Monday, July 29, 2013

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

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

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

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

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

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

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

Monday, July 08, 2013

Monday, July 08, 2013

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

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

Saturday, July 06, 2013

Saturday, July 06, 2013

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

Friday, July 05, 2013

Friday, July 05, 2013

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

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

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

Monday, July 01, 2013

Monday, July 01, 2013

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

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