aligners vicariously. Her plan is a long one, with 41 projected aligners, but she is already thinking of how she might be able to shorten the treatment.  In fact, because her compliance is so good, she will probably be able to wear them for 10 days each instead of 2 weeks, which will cut months off of her treatment.  There is also an less common procedure that she wants to try.  When bone receives a traumatic injury, in order to repair itself, the remodeling rate of the bone doubles.  This is called the Regional Acceleratory Phenomenon (RAP).  By controlling the remodeling rate of the bone, you can control the speed with which you can move teeth.  A procedure called corticision involves causing localized trauma to the bone between teeth that are actively moving and thereby accelerating the remodeling rate and the tooth movement.  My wife is about the last person I would have expected to want a scalpel blade forced into the bone between her teeth under local anesthesia, but the fact that she does shows how eager she is to move the treatment along. And it’s unlikely she will sue me, so it’s a win-win.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

As one door closes, another opens. Beverly and I were recently called as Service Missionaries to work with BYU-Idaho’s Pathway program. Church Service Missionaries work from home with a specific responsibility, in our case with helping others get a college degree through a distance education program of BYU-I. The Pathway program is an introduction to college program for those who never went to college but always wanted to, as well as those who started college and never completed a degree. Students enroll in the program and then meet every Thursday night together for an hour of group-help time while they are enrolled in an online class through BYU-I. In the three semesters they attend during the first year, students will earn 15 hours of college credit and pay only $65 per credit hour They must maintain a B average, but the work group that meets together each Thursday is very supportive and helps to achieve that standard. Students with previous college may have some or all of their credits transferred and accepted by BYU-I and applied toward their degree. Once they complete the Pathway first year, they then matriculate with BYU-I and become a continuing online student where they may complete their degree. Their cost remains at $65 per credit hour til graduation unless they decide to move to BYU-I and attend in residence. There is NO requirement for a high school diploma or the need to take ACT or SAT examinations. Students agree to strive to live the BYU-I honor code, have access to a computer with internet availability, and plan on spending about 15 hours a week on the course work. After the Pathway year, students can complete a certificate program, an Associates degree or a Bachelors degree online. Even though the program is only about 3 years old, in my own ward there are several individuals who have already completed or are about to complete the Pathway year and matriculate at BYI-I. Some already have enough college credit that completing the Pathway year will allow them to receive their degree. The enrollment deadline for the fall semester is August 14. If any of you Alaskans want to get started in a degree program or finish the one you may have begun long ago, please message me here with contact information and we will be glad to help you get enrolled and move a step closer to your college goal.

Thursday, June 12, 2013

Last night I was looking for a picture.  Behind the box of comic books, residue of my misspent youth, I found our collection of photographs.  That is, I found the box that should have been our photographs.  It seems that many are somewhere else.  Everything is.  There was a picture album that was disintegrating from disuse with some 40 year old photos in it, and then there were dozens of photofinisher envelopes of negatives.  My first camera was, of course, a film camera.  A Kodak 110 and I shot many 12 and 24 exposure rolls through it.  The younger generation already thinks I am writing in a foreign language, but truth to tell, it was once tricky to get a good photograph with the lighting perfect and the subject smiling (assuming a people shot) and the figures balanced in the frame.  The uncertainty of it all was disturbing, and the cost was discouraging.  After dental school, I was strongly encouraged to get a 35mm. clinical camera with a 100mm. close focusing lens so I could take undistorted pictures of teeth and gums and things.  I bought a Minolta body with the lens and flash setup for clinical photography, but the beauty of an SLR is that you can change the lenses, and even could back then.  I got a telephoto zoom and a wide angle zoom and I began to take lots of photos.  At the time, clinical pictures were all 35mm. slides, so everything I took were slides.  Decent photography took a lot of time and patience to get the shutter speed and f-stop and depth of field and flash and film speed all working together to give predictable results.  My result was a carrying case with hundreds of slides of the places we’ve been and of the children growing up and the friends we’ve made through the years.  The case is still sitting here staring at me accusingly because it must know that I have committed time and again to transfer the images on the slides to a computer.  Clinical slides I gave up on long ago.  If I lecture now, it is on current topics and the slides are from a digital camera. I still have several carousels around of clinical slides, just waiting to hit the dumpster. The ease of digital photography has made us lazy, because pushing the button is free and it is easier to trust the automatic settings  and shoot a few extra pics you can review on the spot rather than use any photo expertise you may pretend to have.  And then I found the negatives.  After taking thousands of slides, I began to realize that to view them, you needed a slide projector and a screen and a dark room and an audience.  Individual printed-on-paper photographs could be enjoyed in the daylight by an individual person.  I began to have my photos printed a few years before the digital revolution, and thus the negatives.  You can, you see, scan the negatives and then with the tricky photo-processing software common today, convert the negatives to normal-colored images and save them on the computer along with the rest of your digital pictures.  Now not only do the slides stare at me unabashedly, but the negatives are beginning to look sullen as well. It really is time to get the proper equipment and, though it will likely take as long to scan them as it did to take them, just think of how much my heirs will enjoy looking though thousands of pictures on my hard drive of the future of people they don’t know and places they have never been.  

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I want to tell you a love story.  Way back in 1974, I left home bound  for The University of Arizona in Tucson.  After arriving, I went to the LDS institute and found an apartment looking for a roommate and began attending classes.  As a fund raising service opportunity, the men’s group made hamburgers in the snack area for sale and I volunteered to work one day, and who should walk in but this cute girl in with brown hair wearing a skirt and what I have been repeatedly informed were not go-go boots.  We made a bit of small talk and a month or so later we were both invited to visit our friend, Linda, in Colonia Juarez, Mexico a few days after Christmas.  My roommate, Craig, and I decided to carpool with that cute girl and her younger sister, so I drove my 1964 Chevrolet Impala to Casa Grande from Phoenix and picked up Craig, and then over to  Safford where we picked up Beverly and Susan, and then drove to Mexico.  Linda’s family had an apple orchard in Colonia Juarez where she was raised and we stayed in their home.  They had a huge Christmas tree in the living room and were gracious hosts, but I remember little about them because I was paying too much attention to that cute girl.  The bunch of us went for a ride in the back of a pickup hanging over the cab freezing, and I discovered that maybe she was paying a little attention to me, as we tried to huddle together for a little warmth.  We did generate a little warmth, or so it felt to me, and even exchanged a first kiss.  By the time I delivered her back to her family, Beverly and I were definitely interested in each other.  When we got back to college, we became almost inseparable.  I came to meet her roommates and found myself enjoying her cooking almost every day.  She could cook, sew, get straight A’s in school doing seemingly little work, and was extremely capable in everything she did.  I knew that was what my Mom could do so that is what I thought all girls could do, but I had discovered that was not true.  In every way, she had captured my heart.  We became almost inseparable and our grades began to show it.  I nursed her through the German measles that semester, and by March, we were already thinking about marriage. It wasn’t something that we even discussed, but each just assumed. We drove to Solomonville (a small town outside of Safford)  to visit her family several times, and at the end of one uncomfortable evening, I followed her father into the bedroom and asked him for her hand in marriage.  He consented.   Finally, after deciding that June was unreasonably soon, we decided on August for our marriage date.  At the end of the semester, she went home and I moved to Safford.  Beverly’s dad had agreed to employ me as a laborer with his construction company for the summer, so working crazy shift-work, we saw each other as much as we could and finally, on August 15, we were married for time and eternity in the Mesa, Arizona temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  That night we had a reception at my parent’s home in Phoenix, and drove to Safford the next day where we had our second reception. Both were beautiful and we saw so many of our loving friends that neither of us remember much of, because we still only had eyes for each other.  About two days later, we packed everything we owned into a horse trailer and drove off for Tucson.  We found a small apartment in a poor section of town not far from the University where we moved in and were deliriously happy, despite the crickets in the ceiling that chirped all night….every night. I became a much more serious student because I didn’t have to chase that cute girl anymore.  We both worked for Larson Construction again the next summer, living in the back bedroom of Beverly’s grandmother’s house.  It was an exhausting summer and we moved into a new apartment when we got back to school in the fall.  We made it our home, and in January of 1976, our son, Robert, was born.  A month or so later I was accepted to dental school in Boston, Massachusetts and by June, we had loaded everything we still had into the back of a 1967 Chevy pickup I traded our waterbed for and began driving across the country.  We have had many adventures since then, including having 5 more wonderful children, but the highlight of my life has always been that cute girl I met all those years ago.  Happy 60^th Birthday to my wonderful wife, Beverly.