Tuesday, April 30, 2013


Tuesday, April 30, 2013
The memories of my late-teenage experiences in Costa Rica spawned a desire to return with my wife.  It took us a while to get there in between dental school and Army assignments in Japan, Texas, Arizona, Kentucky, Germany, and finally Alaska, but  the airlines conspired to help us out.  In the olden days of Alaska citizenship, the airlines were very eager to get you to spend your Permanent Dividend dollars with them and they promoted some amazing deals.  The Dividend was about $1200, and the airlines would offer x number of tickets to their destinations for your Dividend.  Northwest and Continental offered 3 and 4 tickets to Costa Rica at various times, so we farmed out our kids to our faithful friends and we flew away.  We arrived in Liberia, Guanacaste, the northern province of Costa Rica, rented a car and after describing to the rental agent that we were looking for a quiet beach we could relax on, he recommended Playa Junquillal.  At the time, the roads were slow going, gravel or pot-holey asphalt and poorly signed, but we reached Junquillal and set about finding a room.  The first place we looked was a hotel sprinkled down the side of a hill to the ocean called Antumalal.  It was a beautiful setting and we were some of the only guests, so we took a room closest to the beach and intended to stay for a night or two which became three, and then four, and five and six and we saddled up again to see some more of the country.  Costa Rica is varied in it’s topography with volcanoes and mountains, northern plains with agriculture, the central valley with the capital, San Jose, and both Pacific and Caribbean beaches.  You choose temperature with elevation.  San Jose is in the 70’s year round while the beaches are in the high 90’s.  We began exploring in the mountains and stayed in a rustic lodge where they were developing a very long concrete water slide and a canopy tour on zip lines, saw Rincon de la Vieja (one of 5 active volcanoes in Costa Rica), drove down to the plains again and then around Lake Arenal to see Arenal (another of the active volcanoes).  We drove down to Tabacon with it’s hot springs that drain through many pools of different temperatures where we swam in the pools and stayed the night.  Driving to the outskirts of San Jose and then to the pacific coast where we took a ferry from Puntarenas to the Nicoya peninsula, we found ourselves back where we started at Antumalal on Playa Junquillal.  After two more days of not driving and just relaxing, we made our way back to the airport and home, hoping our faithful friends still were after watching our kids for two weeks.

Monday, April 29, 2013


Monday, April 29, 2013
While traveling through Latin America in 1974, we finally cleared the border at Tapachula, Mexico and entered Guatemala.  It was like emerging from a dusty and arid desert and entering an oasis.  Guatemala was verdant green and we climbed quickly into the mountains.  We stopped in Huehuetanango and poked around the Mercado and the girls were thrilled to find huaraches (sandals) colored with red and green in the native style.  They each bought a pair and we drove on to Guatemala City.  We stayed in a small pension for the night and the girls and I decided to explore a bit.  We were dressed casually, the girls wearing their newly purchased sandals, and we covered a couple of miles arriving at Parque Central at dusk.  It is usual in Latin American cities to have a Central Park that is in the middle of the downtown area.  Bordering the park was the National Museum and National Palace, home of the President.  After walking all that way in new sandals, the girls had worn painful blisters on their feet and as we passed by the Palacio Nacional, the guards stationed in front noticed that they were limping.  We chatted for a few minutes and soon they had called the Jefe de la Guardia, the  Chief of the Guard, who lived in an apartment in the Palace.  He was a very nice fellow who found bandages and insisted on dressing the girls’ wounds.  We were surprised to be so close to the Guatemalan “White House”, and he offered to give us a tour.  He led us from room to reception hall to ballroom and on, flipping on the lights as we went and giving us a history and current use tour of the building.  He finally took us to his apartment where he gave us cold drinks and finally, as it was getting late and we had only a vague idea of where to go from there, put us in his red Mercedes with a driver and sent us back to the pension.  I don’t suppose all tourists get this kind of treatment in Guatemala, and there has been a regime change or two since then, but my advice for the low budget traveler: Always travel with a couple of cute girls and your life will be much better.

Sunday, April 28, 2013


Sunday, April 28, 2013
In 1974, as a veteran of 2 years of high school Spanish under the tutelage of Mr. Fierros and 2 years of college Spanish, the slavish student of Mr. Campion, I enrolled with Mr. Campion for a college extension course to be taught at Centro Cultural in San Jose, Costa Rica.  Mr. Campion organized these trips every summer and he taught the classes for a few hours a day in San Jose leaving the students to learn the language and culture the rest of the time. This was by far, the best part of the language learning experience. We were supposed to live with a family there, but they were short a family and I wound up in a pension which was OK, but not as intimate an experience as living with a family might have been.  The trip, in all, was inexpensive (due to tuition and expense grants) and irreplaceable as a first chance to be away from home and live in a foreign environment.  Some of the students  flew to Costa Rica, but trying to trim costs as much as possible, I rode most of the 3000 miles in the shell camper of an old Chevvy pickup.  Gonzalo Morales had no need of a Spanish speaking experience, but he was as eligible as any of us for financial aid, so as a 40+ year old man, he enrolled in the course and his master plan was to sell the truck and a trailer-load of junk in Costa Rica and make some money.  Myself, Lorna Griffin, Sheila Moore  and Pearl Zertuche paid Gonzalo for passage, and he drove the truck the length of Mexico and through Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  Lorna, Sheila and I were the teenagers of the group.  Pearl was another middle-aged native speaker on vacation.  Because Pearl would get carsick, we three spent most of the time in the un-airconditioned shell  camper crossing the deserts of Mexico looking out of the tiny windows on the sides and listening to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.  In Tegucigalpa, Honduras Gonzalo, who had failed to get a passport and was  bluffing his way through the borders got hung up by immigration and had to go to the Embassy to get an emergency passport, which took a few days.  Because the rest of us had to get to San Jose to start the school, he had to buy us tickets on the Tica Bus line and we rode the rest of the way through Nicaragua and Costa Rica in style, finally met by Mr. Campion who settled us in to our accommodations.  Sheila’s family had teenagers about our age and Lorna had a “brother” a bit younger, but we met some friends at local dance clubs and had a great experience.  I became an Orange Crush drinker while my compatriots learned to drink cerveza.  Most of my meals were taken with the boarders in the pension, mostly early 20’s men who were working or going to school.  They didn’t speak much English and my conversational Spanish was embryonic, so interactions were a little stilted.  I did speak quite a bit with Daisy, one of the maids, and by the end of the summer felt like I could survive in a Spanish-speaking country.  When our summer ended and it was time to head home,  Sheila, Lorna and I turned north on Tica Bus as far as it went, and then on a Mexican bus line to where we could start a journey by train.  It was really an ideal traveling arrangement because the girls could travel unmolested because they were with me, and strangers were very kind and generous because I was with them.  Traveling in Mexico took some persistence.  I recall buying train tickets at the main train depot in Mexico City where ticket windows in the large round room would open, seemingly at random and would sell a limited number of tickets for a particular train.  This was B.C. (Before Computer) and is probably a more sane process now, but then getting a ticket for the train you wanted was a challenge.  We persevered and finally got to Nogales where my Mom and Dad picked us up in their pickup-camper and drove us back to Phoenix.  A few short days later I loaded my necessities into my car and headed off for college at University of Arizona in Tucson, but that’s another story.  I took 2 more years of Spanish at U of A which was a much better experience with an improved ear and tongue for the language.

Thursday, April 25, 2013


Thursday, April 25, 2013
Traveling brings out the best and the worst in people.  I have watched fellow travelers act rudely toward others, including their family members.  Most often, however, they respond with poor demeanor to the workers in the travel industry.  I admit, there have been times when I have been nonplussed at the inattention I have received by a travel professional while traveling.  Everyone who travels has probably seen the service worker with a smile rigidly fixed on their face who seems to do their utmost to make the travel experience miserable for the traveler.  They are, to be sure, living within the rules and constraints put forth by their employer, but seem to take a special joy in causing havoc in the traveler’s life. 
I began traveling by air at about 1:40 AM this morning (for the temporally challenged, that is a little after midnight).  This is common in Alaska because that is when many flights leave, theoretically arriving just in time for a new day somewhere else, dragging of course.  We arrived in Phoenix for a sleepy 4 hour layover and boarded again for another 5 hour flight.  On this flight, we were blessed with the complete opposite of the the travel industry professional I described before.  Our flight attendant was tall, pleasant, and the most attentive I have ever had the pleasure to be attended by.  He fussed over us like we were royalty, never getting in the way, but always available and eager to please.  On meeting  Robert on our arrival, he remarked that he must have had the same attendant last week, because it was indeed, remarkable. 
I attended a seminar many years ago and the speaker described the ideal customer interaction as a “Disney” moment or a “Nordstrom” moment.  I listened and have, from that time, made it the policy in my office that the patient is the most important person in the office.  Not me, not the staff, nor anyone else.  That policy makes it fun to go to work and wondrous to watch as my employees try their best to make the experience for our patients (and their parents) a happy one, and we take criticism very seriously.  This US Airways flight attendant shows that spirit in all he does, and his attitude alone makes me willing to fly US Air again.  

Tuesday, April 23, 2013


Tuesday, April 23, 2013

            I like precision.   I love to see the way things are constructed and how they work.  Things that have rules and reasons and properties make sense to me.  Building things has always appealed to me, and for that reason I enjoy carpentry and cabinetmaking and architecture.  Welding appeals to me because it has principles that, if followed, result in incredibly strong structures.  Earthmoving might seem to be a loosey-goosey process, but laying out a road that is flat and on grade or digging a hole of particular dimensions requires planning and skill.  Concrete work might seem to have nebulous properties because the material is soft and gooey, but building accurate forms and pouring the “marvelous mud” into them results in a crisp object or structure with flat sides and exacting corners.  When I was a boy, we had a neighbor who was a watchmaker.  I would watch with fascination as he disassembled and cleaned and reassembled the myriad microscopic parts.  Looking through a loupe fastened to his glasses and over a drawer that pulled out from his workbench to touch his chest and catch any tiny dropped parts, Orrin could remove and replace hairsprings and bearings and crystals and crowns, clean all the components in his special cleaning machine, and reassemble them to work again.  Even in dentistry, I enjoy the exacting processes of cavity and crown preparation, surgery and even orthodontics.  What I never enjoyed was dentures.  Denture construction is a loosey-goosey process that doesn’t have enough precision, primarily because mouths with no teeth don’t have much precision.  There is little similarity between the precision a person with teeth can perceive and that which an edentulous person can perceive.   That is because the proprioceptive organ of the periodontal ligament which surrounds the root of the tooth is missing in a mouth without teeth.  I’ve always hated painting because it is messy and sloppy and often imprecise.  I must have been one of those children who insisted on coloring inside the lines and enjoyed using pencils instead of-heaven forbid-water paints where the colors ran all over the lines.  My wife has asked me uncountable times to trim her hair, and I have sometimes obliged her, but dislike doing it because cutting hair is an imprecise art.  I admire those that can do it well, as I admire painters and removable prosthodontists, but they are not me.  When I was in the Army, I was stationed at Camp Zama, Japan.  The other dentist in the clinic was an avid golfer and he persuaded me to join the golf club.  I bought some clubs and we would shoot 6 holes before work on the deserted but beautiful course.  One afternoon, I was golfing with one of my patients, a sergeant.  He watched me swing with less than desirable results, and after a while, he said, “Sir, You gotta get loose!”  I said, “I understand what you mean, sergeant, but I am not loose.  I try, but I am not loose.”  I realized then that I wasn’t a golfer and trying to be one was frustration and denying the talents I have while trying to adopt one that was clearly not mine.  I sold my clubs.  I think this explains well my preference for certain activities and my distaste for others.  It’s just the way I’m built.  Blame my genes.

Monday, April 22, 2013


Monday, April 22,  2013

            I know.  You’re wondering if Invisalign is all that they say it is.  And the answer is…..it is getting closer and closer.  Moving teeth where you want them to go is a complex business because it involves controlling the pressure applied to the root of the tooth while only being able to influence the crown.  The pressure  causes a stimulus in bone remodeling at the surface of the ligament that holds the root to the bone.  Putting pressure on this ligament causes remodeling of the bone along the length of the root.  Imagine your finger buried in sand and trying to move the end of your finger through the sand when you can only apply force through the base of the finger.  The end gets much less force, but to move the end at the same rate as the rest of the finger, you have to push the end of the finger ahead faster so that it keeps up with the rest of the finger.  The same principle applies in moving teeth.  If you want to move the root of the tooth as fast or sometimes faster than the rest of the tooth, you have to increase the force felt at the end of the root while only being able to attach to the crown of the tooth.  We call that managing the “moment-to-force ratio” and with traditional braces (brackets on each tooth and a wire running between them, springs and elastic chains or rubber bands to create force on teeth or groups of teeth) you can accomplish this in an approximate kind of way.  With the original Invisalign product, the attachment of the plastic aligner to the tooth was pretty sloppy, so it was possible to tip a tooth through the bone, but root movement was difficult.  Through the generations of the the product, attachments (shaped tooth-colored bumps of various sizes and shapes) have been added to selected teeth so that the aligner “grips” the tooth better and can apply a moment-to-force ratio to the tooth via the attachments.  The materials have also changed so that they are more elastic than the original and the deformation of the material helps with application of force.    With traditional braces, the progress is assessed at each visit so that adjustments of the bracket, wire, or auxillary can be made to direct and maximize tooth movement.  With Invisalign, before treatment begins,  a very accurate impression of the teeth is digitally scanned and prepared by the lab, and then forwarded to me over the Internet so I can direct the tooth movement.  An aligner (clear plastic tray that engages the teeth) fits imperfectly when treatment begins, but puts force on the teeth so that within 2 weeks the teeth move to fit the tray.  At that interval, another programmed tray is worn for the next 2 weeks, and so on until the teeth are where you want them.  All of that movement is planned by the orthodontist before treatment is begun and, while some changes can be made during the course of treatment, the computer model has to accurately predict how the teeth will move, as all the aligners are manufactured at the outset.  Clever orthodontists have figured out how to apply forces between the upper and lower teeth with rubber bands through slits and hooks on the aligners so shifting teeth forward and backward relative to the teeth in the opposite arch is possible.  And it works.  It is esthetic, hygiene is easier than with conventional braces, and they are removed to eat which is more pleasant.  That said, teeth still get sore, it is still a hassle to keep up with the trays and to wear them 22 hours a day.  For some, braces that are semi-permanently attached are less bother, but many who have always wanted straight teeth but would not go for braces now have another option, and I have many satisfied patients.  They say put your money where your mouth is…..well I am…. sort of.  My wife is starting treatment within a few weeks, and I will get to live with the process second-hand.  If I can just keep her happy………

Sunday, April 21, 2013


Sunday, April 21, 2013

            The internal combustion engine has changed all of our lives in more ways than we know or can describe.  I attended a vintage machinery show in Iowa 20 or 25 years ago and was impressed at the number and types of engines that had been around for many decades, some from the turn of the last century.  There was everything from steam engine tractors running belt-driven threshing machines to single cylinder “thumper” pump engines to antique cars to early generators.  Wherever power was needed, some engineer designed an engine to accomplish the task.  Our life hasn’t changed that much.  The sophistication of today’s engines is greater with our engines today being more fuel efficient and quieter and generally safer, but there is still one for nearly every purpose.  Not long ago, I wandered around the house and tried to count the number of engines that live here.  I am perhaps a little atypical as I enjoy tinkering with machinery, but we have crossed the border of the ridiculous.  I won’t enumerate them all to advertise the ridiculous, but there are several gas-operated passenger vehicles and diesels too, a diesel loader, bulldozer and excavator, gasoline generators, weed eaters, chain saws, boat motors, 4 wheelers, a six wheeler, snow machines (snow mobiles for the non-Alaskans among you), a motorcycle, a dump truck, an air compressor, weed blower, a log splitter,  and probably a few more that I will trip over in the next week.  Accumulating this collection has taken the passive attention of 20 years or so, but maintaining them takes active attention every year if I want to be able to use them on demand.  While each and every one of these labor savers does exactly that, there comes a time when your possessions begin to own you, and when you realize that, maybe it is time to divest yourself of some of them.  Big talk.  My wife reminds me on a regular basis that it is time to get rid of that truck that no longer runs.  But I have plans for it.  

Saturday, April 20, 2013

A hormone is a chemical manufactured by glandular tissue and circulated in the blood that has a regulatory effect on tissues or organs distant from it’s source.  For example, insulin is produced in the pancreas and released into the blood to facilitate the use of glucose in the cells of the body.  It thereby causes the lowering of blood sugar and the “burning” of glucose in the cells.  Epinephrine is produced in the adrenal gland on top of the kidney and has the effect of increasing central circulation,  making the heart pound and the breathing deepen, slowing digestion, widening the pupils and contracting skeletal muscle (the “fight or flight” response).
The chicken responds to lengthening or shortening of the photoperiod by increasing or decreasing the amount of the Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone which switches on or off the response of laying eggs.  Controlling the photoperiod with artificial lights keeps the GnRH in circulation so hens will continue to lay through the winter.
In short, we have many hundreds of hormones that control our physiologic processes.  I am not a chicken so perhaps the lengthening day in Spring won’t cause the GnRH to be released, but the lengthening day has an amazing effect on my energy, wakefulness, and willingness to be productively employed.  In midwinter, though the days are shorter, artificial light and heat make my garage a tolerable place to work, but time just slips away like sand through my fingers.  Yet, as the days lengthen into March and April, I have time and energy to get  those projects I neglected  all winter done and invent new ones.  This morning I got up, finished a novel, cut and hauled firewood for several hours, shoveled snow off of our construction project at the cabin, removed the holy tarp I had covering it and replace it with new, loaded up, drove home, and here I am writing this at almost midnight.  If it were December, I would have run out of juice hours ago.  Reduction of melatonin production due to the increasing photoperiod may be why energy levels peak as the days lengthen.  That tricky pineal gland makes all that melatonin all winter to help us hibernate, I guess.  Anyone for a pinealectomy?

Thursday, April 18, 2013


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

            I made a commitment 5 years ago with the 16-18 year old young men in my youth group at church to climb Mt. Baldy every month, sun or snow.  I live on the side of the mountain so the hike starts from our home at 1900 feet elevation and climbs steeply up the side of the mountain on our own trail to the mountain top at 2990 feet in less than a mile.  We calendar the hike for every month, but there are those months when it just doesn’t work out and we have to postpone our trip.  This winter has not been as regular as usual, but tonight we made our last winter trip with one of the boys carrying a snowboard, another a sled, and a third an ice ax.  Three adults also made the trek.  In five years, a number of young men have cycled through the group.  Some have served missions and are now in college, some are now serving missions, and more are graduating from high school in a few weeks and are eager to begin their missions.  Having an informal and inspirational opportunity to share with these young men has been a highlight for me.  Undoubtedly, they tolerate me as an eccentric who is trying to relive his youth and keep up with the boys, but they seldom turn me down.  Watching boys turn into men of good character is a moving and inspiring thing to witness, and playing a part in the process is an honor and a sobering responsibility. 
            Tonight we began breaking trail through 1-2 feet of snow from the last two storms at about 7:30 and paused for 15 minutes at 8:30 to talk about our faith in God and the future and our part in it.  At about 9:00 PM we reached the top to witness the sun close to setting, the beautiful snow covered mountains all around, and the city and the ocean below.  Seeing the wonder of God’s creation is always a humbling experience.  There will come a time when these young men are the responsibility of another, and my heart is heavy to see it draw near, but until then I am eager for next month.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013


Tuesday, April 16, 2013

            Mexican food is an enigma wrapped in a tortilla shrouded in enchilada sauce.  Even though I grew up in Phoenix, because Dad was not a lover of Mexican food, my exposure as a child was limited to what the lunch ladies at the grade school prepared occasionally.  Not bad, as I remember, but probably not too authentic.  It wasn’t until I was old enough to make my own eating choices that I began to sample the fare from south of the border.  A high school classmate’s family, the Tangs, owned a Chinese restaurant called unsurprisingly, “Tangs”.  They also had a Mexican restaurant called “El Tango” that I enjoyed in high school and college.  My wife’s family is  from Solomonville, Arizona where Mexican food is a staple and my mother-in-law fixed pork-green chile and green chile-chicken enchiladas frequently. Every Wednesday night, she fixed red-chile enchiladas.  My wife has spent a lifetime weaning me off the meat and potatoes I was raised on, and Mexican food was often a part of our menu. 
            In Arizona as well as at Taco Bell everywhere, a tostada is a corn tortilla hard-fried flat with beans, meat, and salad on top. The taco is  the same tortilla folded, crisp fried and stuffed with about the same things, depending on preference.  (A soft taco has a soft-fried corn tortilla.)  In Solomonville, a relative of the tostada made with a flat-fried flour tortilla with all the fixings on top was known as a “Big Daddy”.  (Probably only at La Paloma restaurant, but who knows?)  And therein lies the enigma:  In Anchorage, except at Taco Bell, a tostada or a taco salad is a bowl-fried flour tortilla with the fixins in the bowl.  Now that is just wrong!  The Spanish words are the same, but somehow false meanings have been perpetrated on the good people of Alaska.  I actually don’t care for the traditional tostada, preferring the Big Daddy.  No one here has heard of that, of course, so I request a taco salad on a flat-fried flour tortilla, which is one of my favorite dishes.  The first time the server will look at me like I am loco, and tell me they can’t do that.  I ask them to check with the chef, who always knows how to fry a tortilla, and they accommodate me.  In Solomonville, this is the most popular item on the menu and I try and convince them to add it to their menu guaranteeing it will be a big seller.  I mean, a taco salad in a bowl-shell is a soggy mess at the bottom and the flat tortilla is way more fun to eat.  When the kids were at home, Beverly would fix Big Daddys for dinner and the standing offer was $1.00 if you could eat the whole thing without breaking it.  I didn’t have to pay off very often.
            A new genre of Mexican restaurant has opened in Anchorage.  It started out as a single location, but it’s popularity has driven 5 more locations to open.  The menu is an on-the-wall over-the-counter variety with a limited number of items available, but the food is fast, cheap, and surprisingly good making it my wife’s favorite restaurant.  Taco King is the name, and don’t be surprised when these guys open one in your neighborhood.

Monday, April 15, 2013


Monday, April 15, 2013

            I love sweet.  One might say I’m addicted to sweet.  I believe it has always been that way.  I remember pouring tablespoons of sugar on my Wheaties cereal and thinking the best part of the cereal was eating the sugar slush at the bottom of the bowl.  Ice cream has been a particular weakness, in an array of other particular weaknesses.   We lived very humbly in childhood, but I recall Mom always bringing home Imitation Ice Milk from the grocery store, and we ate it as if we had good sense.  (Is that even for sale these days?) (And what is it, anyway?) In later years as I began to make ice cream, the recipes that stick out in my mind were chocolate so rich and thick you literally couldn’t eat a big bowlful, and custard vanilla of the same ilk.  As kids, we had no money for soda pop, but I would search the hedges and weeds for deposit bottles we could trade in for 2 cents so we could buy candy and soda at the 7-11 on the corner.  Buttermilk donuts and Hostess Apple Pies and fudge and divinity and brownies and caramel.  Dipping strawberries in Eagle Brand and Fireballs and Sweet Tarts and Snickers bars.  I never got tired of any of those things and it’s amazing my pancreas has kept up.  It is true that I don’t feed the sugar monster like I used to .  It would now be unusual for me to drink a “leaded” soda, settling instead for the diet fare so widely available now.  I am still awfully tempted by Hershey’s chocolate or an Apple Fritter, but I substitute Stevia when I can, as much to cut down on calories as sugar.  I read that a rat will suffer malnutrition rather than leave a sugar drip.  Perhaps I am more rat than I know, but I do allow my higher consciousness to inform my decisions, even if it doesn’t always have the final say-so on my actions.  Stevia, by the way, is a naturally occurring sweetener made from the leaves of the stevia plant.  There are many iterations available, and some samples are bitter as well as sweet.  I recommend KAL stevia in the 3.5oz bottle.  It has a tiny scoop inside and that tiny scoop will sweeten a 16-20 oz beverage quite adequately.  The bottle will last a long time, 6-8 months with daily use.  Some stevia competitors are cut with other sugars to dilute them.  I’ve tried several, but this pure stevia extract  is the best I’ve found.  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VRSR84/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sunday, April 14, 2013


Sunday, April 14, 2013

            Chicken farming, or maybe ranching, is a pastime that I have aspired to.  Our first chicken came to us when we were in college.  She walked down the street in front of the house and we grabbed her.  She was a White Rock and, aside from the time a dog caught her and tore a hole in her back that we sutured up, she was a good layer.  We moved a few miles away and acquired  a small flock of chickens which were cast-offs from an egg operation nearby.  We got 5 or 6 eggs a day which was more than we could eat and it was satisfying to harvest the fruits of their labor.  When we moved to Boston to go to dental school, my Dad adopted our chickens and one duck and kept them for several years.  In the mid 1990’s we decided we wanted to raise chickens again so the kids could have the experience.  We hatched some and got some from a school project and others from friends who decided they didn’t want to have that much fun any more.  We built a chicken coop and fenced off a run in the woods and eventually had about 20 chickens and 4 or 5 beautiful Golden and Ring-Necked Pheasants.  After a couple of years, we got tired of caring for them.  Winter in Alaska is challenging for chickens and the economics and hassle became more than we wanted to deal with.  A neighbor’s dog broke into the pheasant run and killed the pheasants and we butchered our way out of the chicken business.  The coop sat idle for about 15 years and last summer I retrieved it, remodeled it, and moved it into our fenced back yard.  Our grandson Keith’s class hatched chickens as a school project and we took 14 chicks at the end of the school year.  We babied them through early summer and discovered that the predators that didn’t bother us when we lived in a neighborhood were a nuisance at our new home in the woods.  I ordered a dozen Cornish Cross chicks mail-order to raise for meat and after brooding them in the garage  moved them to the greenhouse to grow up.  Speaking of predators, the ravens, eagles, hawks and owls each took turns picking off the chickens when they would escape from the pen.  One day while I was at work and Beverly was in the bathroom getting ready for the day, she heard noise from the back yard.  She looked out to find three grizzly bears destroying the chicken run, killing and eating the chickens as they caught them, and trying to reach into the overturned chicken coop and catch the rest.  It was a bloody mess, and the chickens, being chickens, instead of running away tried to run past one bear to the other side of the run, and then back again.  One rooster and two hens did successfully hide away from the pen, and the bears, who were in no hurry to leave, calmly ate their lunch.  I was at work and Beverly called me frantically, but there was little I could do from there so I came home to destruction.  The bears had also discovered the chicks in the greenhouse, and while they couldn’t figure out how to get in, stood up at the side and raked the roof with their claws and destroyed it.  We moved the remaining chickens to the garage, uprighted the chicken coop, and tried to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, the bears came back every day for the next several days hoping for a repeat performance.  We used firecrackers to scare them away and I was justified in shooting them to protect “life and property”, but didn’t have the opportunity.  We have wintered over 3 hens who have laid intermittently, and are now deciding on chickens for the summer.  I have an electric fence that I plan to try and hope that nature smiles on us…..and not the bears.  There are, incidentally, many beautiful breeds of chickens you can order by US Mail.  Take a look at www.cacklehatchery.com for a look at the variety.  Who knows, you may be inspired to be a chicken rancher too.

Saturday, April 13, 2013


Saturday, April 13, 2013

            My father is a welder, and worked as a welder for 30 plus years.  Because he worked in a shop, we had no welder at home.  Fusing metal together was a bit of a mystery to me.  I just knew that when Dad came home, he smelled like welding; that is the smoke from welding.  Just smelling that smell today brings back memories of Dad coming home from work and laying down on the floor while us kids climbed all over him and rifled through his pockets to find a package of peanuts or gum he had bought from a vending machine at work.  I thought it odd to have a skill that we couldn’t use at home because we didn’t have a welding machine.  In the mid-60’s, Dad found a used machine that he bought and brought home.  It was heavy with steel wheels and a tongue to move it like a wagon.  It was a stick welder, and I didn’t know there was anything else at the time. 
For the non-welders out there, stick welding is a common term for MMA, or Manual Metal Arc welding.  By transforming line voltage into low voltage-high amperage current, an arc can be created by touching the hot lead to the grounded lead.  This hot arc can be controlled to melt away the welding rod on the hot side as well as the grounded steel on the other. The rod and the grounded metal fuse together, the melting rod joining and filling in the gap between the grounded steel pieces you want to join.  Oxidation contaminates the welding joint, so to avoid oxidation, a flux is used to keep oxygen out of the weld.  On a welding rod used in stick welding, the rod is coated with flux.  The other common type of welding at home is MIG, or Machine Inert Gas welding.  In MIG welding, wire on a spool is fed through a hose to a “gun”. The hose is pressurized with an inert gas flux that surrounds the wire as it leaves the gun.  The “gun” is electrically hot while the work is electrically grounded and the arc is created and maintained as the wire is automatically fed into the arc. MIG welding is generally cleaner and doesn’t leave you with a cooled chemical flux coating on the weld as the gas just dissipates during the process. Very similarly, some welding wire is supplied on a spool with a flux core and can be used in a MIG machine without the gas.  MIG welding is generally much easier to learn and machines for home use became common in the 80’s and 90’s. 
Growing up in the home of a welder, one might have thought that I would have been well trained in the art, but I didn’t get to do much welding at home, apart from observing and a few basic lessons Dad gave me.  In those years, he bought a machine that his shop was getting rid of and sold the old one to my uncle, Dick Shires.   After I joined the Army and we moved to Japan, I decided we needed a swing set in our back yard, so I began frequenting the dump and soon collected enough pipe to construct one.  There was a metal shop on post that let me use their equipment and all the rod I could burn, so I put together a swing set with a chinning bar on one end, and Robert and Jennifer endlessly played on it. 
We moved to Fort Huachuca in Arizona after we came back to the US, and one of my first acquisitions was a Lincoln “buzz box” stick welder that I could plug into the dryer plug and weld in the back yard.  With even more children of swinging age, I put together another, even bigger, swing set complete with an overhead ladder.  Hours of welding galvanized pipe taught me the basics of stick welding.  I took that welder with us to Kentucky and Germany and finally to Alaska. 
While we had been gone, Dad acquired a MIG welder.  I had to build a rack for the top of our Suburban, and laid all the pieces out on the worktable at his house when he brought out the MIG.  With about 2 minutes of instruction, I learned to use it and quickly decided MIG was MUCH easier than MMA.  When we got to Alaska, I began looking for a MIG welder and finally found a Hobart Beta-MIG 200 which I have used at least weekly for many years. 
I suppose you could say that it is in my blood and certainly part of my heritage, but I truly enjoy welding.  Creating something useful from a pile of steel is stimulating and rewarding.  My children got to weld as much as they wanted to, but never wanted to very much.  Robert now has his own MIG machine so he doesn’t have to borrow mine, and Jonathon has taken welding as part of his course of study in Mechanical Engineering and enjoys it.  It seems that I have a never-ending list of projects that are now only waiting for the snow to melt so I can get to the steel.

Friday, April 12, 2013


Friday, April 12, 2013

            This afternoon, after a morning of reading Marc Cameron’s second thriller and bulldozing the snow berm off the edge of my road, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I lay down on the floor in the sun and was immediately unconscious.  Or maybe subconsciously conscious but consciously unconscious.  I say this because in the semi-dream state I was in, I was aware I was asleep and of where I was sleeping.   I remember thinking how rested I felt and rolling over to congratulate myself on unselfconsciously whiling away the afternoon.  I was fully clothed with long underwear and a heavy fleece shirt, but even laying in the direct sunlight, I wasn’t unusually warm.  I recall turning over again and prodding myself to get up and do something productive, but I comfortably let that fleeting thought expire and continued to almost dream.  Finally, I awoke and knowing that my entire day had been wasted, I asked my wife how long I had been asleep.  “Oh, maybe an hour”, she replied.   I was flabbergasted.  My subconscious mind had been keeping track, I thought, and it had to have been at least 2 or maybe even 3 hours.  The clock in the kitchen was obviously wrong, because I felt way too refreshed for it having been only an hour’s time.  Suddenly, I was burning up.  All that clothing in the direct sun gave me the feeling of sitting in a potter’s kiln.  As I tore off my shirt and the long underwear, I pondered that maybe I should do more sleeping in the middle of the day.  So much more efficient than wasting an entire night.  Now try and read all those conscious words out loud and see if conscience or conscientious try to squeeze their way onto your tongue.  They do onto mine.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

The youth of my ward get the opportunity about 3 times a year to visit the temple and perform proxy baptisms for the dead.  We regard this as a service to the departed who never had the chance in life to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We believe that the spirits of the deceased wait for this opportunity because the ordinance of baptism requires a body, and having lost theirs, a proxy baptism provides them with something they can’t do for themselves.  This is, of course, non-binding on the dead.  They are paid this honor because we love and respect them.  If they choose not to accept this homage, they don’t, but the fact remains that someone has thought of them and prayed about them; some who may not have been thought of by a mortal for centuries.
The requirements to enter the temple are the same for youth and adults.  In a personal interview, they have to avow their allegiance to the Gospel, their moral cleanliness, their honesty, and their obedience to the laws and commandments they profess to adhere to.  Though there are competing activities (today, a track meet was over just as we were to meet), other obligations and distractions, our youth clamor to be able to attend the temple.  Today we had 13 young men and 12 young women in a group of about 30 total who were reverent and polite and desirous of serving their fellow man and God.  In a session of about 2 hours, they sat quietly and witnessed and participated in approximately 250 baptisms by immersion.
It has been my privilege to watch these young men and women grow up over the past 5 years.  They are an inspiration to me as they prepare themselves for happiness and success in a world that has too little of the same.


Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

            I finished my taxes today….that is figuring them for 2012….we never finish taxes.  I feel privileged to be able to earn an income to provide for my family as well as to provide for my wife and I in our retirement.   I read Pat Buchanan’s column yesterday, “Where Have All The Workers Gone?” He quotes some sobering statistics from the end of the month labor reports for March.  Unemployment fell to 7.6% because 495,000 people dropped out of the labor force-stopped looking for jobs.  Only  63.3% of eligible workers are working.  Food stamps are now being used by 47 million Americans, an increase of 16 million since Bush left office.  5% of the working age population are receiving disability pay and most are permanently out of the work force.  The top 1% of workers pay 37% of all income taxes, and the top 50% pay 98% of all income taxes.  Baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 300,000 a month and starting to draw Social Security and to use Medicare.  At the same time, the President proposes a record-breaking budget that pays lip-service to entitlement reform, the area that must be pared back if there is ever to be a hope of living within our fiscal means.  With fewer workers paying the bill, the buck has to stop somewhere.  

Tuesday, April 9, 2013


Tuesday, April 09, 2013

            Malcolm Gladwell has written four books that I have enjoyed very much.  Blink, What the Dog Saw, The Tipping Point, and Outliers.   The books are collections of interesting interviews and factoids, many of which have been published in the New Yorker Magazine.  In the book Outliers, he discussed the 10,000 hours.  Based on the research of Anders Ericsson, he demonstrates that excellence in a field of endeavor requires 10,000 hours of dedicated and directed practice.  Merely working in a field may not contribute to the requisite total because it may not be practice involving self-analysis and improvement.  While there are prodigies and recognizing that 10,000 hours is not an absolute guarantee of world class quality, it is borne out in many examples in life.   In the working world, labor unions certify their workers in the various steps of a trade working as an apprentice for 3-5 years under a master, as a journeyman for another 4 or 5 years, and finally as a master.   (This applies to electricians.  I cannot speak with absolute knowledge about other trades.)  Working 200-8 hour days in a year is 1600 hours.  If all that working were practice, it would equal 10,000 hours in 6.25 years. Given that it is not all practice, 10 years to become a master is about right.  In my own field of orthodontics, having completed 4 years of college, 4 of dental school, and 2 more of residency qualifies one to be an orthodontist, but says little of expertise.  Many years of further study and self-evaluation in every step of treatment decidedly increases the quality of the care one can deliver.  Fresh out of school with little experience, the quality of results may be good, but not great consistently. After 25 years of practice as an orthodontist, I still have challenging cases, but I can much more quickly and competently see what needs to be done at each stage, and perform the treatment.  Recognizing this as a problem, when my son joined my practice, he and I saw every patient together for the first 18 months, and still see the same patients and evaluate each other’s treatment daily.  Orthodontics does not generally carry life and death consequences, but you can see why a general surgery residency is 5 years long with specialty fellowships after that.  It takes a while to become an “expert” level provider.  That is why Consumer Reports recommends you find out about your doctor’s training and experience and track record as a provider.  Accept only the best and let the learners and those who are not motivated to self-improvement practice on someone else.

Monday, April 8, 2013


Monday, April 08, 2013

When I weighed in for my last PT test at Fort Richardson, I weighed 205 lbs.  Although I consistently maxed the PT test, it was obvious that my weight was creeping upward.  I left the Army and Ft. Richardson on Feb. 1, 1997 and quit exercising in earnest.  In the Army, I was given time to exercise.  At lunch, I would run 4 miles every other day.  Maintaining my fitness and my weight wasn’t difficult, but in the last 6 or 8 months my travel schedule became more intense, so I exercised less.  By 2000, I weighed in at about 220 and by 2005, about 230.  I was spending 3 days every 3 weeks in Fairbanks eating at buffets, and while I did exercise, it is hard to burn off all-you-can eat.  In fact, one of the recurring themes anyone dieting should hear playing in their head all the time is that you can eat far more calories than you can burn, and unless you dig ditches with a hand shovel for a living, the only successful way to lose weight is to eat less.
  What you eat as well as how much you eat is also very important.  My wife would say that I become a missionary for whatever diet book I happen to have most recently read.  In fact, I do become conversational about the books I read, but the interesting thing is that the books that I have read concerning different diets generally recommend similar concentrations in food.  Dean Ornish has written many books on his dietary recommendations, and years ago I read “Reversing Heart Disease” which I found fascinating.  He advocates completely eliminating fat from the diet and eating almost exclusively vegetables.  “The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet” recommends reducing or eliminating sugars and simple starches from the diet and gives lots of physiologic information on the subject.  “The Rice Diet Solution” recommends severely limiting simple sugars and starches and concentrating on a diet of vegetables.  “Wheat Belly” describes how wheat has been modified over the years to become an allergen to many people and why it should be eliminated along with sugars and other simple starches from the diet, recommending instead a diet mostly containing vegetables.  He gives an excellent physiologic explanation of what simple starches do to you and how they are worse than plain table sugar.  There are many, many more but these are a few that I have read for motivation over the years.
            The problem with each of these is that it is difficult for most people to be content eating just vegetables.  I evolved a solution that has worked for me.  I wanted a diet that was easy to prepare, easy to eat, tasty, healthy, and that I didn’t tire of.  Easy, right?  How do you do that with salads?   My solution is this:  I prepare a big salad about twice a week that contains carrots, red, orange, and green bell peppers, lettuce of various kinds, seedless grapes cut in halves, red cabbage, green cabbage, bok choi, walnuts or pecans, frozen corn, and whatever else we happen to have in the larder.  I avoid vegetables that would spoil the batch in a day or two like cucumbers, but zucchini seems to work out OK.  We don’t always have the whole list in stock, but whatever we do have seems to work out fine. 
Eating a salad in a restaurant is a pain because they leave the pieces too big, so you either have to cut up your lettuce or wad it into your mouth with a fork.  I want something I can eat quickly and easily, so I chop all the pieces into bite-size that I can eat with a tablespoon instead of a fork.  This alone makes eating a salad so much more enjoyable that I don’t understand why the restaurants haven’t figured it out.  I put the salad into 2 or 3 gallon-size Zip-loc bags and put them in the refrigerator.  With a little practice, the whole process takes 15-20 minutes. Then, I eat a dinner-plate size portion for lunch and for dinner.  I use Costco Balsamic vinegar for dressing (few calories and very tasty).  Watch out!  Most other Balsamics are very disappointing. For dinner, after the salad, I will also have a small portion of whatever Beverly fixes.
            Lately, I wondered what would be wrong with salad for breakfast, so I now put a little olive oil in a wok and stir a generous helping of the salad into the wok to cook for a few minutes.  When it is done, I turn the heat down and add an egg and stir it until the egg is done and I have a vegetable omelet, light on the eggs and heavy on the vegetables. 
            When I am in weight loss mode, this is about all I eat, and I expect to lose several pounds a week.  It takes about 2 weeks for your body to get into the metabolic mood to lose weight, so you have to be patient, but hunger is not a problem.  In maintenance mode, I allow myself some treaty things, but I try not to splurge at every meal, or the meal is no longer the maintenance meal and becomes the weight-gain lifestyle instead of the weight-loss lifestyle. 
            “The Rice Diet Solution” resonated with me at the time I read it and I followed the book closely.  I was astounded to see the weight drop off very quickly and I went from about 230 to about 175 in a couple of months.  I have since hovered between 180 and 185 and have mostly been faithful to my lifestyle.  I’m still not tired of the salad, but being lazy, I am tired of making it.  On the other hand, I would spend far more time preparing almost any other kind of substantial food.  Eat hearty!  I do.

Sunday, April 7, 2013


Sunday, April 7, 2013

We left for the cabin on Thursday having taken Keith, Rachel, and Cayden out of school early.  We had the back of the truck and Beverly’s Pilot stuffed to the gills with kids and food and stuff, and had an uneventful 150 minute drive to Trapper Creek.  The road was dry, the sun was out and the sky was  blue.  I was worried that the snow machines we were towing behind us would be unusable because the melting was happening.  Spring was here.  I had the older boys with me in the truck and we arrived ahead of Beverly and the younger crew, so we filled the sled with part of our cargo and headed off for the cabin.  Contrary to my original fears, the snow was perfect.  Crunchy to the footstep, and firm enough to walk on without sinking in, if you walked carefully.  Thigh deep if you didn’t.  We made the short run to the cabin, unlocked and made ready for the business of life with kids, hooked up a second sled to another machine, and headed back to the parking lot to pick up Beverly’s tribe.  I didn’t realize how much gear we had until we began to transport it.  Filling both sleds with essentials and kids, we rode again to the cabin and unloaded, and then the boys and I drove to the truck one more time to complete the unloading.  The parking lot is sometimes crowded.  This time it was ridiculous.  It looked like every enclosed snow machine trailer in Anchorage was there, and me with my lowly two-place trailer.  We did finally get the last trip made and unloaded and began the process of settling the kids in.  Actually, the kids were only interested in getting out….on the machines.  I reintroduced them to the rules and fitted them for helmets and they were off.  One of the rules is don’t ride alone.  A second is to stay on the lake (in sight of the cabin).  The third is to stay out of the woods.  All of these rules have been developed for their safety and our ease (not having to rescue them constantly) and the young riders again proved their necessity.  No accidents fortunately, but stuck machines a couple of times.  The Lion King movie, dinner, and bed.  Curtis showed up Friday with more gear, and each day was much the same, except Saturday and Sunday we got to listen to the General Conference broadcasts.  I got a few things done around the cabin, and time to come home.  Multiple trips to the vehicles got all the gear and personnel transported, the place secured, and the homeward journey begun……and ended.  Except when we got home, a surprise awaited….. We had had more than a foot of snow while we were gone completely blocking my driveway.  Fortunately, I had a snow machine so I unloaded, rode up the road with the sled and the boys, and then plowed the driveway, which was the last thing I did before we left 3 days earlier, in very different conditions.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013


Wednesday, April 03, 2013

My dilemma is the dilemma of man from the beginning of time; the conflict is what I should be doing versus what I would rather do.  This is the basis of religion, of success in school, of happiness in family, in proper education of children, and in success in life overall.  In religion, we speak of our obedience to God and in the Judeo-Christian tradition, putting God and our fellow man ahead of ourselves.  This is a workable definition of what we should do.  What we want to do is to please ourselves; we want to put our own desires above those of God and of our fellow man.  This hostility, read enmity, toward the commandments of God is called pride, and we might define our achievement on earth as the eventual submission of our will to God’s will, of eliminating pride in favor of charity.  Forever, but in my memory since the 60s, the mantra has been, “If it feels good, do it”.  That is a pretty succinct statement of the trial of mortality: the advocacy of putting off our higher purpose to settle for the immediate gratification of a lower one.  And how does that relate to me sitting here typing away on the computer in favor of going out to organize my world, clear melting snow off my driveway, clean out a winters accumulation from my garage, water my plants, do the laundry, etc.  The siren song of the keyboard and monitor call me away from taking advantage of a beautiful day to be productive.  Productivity at time sounds like an evil word, but in the end, all those productively spent moments add up to success in school and job and life. Obsessively producing is not our end goal, but accomplishing worthwhile things is.  On our own we must each decide what is or is not worthwhile, and what is or is not wasting one of the most precious gifts that God did give us: time.  I could tie all that back to charity versus pride and God’s will versus man’s carnal desires, but I trust that if you think about how this applies in the world we live in, you will see that love for others, unselfishness and charity bring happiness and peace and how selfishness brings hate and destruction and war.  I need to go move the snow.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

I have always loved to read.  In the first grade, Mrs. Williams taught us how words fit together on a page.  Dick and Jane  became friends that were replaced a year later at by Dot and Jim.  Oddly, they talked the same and had the same conversations.  “See Jim run” or “Run, Jane, run!”  A few weeks ago, one of my granddaughters wanted me to read a book to her, and rather than reading her book, I thought it would be far better to find Dot and Jim.  Thanks to my wonderful mother, I still have those first and second grade readers, and I dug them out of the bookcase.  “Catheryn”, I said.  “Let’s read these stories.”  “You should be able to read them by yourself!”  Then we opened the book and I re-realized there is really more to reading than just knowing the ABCs.  In fact, English is a pretty messy language with all those letters that choose to do different things in various situations. It’s certainly learnable by Catheryn; she is so bright that if she were a boy, her dad would call her son, but I was clearly rushing the process to stroke my own ego as a great teacher taking advantage of the perfect teachable moment. But learning it all in one session?  No wonder it took Mrs. Williams a whole year to get me to the 2nd. Grade.  But by the 2nd grade, Mrs. Ragsdale was awarding us Bookworm certificates for reading 5 and 10 and 25 and 100 books.  Books became an obsession.  I could not stand to throw a book away, no matter what the subject.  My wife shares my illness, and we have acquired quite a collection.  I have learned to cull the less useful from the more useful and I have boxes of the culled awaiting disposition.  Sadly, I’ve discovered ebooks and found that I enjoy reading them more than paper, and while reference books are useful, the internet has made reference so simple that finding a book on the shelf takes longer than completing online research.  So what do I do with the beautiful bookcase I built and all the tomes it contains?  As my Dad might say, I’ll leave it to my heirs……

Monday, April 1, 2013


Monday, April 01, 2013

Spring is jumping around all over the place.  Now our Spring is not like your spring.  Blue skies and sunshine looks pretty springy, but the melting is just getting started.  When the roads start to look like a Slushee dumped out of the cup, Spring is on the way, and today that’s what the roads looked like.  Of course at night, all that slush freezes and, while the drivers haven’t yet gotten their summer-time lobotomy and can still drive on frozen roads, some are over-eager and slide through the  intersections like they are on hockey skates.  Unfortunately the goalie is another car and the result looks more like high-dollar bumper cars at Knots Berry Farm.  The beginning of winter is a peculiar time for the drivers because the lobotomy hasn’t worn off until after a few close calls.  Every snow storm until December has the highway littered with ditch-divers and the tow trucks work round-the-clock.  This is the end of winter, however, and the crunch-incidence is a little lower.  April and October are really the ugly months in Alaska.  In April, there are no leaves on the trees and the beautiful snow becomes not-so-beautiful slush and mud.  By October, the leaves are gone and everything looks pretty dead until the beautiful snow starts to stick.  The leaves start to pop the second week in May, and then the pretty starts.  Planting a garden until the first of June is a bit of a waste.  The plants just sit there waiting for warmth so they can start to grow, but when they finally do, the long days make them grow quickly.  Tough lessons for a raised-up desert rat like me, but this year in Alaska makes 20, so I guess I have lived here longer than I lived in Arizona.  Sobering.