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. 

Sunday, June 09, 2013

I have a 1973 International Harvester Dump Truck.  It has a big V-8 engine and is complete with air brakes, and air horn, duals in the rear, a body in pretty good shape, and a working dump bed.  It is really kind of cute, in a heavy equipment kind of way.  It’s only problem is that it doesn’t run too well.  It needs a set of spark plug wires and maybe plugs, points, distributor cap, and condenser.  This is the kind of automotive work I cut my slightly greasy teeth on back in the day.  Why is it that I have parked it in front of the garage to give it a tune-up at least twice without accomplishing anything except getting to honk the air horn.  This sort of a tune-up was standard for every vehicle before the age of electronic ignition and fuel injection and computer-controlled everything.  This beast, despite having an automatic transmission, was born in the age of manual.  Everything is. Why is it that I have so little desire to perform those restorative tasks that few even have the tools for anymore?  I suspect that part of it has to do with leaning over the engine and having to grow joints in the middle of my forearm to reach hidden parts.  Part of it has to do with my back complaining.  Part of it has to do with my wanting to do something more “fun”.  And much of it has to do with the fact that I’ve grown lazy and content with a vehicle that doesn’t require much more than a regular oil change and a couple of sets of spark plugs during it’s life. Life has really gotten much easier for all of us in so many respects, that it has deprived us of the necessity to know how things work and how they break and how to fix them.  I appreciate those skills and tried as a semi-patient father to imbue my children with a similar appreciation.  In large part, I am gratified to see success.  It wasn’t so in their youth, but now I see my kids taking on projects that I never thought they would ever attempt.  Sarah sews.  Not as a teenager, but as an adult, she wanted to learn and did.  Robert recently put together an entire in-floor heating system for an addition to his house from parts we both had laying around.  He also removed and replaced the biggest automatic transmission I ever saw in a pickup truck.  Rebecca just finished remodeling her kitchen and called for advice about support for the table she had to build that would be finished with a granite countertop.  Jonathon just finished making an aquaponic system that uses live fish to filter and feed vegetable plants, similar but better than a hydroponic system.  Jennifer and Tyson are getting ready to dig up their driveway and reslope it to guide water around the house.  Carolyn just finished building up a corner of their front yard with a dump truck of topsoil, and then building a greenhouse on top.  These aren’t necessarily remarkable achievements.  Lots of people do these sorts of things, but lots don’t.  There is a dearth of knowledge and inspiration and drive and can-do attitude  in the world that I am grateful my children and their loving spouses lack.  And tomorrow, I will put on my can-do attitude and tune up the dump truck.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

Mason Williams was the poet who wrote a series of poems that are best delivered while clapping on the beat and stomping a foot on the back-beat.  There is quite a collection including “Them Toad Suckers”, “Them Lunch Toters”, “Them Moose Goosers”, “Them Dog Kickers” and so on.  Today I was pulling out the branches of barely leafing devil’s club and I happened to remember one of his originals, “Them Sticker Gitters”.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gJQwgLWSjJ0

  That particular ditty is quite appropriate while pulling out devil’s club because, as you might imagine, it is full of stickers.  Devil’s club, as far as I know, is an uniquely Alaskan weed.  It’s branches grow underground and then shoots arise from them.  The underground sections have few thorns, but the shoots and branches that grow up from them are covered.  The stickers are particularly nasty because they seem to each have their own drop of poison and whether they imbed or not, wherever they break the skin, they leave a sore that swells a bit and irritates for days.  If the thorn is broken off under the skin, then digging it out is the only cure.  I remember spending entire summers in Phoenix without shoes.  There were several stickers that grew around the neighborhood like mesquite and paloverde and the occasional tumble weed, but the worst surprise was to step, full-force, on a bullhead.  Named after the fish, I’m sure, the bullhead is maybe ¼” in diameter, hard, and covered with spines of various lengths.  Stepping barefoot into a bullhead patch gave little alternative but to sit down as quickly as possible and pull out the little monster.  If the tip was broken off, then it was Mom’s turn to find a needle and dig it out. We just loved that, and I decided that I would rather dig out my own thorns than have someone else do it.  Our yard was surrounded by inhospitable plants.  We had a rose hedge that surrounded the back yard and a pyracantha hedge along one side of the front yard and Mom’s individual roses on either side of the driveway on the other side of the front yard.  One might assume that Mom enjoyed picking out stickers, but I think she was just teaching us to be careful.  When I was old enough to join Dad on hunting trips, we would walk miles in the desert looking for quail.  Cactus grew everywhere and the large-thorned varieties like saguaro and barrel cactus weren’t really too much of a problem because they were visible, but rubbing up against the small thorns of a prickly pear would insinuate tiny spines into your clothes and your skin that you couldn’t hardly pick out.  It was more effective to scrape them off with the knife edge.  The real evil specimen, however, was the cholla or jumping cactus.  The little balls of thorns were so tenuously attached to the main plant that bumping it would result in the balls going everywhere.  The hundreds spines on each ball were barely hooked on the tip and were as fine as a hypodermic needle, so if you inadvertently hit one, you were left with maybe dozens of needles stuck deeply in whatever part of your body they happen to contact.  It was common to see a steer with jumping cactus stuck on it’s body and I have spent some time pulling out the spines from our dog while roaming the desert landscape.  The story that still makes me cringe is of a neighbor as told by her husband.  They were not outdoor types and found themselves out in the desert.  The wife had to relieve herself, and having no rest room for miles around, decided to squat out of sight in the time-honored tradition.  Untraditionally, she squatted over a cholla and it was a painful learning opportunity that she realized as her husband pulled the many spines from her tender parts.  And here I sit this evening with the devil’s club spines that penetrated my leather gloves irritating my fingers.  I am ready for a little exploratory surgery, I guess, so maybe I’ll just play that Mason Williams clip one more time…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gJQwgLWSjJ0

www.youtube.com

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

I suppose dumpster diving is the natural progression from talking about the attraction of the dump.  Dumpster diving is not for the faint of heart because some things just belong in the dumpster and shouldn’t be disturbed.  The waste from our summer fish butchering operation after dip netting comes to mind.  Those bags really just need to go straight to the landfill and be buried ASAP.  On the other hand, construction sites yield all kinds of building supplies from pipe and steel and lighting fixtures and conduit and lumber to 5 gallon buckets and tools in need of repair.  My favorite dumpster story involves chickens.  Years ago when I was in the Army, we raised chickens for the eggs and for the experience.  In Alaska, it is not particularly cost-effective because in the winter, egg production falls.  Chickens really like to scratch, and will eat greens voraciously.  We had 20 plus chickens and feeding them through the less productive winter was not very profitable, and though they would go out to eat the snow, they spent most of the time in the henhouse.  Robert, who worked at McDonalds, would bring home a bag of dried-out buns from time to time and the chickens would go wild, but what they really loved was salad greens.  I had noticed that in grocery stores, the produce section would prepare their goods for sale by taking off the outer leaves of the cabbage and lettuce and would throw away anything that didn’t look fresh.  Safeway refused to part with their produce waste, and it went into a compactor-dumpster so there was no chance at retrieval.  I inquired at the Commissary (the military grocery store) and the produce manager told me he couldn’t give the waste away either because if it killed me or my chickens, the government might be liable, but he took me to the back door and pointed out the dumpster that they threw the black garbage bags in every night, and I began frequenting the dumpster and the chickens couldn’t have been happier.  A couple of bags of leaves would keep them happy for a week.  I was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time, and had traveled with another officer to Fairbanks for the day to work in a clinic there.  We flew on a military C-12 aircraft and the trip took about an hour.  When we returned to the base one evening, I was giving my friend a ride home and suggested we check the dumpster.  It was quite dark out with snow on the ground, and Paul felt more than a little conspicuous, but I assured him it was alright, and that I had never even been questioned.  That was all about to change, however.  Picture two senior Army officers in uniform rooting around in a dumpster  looking for vegetable scraps when two squad cars of military police roll up with searchlights lighting up the night.  Of course the trash is much too valuable to allow anyone to pilfer, so they wanted to know what we were doing.  I explained about my chickens and they inspected the contents of the trash bags and finally let us go.  They even let me keep the bags, and the chickens were happy as usual, but I know I will never hear the end from Paul of nearly getting us arrested for stealing the produce trash from the dumpster at the Elmendorf Commissary.

Monday, June 03, 2013

I’m not sure what the attraction of trash is, but it is clearly there.  As a boy, I loved to walk down the alleys and see what goodies the neighbors threw away.  I came home with books and a washing machine and lumber and fencing and bags of screws and nails and who knows what else.  Dad always complained that I was hauling home all that junk, but those pieces of sheet metal and those boards wound up in some project or another.  I took the washing machine apart into all the various components and reproduced the electrical connections on the workbench to figure out how the timer and float and motor and switches all worked together.  Those kinds of experiences helped to make me foolishly fearless in disassembly and repair of almost anything.  Trips to the dump were a fascination for me before the people that run the dumps got so fussy about who could recover materials and reusables from their premises.  When we lived in Japan, both Camp Zama and Atsugi Naval Air Station had dumps that were unattended, and we made many happy trips recovering discarded materials.  I still have logging chains from the Atsugi dump, and we recovered enough lumber to build beds playhouses and a shop and a greenhouse and a swingset.  Pallets were made of teak, so pulling the nails and planing them down left some beautiful wood for special projects.  Even here in Eagle River, the dump can be a place of excitement and mystery.  If you dump on the “face” of the landfill where the bulldozers work, you will see lumber and iron and toys and appliances and everything else you can imagine being buried by the heavy equipment.  They pretend to have a recycling program here, but the very highest level of recycling is reuse, and that is completely ignored.  If a product or material can be reused or repurposed, it doesn’t have to be broken down into component compounds to be of value.  It is already of value.  Fairbanks does public dumping better than most places.  They have lots with dozens of dumpsters surrounding them and a covered area where people can leave objects that they no longer want but that still have some value.  Free for the taking and affordable to all, chairs and toys and playground equipment and tires can all be found there, and if not taken away, the dumpsters are pretty close.  I have brought home pipe and drawer slides and electrical wire and moldings and even a Fisher Price car that the grandkids love.  So why do we as a society stand by and watch as these things are crushed and buried in a landfill while we worry about saving aluminum cans?  My dream would be to have everything entering the dump pass through a conveyor where all the reusables and recyclables would be removed and put in a proper stream, either for sale at a reduced rate or recycled.  Hazardous wastes are handled in such a manner here in Eagle River.  If a reusable container of paint or oil or wax or windex or whatever is dropped off at the facility here, it is put on a shelf that any other patron is free to take home and use up of it what is left.  This is a great service to both donors and reusers, and keeps the waste from going into the landfill or having to be disposed of as a hazardous waste.  What a marvel it would be if that same logic could be applied to solid waste.  Instead, try and “steal” material from the dump and you will be threatened with arrest.  Logic?

Sunday, June 02, 2013

Today has been a sad day.  I have had the honor and privilege of serving as Bishop of the Bear Mountain Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for the past 5 years.  A Bishop is the ecclesiastical leader of a congregation and serves with two counselors.  In our church, all serve as unpaid volunteers.  The Bishop is called through inspiration and revelation by the Stake President.  The Bishopric calls through inspiration and revelation those who serve in the ward.  As Bishop, I have received that inspiration and have extended those callings to most of the members of the ward who almost universally have served faithfully.   Serving in this capacity has brought untold blessings to my family and to me, and while the responsibility is significant, the love I have received and have learned to give has far outweighed the burden of any responsibility.  Bishops generally serve for about 5 years, and it has now been nearly 5 years and two months, so being released was not a surprise.  Teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and bearing witness of Him has lifted me up and brought me closer to our Father in Heaven.  Watching the Gospel in action as faithful members pattern their lives after His has been a continual inspiration.  Being released from the chance to serve those who I have learned to love and respect leaves an ache in my heart that will not soon be filled.  

Saturday, June 01, 2013

I suppose it is fair to say that everyone has a particular candy that they like best.  Judging from my own reactions, that varies somewhat with how I feel and what is available.  Chocolate, for instance, is a favorite.  My real preference in the chocolate line is white chocolate, which really isn’t chocolate at all, but Lindt truffles melting their slow but delectable essence unleash an explosion of sensation that is hard not to love.  Even the milk chocolate truffles are pretty great, but my wife’s opinion would be much different.  She still savors the texture and flavor treat, but her preference is dark chocolate; the darker the better.  For me, dark chocolate is hardly worth bothering with which is one reason we are such a great companionship.  We can each pretend to sacrifice from a bag of mixed chocolates those which we don’t prefer and still provide a taste  delicacy for the other.  We also have learned to really sacrifice for each other, but that is another story.  At other times when chocolate isn’t really the thing, I love caramel.  I eat it only rarely because it isn’t good for me.  Health is not what I am talking about, however.  Wonderfully sticky caramels tend to handily remove my onlays from my teeth requiring another cementation, and Robert gets cranky when that happens too often, so I just deny myself.  When neither chocolate or caramel are on the sweetshop menu, I love hot cinnamon candies.  When we would go to the theatre in my younger days, I would by a big box of Ferrara Red Hots and start out slow, but soon I would be chewing up a mouthful and enjoying both the burn and the cinnamon flavor.  Hot Tamales I learned to like a bit later, and when Costco started carrying the 4.5 lb. bags, I could actually get burned out.   Then I discovered Atomic Fire Balls.  Fire Balls are cinnamon jaw-breakers that can be just smoking hot.  Not always, but sometimes.  They just have an occasional better batch, I guess.  Anyway, I have had to restrict my Fireball intake for 2 reasons.  Jawbreakers are really misnamed.  More appropriately, they would be called Toothbreakers.  My desire to bite them is pretty strong, and as I already indicated, Robert gets grumpy if he has to fix my teeth in an unscheduled appointment.  I won’t even mention the times I had to sew his face back together in an unscheduled manner.  The other reason I usually avoid Fireballs is that they are pure sugar,  and 30 calories a piece.  With 240 in the Sam’s Club container, that is way too many calories to calculate.  When my son-in-law Curtis asked for Carolyn’s hand in marriage, I told him that I wanted something from him first.  Of all the expensive things I could have asked from him to prove his dedication to her, I asked for a container of Fireballs.  I’m still waiting.   But I want you to know that Carolyn would be worth the risk.

Friday, May 31, 2013

When I think of woodcutters, I think of Hansel and Gretels’ father, or of the lumberjack that rescued Little Red Riding Hood, or maybe the lumberjacks in the silly Monty Python Lumberjack song.  They are always pictured with a big, sharp axe and that is the way woodcutting was done for eons.  In the Yukon Territory during the gold rush in the late 1800s, entire forests were cleared away by hand to provide fuel for the steamboats that moved freight and people from Whitehorse to Dawson.  Being way too mechanized for an axe, when I needed to cut firewood for wintertime heat, I opted for a chain saw.  My first was a small Homelite purchased at Costco when we were stationed at Ft. Huachuaca.  Our historical house on the parade field had a fireplace and we were determined to have a fire.  There was a woodcutting area on the post, and after reading the manual, I took my new saw out and began by cutting up some wood on the ground and soon was felling trees.  As I became more experienced, I was much more at ease using the chain saw, and I filled up the bed of my 1958 International Harvester ¾ ton pickup and hauled it home, only to burn very little of it.  The chimney didn’t really draw very well, and that smoky flavor we found delicious on our steaks just wasn’t as attractive inside the house.  In Kentucky, we also had a fireplace and I cut and burned firewood there, but it really wasn’t until we moved to Alaska that I began to think of myself as a woodcutter, even without the fairy tale.  Our first home had 2 fireplaces and I cut enough to burn in them.  I even put a log lighter in so that building a fire was as easy as turning on the gas and striking a match.  When we built our first cabin however, was when I began felling trees for use in construction as well as to cut and split for heat.  We built the cabin on piers which were spruce logs I cut and that we debarked, treated, and planted in holes to support the cabin 4 feet off the ground.  On each wintertime visit, we burned what I had cut and stacked in the summer, and if we weren’t very careful, the inside temperature would be in the 90s, even when it was -20 outside.  We learned to cut trees that were dangerously near the house by winching them in the opposite direction or using an ATV to put enough traction on them to get them to fall away from the building.  The new cabin in Trapper Creek is much larger and more comfortable, and uses lots more wood.  Fortunately, there is a lot of downed wood around.  I spent a good deal of time this winter cutting, splitting and stacking firewood so that next winter we will have seasoned wood ready to burn.  It is actually easier to cut it in the winter because the snow allows you to go nearly anywhere, and in the summer the vegetation and the swamps limit your ability to travel.  Robert heats his home with wood, and as I was driving through an area of road construction on Eagle River Road, I saw a big pile of wood.  A workman told me it was free for the taking so I called Robert and off we went to cut wood for next winter.  The trees were stacked on the side of the road and we pulled his truck and trailer as close as we could get and set about cutting the logs into bite-size pieces.  We actually were aiming for 6-8 foot lengths which we could end-over-end to the trailer or truck and muscle into place.  We maxed out both the trailer and the truck and got home safely where we unloaded the truck onto the ground.  He will cut it and he claims his kids will stack it.  Hmmm.   Sounds just a little hokey to me.