TyroErudition

Victorian Conceptions of Nineteenth-Century Mormonism

2011-12-19T15:19:00.001-06:00

A while back I read Sherlock Holmes offends Mormon mother in Virginia, school board pulls book. Essentially, "A Study in Scarlet," the first Sherlock Holmes story, from a historical perspective, inaccurately portrays Mormonism; the Virginia school district had it on a reading list for students; the Mormon mother asked that it be removed; the school board removed it because it was "inappropriate" for 11- to 12-year-olds.

At the time, I hadn't read "A Study in Scarlet," but I was a bit offended that the mother would make such a big deal about the story. I've run across inaccurate portrayals of Mormons before in Victorian literature, and I mostly find them amusing, since they reflect Victorian anxieties, fears, and double-standards. Now that I've read the story (and I hope the mother in question above read the story, too, or else I'm even more upset with her), I still think things were blown out of proportion in Virginia, but I can understand what offended her. That's not what I'm going to write about, though. I'm writing in defense of "A Study in Scarlet."

[Spoiler Alert!] The mystery and double murder (quadruple, when everything comes out) are founded on misconceptions of Mormons. The story starts with an introduction to Watson and his introduction to Sherlock Holmes. At the end of the first part, Holmes declares who the murderer of two foreign men is, though we are at a loss as to why, how, etc. (ah, the beauty of a well-constructed Homes story). Part 2 begins with the emigration of a man and his adopted daughter, the only survivors of a transcontinental wagon train that died of starvation. They are discovered, starving to death on the prairie with circling vultures, by a Mormon wagon train (featuring Brigham Young in a fancy, well-stocked wagon). A bit of the history of Mormons is given: their being driven from place to place and their final quest to find Zion in Utah. Well, John Ferrier and his daughter, Lucy, agree to become Mormons in exchange for being rescued. They arrive in Utah, and everyone soon becomes wealthy and prospers. Lucy grows into a fine woman. She falls in love with Jefferson Hope (oh, how I love that name!), a trapper-trader-mountain man kind of guy, and they are essentially engaged. Jefferson takes off for a bit to become more wealthy. Meanwhile, Brigham Young tells John Ferrier that Lucy must marry a Mormon (he gives her a choice between a man with four wives and one with seven). John Ferrier, above all, does not want his daughter to marry a Mormon. Brigham Young gives them a month to decide. The engagement with Jefferson is discovered, and Ferrier begins to receive a daily countdown to decision point (numbers painted on various surfaces around his farm). He knows that if he doesn't comply, he will mysteriously disappear, as every man who contradicts Brigham Young tends to. Jefferson Hope returns with a couple of days to spare, and the three escape. While Jefferson is hunting one day, he returns to camp to find Ferrier's grave and Lucy taken. He returns to Salt Lake to find Lucy married. She soon dies (of disappointment, etc.). Soon after this, there is a faction in the Mormon leadership, and several men decide to become "Gentiles"; one is Lucy's husband and another is the other man she could have married. Jefferson proceeds to try to kill both of them, and this begins a long manhunt, where Jefferson follows them across the United States, throughout Europe, and finally to England, where he kills them.

Most of the portrayal of Mormons and Mormonism is incorrect. Salt Lake (Utah) is portrayed as a locked down fortress, where no one may leave without consent of the "Four Elders." Portrayals of Mormon doctrines concerning polygamy are not correct, and a few other things, like the wealth of Mormons (the story suggests the leaders are the most wealthy and marry lots of women who will bring more wealth and land). Side note: The Mormon pioneers were incredibly poor for many years after they got to Utah, and though they prospered to an extent, they struggled for quite a while before becoming as prosperous as the story suggests. I mention this because it was the inaccuracy that stood out the most to me, along with the, for lack of a better term, "cultish" nature of the religion; oh, and it's clear they are headed to "Utah," which didn't exist until well after the pioneers got to the Rocky Mountains). I could point out more stuff, but I'm going to move on, since this is a defense of the story.

As I mentioned, I usually find mentions of Mormons and Mormonism amusing (the episode in Around the World in Eighty Days is great), and the portrayal in this Sherlock Holmes story is very interesting. It is such a central part to the story, and I find it fascinating that Doyle would make almost half the story about Mormonism. Remember, this is the first Sherlock Holmes story, and Doyle had a lot riding on the story's publication. It had to be good in order for him to continue writing more stories. Evidently, it made such a big hit that Sherlock Holmes has become a long-lasting hit (new movie's out!). I'm not suggesting that Mormons made the story a hit (Sherlock is the star, for sure), but why put Mormons in the story that needs to be successful?

(Side: I did a brief search to see if any scholars have written about this, but my search yielded only something in French, which I didn't feel like reading. There could be more out there; I just didn't feel like looking that hard...)

My theory is that Mormonism was a hot topic in Victorian England (not a major topic, necessarily). I've come across a few articles in magazines on Mormonism, and one particular "firsthand" account of Mormons was reprinted in a few different places. My thinking is that there were a lot of rumors floating around, and people were mildly interested in the strange new American religion (especially that it was being proselyted in England). People were getting a skewed view, too, since most firsthand accounts weren't really firsthand or were based on other firsthand accounts. From what I've seen, Victorians were interested in the practice of polygamy because of recent bigamy trials, where some men and women were I believe convicted of being married to more than one person. This (the 1880s and 1890s) is the period just after the sensational decades (1860s and 1870s), where literature began picking up on the subversive in Victorian society, being practiced more or less in the open. This is the time of the rise of the detective novel, where the obsessive interest in crime by regular readers led to the creation of detectives like Sherlock Holmes. Literature was delving into scandalous stuff, and what could be more scandalous than a religion that openly practices polygamy, believes in gods and angels arriving on earth bring sealed golden records, and keeps secretively to itself because of terrible persecutions? Who knows what goes on in that secret valley in the Rocky Mountains, where so many who enter never emerge? Is any of that accurate, historically? Maybe. But what is fascinating is the possibility that it exists! That is what Sherlock Holmes is all about; that's what sensational literature, literature that focuses on crime and scandalous happenings. And guess what: it sells!

The title of my blog post is carefully worded: Victorians had some strange conceptions of nineteenth-century Mormonism (which is much different than Mormonism of today; for instance, we no long practice polygamy and haven't since before the turn of the century--1900; we also are less closed, meaning you'll find members of the church all over the world: when young and insecure, the meager group of followers had to band together; now we're much more secure about ourselves). It saddens me that some people, like the woman in Virginia, can take offense at stories like "A Study in Scarlet." Perhaps I just have a different perspective on the matter, but "A Study in Scarlet" represents an interesting point in literature. It reveals, because of its interest in Mormonism, certain anxieties Victorians had about strange things. The historical portrayal of Mormons is besides the point. If anyone who reads the story really thinks that's the way things were, he or she had better rethink what "fiction" and "poetic license" are. Did Doyle know the "truth" about Mormons? Probably not; he was subject to the misconceptions floating around, just like all other people. Did he care? Heavens no! The misconceptions he so eloquently perpetuates make for a great story.

One question remains: If I had been in the above woman's situation, what would I have done? Well, I would have let my kid read the story and talked to him about why the story is the way it is. I probably would have armed him with information to take to classmates to talk about the differences between what fiction portrays and what really happened. In fact, I probably would have given him a few copies of the Book of Mormon with the instructions, "If anyone wants to read nineteenth-century Mormon literature that's accurate, have him read this."

For more information about Mormonism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, click here.

For more (accurate) information on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, click here.

A Letter Exchange

2011-11-24T09:41:00.001-06:00

I came across the following letter exchange while doing research on W. M. Thackeray. Of course, the letters themselves are much more entertaining, but you'll get the general idea.

June 1847

1: John Forster to William Thackeray: Why did you snub me at the party last night?

2: Thackeray to Forster: I snubbed you because a mutual friend told me you said I am "as false as hell."

3: Forster to Thackeray: Charles Dickens told me that Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon told him who the mutual friend is, and I have "no recollection" of saying such a thing about you to Tom Taylor. And if I ever did say such a thing, it's taken out of context and is a breach of confidence between Taylor and myself. If I ever did say such a thing, it was probably related to the caricature sketch you drew of me which wasn't particularly flattering.

4: Dickens to Forster: I gave your letter [letter 3] to Gordon, and he and I agree that what you say is just right. Gordon hopes you and Taylor will still get on, and he thinks Thackeray is in the wrong in all this. I agree.

5: Forster to Taylor: You betrayed our confidence. How dare you!

6: Thackeray to Dickens: I don't want to get Taylor into trouble. I was just really offended by Forster's comment about me; it hurts my "honor & character." If he's offended by the caricature I made, then he's taking things too seriously. "Forster ought not to have used the words: Taylor ought not to have told them: and I ought not to have taken them up." I'm sorry about the whole affair, and I hope you'll reconcile Forster and Taylor.

7: Gordon to Dickens: "It would be absurd that Tom Taylor and Forster should no longer be friends because Thackeray, for once in his life, took things too seriously."

8: Taylor to Forster: I'm really sorry. Will you forgive me? Will you restore my good name and trust?

9: Forster to Dickens: Thanks for sending me Thackeray's letter [letter 6]. It seems Thackeray is sincere. I wrote to Taylor, and we are on good terms again.

10: Forster to Taylor: I forgive you.

July 1847

11: Thackeray to his mother: "There are no end of quarrels in this wicked Vanity Fair, and my feet are perpetually in hot water. Jerrold hates me, Ainsworth hates me, Dickens mistrusts me, Forster says I am false as hell, and Bulwer curses me--he is the only one who has any reason--yes the others have a good one too as times go."

Mountains

2011-11-13T14:54:00.000-06:00

Since moving to Lubbock, TX, I've thought a lot about mountains. Lubbock, for those who may read this and not know Lubbock exists, let alone where it is, is in the South Plains region of Texas, northish-west of Dallas about 5ish hours and south of Amarillo about the same distance. It's basically on a giant plateau, and the prominent geographical feature is the horizon. It's as flat as flat can be. It's so flat that the water has nowhere to go when it rains and there are massive flooding problems every time there is a downpour. It's so flat that the sun rises earlier and sets later than I could have imagined. It's so flat that pancakes look like mountains. It's so flat...well, you get the idea.

So, I think about mountains. A lot. I grew up in northern Utah, in the shadow of mountains. As a child, I woke in the mornings to the sound of canyon winds rushing by/through our house with fresh, mountain air. (Now I occasionally wake up to the sound of wind, filled with dust and whatever blows in from the oil wells and farm lands.) As a child, I took lots of hikes with my family, and we explored hidden waterfalls and would look down from the tops of the mountains to the shiny valleys below.

Cedar Breaks, Southern Utah

The hikes were often strenuous, but always worth it. Mountain tops are so peaceful. The world is far below and away, and it's easy to let your mind wander and wonder. The sun is closer yet less fierce, and life's problems seem to melt away. I miss mountains. Even though as I've gotten older I've gone up into them less (time constraints, mainly), mountains have always been a reminder to me of the peace I felt after all that physical exertion. I miss living in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

Looking up from Ogden Valley, Northern Utah

Is it a wonder that mountains have traditionally been where prophets have found God? The prime example, of course, is Moses, who saw God in the burning bush on a mountain:

1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
2 And the presence of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4 And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. (JST Exodus 3)

Later, when Moses was feeling rather down about his job (convincing Pharaoh to let the Israelites go), Moses learned about who he was and who God was and that God's purpose, His work and glory, "is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). Moses learned his potential as God's son. After Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, across Jordan, and into the wilderness, the Lord again appeared to him and gave him the Law of Moses. Moses spent a lot of time in the mountains (and he had to hike them several times, poor guy).

Elijah had a similar experience when the Lord taught him about how the Holy Ghost communicates with man. Elijah went to Horeb, "the mount of God," seeking comfort and protection (since someone was trying to kill him). He then had this experience:

10 And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.
11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

Elijah had to go to the mountains to hear the still small voice of the Lord, the Holy Ghost. He had to remove himself from the unrighteousness of his people to find God.

There is a mountain in Lubbock. It's a symbolic mountain, but it is there. Just like the real rocky mountains I miss, Lubbock's mountain reminds of the peace I feel when I go inside it. This mountain is Lubbock Texas Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


Salt Lake Temple Spires

Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are primarily places of learning, a graduate school, if you will, for faithful, qualified, worthy members of the church. In temples, we learn more about our relationship with God and our eternal potential as His children. Not all members of the Church can enter the temple; all must be interviewed by two local church leaders, proving that they have a conviction in the beliefs of the Church, they keep God's commandments, and they are full participants in the Church's organizations (among other things). However, all members of the Church have opportunity to meet the requirements to enter the temple.

Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple

We do not speak in specifics about what goes on inside our temples, because temples are in a very literal way Houses of God, and the things done inside are sacred and holy. We have been asked to speak in general terms about these things outside the temple, to preserve their sacred nature. So much in this world has become profane because of overuse and ridicule. We wish to keep temples pure and sacred.

Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple

However, I will say that in temples we participate in rites and ordinances and make covenants (promises) with God essential for salvation. We also vicariously perform these for our deceased ancestors. Ordinances, like baptism, are essential for us to dwell with God forever, and we want everyone that lives, has lived, and will live on this earth to have the opportunity to dwell with God forever. In our temples, we are baptized for our deceased relatives. Other essential ordinances are the endowment (literally, a gift from God) and eternal marriage, where a man and woman can be married, or sealed, together for time and eternity (not "till death do you part"). These ordinances teach us what it means to be with God, to be like God. Eternal marriages and families are the end purposes of the temple, and it is only in temples that we can be bound together forever.

Since I moved to Lubbock, I've been on a spiritual journey. Not that I wasn't on one before, but I've changed more in the last two years than in the six preceding years. Soon after I arrived in Lubbock, I had a greater spiritual desire for all the blessings God offers His children (see Abraham 1). This desire came at a pivotal time in my life; I was just starting my PhD program, and I was wondering how I would make it through the next five years (and the rest of my life). The answer was (and always will be) the temple.

Salt Lake Temple

This journey led me to the temple, God's mountain in Lubbock. In God's temple, on His mountain, I am learning more about Him. I feel a peace and joy in the temple that I cannot feel anywhere else. Like Moses, I find God in the temple and learn more about how I, personally, can gain immortality and eternal life and also how I can help others gain immortality and eternal life. Like Elijah, the temple is the place where I can hear the Lord in a way I cannot anywhere else. The temple provides protection from the troubles of life, and I know that as I keep the covenants I have made, God will bless me in ways I cannot fathom. He already has.

President Thomas S. Monson (current Prophet and President of the Church) said:

The world can be a challenging and difficult place in which to live. We are often surrounded by that which would drag us down. As you and I go to the holy houses of God, as we remember the covenants we make within, we will be more able to bear every trial and to overcome each temptation. In this sacred sanctuary we will find peace; we will be renewed and fortified. (Full address)

How did Moses do all that he did? How did Elijah become the great prophet he was? How will I survive graduate school (and life!)? By going into the mountains.

For more information about temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, click any of the links above or click here.

What Does a Desk Say About Me?

2011-10-25T14:58:00.002-05:00

I wrote the following about a year and a half ago and forgot about it. I found it when going through some things today. Some things have changed, but you'll get the general idea.

Contents of mydesk:

The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories

What the Best College Teachers Do

Ungradedin-class work from my freshman writing students

Ahalf-empty water bottle--red, with "Texas Tech"

Acomputer

Alamp (touch)

Analarm clock (seldom used?)

Quoteson sticky notes attached to a computer monitor (LCD):

President Monson "Do not pray fortasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your task. Thenthe performance of your task will be no miracle, but you will be themiracle."

Elder Bruce C. Hafen "We can haveeternal life if we want it, but only if there is nothing else we want more."

Printer(dusty, as is most of the desk)

Thoseblack organizing/filing shelves, the top one for filing and so full the plasticis bending. The others about half full, each shelf designated for a class orpurpose.

Alarge planner, written in, a lot.

Ann'sHouse Cranberry Nut Antioxidant

Variouscontainers containing paperclips and small sticky notes (the kind you put onthe edges of pages).

Twostaplers (one for more than 30 sheets of paper)

Abunch of pens crowded into a silver pen holder.

AKleenex (or is it Puffs?) box.

Adesk calendar on February 4 (it's April).

ABook of Mormon (Italian leather)

Anotebook for writing scriptural thoughts; almost full.

Amirror and tweezers

Booksand more books:

Severalanthologies
EarlyAmerican literature
The Smithsonian Book of Books
Victorian Sensation Fiction
MLAhandbooks (two)
Teaching Literature
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
Librarybooks: Mostlyearly American print culture

BooksI will (not) be teaching atop one another (it's annoying to get one from themiddle):

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (3 copies)
The Mill on the Floss (2 copies)
Hard Times (2 copies)
Lady Audley's Secret
The Moonstone

Oldmail (ads)

AniPhone (plugged in)

Apile of readings for a class (book history)

Stickynotes with words on them about things

In the intervening year and a half, some of these things have migrated off my desk and others have taken up residence in their place. Of note, I suppose would be the following:
Graduate Study for the 21st Century
Rolls for Relief Society
Two new quotes:

"[A] spiritual education in the institute will shape the purpose and speed the process of [your] secular learning." Henry B. Eyring

"I believe that is a good way to face the unpleasant things in our lives, not complaining but thanking the Lord for the trust He places in us when He gives us the opportunity to overcome difficulties." Richard G. Scott

Empty paper bowl with a tissue in it

Learning Human Beingness

2011-09-20T11:50:00.001-05:00

In the movie Martian Child, David and Dennis have this conversation (it's in the trailer if you want to see it):

David: Why did they send you here? You know, the Martians?
Dennis: To join a family and to learn human beingness.

What does it mean to be a human being? I suppose that's what we're all trying to figure out. We're all little aliens sent down to a strange world with strange things in it. We're (hopefully) given a couple of experienced aliens to help us figure things out. But most of what we learn we learn by experience, by living life and exploring its possibilities. As we do so, we learn human beingness.

A recent, unexpected, event in my life has made me reflect on my own human beingness. I suppose I'm somewhat like Dennis: I'd much rather spend my days in a box (with a good novel, of course) than interact with the children on the playground. But now I find I must interact, and those interactions are at times painful.

When I worked at the LDS Church Office Building, I had a manager who often said that, when it comes down to it, the most important thing is the relationships we have with other people. I've thought a lot about that. It's interesting that Dennis is sent to a family to learn human beingness. Perhaps it's in families that we establish the relationships that teach us most about what it means to be human.

The fact is, we can't stay in a box and learn what it means to be human. We must have relationships with others, and through those relationships we learn about life, living, loving, pain, joy, and all that relationships bring. But through it all, we become something. We become human.

What is the essence of humanity? What is our purpose here? Why is it important that we learn what it means to be human? Well, I believe that the essence of humanity is Divine, and by learning what it means to be human, we learn what it means to be Divine, to be like God.

In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy (spoiler alert), Preservation, one part of the yin-yang creator gods (the other being Ruin), sacrifices itself (herself?) to put a piece of its godhood in everything living human. By doing so, it saves the world from Ruin (who, obviously, just wants to destroy everything). One of the many things I like about this series is the reality of a destructive, evil force. That's something so many fail to realize in this world.

Whether you want to admit it or not, there is an Evil in this world that seeks to thwart our efforts to learn human beingness. It seeks to convince us that being human means something other than what it is, that there is no spark of divinity in us, that there is no evil, that relationships (especially family ones) don't matter. And it's fairly successful.

The evil in this world is negativity, it's depression and doubt, it's destruction and ruin. Evil is darkness. Humanity--divinity--is everything opposite that. Darkness and Light created this world, but Light is what will prevail. Learning what evil is, is part of learning what human beingness is, but it's the Light that will preserve and save us.

What does it mean to be human? It means learning and living and getting outside of the box once in a while to love someone else. It means seeking for divinity in others and finding it there. It means finding divinity in ourselves and not letting evil tell us that it's not, because it is. Learning human beingness means being a human being and helping others be human beings, too.

Those Martians are pretty smart, aren't they?

Kindle: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

2011-06-24T12:55:00.001-05:00

So I bought a Kindle. I originally had declared I would never do such a thing, but after contemplating the hundreds of dollars I would spend printing PDF documents, I decided a $140 Kindle would be worth it in the long run. I also had a couple of people praise the virtues of a Kindle when studying for qualifying exams, and since my eyes get really tired when I read on a computer screen and most of the next three years I will be staring at PDF documents, I was rather persuaded by it all. I'm hoping the Kindle will help preserve me from eye-strain headaches and living in poverty surrounded by paper (Bleak House allusion--you should read it, which is currently my favorite novel of all time; it might be free on Kindle).

I was excited to get it and try it out, but since then, I've had mixed feelings/results with its success. My thoughts are related to both book history and my personal preferences, to both the form of the Kindle itself and program flaws and things Kindle has no control over, and to convenience.

The Good

You can download novels instantly for mostly cheap prices.
It holds thousands of books, which for me would be good since I have now five bookcases that are bursting.
It keeps your notes all together (a plus when studying for qualifying exams).
It's light and easy to hold.
You can adjust the text size and screen rotation.
It's easy on the eyes with it's cool "electronic ink."
It even recognizes line and word units in non-OCRed PDF documents, which makes it nice for putting in notes (more on this under Bad and Ugly).
The battery life amazingly long; evidently LCD screens are the main reason why laptops and iPhones, etc., have terrible battery life.
You can download notes and highlighted passages to your computer (a plus when studying for qualifying exams).
This is actually an annoying thing, but from a book history perspective it's fascinating. So, by default, you can see the "popular" highlights of other readers of a particular book. Isn't that cool! You can see exactly what other people find interesting in books. It makes the study of readership, the reading experience, etc., amazingly possible/easy. Book historians of the future will love it. But at the same time, I don't care what other people underline when I'm reading a book. Fortunately, this feature can be turned off.

The Bad

Some publishers' prices are absolutely ridiculous (sometimes the Kindle book is MORE than the paperback).
There are no page numbers.
With old books, you have no idea what edition it is, though you can buy more expensive versions of the book that are edited properly. I haven't bought one of these yet, but I'm planning on it to see what it is like.
You can't lend books unless the other person has a Kindle.
You can't get rid of/resell/burn books you don't like, need, or want anymore. Deleting feels like a waste of money and is not satisfying at all. Could you imagine a used Kindle-book bookstore? Buy a book for a discounted price in the old Kindle format! Buy a book with someone else's highlights and notes! That's definitely wouldn't work...
It's really hard to "go to" a place in the book; yes, you can search, but you can't just flip to chapter 10 or page 50 where you know a cool quote is. The bookmark feature is also integrated into the notes and highlights, which is annoying because you have to flip through it all to find the bookmarks.
It's really hard to navigate notes, bookmarks, highlights, etc. (design flaw, yes)
It's harder to browse books and flip through books and read various excerpts before deciding to buy them.
If a book isn't OCRed, you can't highlight anything, and most of what I read is not OCRed.

The Ugly

The sensual pleasure of book reading is gone (just don't think about that one too much).
Holding a piece of synthetic plastic just isn't the same as paper (which I think of as more natural, but I know is really not...)
I can't write in the margins, and typing in notes is hard and slow.
The percentage marker at the bottom of the screen is totally and completely and irrevocably annoying. What in the world does it mean that I'm 10% of the way through a book? It's a different 10% than in the last book I read, and the next book I read it will be still different. 10% is relative. When I read an actual physical book, I can feel how far I am through it, and I can estimate how long it will take me to get through. But with the Kindle, there's just that annoying "loading bar" at the bottom with a percent. I don't know how long it will take to get halfway through the bar, and it's different with every book. For instance, I read The Hunger Games on Kindle (it was $4), and that took me roughly five or six hours to read. Now I'm reading the first book of The Sword of Truth series (also $4), and I've read it for about three hours, and I'm only 20% of the way through the book. This is one of the ugliest things about the Kindle. At the same time, though, I don't know of a solution unless the traditional pages are placed back in. I like the tyranny of the page; it brings order. The Kindle has "locations," but for any given book there are thousands of "locations" and I have no idea what that means. Is it by sentence? by paragraph? by traditional page? Who knows.
Since it's all electronic, old books have to be uploaded in certain ways to make them best for Kindle usage, which is not really a Kindle problem but annoying all the same. Here we have the limitations of technology. People like to think technology is liberating, but it just redefines and confines in a different totalitarian system than what we had before. It's a new paradigm , but it's still a paradigm.

Conclusions
The Kindle is useful but very annoying (something like a spouse, I've heard), and at least for me, it will never replace the book.

Why I'm a Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormon)

2011-05-24T23:47:00.002-05:00

For a few dozen reasons, I've been thinking lately about why I am a devout, active, participating, living, breathing, loving, dying, member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yes, I was "raised" in this church (i.e. my parents were members, their parents were members, their parents were members, their parents were members, their parents were members, and maybe their parents were members--I lost track of parents), but I like to think that I believe, belong, contribute, serve, am for more important reasons. (Sorry about the cataloging of words; I recently finished reading James Joyce's Ulysses, which has a lot of catalogs in it. Have no fear, that is where the influence will end. Er.) Yes, the LDS Church is known for being able to keep children raised with its beliefs as adults (brainwashing--oh yes, that's the secret--please note the dripping sarcasm here), but there is more reason there than Mormons are simple-minded, blind followers of whatever church leaders say (we're not that at all--or we shouldn't be--but aren't there blind followers of every dogma?). Putting aside all the asides (I like parentheses, you see), I want to let everyone know why I am a Mormon.

It all begins with a little girl who lived on a little island called the Isle of Man in the mid-nineteenth-century. She sailed across the ocean when her parents met a couple of Mormon missionaries and decided that the missionaries had something to offer than no one else had offered them before. This little girl--she was sixteen-ish--walked across America, from the civilization in the East, to the wild unknown in the West. She was captured by Indians (they were fascinated by her red hair); two of her close family members died along the way; and she met the love of her life. After a series of unfortunate events, she was left a young, pregnant widow in Salt Lake City (I'm not sure if it was a full city yet; I don't think Utah was a state). So as not to be a burden to her family, she married a man whom she didn't really love but who would care for her and her son. She eventually bore him ten children (one of whom was the grandfather of my grandmother's mother).

Now, I have dozens of ancestors who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its infancy, but this particular ancestor of mine has always had a special place in my heart. My grandmother knew her quite well; this ancestor knew Joseph Smith--sat on his knee and played with him; this ancestor was not famous or well known. She lived a life of quiet faith (well, as quite as a fiery red-headed Irish woman can) and endured through many trials (the death of her true love, plural marriage, etc.). But she lived on, leaving a legacy of faith and belief in her wake.

How can I deny her belief? How can I deny her faith and the faith of all my progenitors who provide a witness for the truthfulness of all that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represents? After all these witnesses, how cannot I not believe? OK, you say, but this isn't why you believe. Maybe you're right. Well, let me tell you another story.

This one is about a boy. He grew up in a large, poor, farming family that had to move around a lot. His family lived in a time and area of the United States known for its religious turmoil (it was called the "Burnt Over District" because of all the revivals and camps and such). Naturally, as God-fearing, Bible-reading people, this boy's family was caught up in the religious turmoil. It was hard: so many voices telling them different things to believe. When all the preachers contradicted one another (or worse, hypocritically condemned other preachers but taught to love one's enemies), how could anyone pick one that is right? For, there must be a "right"one? Can God be anything to anyone? Not if one believes the Bible, or at least this is what this boy was trying to figure out.

Anyways, after thinking and praying and reading the Bible, this boy did what the Bible says to do: he asked God Himself which religion was true. And when Joseph Smith received his answer, it changed the world.

My faith begins with this boy; it begins with what he saw and with what God told him. Now, some say that God does not appear to man. Well, why not? He did all throughout the Bible, why not now (well, almost 200 years ago)? Some say that God doesn't call prophets anymore. Well, why not? He did in biblical times. If the Bible is God's word, which a great portion of this plant believes, then what does it teach about God? Well, that He loves His children, that He answers prayers, and that He sends wisdom and counsel through various means, including prophets and personal revelation. So, Joseph Smith received personal revelation, and God called Him to be a prophet. Thus, with Joseph Smith, God reestablished a critical connection between God and man, and that connection is direct revelation to the world through someone authorized to speak in behalf of God on this earth.

My belief in the LDS Church begins with my belief that God does not leave His children to wander the earth without direction. The Bible is wonderful; I love the Bible. But, really, how in the world does the story of David and Goliath have anything to do with, say, the degrading nature of pornography or the growing discrepancy between the wealthy and poor? Yes, one can pull principles from this story, but why wouldn't God give specific direction on matters that we face today? That's why I believe in prophets today, and I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

So, it follows, that I believe everything he taught, which means I believe everything that followed. And that's why I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Because I believe in personal communication between God and man, I must say a word about my communication with God. For I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because God told me that what the leaders of this church say is true. No, I haven't personally seen God, but I've prayed and asked Him, and He has told me this through the Holy Ghost, in my mind and heart. I've felt with every quark (smaller unit than atom) of my being that it's all true. Now, do I understand everything? No. Do I agree with everything? No. Does that make any of it any less true? No. So, there you have it.

In all honesty, I've been thinking about this blog post for about three months. Most of it I wrote three months ago and then I stopped. Why? Because, honestly, I can't explain why I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can tell stories of awesome people and I can explain prophets and personal revelation, but none of that is why am what I am.

I mean, really, what does it mean that something is true? It's not false? But what does any of that mean in a relativistic/pluralistic world where Truth isn't at all what it used to be (if it ever used to be anything)? I say I feel it is true, but what does that mean? I have no idea! Really, I don't.

So, then, why am I a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Because it's right. Whatever that means.

But why is it right, for me? Because it (the Church) offers me something I have not found anywhere else: peace, joy, satisfaction with myself and who I am. I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not. I just have to be me, and that's enough. But it (the Church) also pushes me to be better than I am, to become something greater, to reach my true potential as one of God's children.

Um, that sounds pretty good. Let's stick with that.

Undeserved Mercy

2011-03-30T22:39:00.006-05:00

Originally, the title was going to have a bunch of question marks after it, but then I realized that all mercy is undeserved, so really the title is redundant to begin with, but enough on that; I'll come back to it.

I was pulling out of a parking lot during the busy time of day after getting dinner at a restaurant. I waved at a couple of pedestrians to cross before I rolled onto the street. One of them waved me down, and I rolled down the car window to give directions (or so I hoped). Nope. He held up a pair of socks and a bunch of stickers of some kind (the packages were black). He explained that he was out selling stickers with her (his head tilted back to indicate the woman standing behind him). They were hard up on money and he had health problems and this guy had given him a pair of socks because his feet were blistered and he couldn't afford socks and they were hungry and they were already selling stuff on the street illegally and their down-trodden looks told the rest of the story. I'm guessing they weren't homeless, but they could have been (no shopping cart filled with their possessions was in sight).

I said I didn't have cash (I never have cash; I just use my credit/debit card). He said that they took debit and credit cards (first warning bell went off in my head, well, OK, it was first and a half; the half was the long rambling story about the stickers and health problems, etc.). Yeah, I'm not stupid, well, not really. So I said I'd buy them dinner.

I backed my car up and pulled into the parking lot of a pizza place. We went in and up to the counter to order. He asked me what they could get, and I decided to test them a little. I said, "You get what you need." My thinking was, well, if they really were jobless, homeless, etc., this might be the only square meal they get all day or week, and I still wondered if they were being honest (is it bad of me to be suspicious? perhaps I am always suspicious of beggars because I would die first rather than beg, but that may just be me). I thought I'd see how far he would take advantage of me. So the guy orders and orders and before I knew it he'd ordered food totaling over $30. I had a choice, obviously. I could have said no and walked out. I could have told him to take off the drinks and cookies and one of the $8 salads or get a cheese pizza rather than a specialty or take off the energy drink (he said it was for the vitamins because he got blackouts/epilepsy/seizures--he wasn't sure which--because of vitamin deficiency; third-ish warning bell goes off in my head). I could have done a lot of things, but I just looked at him and said, "You'll be extra grateful, yes?" He nodded. (Another warning bell goes off, though, I'm not sure why.)

So I paid and with many "God bless yous" exchanged, I walked out and back to my car to drive home.

You know, I'd like to think I did this all out of the goodness of my heart and I feel good about it and all that, but I feel very conflicted. One part of me wonders if I was taken advantage of (something I'm particularly tender about at the moment) and another part of me cringes at the lost $30 (I'm a poor college student who might be jobless this summer) and another part of me is grateful that I could offer something meaningful to two unfortunate people. And another part of me (boy, there are a lot of parts of me) keeps thinking about King Benjamin (Mosiah 4):

11And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of his goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causeth such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel.

12And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true.

13And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due.

16And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

17Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—

18But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

19For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?

20And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy.

21And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.

22And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition to you for your substance that he perish not, and condemn him, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongeth; and yet ye put up no petition, nor repent of the thing which thou hast done.

23I say unto you, wo be unto that man, for his substance shall perish with him; and now, I say these things unto those who are rich as pertaining to the things of this world.

24And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give.

25And now, if ye say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received.

26And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants.

27And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.

I've always considered myself a part of the group mentioned in 24/25, because I consider myself poor (I'm not quite official poverty level, but I'm close). But I could definitely be poorer. I donate money regularly to various organizations, but I also like to help out people I come in contact with. I primarily donate time, since I have more of that than money. So, I like to think I'm following King Benjamin's counsel about giving to the poor. But most of the people I help I never see, so what about the beggar I see and the one that offers up a petition to me?

How, indeed, can I judge the people I helped the other day? I don't know their circumstances; I don't know if everything the guy said is true and the warning bells were just my suspicious mind. Anyways, what right do I have to judge? So what if I was merciful to them and they didn't deserve it? Is it fair that mercy can only come to those who are in destitute circumstances? Doesn't it make more sense to extend mercy before destitution? Really, what does it mean to "deserve" mercy?

Am I not a beggar? I plead with God, my Father in Heaven, every day to watch over me. I plead for His guidance. I plead for His forgiveness. I plead with Him to make sure I always have a roof over my head and food in my fridge. All that I have is His. So how can I not give, even if I am giving to a con artist taking advantage of me?

Do I deserve the mercy I have received from God? Well, no! None of us do. Mercy is not something we "deserve." I love this definition: "Mercy is the compassionate treatment of a person greater than what is deserved, and it is made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Our Heavenly Father knows our weaknesses and sins. He shows mercy when He forgives us of our sins and helps us return to dwell in His presence" (lds.org). So, if I am trying to be like Christ, then I should have mercy for all around me.

At the same time, I have always loved verse 27. To me it says, do what you can, do something, but don't worry about solving the world's problems. Do what you can in your sphere of influence.

Was $30 too much? Probably. Was it unwise? Maybe. Was it worth it?

Is there no balm in Gilead...?

2011-01-07T12:35:00.005-06:00

The conversation went something like this:
Dad: "Will you do the dishes just once while you're here? It will be your payment for staying with us these two weeks."
Me: "Do you have gloves?"
Dad: "Yes, look in the closet there. See, a whole box."
Me: Observes that there is a full box of latex, powder-less gloves. "Yep. I'll do them sometime."

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child" (Jeremiah 1:5-6).

No wonder Jeremiah said he could not speak: he was living among a people that had completely and utterly rejected their God, a people so corrupt and proud that they failed to see the pending doom of Babylonian captivity. The children of Israel, God's chosen people, had defiled the temple, abandoned their covenants, and turned to follow heathen gods. For this reason God sent them Jeremiah; in all His wisdom and foreknowledge, God ordained a prophet to turn them to repentance and salvation. And Jeremiah did speak, and spoke he so well that a literary form was named after him: the Jeremiad.

The pattern of prophets being called and then focusing on their weaknesses and inadequacies is rampant. Moses said almost exactly what Jeremiah said; Jonah ran away; Joshua, who had to follow the footsteps of Moses, did not know if he could handle the whiny, disobedient Israelites; Gideon hid when he was called; Paul was an enemy to Christ; Peter denied the Lord; etc., etc. Perhaps there is a lesson in this: all these men became great, so great they converted thousands, bringing so many of God's children to salvation.

But this isn't what I am interested in. I am interested in the prophecies of Jeremiah and his pleas to Israel to repent lest their loving God destroy them in an act of mercy: dead people cannot sin. Early in his prophecies, Jeremiah says that the time for repentance is past. Israel is so far gone into the darkness that they cannot see the light: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved....Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?" (Jeremiah 8:22).

I'm making dinner. I put on the latex-free, powder-free gloves and cut up the chicken. It goes into the pan and I put the knife and cutting board in the sink, throwing away the gloves. A new pair of gloves. As the meat cooks, I cut up the veggies (tonight dinner is fajitas). Then I put that cutting board in the sink with the knife, throwing away the gloves. Gloves free I get the seasoning ready (a homemade mix of spices and fruit juices; if I juice the fruit myself, I don gloves again). Then I get the cookies ready. A glove goes on a hand when I crack the egg. Off goes the glove and the egg shell goes with it into the garbage (I bought a garbage can you can open with one of those levers at the bottom; 30 bucks for that thing; ridiculous!). Once the dough is ready, I put on gloves again or use two spoons (I've gotten good at the two spoons thing) to put the dough on the pans. Soon enough dinner is ready, and I eat the fajitas gloves free while the cookies bake.

Clean-up: I put on gloves and grab Clorox wipes to wipe down the kitchen counter and stove. I use gloves to wash the dishes and put them in the dishwasher (it's a crappy dishwasher; even when I pre-wash stuff it still comes out dirty sometimes). I wipe down the sink and facet. Done. The gloves go in the garbage.

Jeremiah's second question answers the first: yes, there is balm, or at least there is a physician. If that is so, why haven't the people been healed? Jeremiah's (actually, it's the Lord speaking here) not talking about physical healing. The Israelites are spiritually sick. Who is their physician, what is their balm? Jehovah, their rejected God, of course, and His arms of mercy, His Atonement that their law (Law of Moses) was supposed to point them to. Jesus Christ came to save the sick; after all, the whole need no physician (that's in the New Testament somewhere). Why are they sick? Well, the harvest is past, the summer ended. The children of Israel have a terminal illness: they have eczema. Yes, they have that red, scaly, flaking, inflamed, itchy, bloody condition where the body's immune system becomes the body's enemy.

I didn't know what it was; I just knew that my hands were dry, cracked, bleeding, and itchy beyond belief. The first doctor did tell me what it was; she said it was a rash and gave me an expensive ($25 for 1 oz.) ointment to put on. The ointment did nothing. The second doctor told me it was eczema. Ah, finally a name! He gave me a cheap steroid cream ($1-4 for 1 oz), some surgical gloves, and a list of instructions:

Use the following incredibly expensive creams and lotions that are clinically proven to relieve symptoms.
Take a bath every other day or once a week or never, if you can stand it.
Use these particular brands of soap.
Never wash your hands. Ever.
Immediately after bathing apply expensive creams the lotions and keep applying every hour.
Never actually use the steroid cream because steroid creams are evil and can cause permanent damage to your skin.
Etc.

I eventually learned the following:

Just because something is incredibly expensive and says it is clinically proven to relieve symptoms doesn't mean that it actually does. I went through about ten brands before I finally (about a month ago) discovered two brands that actually do help with the itching and inflammation. Most of those on the top of the doctor's list actually made the inflammation worse!
Seriously? I bathe everyday. End of story.
This one I actually have found helpful. I already used the brand the doctor recommended (Dove), and I found a hand-soap designed for sensitive skin.
Now you know why I use gloves for everything; I never have to wash my hands. I sometimes even take showers with gloves on (I haven't thought about using the toilet with gloves...).
Did you know there is a difference between a cream and a lotion? I've learned all kinds of stuff about creams and lotions since I was diagnosed. Creams are better if you want something to stay on the skin longer; lotions absorb quickly. In a way, lotions are watered down versions of creams. I usually use a cream after bathing and then use lotion the rest of day.
I use the steroid cream at night occasionally, but it's annoying. I have to wear gloves when I put it on so the cream doesn't get in my eyes or other sensitive areas.
I've forgotten or ignored the other stuff. I can't find the paper the doctor gave me (it's been three years now). I've just learned what works for me.

Eczema is a condition with an unknown cause where the body's immune system reacts to something foreign. The itching and redness and scaliness and cracks, etc., are all symptoms of the unknown underlying cause. It can be constant or can "flare up" when the skin comes in contact with certain things. I have eczema only on my hands.

For me, my eczema flares up under the following conditions: when I wash my hands; when I use harsh chemicals (like laundry detergent, bleach, or even shampoo, yes); when my hands come in contact with certain kinds of water, particularly hard water (living in Lubbock, TX, has not helped this at all; I crave the wonder of soft water); when it's winter; when it gets cold (my hands itch more when my body temperature is the lowest in the morning); and many other times. Creams and lotions help, but there is no cure. There is no balm in Gilead.

What is the balm of Gilead? In ancient times, the balm of Gilead was a special balm used to treat illnesses (including rashes and skin disorders) and must have been effective because it was a hot commodity. The men who bought Joseph of Egypt were coming from Gilead with this balm to sell in Egypt. The balm became a symbol of healing.

Eczema is a lot like sin. It flares up when it comes in contact with certain negative things and it is terminal. Sin happens when we place ourselves in bad situations, and it is something we will never escape from (not in this life, at least). I can only deal with the symptoms of eczema: there is an unknown underlying cause that makes my skin itchy and red and scaly and cracked. We, alone, can only do so much about sin. When we make a mistake we can apologize and repent, but the itching comes back. For the Israelites, they ignored the warnings of their physician, of their prophets and God, and they continued to the point when their hands were so disfigured that they had to be cut off. Eczema can lead to worse things: infection and even death if not cared for.

I sit here now and feel the burning of my hands, that terrible burning of eczema. I have found no balm to heal. Until my body is resurrected and perfect I will ever have eczema. As a daughter of Eve, I must live in a world where the effects of a fallen, sin-filled world are everywhere. There is no escape in this life; yes, we can turn to God and have faith in the Atonement and we can find peace, but the effects of sin cannot be cured and the peace will always be temporary until Jehovah returns. Then, then, there will be balm in Gilead.

Transitions: Reflections after PhD, Year One

2010-08-11T09:42:00.006-05:00

After the whirlwind that was my moving to Lubbock, TX, I really began to doubt what I was doing here. I moved half-way across the country to a city I didn't know existed until about 10 months before, and I had not yet felt comfortable with it all. Was graduate school really for me? Did I really want to do all the work required? Was I good enough? And, most important of all, was this what God wanted for me?

I had no job. I was in the same place many English majors are after getting that shiny diploma cover with a "sample" Bachelor of Arts diploma in it: I was jobless. Who would hire an English major? (And technically, I hadn't yet graduated...I was finishing an independent study class--Shakespeare.) I had spoken with the school's editing internship coordinator, a lovely woman who was a bit absentminded and whom no one could ever get a hold of, but all she had given me was a name of someone who worked for my church who had expressed interest in hiring an intern or two.

So I had a name and the organization he was associated with. I did the most assertive thing I had ever done till that point. It was my first real action as an adult woman. It was scary, and my dad went with me. I went to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Family History Library, where I thought this man worked. I asked a volunteer there if they had a directory. They did. She looked up his name. I now had a number (and I found out he didn't work in the Family History Library, but in the Church Office Building).

So I had a name and the organization and a number. I called.

Right after I moved, I went to an academic conference, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference, which is another blog post in and of itself. My flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul got in to Lubbock early Sunday morning. I was tired (I'd gotten up at 4 am to catch my flight), and I was feeling emotionally and spiritually drained. Moving takes a lot out of you, especially if you don't know if what you're doing is the best thing for you at the moment. I stared at my bed, which looked awfully good, and at all the unpacked boxes and such around my apartment, which symbolized my current uncertainty. I then thought about church. I should got to church; that's a good thing, right? I mean, when life is hard, church is always the best place to be, right? I decided to take a nap, but I set my alarm to wake me up in time to get to church.

I should mention that at the time of my unemployed status as a recent BA recipient, I also had just been rejected from three master's degree programs. This was incredibly depressing because I had set my heart on graduate school (after being rejected from the secondary education program, I had decided graduate school was the place for me). I felt like I was at a road block. My dream of being a teacher was on the other side, but I couldn't get past this massive wall that just kept getting higher, blocking my view. Was there another path I should take? The uncertainty bothered me. I'm a planner, not a terribly meticulous one, but I like to see where I'm going so I know how to get there. And at this time I was stumbling around, bumping into this wall, in the dark.

Long story short, I was hired as an intern in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that experience taught me many things, which must be jumped over for now. I think I'm trying to make some point here. Oh, yes. After my internship ended, I was hired as the internship coordinator and assistant editor. Yes, giant leap from intern...

I got to church late, found a seat, and managed to finish singing the opening hymn. As I sat there through the service, among strangers (who are now all good friends, by the way), I had the overwhelming feeling that I was supposed to be there. Heavenly Father was pleased I'd chosen to go to church, even though the justification and need for sleep was strong; He was pleased that I had moved across the country; He was pleased that I was sitting in that chapel at that moment in that place. I was supposed to be in Lubbock, TX. I was supposed to be in graduate school, at that graduate school, at that time. I'm a crier; yes, I'm coming to accept that. And in this moment, the tears flowed.

In my position, I learned a few things: 1) I never wanted to be in a leadership position ever again. Not that I couldn't do it; I didn't want to do it. Too much pressure. Anyways, leaders need good followers. I can be a good follower. 2) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true and living church on earth. Yes, I knew this before, and I still know it, but I was blessed with a unique perspective on the truth of it all. 3) It's possible to pray yourself into graduate school. I did it. And I think Heavenly Father blessed me with the opportunity to attend BYU because I needed to learn a few things as I tried to walk through a wall/road block. It turns out, I just needed to walk around the wall...duh. 4) God works in ways that are best for us. He loves us. He has a plan for us. Sometimes, we just need to "fear...not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord" (Exodus. 14:13).

So, since this blog is titled something about reflections after working on a PhD for a year, I suppose I should get beyond how I got here. But, as I've been thinking about lately, the beginning of something is often the most important part. What was it that I learned that Sunday that helped me through this year? Well, God loves me, He has a plan (in which I'm trying to be a willing figure), and my life is right now what it needs to be. Peace: "Therefore, let your hearts be comforted concerning [graduate school, life, etc.]; for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God" (D&C 101:16). Perhaps some day I will actually get around to reflecting on all that I have learned over the last year. My life has changed profoundly in ways I am just beginning to understand, and I have learned things about myself and my purpose in this life and eternity that I never dreamed of before.

I definitely knew more about what I was getting myself into this time around (see some thoughts I had after my first year in the master's program). But, at the same time, I was not prepared for being told I was "too Mormon" or learning more about Heavenly Father in the temple or meeting some of the most amazing people in the world who are becoming such very dear friends. I can firmly say, after year one, my life and purpose is here. I don't know what year two will bring, but whatever it brings, it will bring more knowledge and life. And that is what we are all living for.

After praying myself into graduate school, I realized that roadblocks don't mean the journey is frustrated or ended. They simply mean detours. And detours are often interesting and scenic, and they usually take forever to get through! But they often show us things we never expected to see and help us understand things we never expected to understand. Detours are what teach us the most about how much God loves us, and they help us understand that He is really in control. Anyways, that is the most important thing to learn, isn't it?

After 25 Years of Life, I Have Learned...

2010-04-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

Well, today's the day. It's my birthday. I never have thought birthdays worth much. It's just another day. In fact, as far as my existence goes, I believe that I (and everyone else) have always existed (not in my current form). So birthdays really aren't to celebrate the day we first existed. Yes, it is birthday, so that means it is the day we were born into this world (actually, you could say that all of us are nine months, or so, older than we are). I suppose that is worth celebrating. It is a wonderful thing that we are all here, that we chose to live. Yes, we chose. I firmly believe that. Existence isn't random or the result of ages of evolution or something else. We chose to be here. But what in the world did we get ourselves into? What is it that life is supposed to do? Why celebrate our existence?

Birthdays are funny things. Everyone has one, and yet that day of birth is not unique. But it's a day we try to be unique. Like everyone else. [Insert smiley with a wink]

Birthdays mark the passage of time (Enya's "Only Time" just came on my Media Player; fitting, no?). Time is important to mortals. From the day we are born, we mark the days and months and years until we will no longer be. I've often wondered why time is so important. It is ingrained into our very beings, somehow. Why? Why not forget that today is Monday and tomorrow is Tuesday and in three weeks it will be Monday again and next year will be 2011 and a hundred years ago it was 1910? What if we stopped watching the little minute hand on the clocks tick by, telling us how far the sun is traveling across the sky, indicating to us the beginning and ending of a day? What would that do? What if we just slept when it was dark and lived when it was light and forgot to wonder how far gone the sun is? What if we lived as if there were no time, as if life would continue on forever?

But I'm getting off topic. I'm talking about the fact that I have lived on the planet earth for 25 years. That seems so long, doesn't it? Yet, my grandmother has been here for almost 95 (if we counted conception as the moment of our "birth," she is 95 currently). She was 70 when I was born. She had already lived almost three of my current lives by the time I can crying into this world of toil and woe (and joy and peace). Now, she has lived my life with me.

There I go again. I like tangents, you see. The point of this post (or what I will define as a personal essay) is to relate some things I have learned in 25 years of life on earth. I guess I hope you will learn something about life, about living, about birthdays, about humanity, about yourself. That's a lot of abouts, but life is about many things, after all.

Well, first thing is first: I have learned that there is God. Not only is there one, but he loves me, and you, and everyone else. Why? I am still figuring that one out, but it is all about love, the kind that God has for you and me and all of us.

I have learned that humans are stupid and funny and ironic and evil and happy and kind and sad and generous and guilty and selfish and thoughtful and thankful and wise and selfless and good and irrational and irreverent and holy and helpful and forgetful and forgiving and unforgiving and unusual and God's children. That is all.

I have learned that there is beauty in everything and everyone. All things come from God, and because of that, there is beauty in everything, even if that beauty is hard to find or even if someone wants to be ugly because they are unhappy or something on the outside pretends to be what it is not. There is a lot of pretending in this world. Too much, if you ask me. Whatever happened to being genuine?

Since I am getting tired of "I have learned," I find that there is something common to all humanity, despite and because of our different cultures and religions and such. We all are divine and have a spark of God in us. How else can it be if we are His children? That spark encourages us to become more than we are. I don't believe that the ideologies behind democracy and freedom are culture-related. I believe they are innate in all of us. History shows this, if it shows anything.

Another thing that is important to humanity is family. What would we do without our families? Even if we have broken homes, there is little doubt that our family defines who we are, in part. By nature we are divine, by nurture that divinity is fostered or repressed. We choose what we do with our lives, and we are accountable for those choices, but it is in our families that we learn what choices there are. May fathers and mothers and children always be what they are and united in love; anything else will destroy us.

As for literature (and you thought I'd forget that, didn't you!), that divine spark (light may be a better word; it's hard to describe) in humanity searches for truth (whatever that is; see below on what we are all searching for). In fact, that divine spark/light is itself truth, and truth embraceth truth (yes, that is scripture; somewhere in the Doctrine and Covenants, I think; I'll let you look it up). For some reason, humanity has tried to figure itself out through literature. I am glad it has (or else I wouldn't have a job), but why I am still trying to figure out. Literature can tell us something about humanity, about this truth that we are all looking for (or I think we are). Literature is that divine spark manifest in material/physical/temporal form. Granted, there is "good" and "bad" literature. My canon looks something like this: whatever is good leads to good. So if literature inspires the spark to be light or a flame or something, then it is good—there is definitely some bad stuff out there, so watch out. That's why I like literature. I know not everyone does, but I do so you don't have to (unless you want to; I don't mind fellow readers).

What are we all searching for? What do we see as the purpose of our lives? What have I discovered (ha! not learned)? I want peace. I'm not talking about world peace (though that would be nice) or societal peace (again, a good thing). I'm talking about that deep inner confidence and satisfaction with yourself, life, accomplishments, goals, etc. I want more than RIP on my tombstone; I want to know now—while I am living and breathing as a mortal—that what I am doing is what I am supposed to be doing to get me where I want to go. I want to go/return to God, and I want to know that what I am doing will get me there. Isn't that what you are searching for? This search can take different forms. Maybe you don't care what God thinks, but I am sure you still want peace or happiness or satisfaction (not the lust kind, but the confidence in self kind). And if you don't care what God thinks, think again. You should care.

I've stayed on topic pretty well, haven't I? I've always thought of personal essays as meandering things. I once read an essay that meandered through defining what a personal essay is. It was delightful. So I will meander, from point to point, some related and some not. I think I am just about done anyways. How can one write in a single blog post/essay all that one has learned in 25 years? I mean, I haven't even mentioned the stuff about taking care of oneself. That is a feat! Just watch a child trying to figure it out! It's really amazing any of us make it past the age of five. Parents are really amazing people to not strangle children. Pay homage to goodly parents! (If your parents did strangle you, I apologize. I really don't mean to be offensive; one thing I have learned is that people are quick to be offended, so I must watch what I say and do.)

What have I accomplished in the 25 short years of my life?—I spoke with my grandmother yesterday. She said, You are 25. Wow, you are so young. So young. And you have accomplished so much! The pride was all evident in her voice. I love you, too, Grandma. I'm glad God has extended your life so you can be here to love me—Three college degrees and one on the way—probably my biggest accomplishments. Beyond that, I have helped people, which is what life is all about anyways. It's about two things, I have realized—actually, three—1) Love God, 2) Love People, 3) Learn as much as you possibly can—never mind, four—4) Become something with all that loving and learning. When we die, when we pass from mortality to immortality, we will only be what we have become and what we know. Maybe what we are really all searching for is what we want to become. What do you want to become?

I want to be like God. That is why I believe loving God and loving people means serving them, and you serve God by serving people, so God has set it up so you can kill two birds with one stone (um . . . that doesn't sound right, does it? Oh well, it is written). But you also serve God by doing what He wants you to do (and not doing what he doesn't want you to do). I serve God because I love him. By default I love you, too. Awe, shucks! We are one big, happy, loving family! Hugs all around!

Ew. Enough of the lovey-dovey stuff. So, anyways, that is what I have learned, after 25 years of life as a mortal. What will I learn in the next 25? Or 33? Or 47? Or 52? Or 66? Or 71? Or the rest of eternity, when I am immortal? What adventures await us all before and after we die? Dumbledore said it, after all: death is the next great adventure (bad paraphrasing here). But God said it better: "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man [and woman]" (Moses 1:39). And if all I remember when I die (or get hit in the head and have amnesia) is that one sentence, I'll know all I ever needed to know because I'll have become all I ever needed to become.

2009-09-25T22:36:00.003-05:00

Blogging: Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.
from despair.com

Connections

2009-08-26T23:53:00.001-05:00

My family wanted to see campus. I suggested a campus tour, so they could get all that commentary on the buildings and history of the school, but the consensus was it was too hot to sit in a golf cart or wander around. So we drove.

Texas Tech University has the second largest college campus (land size-wise) in the United States. I guess the only bigger one is the Air Force Academy and they count runways. TTU extends from 4th Street to 19th Street north to south and about two miles east to west. It is a large campus; a highway even runs through the middle of it.

I pointed out all the buildings I remembered from my trip to the campus five months ago, and we argued about whether the architecture and colorings of the campus buildings is "ugly." For the most part, I think they're lovely, but there are a few random elements that make one question whether the architect was high, drunk, or both when he/she designed the buildings.

My brother had finally had enough, and his eighteen-year-old focus was on the Student Union. Whatever.

We found the bookstore (a Barnes & Noble combined with a school bookstore). Nothing else was open, and since it's still before the rush of students return to school (next week), no one was in the bookstore. My family made a beeline for the expensive TTU-labeled brand-name paraphernalia. I told them to go to Wal-Mart and save a little money, but they wanted "authentic" TTU merchandise. OK. I got something practical: a water bottle with "Texas Tech" on it.

My youngest brother is a collector of playing cards (the 52-card deck variety with kings and queens and aces), and he gets a deck specific to the place we are visiting whenever we go anywhere. But he couldn't find any of TTU. We asked a store worker, and he looked, revealing what we all suspected: they didn't have any/were out.

The worker (his name escapes me, and I can't remember whether he was a cashier or a stocker or one of those people who wander around and ask people if they need help) asked where we were from. Now that I think about it, it's possible he recognized our accent/lack of accent. We told him from Utah. He asked which part. We told him Roy. We always say Roy, even though no one has heard of it and has no idea it exists and can't point to it on a map, for reasons I'm not sure. Maybe there is some pride from being from a town no one has heard of.

He didn't seem put off by our answer, but we started to explain its location anyway, to fill the silence.

"I know where Roy is," he cut in, and we stared at him. "I'm from Utah, too--Ogden."

Wow.

We didn't know what to say. Here we were in this town in the middle of the panhandle of Texas, with very few (if any) from Utah and very few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and one of the first people we meet not only is a member (we assumed of course, which may not be a good assumption, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate as I'll explain later) but is from Utah.

I assumed he was a student and said so.

"No. I just work here."

I asked him why Lubbock (of all places).

"My wife's from here."

Ah. It all came together. I wanted to find out more, but we were swept away by my dad who was at the check stand trying to get us to bring our TTU-labeled clothing, etc., to be paid so he could go to Texas Instruments on a tour (we never found the place, actually, much to my dad's disappointment; there was a train that decided to stop on the tracks that were about 100 yards from the place, and we were stuck on the other side). We rushed over and bought our expensive gear.

But before all the purchasing and such, there was this strange moment of connection with this guy from Ogden, Utah, who worked at TTU but wasn't a student and was married to a woman from Lubbock. For a few seconds we just looked at each other, almost lost for words. We were Utahans in an ocean full of Texans; we were a few grains of white sand in a world of brown sand. We were connected for that bizarre instance and perhaps forever.

These connections are strange; I've had a few in my life. I think they happen to all of us. What do they mean? Why do we have them? I will probably never see that guy again in my life, yet for a moment we were intimately connected. What does that mean? What are these things that connect us to each other? What are we to do?

A Psalm

2009-08-18T00:27:00.000-05:00

Though the darkness surrounds me and evil foes beat upon the walls of my weakened heart, though death is beauty and strange and rest, though my soul cries out in pain and anguish for the second death to overcome and let my frail and sad existence end;

Though my heart stands, dying, dying within the walls that are surrounded by darkness as Evil pounds down the door only to find an empty shell of a once thriving and beautiful city;

Though my eyes water by night, sending me swirling into whirlpools of pain;

I reach up from the waters of despair and pain, my weak arm extended, grasping for some support, some aide . . .

Thou art there.

Thy patience and love and mercy and love surround my pain and lift me from the depths of despair. Thy arm, as always, is held out, not removing the pain, but restoring my city and destroying my enemies with a consuming fire that heals my wounded soul.

Thy servants comfort me with heavy hands and anoint me for better things; Thy peace flows from the crown of my head to the smallest molecule of my soul, and I know Thou lovest me, though Thou wouldst have me lie in darkness.

Thy patience overwhelms my soul; that Thou wouldst care and love a wretched soul and shed mercy on a sinful and rebellious heart.

Thy mercy encompasses me and I think of Thy sacrifice and weep and weep to know of Thy love.

Thy love whispers and whispers and I know . . .

Thy love dries the pain and fills the whirlpool; Thy love bursts forth as water from dry stone to soothe my parched lips and fill my wounded soul until I am healed.

I praise Thee and worship Thy Holy Name until the first death overcomes and I stand before Thee to be judged and the words come . . . and I enter the rest of Thy love: Eternity.

Glory to Thee forever more, amen.

Family Reunion Videos

2009-08-03T09:07:00.004-05:00

This post is just so my relatives can see the videos I took at the family reunion. Stay tuned for my regular posts.

From Time to Eternity

2009-07-21T09:15:00.005-05:00

Um...so I know I have posted a blog in, let's see, two months (cringe). That's for good reason. My master's thesis is almost done! That's my summer accomplishment. I haven't had much to say either, since my mind has been full of the Penny Post and whether or not it was written to the upper classes or the lower classes or both. That's another story, though.

Time. That's what I've been most interested in lately. Where does time go? Why must our lives be calculated by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, years, decades, centuries? Why must be know the exact date Jesus Christ came to earth? Isn't it just good enough to know that He came? Why must we know the exact date He will come again (or the world will end)? Isn't it enough to know that He will come? Isn't that all that matters?

I'm not concerned about aging, though that has to do with time as well. People are obsessed with not getting old, with staying young forever. Why? Why would you want to be young forever? My grandmother is almost 94 years old. She has a few health problems and a few aches and pains (and it takes her a hour every day to take on and off these special socks she has to wear), but she tells me she wouldn't want to be young again (perhaps feel young, but not be young). She's content with where she's at, and she's looking forward anxiously to where she is going next. She really wants to die. It's very strange being so close to someone who wants to die; it puts an interesting perspective on life.

But back to this people obsession: I can't believe the anti-aging products out there that promise to take years and years off your life. Why? I think aging is beautiful (one reason I like Dove; they always have these "you are beautiful just as you are" commercials); all those wrinkles and groves and spots. They are the signs of wisdom and a life well lived. The wrinkles tell us how much you've smiled and enjoyed life, how often you've been surprised, and how much you've cried. Aging tells us what your long life was like. I guess I could see people who didn't live life well--maybe they wouldn't want to age. But that's ever more reason to live life with joy! So when we are old, our faces will show how happy we've been.

This is a side. I think it's funny how obsessed people are will tan skin. Don't they realize that tanning (whether in the sun or not) causes not only skin cancer but also wrinkles? I laugh at tanning people; when they're old, they will be the ones spending thousands of dollars on anti-aging stuff.

Time. I've really felt the quick passing of time this year. For instance, right now, I've been sitting here for 15 minutes typing. What!? That long?! I can't believe it. Time moves along so quickly. As I've dealt with problems of drafting and revising and revising again (my thesis, of course), I've reflected on what has gotten me into this time-sensitive predicament. I keep thinking: if only I had more time, then I wouldn't be pressured so much. But time in not kind, and instead of stopping as it did for Joshua, it quietly ticks onward (I've tried stopping my watches, but that just makes me late for things. Evidently, time is not confined to mechanical things. With computers you can go back in time, but only virtually). But I have no more time. I'm out of time.

How can one "be out of time"? That's an interesting concept. Time extends onward (never backward). Time is progressive (perhaps why humanity is progressive, too). "Out of time," then is only for the procrastinators, those who do not use their time wisely. I think of the scriptures: this life is the time to prepare to meet God; if we don't repent and prepare now, soon the time will come when we'll be out of time and then where will we be? Well, in hell, of course. That is what hell is, I think, running out of time.

So I've run out of time. Have I procrastinated? A little. We're all naturally inclined to that, unfortunately. But I've worked hard, too. In life, thank goodness for the Atonement, because it takes care of our running out of time, if we work hard. But with my thesis. Have I had a savior? I don't know. I feel like this has all been me; I've had no help in the way Christ helps me in aspects of my spiritual life. I've learned, though, that heavenly help comes temporally as well. Why? I don't know. My obtaining a master's degree has nothing to do with my spiritual welfare (or anyone else's, at least that I'm aware). But, for some reason, because I care about it, God does, too, and He sends help where He can.

Time. I posted a Facebook status where I mentioned how time flies by. A friend, who is about my parents' age (maybe a bit younger), commented that if I thought time goes fast in my twenties, wait until I'm in my forties. So that must mean that time speeds up as we grow older. I'm not really looking forward to that!

This is a fun aside (for you [eternally] married out there): There was this guy (from Brazil) who went to a restaurant with his wife. They had to wait a while for a booth table, and when they got it, the man asked the waitress to put both menus on one side, since he liked sitting next to his wife. He then told her they were on their honeymoon. She asked how long they'd been married, and he said 29 years. She stared at him strangely (wondering if perhaps his English wasn't that great and so he didn't understand). He then said (after affirming her LDS status): "When we're married for 3,000 years, 29 is nothing. 29 is still honeymooning."

Time. With all our time-saving devices, it amazes me we don't have more time. But that may be because we fill up the extra time with unimportant things. Perhaps the answer, then, about what to do with the flowing, ever flowing time is to arrange priorities. If we spend our time on things that matter, on things that will make our time seem productive, then time will fly by as usual, but perhaps we won't run out of time as quickly.

Yesterday, for example, I had an extremely productive day. I got up very early, revised my thesis, went to work and conferenced with my students about their research papers, taught a fairly productive class, came home immediately, ate lunch, got to work on the book I'm editing, and edited a good chunk of that. Last night I felt content for the first time in a long time. I had worked hard all day (I did take one or two breaks; I started reading I Will Repay a sequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel), and I'd done all that I could in time I had been allotted that day. If only every day can be like that!

But, then, it can! We just have to not procrastinate: the great arch villain to time.

"The time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers," through life and time, waiting, ever waiting, until time will stop and He will say "It is finished" (Jacob 7: 26). Then time will end. And all we'll have left is eternity.

One of my favorite songs (I especially love this version with its ending):

In which the author explains why she didn't leave the apartment for two days

2009-05-14T10:32:00.002-05:00

I have had the delight of reading the epic romance-novel The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding. This 800-page 18th century novel is considered one of the first of its kind, as Fielding proceeded to distinguish his novel from the other "lesser" (so he felt) novels of Samuel Richardson and Daniel Defoe (and others). The novel is about a young man (early twenties) named Tom Jones, who was discovered as an infant in the bed of his benefactor, Squire Allworthy. The squire, despite Tom's obviously spurious beginnings, decides to raise him as his own son alongside his nephew, Blifil. The book proceeds with the amazing adventures of Tom as he seeks to earn the heart of his true love, Sophia, who is engaged to be married to Blifil. Tom is a dashing young man, and all the ladies can't but help to throw themselves into his arms. His affairs are numerous and get him into much trouble, eventually leading (in part) to him being banished from the Allworthy family (Blifil and his tutors Thwackum [what a great name!] and Square also plot to see his destruction). So Tom sets out to seek his fortune.

I won't reveal the ending, which contains so many twists and turns in 800-pages, it would take that much to relate them all. I highly recommend that you read the book yourselves. I read most of it in two days, in which I never left my apartment. They were joyful days of enlightenment and humor (Fielding is very concerned with making sure his readers are entertained and never bored; Richardson, on the other hand, tends to get a bit tedious. Pamela, for example, is all about a servant girl whose master is trying to seduce her. She resists his advances, including him dressing up as one of her bedfellows and slipping into bed with her. She gets out of that one by fainting. Anyway, she writes these letters to her parents describing the events. She is eventually kidnapped by her master, and when he finally decides to let her go [at about page 200], she discovers that she loves him and he her. The rest of the novel is all about their efforts to get married and Pamela's amazing virtue and beauty and Mr B's [the master] goodness and charity. That gets old after 300 pages!). I thoroughly enjoyed Tom Jones.

The "moral" of the story is about the importance of having a good heart with noble intentions, even though one may have faults. Tom is painted as a giving, caring, merciful young man who almost always looks out for the best interests of others. His one weakness is imprudence (his inability to resist beautiful women). The story is also something about love:

"What is commonly called love, namely, the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with certain quantity of delicate white human flesh, is by no means that passion for which I here contend. This is indeed more properly hunger; and as no glutton is ashamed to apply the word love to his appetite, and to say he LOVES such and such dishes, so may the lover of this kind with equal propriety say he HUNGERS after such and such women" (230).

So Tom hungers after women, but truly loves Sophia. By the way, Sophia is very aware of his gluttony, and it takes Tom about three pages of discourse to convince her he really does love her and will be faithful to her, etc., etc. (oops, I just gave away the end. Well that's obvious from page one. "Our hero" is Tom, and "our heroine" is Sophia; Fielding doesn't mind giving away the ending. It's the journey that is important, anyway.)

The story is truly an epic romance, with hilarious fights (one between two women) described as epic battles, love, friendship, loyalty, family, and the triumph of truth and duty. Tom Jones shows us the most important qualities of humanity, but he doesn't pretend to be perfect. That's one of the things I like about Fielding. He tries to make is characters as "realistic" as possible: they aren't perfect! Tom Jones likes the ladies too much and even Allworthy (doesn't the name say it all?) has faults, namely that he too readily believes everything he hears. Sophia herself has a fault (that I see), which Allworthy states is a strength. She is much too obliging to men. She obeys her father even to her own detriment (she eventually runs away from home, though), and sometimes I wish she'd just buck up and have a spine. Though, she does have her own way of getting things done. Pamela, on the other hand, paints Pamela as a perfectly virtuous young woman with no faults (though you can see that she isn't entirely repulsed by Mr. B's advances).

Tom Jones is also about how to write a novel and how to read a novel as well. Fielding was using this story to explain to readers what the novel looks like and how readers (whom he calls "critics") are to read and respond. No narrator/author is ever so insightful into his own writing process and what it takes to truly write a "good" story:

"To invent good stories, and to tell them well, are possibly very rare talents, and yet I have observed few persons who have scrupled to aim at both; and if we examine the romances and novels with which the world abounds, I think we may fairly conclude that most of the authors would not have attempted to show their teeth (if the expression may be allowed by me) in any other way of writing; nor could, indeed, have strung together a dozen sentences on any other subject whatever" (398).

He names the qualities a good writer must have to be successful: genius, or invention (wit) and judgement; learning (classical education, which at the time was primarily had by those of the upper classes of society, like Fielding; other authors of the day, like Richardson and Defoe, were tradesmen); conversation (to understand the true character of humanity); and (of course) a good heart.

So, dear reader, if thou wouldst like to understand what makes for a good novel and novelist, according to Fielding, of course, I recommend Tom Jones.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 11 (Last Part): Snow, Airplanes, and Answers to Prayers

2009-04-30T10:50:00.005-05:00

My trip to England ended with a miracle.

The last day I was in Oxford (Monday), England got the biggest snow storm in 20 years. Oxford got about an inch of snow (so I wasn't impressed, being from Utah), but London got about six inches. They don't have snow plows in England because it doesn't snow enough to require them (except every 20 years, that is). Basically, London closed for a day. No traffic went in or out of the city, and even the underground was closed. All plane flights were canceled as well. I was very glad my flight left on Tuesday! I was worried that I wouldn't get to London, though. I called my family, and we all prayed fervently!

I caught another express bus from Oxford to London Heathrow Airport (they dropped me off at my terminal, too!), and besides a little morning traffic, we had no problems getting to London. Of course, the airport is outside of the city. I met a guy from LA (I'll get to him in a minute) who came from the city center, and he said it took an hour to go a few miles by taxi (he was not happy about his taxi bill!).

The airport was a mess. I was there three hours early, and it was a good thing I was. Everyone from the day before, whose flight had been canceled, was there trying to get a flight. People were sleeping all over the floors and benches, and the 20 or so check-in lines had about 50 people each standing there. I asked someone about where to go, and he said to pick a line and wait. I found a fairly short line (only 20 people deep), and I waited an hour (I was almost to the front!) when the airport guy at the desk said he wasn't checking baggage; he was a visa verification guy. That's why the line was so short! I groaned and dragged my stuff to another line which split into three other lines. I figured it would be faster.

This is where I met the man from LA going home from a business trip. Actually, he flew to London just for this meeting on Monday, but because of the snow storm, they canceled the meeting! He flew to London for nothing! Poor guy. I was grateful he was with me, though. We got a really nice conversation going about literature (he has two teenage daughters who love Stephanie Meyer and Harry Potter), and I found out he is an engineer, a body engineer. He designs artificial body parts. He is currently working on an artificial pancreas for people with type 1 diabetes. My youngest brother has type 1, so we had a great conversation about the wonders of modern medicine and the great future that is in store for people with terminal diseases and illnesses. It was great! The time (two hours) flew by quickly as we slowly inched forward in our line.

Somehow we picked the wrong line, though. The person at the desk was taking about five or ten minutes per person, and somehow another line of waiting people decided to start merging with our line, making it twice as long. An airport person came to sort things out, but she just made things worse (everyone was worried and impatient because all of us had about half an hour before our flights left, and some people weren't very nice to the airport lady). Some people in line actually missed their flights. The time for my flight was slowly inching along, and I kept praying that I won't miss it. Finally, I made it to the front of the line, and I had about a minute before my plane was to leave.

The guy at the desk checked me in at lightning speed. My bags were even just over the weight limit, but he didn't say anything. He just told me to start running. I did. I failed to say goodbye to the nice man in the line, though. Oh well. I silently wished him luck and thanks for being a line-friend. I made it the security check places, running to the front of lines (as the guy at the desk told me to do). It still took me a while to get through security, even though they were being really lax about things (they didn't search anyone, and they didn't make us take our shoes off). I met an older woman in line. She was headed from the US to some tropical place for vacation. Her flight had been canceled the day before, and she and her husband decided to break up to travel quicker. She found a flight right away, but his wouldn't leave for a few hours. After we made it through security, she gave me a big hug, and we run off in our respective directions.

London Heathrow Airport is a huge airport. I ran through about half of it! When I got to my gate, there were a lot of people sitting around. My heart sank. I figured they were waiting for the next flight. Then I looked at the board above the boarding entrance, and it said that my flight was delayed. Then an announcement came on, informing passengers that the flight had been delayed because of an electrical problem. The problem had been resolved, and it would be boarding in about fifteen minutes.

I couldn't believe it! I found a place to sit down, and I sank into a chair. I sent a prayer of thanks to Him Above, and sighed in relief. I then got this overwhelming feeling that the electrical problem had been for me, so I wouldn't miss the flight. And who says that prayer doesn't do anything and miracles don't happen?!

Despite our delay, we made it to Chicago in record time, because the plane wasn't full and the pilot could take the plane higher and faster than usual. I made my next flight to Salt Lake just fine (in fact, we were half an hour early there, too, because the flight was only a 1/3 of the way full).

So there ends my adventure to/in England, and I really want to go back.

That's one more reason why I want to live in England.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 10: London (Again)

2009-04-23T10:50:00.008-05:00

The Saturday I was in Oxford I decided to go back to London, since I didn't get to see everything I wanted to when I was there (because I was too tired!). They have a great bus service from Oxford to London and back, and it's half the price (and time) of a train ride. I went to the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the British Museum. It was a lot of fun, but I was really lonely all day. I realized that it's much better to go sightseeing with someone else. London is a place I want to share with someone; it's not a place to go to alone. Actually, all of England is that way. Even though I had a great time, it would have been nice to have had someone to share it all with. Well, after that strange tangent . . . I was really lucky the day I was in London. I thought about going the next Monday, but it's a good thing I didn't! I'll tell you more about that later. The weather was rainy, but it that's England for you!

The Tower of London was really fun. They have this tour guide dressed as a tower guard who leads you around and tells all these stories of gore and execution, etc. At the beginning he asked (the huge group of people I was with) if we wanted to hear stories of love and conquest or death and gore. The resounding cry was death and gore, of course. I guess the Tower of London holds secrets of love as well as death. It was a great tour, nonetheless, and I loved walking down the cobblestone roads throughout the little village that makes up the Tower of London. The star of the show, of course, was the Crown Jewels. I'm not much of a jewel person. I don't really wear any jewelry (except a few sentimental pieces), and, honestly, I don't understand the obsession with shiny things. In fact I don't even want a jewel on my wedding ring (do I really have to have a wedding ring?); a gold band will be just fine. The Crown Jewels, besides being incredibly ancient, aren't that cool, really. As everyone ooed and awed over the jewels, I just glanced at them and read about the monarchs who wore them, which is the part I'm interested in. For all my love of ceremony and pomp and circumstance, I really hate things, especially shiny things that are just for looks. What's the point of the Crown Jewels?

Next I made my way (on the underground) to St. Paul's Cathedral. It took me a while to figure out how to get in there because the cathedral is currently being renovated/restored/cleaned/painted/something on the outside, and half of it is covered in plastic. But after I found the entrance, I went down to the area where they have the cafe and gift shop. I was a little upset at how much it cost to get in to see it (I got the student rate, at least)--do they make people pay for Sunday services? And they don't let you take pictures, either (which I can sort of see: the flash might ruin the paint or something--but, wait, the British Museum allows picture-taking--grrr!), and you have to buy expensive postcards to get pictures of anything.

I wandered around the crypt area and finally made my way up to the main part of the cathedral, with the gorgeous dome and incredible paintings that reach high into the heavens...

I found a chair and just sat and stared at the dome for a while. It's so incredibly ornate: gold trimmings and all kinds of extra ornamentation on all the statues and paints. St. Paul's Cathedral is just majestic! I don't know how else to describe it.

You can also go up to the top of the dome, but I was tired and didn't feel liking hiking over 300 steps to the top! I've commented before on the feeling of places of worship, and this one was one of those reverent-feeling places, but there was a hollowness there, too, which I couldn't quite figure out (see previous post).

Finally, and just before the place closed, I found the British Library. I didn't get to spend the time I wanted there (and I only saw about half of it). There were way too many people there when I went, and it was really crowded, especially the mummy room. In fact, there were so many Asian people in the mummy room I thought I was in Japan (or some other Asian country)! There weren't any Asian people in the Asian display rooms, though. It was still really neat, and I had a good walk around to see everything in the hour that I had there.

Then I managed to find my way to the bus station to journey back to Oxford. I was exhausted, but it was a good last day of exploring in England. Sunday I rested, and Monday I finished doing research at the Bodleian Library. That's when the big storm hit, but that's for next week's post. So stay tuned!

One more reason why I want to live in England.

Interlude 4ish: Birds of a Feather...You Know How It Goes

2009-04-22T06:52:00.002-05:00

In all of my traveling this year (to, in, and from England and TTU and even my journeys around Provo, UT), I've witnessed/experienced something about human nature that I hadn't before. First, a few experiences.

When I went to England, I tended to gravitate to/click with/speak to people who were similar to me. On my way there, I didn't really talk to anyone. When I got there, the first people I spoke to were my family (of course). One of the first people I spoke to was this lady who helped me with my luggage. The reason: she knew what it was like to lug luggage all over, and she wanted to help so I wouldn't get eaten by the evil subway doors. She was a woman; I was. She was probably about my age. We shared an experience; we were similar.

Then, on my London tour, I "clicked" with the grandmother and grandson from Australia. We were fellow travelers in a strange land. We were both trying to take good pictures while standing in the top of a moving double-decker bus (going at top speeds, very similar to what they do in the third Harry Potter movie, but there weren't beds knocking you all over the place, thank goodness) in the rain. We connected because we were similar.

At the conference, I naturally gravitated to the other graduate student from the US. We were both American and female. We were similar.

When I went to church in Oxford, I, again, was drawn to the woman from Utah who was there for employment purposes. During the main service, we chatted about being from Utah, about what it was like trying to live in a strange country, and about the things we had in common. We were similar.

This was years ago (so I know it doesn't really fit into my thesis above, but it fits the subject; I just thought of it), but when I was in Germany with my dad, we decided we wanted to eat a "real German meal" to start. But we were so jet-lagged that we gravitated to something familiar: McDonald's. Isn't that ridiculous? I don't know what's worse, that we went to McDonald's in Germany or that we went to it because it reminded us of home!

When I was headed home from England, the people I ended up near were from the US (I met a guy on the bus-ride from Boston), the guy in line with me was from LA, and the lady who hugged me was from the South somewhere (you'll get the full story later).

The lady who hugged me: a complete stranger! We were both tired and stressed and anxious, and we both were celebrating small victories. She was a woman, so was I. She was the grandmotherly-type; I get along really well with grandmotherly-types. We were similar and for a moment we were no longer strangers; we became friends, hugging friends. And you should know that I'm not the hugging type (though hugging is growing on me, after years of hugging roommates and friends).

When I visited Texas Tech, I always seemed to hang out more with the women (that may be because I'm somewhat homosocial, yes, that's homosocial, NOT homosexual, ew!). Of course, that probably also has to do with the nature of women, too (see The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine). Anyway, we were similar. But I also was drawn to the guy I met who had graduated from BYU and was a Latter-day Saint. We had a connection, a similarity (well, okay, an entire ideological system--wait, I'm on to something with that).

The conclusion: birds of a feather flock together! Wow! It's true; that's probably why it's an idiom.

But why do they flock together?

How is it that we connect to people? What is it that gets us talking to complete strangers? How is it that we can meet strangers and "click" with them? How can this happen, even with people from completely different countries and cultures? I've had so many really good friends from different countries and cultures, and we've usually "clicked" from the first word spoken. Why is this?

It must go back to this idea of ideology.

What is an ideology? Simply put, it's a system of belief (both secular and religious belief). Democracy is an ideology; the American dream is an ideology; liberalism is an ideology; conservatism is an ideology; Islam is an ideology; Mormonism is an ideology; Christianity is an ideology; I could go on (tangent: Lots of people say that atheism is a religion, and it is, in a way. Religion is a type/category of ideology, just like government systems are a type of ideology, and religion is usually defined as a system of belief, meaning "faith," usually in a higher power that guides/created things. So if religion is an ideology and atheism is an ideology, you could sort of say that atheism is a religion. I'm beginning to think of atheism as more an ideology than a religion, for obvious reasons).

Why do we have ideologies? Well, if you don't have something to believe in, to found your way of thinking, to live for, really, then life is pointless. Yes, it is. Perhaps people who commit suicide feel that they have nothing to believe in, no ideology on which to ground themselves, and when there is nothing, there is no point to living anymore. From the moment we're born, we're part of an ideology. Some people (hopefully most) are born into an ideology of love and acceptance, of security, of family, of hope, of progression, etc. Some people are born into different ideologies, ones of pain or of trauma or of hate or of uncertainty. People get messed up because of the ideology they are born into.

Whatever we're born into, that's what we believe. Mom and dad and everything they say are the golden rules of our existence. Then comes that wacky period of life known as adolescence when our hormones start making us feel weird things and when our bodies start changing in strange ways that we don't understand and when we can't (yes, that is the right word: cannot) think rationally, or at least we can't think of consequences of our actions. If we were born into a good ideology with good parents who have the guts to stop us from killing ourselves (at the risk of our outrage and hate), then we survive that time. That time is, of course, a time of questioning. It continues with fuller force into the young adult years, when we begin rationally questioning things. This is when we "find ourselves," whatever that is. But the most important thing is that we figure out what we believe. We figure out whether the ideology in which we were born is "correct" or "good" or "right" or "for us."

Some people never question the ideology they were born into, and I think that's really sad. If you don't know why you believe what you believe, ask yourself. If you don't know, maybe it's time to figure it out. That's how we become stronger, when we figure out why what we believe is what we believe. I am in no way suggesting that we do or ought to reject the ideology in which we're raised; I, for one, am very content in my home-ideology. However, I think everyone needs to understand why they believe in a certain ideology.

Ideological systems, of course, are not all good. Take capitalism, for instance: did you know that capitalism is totalitarian? Totalitarian ideologies are dictator ideologies, and the way they work is that there is a system, and whatever doesn't fit in the system is annihilated. (By the way, I have not seen The Matrix, but if you have, you know what I'm talking about here.) With Hitler, Jews and blacks and gays and whoever else did not fit in his system, so he annihilated them. With Americans and slavery, anyone with darker skin was considered subhuman (it was in the ideology), so they were shoved out of the system and put into a different world (that of servitude). Anyway, capitalism is like this, too. Anything that doesn't fit in it--human decency, respect, mercy, barter system, etc.--is not part of it and cannot be part of it.

Ideologies can also be corrupted. Islam is a great example of this (okay, I guess capitalism fits in this category, too). The Muslim ideology is one of faith, worship, family, conversion, and purity. Unfortunately, extreme groups have morphed that ideology into one of extremism and totalitarianism, where anything that does not fit (i.e. the Western world/United States) is annihilated, as we sadly discovered with 9/11.

Ideologies change, and they resist change at times. The ideology of the traditional family is one such ideology that is undergoing change, and resisting it. I think it's okay for imperfect ideologies to change, but true ideologies, like traditional marriage, should not. Unfortunately, in today's world truth is "whatever floats your boat." Universal, unchanging, forever and ever, eternal Truths are rejected and changed. This is what I mean by a true ideology; a true ideology is one that is based on these eternal Truths. Of course, as we learn more (do really know anything?), our perception and understanding of Truths change, but the Truths themselves do not. In Mormonism, plural marriage is an example of a growing understanding of the Truth of eternal marriage.

My point to all this is that ideologies are really important to us as humans, whether we live in the US or in India. It is those ideologies that connect us, and this is where the birds come in. We naturally gravitate to that which is similar, and though I supposed there are many reasons for this, it really comes down to ideology. How can we find someone that shares something with us that can connect us?

The problem is that sometimes ideologies and connecting with people based on our ideologies will alienate other people. For example, I have a Japanese friend who went to high school in the US, and then she went to BYU. Partially because of her more Western and American understanding/ideology, she was rejected by the other Japanese people who went to BYU. They couldn't comprehend someone from their ideology leaving and joining another one. I've had other friends with similar experiences. This is the totalitarian nature of ideologies. Some ideologies don't allow for a person to be more than one ideology (perhaps this is why the democrats and republicans have such a hard time understanding us in the middle, who are neither and both liberal and conservative).

I suppose, in a way, I was missing out by sticking with the other bald eagles (or swans or mallards or whatever we were); I could have learned about a new ideology. My Japanese friend, she came to the US to get a different experience, and she couldn't figure out the point of hanging out with other Japanese people, doing Japanese-type things, when there were so many other people from so many different countries and states and backgrounds.

The question then emerges: is there a universal ideology? Well, I'm not sure about that. Since the Western world (and I really mean the US) currently holds the dominant ideology (the Romans and Ottomans and Egyptians and British had their times, too), the human struggle and system of belief tends to be spoken about in terms of something like "the American dream" or our "God-given rights": life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (come on, Thomas Jefferson was a great guy, but he wasn't the Creator! If everyone's ideology were Christian, I'd say check out what the Bible has to say about the purpose of humanity and the ideology humanity is supposed to have, but I'm just saying that because I'm Christian; what if the Hindus are right?). Perhaps "humanity" is an ideology; I'm not really sure. Evidently, "humanity" isn't enough to connect people and keep them from killing each other (if only it were!). Lots of peace advocates tend to speak in terms of "we're all human," but then the extremists say, "Actually, they're infidels who must convert or die, but since they ignore us, we'll just kill them all." Christianity played that card, too.

So how can we connect as an entire humanity? What ideology do we need in order to connect with each other and become strangers that hug? What do you think?

Why I Want to Live in England Part 9: Oxford (and European) Churches and Movements

2009-04-16T10:41:00.006-05:00

I, naturally, took a tour of Oxford. I even tightened my money belt and toured Christ Church Cathedral and Oxford Tower. I'm glad I did. I really loved both of those places. The tour was very similar to the London tour, but there were fewer things to see, so it was a little less intense. I also got to talk to the tour guide, a really nice old lady, who was very interested in all the people on the tour (we started with three people, but about fifteen were on the bus at the end). The other two people with me were a couple of people from France. They were really nice, and they were very impressed with England. I made the comment that I loved the way Oxford had combined the old and the new to make everything fit together. The French people said that it isn't that way at all in France, and they had liked the way the British did it (very kind, considering the traditional relationship between the French and British). The tour went through all the different colleges and churches throughout the city. It was fun seeing all the places where so much of intellectual history has happened.

I just loved spending time in Oxford. I wandered around the university and down the streets, looking at the beautiful buildings and soaking in the rich history that surrounded me. I've mentioned (I think) that part of the subject of my master's thesis happened at Oxford: the religious movement known as the Oxford Movement. It was amazing to go inside the church where John Henry Newman ("Lead Kindly Light" author) was vicar and started the Oxford Movement (he later converted to Roman Catholicism). It's a beautiful little church (and free!). I wanted to go up the bell tower, but it was too expensive (why do they charge to enter churches, why, oh, why!). How beautiful it all was, though.

I always feel strange taking pictures in churches. They don't let you at St. Paul's Cathedral (you have to buy expensive postcards, instead; if you haven't noticed, I highly disprove of money-grubbing churches). At Oxford, I took pictures at Christ Church Cathedral and St. Mary's University Church (Newman's church). Especially at St. Mary's (probably because they filmed part of Harry Potter at Christ Church) I felt strange. There was this lady there praying. It was really strange taking pictures while she was kneeling and worshiping. The feeling of the church was one of great solemnity (though that was ruined by the gift shop attached to the main chapel).

Churches (of faiths other than mine own) have a certain sacredness about them. I always enter them with great respect, and I tend to glare at people who are too loud or kids/teens who are too rambunctious. But they also are hollow, like there is something missing. When I was in Germany (when I was sixteen), I remember going into the Salzburg Cathedral, excited to be in such an amazing building, and just standing in shock at the emptiness I felt. There wasn't anything there; it was just a really cool, old, ornate place with dead people in it. In Lucern we went into another famous church (I don't remember the name) on Sunday during one of the worship services. It was empty, too, even though it was full of people chanting in Latin or German (I can't remember which). Isn't it strange: I remember the emptiness but not the language of worship.

When I was at St. Mary's in Oxford, I better understood the reason for the emptiness. The Oxford Movement was all about finding authority. The founders (Newman, John Keble, Henry Froude, and others) were helping the Church of England remember that the pope was not the head of the church/religion on earth (I know, ironic that Newman, about 12 years later decided the pope was the head). They decided that the ultimate authority wasn't the Bible (as some other Protestants said), but the original 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ. The primitive church was the ultimate ideal for the structure of the Church.

Recently, the conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was held. There, I listened to counsel, advice, warning, love, and comfort from 15 Apostles of Jesus Christ. Yes, they are here! I listened to counsel, advice, warning, love, and comfort from one of them in particular: the prophet of Jesus Christ guiding the world and the true Church. I have what these men (and women) in the mid-1800s were searching for: the ones through whom the ultimate authority (Jesus Christ/Heavenly Father) speaks.

But, yet, these people (Tractarians, or Oxford Movement people), this place (Oxford/England), these churches (all that I went to in Europe) still hold a very special place in my heart, and I have no qualms about reverencing them. Though other churches are void of authority, they are still sacred places. That is what I learned when I was in England (though paying to go inside them really irked/s me!).

And that is one reason why I want to live in England.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 8: The Bodleian Library and Oxford University

2009-04-09T10:47:00.004-05:00

The next day (Monday) I braved the bus route and managed to get on a bus headed to Chester, where I needed to catch my train to Oxford. I, again, had to change trains a few times, and I had only five minutes between one switch. This time I stopped in Crewe and Birmingham before making it to Oxford. I then managed to find my way to the place I was staying in Oxford: Gable’s Guesthouse.

I must pause here to glory in the blessing of the internet. It was the only way I knew how to get around anywhere. Thank goodness people put bus schedules online! Even if they are difficult to read (England tends to have about three names for every place if it’s not a major population center, and I never could figure out which names the bus schedules followed; the buses are owned by private companies, and each company uses a different name for the same place/stop; plus they always have about three places in a ten-mile radius named the same thing, so that makes things more complicated).

It was nice to be in Oxford (I had a queen-size bed and a bigger bathroom to myself, yea!). I took a break (train travel is stressful), and then I went back to Oxford centre/er to figure out how to get around a little (the landlady at the Gable’s was very helpful on buses, etc., too). I didn’t get to the Bodleian Library in time that day, but I figure out where to go, so that was the most important thing.

I bought a sandwich at a convenience store (everything in Oxford closes at 5:00, even the shops and stores and such; it was strange; the local grocery store even closed at 10:00, which was actually great because I got back late most nights; the buses also didn’t run as frequently after 4:00, so I had to stand and wait a lot) along with some Cadbury Chocolate (I really, really wanted to go to Cadbury World, but it was too far away; I hear they practically throw chocolate at you as you tour the factory), which I ate almost every night in Oxford.

The next day I made my way to the Bodleian Library admissions office (they were expecting me) and went through the process of applying to be admitted. They have this saying that everyone has to read before they enter the library. I’d heard about it, and I honestly thought it was a joke (maybe they used it in the past, but now it was just a icon/joke thing). No, it’s not. I had to read the saying. I had a hard time getting through it (I almost started laughing; even the librarian who witnessed my reading had a smile on her lips), but I made it. This is it:

Do fidem me nullum librum vel instrumentum aliamve quam rem ad bibliothecam pertinentem, vel ibi custodiae causa depositam, aut e bibliotheca sublaturum esse, aut foedaturum deformaturum aliove quo modo laesurum; item neque ignem nec flammam in bibliothecam inlaturum vel in ea accensurum, neque fumo nicotiano aliove quovis ibi usurum; item promitto me omnes leges ad bibliothecam Bodleianam attinentes semper observaturum esse¶

Okay, actually, I don’t read Latin (I’m going to learn this summer, though), and the saying was translated into English in about the 1500s, so I said this instead:

I hereby undertake not to remove form the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

Now do you know why I almost laughed? Who in her right mind would kindle a fire in a library? They still had no-smoking signs everywhere, especially in the toilets.

It’s funny though, about the defacing and injuring part. Back in the Victorian times, books and such would come bound but with their pages uncut. Today, we get these nice, crisply cut and aligned books, but back in the 1900s, the pages would still be folded and uncut. It was the responsibility of readers to cut the pages (letter openers were for more than just letters once upon a time). That poses some problems for modern scholars who want to read books that were never uncut (because they were sent to a library and never actually read). Most archives and libraries will cut the two-hundred-year-old pages, and in my case, they handed me a letter opener and let me do it. So I guess if the librarian says you can injure the pages it’s okay.

I spent my days thereafter mostly in the special collections reading room of the Bodleian Library. It took me a while to figure out how to order materials (everything is kept off site, so you have to order it, and it takes anywhere from two hours to a week to get materials), but the librarians were very nice and patient and helped me figure it all out. I usually got to the library about nine or ten in the morning and left about two or three. I can only take so much of sitting in one place (especially a hard wooden chair).

I’d like to say that my time was productive, but it really wasn’t. I didn’t find anything I was looking for. I could have dug through hundreds of letters between people who were distantly connected to my subject of study, but I figured it wasn’t worth the time and effort. Who can say, though, that she wrote part of her master’s thesis at the Bodleian Library in Oxford? I can.

I wandered around Oxford after I left the Bodleian. I loved walking down the old cobblestone roads and dodging the many students on bikes. Oh the bikes! They were everywhere! There were very few bike racks (no room for them I guess), and so students would leave their bikes leaning against any vertical surface, usually unchained to something. If someone really wanted to, she could take a truck along the road and throw all the bikes in sight into the truck, take off, and make a profit. The bike owners weren’t completely stupid; usually the bikes had chains wrapped around them so that an individual couldn’t just hop on one and take off. I didn’t know that people were so trustworthy.

Oxford is known as the city of spires for a reason. There are probably a hundred or so colleges within Oxford University, and each college (traditionally; not so much anymore) has its own dormitory, church, etc. That makes for a lot of buildings, and a lot of spires. It was fun seeing all the beautiful architecture and looking at the places were so much of intellectual history (Western, that is) flourished and developed.

I study a movement known as the Oxford Movement, and I really enjoyed being at the place where it all began, where the scholars and clergymen began questioning the way the Church of England interacted with the government and then, from there, sought to change and redefine how the church saw itself. I really admire those men who sought so earnestly for the truth and who wanted so desperately to see the gospel of Jesus Christ implemented in the local churches and influence for good the lives of the English. What a wonderful place full of history and reverence and life! I recently came across the following quote, and I think it fits how I feel about truth and learning it.

"He who invades the domain of knowledge must approach it as Moses came to the burning bush; he stands on holy ground; he would acquire things sacred. We must come to this quest of truth--in all regions of human knowledge whatsoever--not only in reverence, but with a spirit of worship" (J. Reuben Clark, Jr., former member of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

I really want to live in England (I’m feeling rather homesick [England-sick] as I write this).

P.S. Since I posted all my trip pictures on Facebook, I decided not to post more here. I always have problems posting pictures on this blog, so I probably won't put a lot up (any tips on posting pictures?).

Interlude 3: In Light of Recent Events

2009-04-06T23:54:00.002-05:00

As an editor and English-professor-in-training, I have a certain pet peeve about making sure things are "letter perfect" in print. Granted, we are all human and make mistakes (the New York Times always publishes their errors, and I love reading that section; it's always hilarious!), and I'm sure I've let a few slip by in my blog posts (I always read through the posts about ten times before I publish them, but things still manage to slip through, alas!). But it's pathetic when people don't even try to correct things (like text and instant-messenger people), especially people who think that the spell checker on their word-processing programs will catch everything. It doesn't! And I have proof:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with me pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleads two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

-Sores unknown

So there!

Why I Want to Live in England Part 7: Conference Ponderings

2009-04-03T10:47:00.000-05:00

I, as I've mentioned, really loved the conference. I realized how much I really want to be in the literary field, in academia.

After I'd been rejected by three graduate schools and sat before the hooded doctors of philosophy who were about to bestow upon me the degree of bachelor of arts, I had something of a vision. The beauty and pomp and circumstance of the graduation ceremony overwhelmed me. As a bird taking flight for the first time into the wonders of the pristine endless blue dome of sky, my soul expanded more than I had ever experienced. I wanted this world; I wanted this moment; I wanted academia. I couldn't believe how I felt; I couldn't believe the incredible joy I felt as I listened and watched and felt the wonder of graduation. As I beheld my hooded mentors, I desired more than anything else to be among them someday. I felt that it was my destiny. I felt that my initial rejections were only part of life's little detours, the roads less traveled that may, by and by, lead back to the well-worn path. Or perhaps never to see the main road again, but forge through the forest of forgotten things (as I have done with my thesis!). I knew that day in April of 2006 that I would return to this world of beauty and refinement, of ideas and humanity, of life and learning, of education.

I felt these things again as I attended the conference held at St. Deiniol's Library. It was wonderful! I was among these people, a colleague-in-training. It was amazing! Here are some things I learned:

I learned about different methods of studying the literature I study and of looking at the ways reading affects people.

I learned that reading is a spiritual activity, which nothing can truly replicate.

I learned to be grateful for my place in a modern world, with technology that makes reading more accessible (and safe!).

I learned about some of the reading experiences of Victorians, which I hope to explore more in my own studies of Victorian literature.

I learned to be grateful for my own literary education. How I glory in knowledge and understanding that come through literature!

I learned that literary and literature can and do affect people, change them, transform them. I think we forget that everything we take in, in life, whether visual or spiritual or physical or emotional, affects us and changes us and transforms us into something we didn't know before. Perhaps this is why I study literature: because it can transform. And, of course, literature transforms us into gods. What was the fruit of the tree in the Garden? The tree was the tree of knowledge. The fruit is literature, and the literature gives us knowledge, which makes us gods.

I learned that reading is both an act of escaping and an act of returning. We read to escape from the realities of life, but at the same time we return to true reality. We read and return to the truths embraced by the home we left so long ago. Truth bridges the veil of unbelief and ignorance, and literature takes us to truth.

I learned that there is nothing like a British person doing a Dickens's reading (and that's one reason why I want to marry a Briton).

I learned that I really, really, really, really want to live in Britain, and there are many reasons why I do!

Why I Want to Live in England Part 4: The Reading and the Age of Gladstone Conference Day 2

2009-04-02T12:29:00.006-05:00

Saturday, January 24
Keynote address: Reading by light

Candlelight was the primary light for Victorians--even after gas light existed. The cost of reading was high (books/periodical $, candle light $, time $, etc.). Daylight was the best light to read in, but unpractical because of the need to work inside. Firelight was also good but hot in the summer. Oil lamps (animal fat-based) were difficult (smelly and greasy) but cheap. There were two types of candles: bees' wax and tallow (animal fat). Bees' wax candles were very expensive, and even the wealthy only used them for looks (as a sign of wealth). Tallow candles were the candle of choice for everyone, especially the poor. The problem with candles is that as they burned the wick grew longer and longer, diminishing light output and candle efficiency and creating a need to constantly maintain them. 1805 saw the first gas light: a raw, gas flame, but it had to be maintained constantly. 1880 brought the first electrical lighting, but technology spread slowly (and was expensive). Even in the 1870s the main source of light was candle light. Tallow the main candle type used, but these candles were smelly and dirty and stained things. Candles made it so that reading was a dirty act. The wick had to be maintained, snuffed, constantly in order for the candle to produce the best luminosity (snuffing originally referred to trimming the wick; later it came to mean putting the candle out). After burning for 11 minutes, a candle lost 60% of its luminosity. When reading, someone would have to snuff a candle every 10 minutes (or lose good light). Snuffed wicks (pieces) smelled awful and were a fire hazard. To start a candle was also hazardous, because one had to use a tinderbox and it took 3 minutes to start a flame. The match wasn't invented until the 1850s and 1860s. Candles created a small circle of light, creating shadows, and candle light was inconsistent light (flickering). Because candles were made of animal fat, there are records of poor people eating their candles during famines and hard times.

These things put a new perspective on the reading experiences of Victorians. Light had to be between the reader and the writing, creating a fire hazard. People often caught on fire because they read.

There are other accounts of women being burned to death from falling asleep while reading and failing to maintain the candle properly, so it caught clothing, hair, and bedding on fire. Think of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. Modern readers think it strange that Mr. Rochester could use the excuse of falling asleep reading and the candle catching the bedding on fire. We don't think that is much of an excuse for covering Bertha's efforts to kill him. But for Victorian readers (and Mr. Rochester's servants), this was a valid excuse. A stupid one, as the servants mention, but a realistic one.

Poor eyesight would have been made worse by reading by candle (it's very hard on the eyes), and sometimes people didn't actually go blind; they just couldn't read with the quality of light they had. Reading was a constant physical danger. Considering the cost of reading, the physical danger, and the impracticality, was reading really worth it? Evidently it was. The production of writing during the Victorian period was phenomenal.

Time was also measured by candle. Candles were like stars, and they would guide those lost in the dark. Candlelight indicative of death: an unsnuffed candle is a neglected light and wasteful, bad. Candle a metaphor for life: if properly cared for it could shine brightly and bring knowledge and rest to the lost; if the neglected, it led to death. Spontaneous combustion was also related to candle burning.

Panel 4: Literacy

Children and Prisoners

Sarah Martin was a teacher of children and the criminal. She created schools for prisoners. They learned in groups. Prison and school learning were very similar. The prison schools also were similar to workhouses for the poor. She taught honesty. She tried to teach young delinquent boys from their own class position, to make them better people and productive contributors to society. She taught them from books. Sometimes, when the boys were released, they would do something bad just to go back to be with Sarah Martin. She taught them, through reading, how to be children.

Textual and non-textual literacies

There are un-literate literacies. Non-textual literacy important in science. Two types of literacies emerged during Victorian period: literature and science. Dickens and other literature encouraged non-textual literacy. He wanted literature to bring both literature literacy and other literacies. Textual and non-textual literacies important to Dickens. The ideal reader encompasses different kinds of reading.

"They say knowledge is power, and so it is. But only the knowledge which you get by observation. Many a man is very learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet he is useless. He knows about all sorts of things, but he can't do them. When you set him to do work, he makes a mess of it. He is what is called a pedant: because he has not used his eyes and ears. He has lived in books. He knows nothing of the world about him, or of men, and their ways, and therefore he is left behind in the race of life by many a shrewd fellow who is not half as book-learned as he: but who is a shrewd fellow--who keeps his eyes open--who is always picking up new facts, and turning them to some particular use" (Charles Kingsley, 1894).

"Mr. Wegg, having read on by note and attached as few ideas as possible to the text, came out of the encounter fresh; but, Mr. Boffin, who had soon laid down his unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently staring with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, was so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend Good-night, and articulate 'Tomorrow' (Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 66).

Panel 5: RED: Reading Experience Database

Go to the RED website and look up your favorite Victorian (or earlier) author/novel. Look and see what the actual reading experience of some readers was as they perused the work.

Key Note: Reader as Traveler

Reading allows for agency and movement, survival skills, and encounters with other people and experiences. The reader is already at home, but what if the reader is not at home? What if voyaging is to the familiar? to the home? not to what is away, different. Does reading of the familiar reinforce or destroy the self? What does location do with reading? Which genres travel best? If a text travels, how is it read differently in different places? Literature changes when it travels. Can literature from Britain become "international"? Books read away always remind us of home. Distance confuses the distinction between reality and fiction. Reading creates bonding with community; traveling reading allows bonding to an absent community. Reading also allows for individual identity. Reading is both an escape from and an evasion of reality. Reading bring consistency.

Panel 6: Popular reading (my panel)

Stevenson Reading and Transformation

Stevenson was unhappy with his lack of popularity. His writing of books is shaped by his reading of others. Reading is transformative. Reading challenges hierarchies: all readers may share a specific reading experience. The working classes are closer to "reality." Emotionally effective reading is life-changing. Stevenson is a reader, writer, critic.

Caine and Acting Literature

The Christian was very popular (1898). Caine's novels fairly popular, and they were the subjects of silent films in later decades. Actresses became so by choice--not necessity--during the suffrage movement (acting traditionally a women's role akin to prostitution). Actresses' profession eventually became a way to climb socially [I think of the Scarlet Pimpernel]. Caine portrays stage as neither good nor bad--the stage people aren't the threat, but the aristocracy and religion are the threat. The character's loss of innocence is not a bad thing, but a growth experience.

My presentation on Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Basically, I argue that scholars traditional claim that Confessions was very popular and well read and accepted among its early readers (1820s) is false. My research uncovered the fact that the novel was read by maybe 5,000 people over the course of a few months and then it was ignored until De Quincey heavily revised it in the 1850s; then it became very popular.

Key Note: Dickens's Public Readings

Dickens liked to write "in company" with his readers--that's why serialization was very popular with him. He liked to create bonds with his audience. Dickens's characters were like real people to him. He often "became" his characters when he tried to create them (he would stand in front of the mirror and mimic them). Dickens wanted to unite the reader, writer, and character. Dickens was read as if he were a neighborhood gossip. Serialization attached Dickens to his readers. Dickens paralleled his fictional seasons with real seasons. The stories followed the readers' interests. Fictional events were dated with national events. Serialization was mutual dependence, a correspondence. Some of his serializations overlapped. Dickens was uncertain about his new relationship with his readers, created by his public readings. Circulation of his novels did not change when he read publicly. Dickens needed public's response. Reading was an act of removing, so Dickens did things to make this public readings more personal. He designed a specific desk that would allow him to read and look at the audience at the same time. Eventually, he no longer read from a book but just recited the reading. His audience already knew the stories, but he tried to create spontaneous storytelling. Dickens paused to wait for response from the audience. He tried to get audience to respond all the time to his readings. Readers no longer just consumers but also producers. Dickens becomes consumer. Readings transformed by reader response to the reading. Sense of community bound by imaginary word.

Whew! That was the conference (that I attended). As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn't attend the final day because it was on Sunday. I really enjoyed these two days, though, and I learned a lot. I'll save my musings on the conference for another blog post (this one is long enough!).

Why I Want to Live in England Part 6: Worship

2009-03-26T10:45:00.007-05:00

St. Deiniol’s is associated with a church (in fact, there is a chapel inside the library; that was interesting, having a cross just above the speaker as he/she was presenting; it was appropriate, though; Matthew mentioned the first day that Gladstone saw a reading as a type of religious worship; he was right. The only two things that make me feel the way I do when I worship are reading and music), and they had the Eucharist every morning. I was tempted to go, just for the experience of going to another religion’s service, but it didn’t feel right. I don’t want to make a mockery of other’s worshipping.

So on Sunday I set out to find the local ward (congregation) of my religion (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I asked about ten people for directions and tried to figure out the bus schedule, but buses tend not to run as frequently on Sunday (I later found out that the bus I should have taken wasn’t offered on Sunday anymore), so I decided to walk. That was a mistake. I ended up going the wrong direction. I walked for about half an hour and discovered that I had walked for half an hour the opposite way. Oh well. I trudged back to St. Deiniol’s and decided to make my day of rest a day of meditation and prayer. But I missed the Eucharist (the sacrament, we call it in my church; we only have one sacrament, and that is the Eucharist). I didn’t go to the conference sessions that day, but I met some nice people at lunch.

I somehow ate dinner before the rest of the conference goers, and I sat with a lady (an American expatriate) from the United Arab Emirates. She was a medieval historian visiting some friends in England. She was a little eccentric, and I could tell she didn’t know quite what to make of me. She was interesting to talk to, though. I always enjoy meeting new people.

That was the conference. Everyone left, and I had a peaceful Sunday night.

And that's one reason why I want to live in England.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 4: The Reading and the Age of Gladstone Conference Day 1

2009-03-19T10:42:00.006-05:00

The conference was amazing. I met some wonder and delightful scholars, who were also very interested in me and who I am. The participants were primarily a group of acquaintances all interested in one fairly esoteric subject (William Gladstone), but they welcomed those of us who were "outsiders." The following is basically a summary of my notes (which are possibly a little incoherent), and I hope I don't get in trouble for sharing the scholarship of others. It's just so fascinating!

Friday, January 23
Panel 1: Reading and Religion

Biblical literature

The Victorians were very religious, and in order to understand them, one must understand their religion. They knew their Bibles very well, and all novels of the period reflect this. Victorians followed religious movements (as we do sports). The majority of books published were religious (though that doesn't mean they were read), and there was a demand for religious literature. The High Church sold 8 million religious publications a year. The biggest seller, of course, was the King James Bible. Preachers sold more books and sermons than novels. Periodicals reflect religious anxieties, and religious battles were fought out in literature. Victorians not only read their the Bibles, but their level of interpretation was greater than that of former generations. Today, we do not have the same religious/biblical education that the Victorians did. This scholar's final question: do students read Biblical handbooks and do they help? or is a religious education better? I think the latter.

Local press: The Antidote

The local press was very religious, and anti-Catholic. Literature was seen as an antidote to Catholicism. Religion a common subject in correspondence sections of periodicals. Writers encouraged readers to write, but people who read the periodical did not necessarily write. There were three types of (male) participants: silent readers, professional editors and writers, and amateur writers (priests, locals, committed Catholics). Local papers were more than just local: they created a national network and were read everywhere.

Panel 2: Victorian Reading

Victorian census forms

Filling out forms complicates reading. The act of reading census forms includes the format, layout, "reader helps," and instructions (How well are they followed? Why are they ignored?). Literary can be better understood by looking at forms. Conclusions: This particular census area (primarily lower-class area) had very high literacy, as the forms indicate. People wrote their own forms (they did not need to dictate), and they mostly followed instructions.

Touching and reading

Touching and seeing books is very important (why we still aren't all online these days). Some suggest that reading is important to masculinity. Touching a book and even the binding, etc., are important to readers and their reading experience. The act of reading is physical, a sexual pleasure (brain sex). The smell of a book (leather) also allows for nostalgia and connection to other people (reading is not an isolated, solitary experience).

Keynote address: Literary and literal

Mathew Arnold (that great Victorian critic) discusses how the literal reduces the literary. The literary first transcends then returns to the literal. Literature and literary are about places. The literary is Arnold's most literal form: prose. Elizabethan language: words were put in order they came to mind, mind before syntax (where any part of speech can be another). Victorian language: syntax before mind (grammatical correctness). Victorian authors, though, returned to Elizabethan. Authors "read" themselves to revise. We must read something to figure out the meanings of syntax. People who see the passages as literal ignore the sentences--syntax--and the meanings there. Literature/reading enhances listening.

So that was day one. If you have any thoughts on what the scholars discussed, feel free to comment. I'm going to save my musings for later.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 5: Cultural Reserves

2009-03-12T10:43:00.001-05:00

Because Part 4 isn't ready yet . . .

[Editor’s note: The following contains material that may be offensive to some readers. The author wishes wholeheartedly to make clear that she does not intend to offend, and she has a very open mind as she hopes to demonstrate below. If she at all implies negative qualities to certain below-named activities, she apologizes, but not too much, because she does not approve of certain very cultural aspects of both British and American society. This, of course, does not mean that she loves those who participate in such activities any less than those who don’t participate in said activities.]

The British are obsessed with tea/coffee time. Every morning and every afternoon we had a half hour break for tea and coffee. It was rather nice, however, to discuss with recent presenters their ideas and carry on the conversations that had begun in the presentations. They looked at me a little strangely, though, because I consistently declined both tea and coffee (I find both a little disgusting, and I abstain from them for religious reasons as well). I always asked for a glass of water (which is rather hard to come by in England; I never actually saw a drinking fountain [or whatever they call them over there] either) and ate a biscuit/scone or piece of cake (coffee cake, I discovered is not made of coffee! Actually, I already knew this, but you still have to be careful because there are coffee cakes and tea cakes). Every morning they tried to get me to have some tea or coffee, too. I had juice.

Then before dinner they had the before dinner drinks in the lounge (half-hour worth), and at dinner they had Champagne, and then after dinner they went to the local pub. I don’t think (in my sheltered life) I’ve ever been around so much alcohol! Fortunately, I saw no one drunk, but I think some of the ladies at one of my dinner tables was rather tipsy one night. Eventually, someone discovered I didn’t drink, and they had juice available. I sometimes would disappear just before dinner, though, and reappear in time to eat. For some reason being around so much alcohol made me uncomfortable. I’ll have to figure that one out (I am going into a PhD program somewhere besides Utah in one of the most liberal fields, after all). Any advice for coping?

Perhaps this is one reason why I don't want to live in England (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Update [tangent]: In my exploration of possible PhD programs, I recently attended a recruitment weekend at Texas Tech University. I had a great time and made a few friends. I discovered, however, that I definitely wasn't in Kansas [Utah] anymore. Lubbock, TX, is a semi-dry city (and I've heard they are going to pass some wet ordinances in a couple of months), and there are many restrictions on who can sell alcohol and where. The citizens of the city I spoke to went on and on about the restrictions (which I guess are slightly ridiculous because anyone can buy whatever they want outside of city limits), and they went on about where the best bars were (they have a mini-strip just outside of the city; it's a block long) and who brewed the best beer, etc. In fact, several of the faculty of Texas Tech are brewers themselves. The weekend was paid for by the school, but they c/wouldn't pay for alcohol, which was another area of complaint. I found the whole thing quite funny, actually.

The obsession with coffee was also funny. One morning we were all sitting in a room waiting for breakfast to arrive, and everyone was moaning about how they desperately needed coffee before they could function. I just needed a few carbs to wake me up (orange juice did it for me). I just laughed at how dependent they all were on that dark, murky substance (which smells awful! I wouldn't taste coffee if my life depended on it!). Of course, I suppose that part of the problem was that several of the attendees had hangovers. I've never figured out why people get drunk; hangovers look so miserable. Why put yourself through all that agony? Are a few drinks really worth it? (Not to mention the empty calories, impaired judgement, brain damage [I'm sure], and liver damage that accompany drinking too much.) It's something I don't think I will ever understand.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 3: Harwarden, Wales

2009-03-05T10:35:00.003-06:00

In the morning I, of course, woke up late. I had about half an hour to get ready and run to the train station. After I hauled my luggage down the two flights of stairs (with some grateful help from the landlady’s husband [the landlord?]), the landlady tried to get me to have breakfast, but I hold her I had literally ten minutes to get to the train station. She then decided she wanted to look up which underground station was closest to me (to see if that would be faster than walking), and I impatiently waiting while her extremely slow Internet tried to look things up. I finally just said thanks and left, running almost all the way through the crowded London streets to the train station. I managed to find my train with five minutes to spare (the train station was rather large; about 25 platforms; whew!).

I sat in my seat, fortunately I had two to myself, and watched the countryside fly by me as we traveled to Wales. The countryside is a stark contrast to the cities. You have these major population centers, and then once you get to the country, there is nothing for miles and miles but farm land and rolling hills. Of course, I guess the US is like that, too, but it’s different. England (and Wales) is all green , even in January when all the trees are dead (or dormant, more appropriately). Because I come from a mountainous region, it’s always strange to look into the horizon and just see that.

I had to change trains about three times, and I only had about ten minutes or so between each train. That was hectic when one of the trains decided to stall for five minutes only ten feet from the platform! I found my way, though. The last train switch was in a little town called Shotten. This strange town was a request board and stop for my way to my final destination (Hawarden; pronounced “Har-den”). I didn’t know how to do that; did I jump up and down as the train approached and hoped that the driver would notice me? Fortunately (or unfortunately) I didn’t have to do that; my train was canceled to Hawarden. Now what did I do? I asked every native in sight, but everyone was as lost as I was. The Shotten station has two platforms (one running north/south and the other east/west or maybe it was northeast/southwest and southeast/northwest), and then are about a half mile apart from each other. I wandered between the two (yes, dragging all that stuff I brought! At that moment I wished I wasn’t such a heavy packer) a few times. There was a call button to contact some central office (probably in London), where the people were supposed to help you, but no one answered (of course) for the hour I pushed the button. Fortunately, a guy came a long and said a bus would be by for the people who were stranded. So I sat and waited for an hour and half. The bus didn’t show at the named time; I went to wait for the next train to where I was headed. Then the bus driver came along and told everyone to follow him.

Meanwhile, I met a nice chap. He was probably in his mid-twenties. He had studied at Oxford, was originally from Manchester, and was working at Chester (I think). He was very interested in this strange young lady from Utah, and we had a nice talk. The British are delightful people, you know. I didn’t meet a surly person. They were all just lovely, very lovely.

So anyway, I finally made it to Hawarden, and then I had to walk another mile or so to St. Deiniol’s Library. I was exhausted (and starving) by the time I found the place. It was beautiful, though. Absolutely incredible. It’s all secure, so when I got to the door I had to ring the bell. They knew who I was right up front, probably because I was obviously American (somehow the British can tell by looking at you that you are American; I haven’t figured out how that works, exactly. I can’t tell if someone is British by looking at them. Maybe it’s the mixed blood [my ancestors are mostly from the British isles (Ireland, Scotland, England), but the rest are from various parts of Western Europe (Scandinavia, France, mostly)]), and there were probably four Americans at the conference I attended, and only two of us were female, so they had a 50/50 chance of figuring out who I was by first look.

The conference director, Matthew, and another conference attendee, Andrew, politely hauled my stuff up a flight of stairs to where my room was (I again felt ashamed at the amount of luggage I had; sigh). Then let me settle in my room (named after a Reverend something-or-other; there was also a Dennis the Mennis and Snoopy room). It had a nice view of the backyard of St. Deiniol’s (which I could never figure out how to get to). I took a breather, reported to my family, and wandered around, looking for the WC or ladies/gents or toilet and bath/shower. I found them (I ended up having two options; I was between different sets). I then wandered back downstairs and to the kitchen to have some lunch.

I made it, at last.

And that’s one reason why I want to live in England.

Interlude 2: The New Old Wives' Tales

2009-02-26T15:39:00.007-06:00

So I have this cousin. Well, actually, she is my dad's cousin (is that my cousin once removed or second cousin or what?). Anyway, she's a great lady, and I love her. She has some very interesting, staunch Republican friends, who like to proliferate (by the way, this is a transitive verb; I checked) these chain emails (most of them several years old), bless her heart. The emails usually contain subject lines that look something like this:

FW: INFANT DROWNING PREVENTION

FW: INFO YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW

FW: READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FW: VIDEO CLIP THAT WAS NOT ALLOWED IN THE US Go Canada!

FW: Refuse New Coins

FW: BROWN RECLUSE SPIDER (graphic photos)

FW: [Fwd: Fw: 21 Therapeutic slides]

Etc.

As serious as some of these may be (the infant drowning one, for example), most of them contain false information, Republican propaganda (now, I'm not necessarily anti-Republican; Democrats have propaganda, too; recently, there has been quite a bit lately...um...), and stuff so old that it's a wonder its not a pony express bag.

For example, the one on the brown recluse spider (graphic photos). This is the email:

Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:06:24 -0500
> Subject: FW: BROWN RECLUSE SPIDER (graphic photos)
> > > > > > > > Subject: Fwd: BROWN RECLUSE SPIDER
> > With spring just around the corner, it's time to review this message again.
> > > > > If you don't look at but one picture, be sure you take a look at the
> last one so that you will know what the spider looks like!
> It's springtime & cleanup is going on. Be careful where you put your
> hands. They like dark spaces & woodpiles.
> > Also areas in the
> attic..............................................
> This guy was bitten by a Brown Recluse spider.
[graphic photo]
> > > Day 3
> > The following illustrates the progression of a brown recluse spider
> bite. The affected skin actually dies on his body!
[graphic photo]
> > > Day 5
> > Some of the pictures towards the end are pretty nasty, but take a
> look at the last one - it is a picture of the spider itself.
[graphic photo]
> > Day 6
> > The Brown Recluse Spider is the most dangerous spider that we have
> in theUSA .
[graphic photo]
> > Day 9
> > A person can die from it's bite. We all should know what the spider
> looks like
[graphic photo]
> > Day 10
> > Send this around
to people you love, because it is almost
> summertime.
> > People will be digging around, doing yard work, spring cleaning, and
> sometimes in their attics.
> > > The Dangerous Brown Recluse Spider
> > Please be careful. Spider bites are dangerous and can have permanent
> and highly negative consequences.
> > They like the darkness and tend to live in storage sheds or attics
> or other areas that might not be frequented by people or light.
> > If you have a need to be in your attic, go up there and turn on a
> light and leave it on for about 30 minutes before you go in to do your work!
> PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO YOUR RELATIVES AND FRIENDS!
> > > >

Now why they don't delete all those annoying >s I don't understand. But anyway. You now need to click this link and do a bit of reading on Wikipedia.

What I hope you'll notice is that, first of all, Wikipedia is not necessarily a great source, but I trust it more than the email I got (I trust the president more than Wikipedia; that's how low it is on my list of authoritative sources).

Second, the brown recluse spider, according to Wikipedia, does not live west of the Rocky Mountains (my cousin and I both live in Utah).

Third, the email asserts that "> > The Brown Recluse Spider is the most dangerous spider that we have> in theUSA," yet, according to Wikipedia, severe spider bites are very rare, though smaller ones should be seen by a doctor, just in case.

I find it interesting that Wikipedia goes off on how what most people think are spider bites are actually more serious health problems. Whoever was writing evidently has a bias about spider bites and more serious health problems (shouldn't that be in a section or different article titled, "people are stupid and think more serious health problems are spider bites"; or, in my case, "doctors should listen to their patients when pateients say they have a bug bite but doctors think its a fungal infection or a more serious health problem, and then when the patients use the fungal cream it doesn't work and eventually the bite heals and the weird rash-thing in the shape of the British Isles goes away"). Okay, sorry, I'm going off on a tanget that is really irrelevant (I guess that's why it is paraenthases).

So, to make a long story short (sorry, too late), this email is basically false and irrelevant to anyone living in Utah. Utahans would be wiser to watch out for black widows, which I personally have seen, though I haven't been bitten, yet.

The emails, then, are bascially useless. I could go on about the Republican propaganda ones, which love to show soldiers in what looks like Iraq playing with children and kissing babies and such. Or the emails supposedly from celebrities who go on about how wonderful the US is and how people need to fulfill their patriotic duty. Or the emails that decry the injustice of affirmative action and "reverse racism" (uh?) and how minorities are taking over the white majority's reign. Or the email about the pro-life commercial that wasn't aired during the superbowl because it was pro-life (Actually, the commerical was very poorly done, and I could see why the Superbowl commission [or whoever decides those things] rejected it; it showed a fetus and then told a sob story about how that baby would be born a minority in single mother's home and live in the ghettos, etc., etc., and then grow up to be president; sudden flash; a picture of Barack Obama. Ha ha.). [I am securely pro-life, by the way.]

Anyway, all these emails are propigating ignorance (or at least one-sidedness and prejudice). I admit that some of them have a point, but that point is overdone and overdone poorly. Most of them are simply new old wives' tales.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 2: London

2009-02-22T00:06:00.019-06:00

My hotel room was on the second floor. British homes go UP; that is how they squeeze a million people in a little tiny area. The hotel had three (or four) floors with no lift (elevator), and my room was on the second. I think I mentioned all the luggage I had. Whew! I did have help, though. The hotel (actually, it was a bed and breakfast, but it's name includes the word "hotel") had an incredibly nice manager and husband, who was basically the grunt labor, I think. The room was itty-bitty. I include a picture of the bathroom to illustrate: the shower was about one foot by two feet, leaning into the toilet, which was under the sink. It was comfortable, though, and clean! I am somewhat obsessive compulsive, and clean is important to me. I avoided hostels as if they were the plague (which perhaps they do carry).

My plan for that day was to head to the British Library and do some research (I'm writing a master's thesis on a Victorian periodical, which is housed in the British Library). However, after four hours of sleep in almost forty-eight hours, I took a shower and crashed for a quick nap that turned into a three-hour deal.

After this refreshing nap (I was still exhausted), I plunged into London once again to find the British Library. I consulted the map I had purchased at the airport and headed in the general direction of the British Library (I hoped). Well, I ended up taking the long way to the library, but what's so bad about getting a little lost in London?

After a few hours reading through really amazing 200-year-old books, I found my way back to the hotel and stopped at a little sandwich shop for dinner. My first night in London was just lovely.

The next day I woke bright and early to do a little touring of the city. I had the traditional English breakfast--beans, tomato, bacon, sausage, eggs sunny-side up, toast--which isn't half bad, except I don't like beans, tomatoes, or eggs sunny-side up. I once again ventured into the underground, but this time I was luggage-free, so the underground was much nicer this time.

One thing I love about the subways (by the way, this was my first time in a subway; even though I'd been to Germany, I hadn't taken the subway anywhere; Utah doesn't have subways [the water table is too high or something like that], and I've never been in a US subway) is the big whoosh! that accompanies the arrival of the train. Half a minute before the train comes barreling through the wormhole of a tunnel, the air starts sucking, pushing and pulling the awaiting crowds of people on the platform. It slowly gains momentum until the train zooms through the opening and slams on the breaks to stop in time to let people on. Then the air is gone and the train is stopped and the people are swarming to get on before the vile doors close, leaving any stragglers in the whoosh! of the suction of the departing train.

I made my way to the the British tourist center at Piccadilly Square (which is more of a free shape than a square), where I purchased a ticket to take a bus tour of the city. They have two main bus tour companies in London: The Big Something or Other Tour and The Original Something or Other Tour. The difference between the two is that one is two pounds cheaper, so I took the Original Tour, though I swear that I saw more Big Tour Buses that Original, especially when I was waiting in the cold, windy rain. The tour was a hop on and off tour, so I could explore the city at my leisure.

I must say I baulked at the prices of everything. Sixteen pounds to get into Westminster (to feel the wonderful spiritual headquarters of England and see a bunch of graves of dead people it costs money!?!)? Seventeen pounds for the Tower of London (hello, it houses expensive jewelry worth millions of pounds; just sell some already!)? Eleven pounds for St. Paul's Cathedral (do you have to pay on Sunday?)? At least the British Museum was free, but I went at a bad time when there were a million Asian tourists crammed into the mummy rooms and every other room but the ones on Asia. So I'm not bitter at all at home must it costs for a tourist. They did have student rates, but every time I pulled out my ID, they looked at it strangely. This comes in a much later reason why I want to live in England, but I'll put it here to illustrate a common response I got. At Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford (sixteen pounds! gosh, you'd think they'd gotten enough money from filming Harry Potter there), the two guards scrutinized my ID until one of them brightened up and declared, "Lake Powell! Yes, I've heard of this school. I've been to that beautiful Lake Powell!" I nodded, wondering how anyone could find Lake Powell beautiful.

On the tour I met a nice grandmother and grandson from Australia there on holiday (vacation). The grandson and I had fun trying to take pictures in the rain on the top of the double-decker bus as it shot around corners and zoomed through the streets and braked at every turn. I almost lost my camera and was very wet from hitting the wet seats on the bus, which I tried to avoid but couldn't because it was either try to stand against something or fly all over the place. The bus, by the way, had a partially open top to allow for more panoramic viewing.

I ate at a little place next to the Tower of London: real fish and chips, which I wasn’t impressed with. Cod is the traditional fish for fish and chips, but I don't like Cod. There they fry the fish with its skin on (ew!). The chips were saturated with oil, and I couldn't quite take all the grease. And they say Americans eat greasy food!

So, anyway, I didn't go into much, but I saw everything important. The tour was a whirlwind of information and sights, but I enjoyed it. Below are some pictures I took. For some reason I was obsessed with Big Ben and took about twenty pictures of it. I didn't even get any of the countryside. Oh well. All the more reason to live there, I guess.

The Tower of London

The Thames ("Tems") River

One of the Parliament buildings

Shakespeare's Globe (rebuilt, obviously)

Big Ben

Westminster Abby

And that's one reason why I want to live in England.

Interlude 1: Award?

2009-02-09T20:30:00.008-06:00

I've been tagged by Pyroclastic Techniques and have received the following award.

The purpose of this award is to let you know that you must post a short list of things you "love" to help your readers get to know you better. Rejecting the award is not an option, besides who'd want to reject attention and glamour anyway?

My short list:

I love being single. I'm in my mid-twenties, and I've never been on a date/had a boyfriend/been in a relationship. Not that I haven't wanted to, but I've never had the opportunity. Well, actually, I was asked in high school to Senior Cotillion by a good friend of mine, but it was awkward (he was my friend), and (please don't take this the wrong way) he was Baptist (I'm Mormon). How I've almost graduated twice (once and one more in a few months) from the marriage capital of universities without being asked out is beyond me. Now, you ask, how can I know that I love being single when I've never not been single? I'm a good observer.

I love to fill out forms. When I was applying for jobs at that magical age of 16, I filled out all the job applications I could get my hands on, even though I applied to maybe three. When I was applying to PhD schools, part of the reason I applied to eight was because I wanted to fill out the forms. I both loath and love filing taxes (loath because it's ridiculous how much time it takes to figure out that the government took way too much money from my meager paycheck [I try to get them to stop taking, but it seems that the more exemptions I claim the more money they take out; go figure] and love because it's fun filling out the forms).

I love reading novels so much that I recently purchased about 20 Victorian/Modern novels, and my goal is to read them all before August 2009 (Victorian novels average at 800 pages per book; Modern novels are a bit less).

I love [maybe] to write this blog, even though I secretly (not any more) think only three people read it.

I love the mountains, and even though I want to live in England, I don't know if I could handle being away from the mountains for very long.

Five's a nice number.

Why I Want to Live in England Part 1: Entering London

2009-02-07T20:02:00.005-06:00

After a long, long flight from Chicago O'Hare to London Heathrow aboard a 747 British Airways plane, I found myself in a very large airport with absolutely no idea how to get to the hotel I was to stay at for two nights. First order of business, of course, was notifying my family that I had arrived safely. Thanks to the miracles of cell phones and satellite communication, I called my family and reported in. From there I found a cash machine (ATM) to withdraw my first pounds. Of course, I couldn't seem to convince the Barclays cash machine that I really had the £750 it told me I had in my bank account, and I left the machine a bit flustered and concerned. Would my credit card actually work halfway around the world? I found a map of London at a nearby convenience store and discovered that, yes, indeed, my card did work in England. How wonderful! The big machines that advertised how to travel about England caught my eye, and I stared at the underground maps for a while, alternately consulting my new London map (which conveniently had underground stations listed on it). I figured out which routes I needed to take to find my way to the Arosfa Hotel, and I approached an underground desk to purchase an Oyster card (which I had been informed was the best way to pay for travel in London). I found my way to the underground stop at terminal 5 (where my plane landed), and after a kind underground guard helped me figure out how to use the Oyster card, I awaited my first underground train.

I might add that I was lugging with me two suitcases (medium and small) and a backpack. On my adventures through the underground of London, I believe I carried those bags up and down over thirty flights of stairs. There are few lifts (elevators) in the London underground, though they have kindly built escalators where you have to climb more than three flights of stairs. Though I do not regret taking so much luggage (I needed all of it), I often wished I had some significant other to carry everything around for me. (Perhaps an insight into what I see as the benefits of dating/marriage: you get someone who can do all the grunt labor for you.) I was constantly worried that someone would steal something, and at one point my heart leaped when a woman grabbed my luggage on an underground train as we were leaving, but she was kindly taking it off the train for me. She saw that I was a foreigner and didn't know about the merciless train doors that would cut anything and everything off when it was time to go: the British are certainly touchy about trains and such being on time. In fact (and this is a real tangent here), there is a story/myth about William Gladstone (a Victorian statesman and prime minister) who was scheduled to give a speech at a railroad station to the people of a small town. Gladstone stood with the other speakers on the caboose of the train. The speaker before him was a bit long winded, and Gladstone was only five or so minutes into his speech when it was time for the train to leave. The train conductor knew how important it was for the train to be on time, and he and the other crew members didn't want to lose their jobs over letting the train be late, so the train took off. The story goes that Gladstone still delivered his speech, even though no one could hear him. So, anyway, I had all this luggage with me on the underground, which was fine at first because the airport was the first stop, and no one was on the train. By the time we were in the middle of London, though, my luggage was taking up room that two people could have used to stand in, and we were all packed in like sardines (I managed to hit rush hour; actually, I always managed to hit rush hour). Oh well.

My first glimpse of England was during my ride on the underground, which was, of course, underground. The train did surface a couple of times (especially on the way into the center of London), and I craned my neck to see the little bit of the houses and foliage of England. It was a cloudy, slightly rainy day, but I enjoyed seeing the rows and rows of brick homes all squished together.

I managed to transfer trains a few times before I emerged into the heart of London, where I consulted my map again to make sure I was going in the direction of my hotel. After discovering that I needed to reenter the subway (two flights of stairs, sigh!) and reemerge on the other side of the street, I finally found the road my hotel was on. My problem now, however, was that the street stretched in either direction, and I didn't know which way to go. Gut or Spirit or whatever pointed me left, and I walked and walked and walked and found it. Whew!

Of course, my room was not ready, so I waited in the hotel lounge and discovered some things about myself. I probably should have been out exploring London, but the stress of being in a new place and having no idea where to go combined with jet lag and five-ish hours of sleep in the last 48 hours was catching up to me. I sat in a chair and watched a British version of the Jerry Springer Show, where the favorite words of the host seemed to be "sexual intercourse" (I think he said it about three times in every sentence). I found most interesting, however (not the show! if I could have changed the page [channel] I would have!), the commercials. They were the same, yet different from American commercials. As I teach in my Persuasive Writing course at BYU, the commonplaces were different. American ideologies and foundations of thinking are different from British (though there are many in common). One uniting commonplace, however, was one that surprised me for some reason.

Please don't take what I am about to say the wrong way (especially if you happen to be British). I was surprised at how much the people I met valued family and family life and children. In fact what surprised me most about England was how good the people are and how genuine they are. I don't know why I was surprised. Somehow, from TV or movies or people or the society/community I've been raised in, I thought that the world was much worse than what I discovered. I know there are some pretty bad people out there, but I didn't meet any in England (actually, as I think about it, I don't think I've every met any, but I have been raised in a pretty conservative and religious community, so I guess I thought it more likely to meet bad people outside of where I was raised). I mention family because family is very important to me, and I have been greatly saddened by the deterioration of family: homosexuality, single parents, orphans, neglectful parents, etc. (I must note here that in many cases family life is often disrupted by unforeseen circumstances like death or illness and the choices of parents and children that rip apart families trying to be stable and healthy. I have personally known many women who were abandoned by husbands or who bravely left abusive or unfaithful husbands and who then were forced to raise children alone. I believe that healthy family relationships begin with a loving mother and father, married under solemn covenant, and that circumstances may revise this ideal.) I somehow had the impression that family was not valued as much outside my community/the United States, but I was very wrong. Though I only saw the outside, the surface showed loving parents and children and well formed and developed family relationships. The TV show I was watching actually did little to justify what I've just said, but would you say that Jerry Springer provides us with the typical American family/relationship? I sure hope not!

So the point of all this (and, yes, I do have a point to all this) is that one of the things that unites Americans and Britons is family. They (and we) care very deeply about children and their success in life. They (and we) want healthy, happy families, and whether that be a social construct or not (I don't think it is; I believe we all innately desire to belong and create families, and it's more than something left over from the Victorians). Perhaps what will unite the world some day will be our concern about families. Could that be the common thread through all societies and cultures and countries and religions and languages? Perhaps.

And that's one reason why I want to live in England.

Why Study Literature?

2009-01-07T19:03:00.013-06:00

The following ideas have been forming inside me for some time now. They are half-formed incomplete thoughts that I hope to continue to polish as I define myself and my profession (my career goal is to be a professor: teach and research). The catalyst for this particular burst of letters and words and hopefully coherent thoughts is a recent blog post by a good friend of mine. You can read her post (and her other lovely musings) by clicking the Pyroclastic Techniques link here or to the left.

When the other children wanted to be astronauts and firefighters and army men and police officers and moms and whatever else children wanted to be, I wanted to be a teacher. During summer vacation in elementary school, I forced my friends to play school with me, and I was always the teacher (this was pre-video games and pre-home computers, at least in my lower-middle class neighborhood; we had TV, but all it had on it was Barney [isn't he still around?]).

I don't remember when I discovered I loved to read, but it was about second grade or so. I remember going to the library in elementary school with my mom and coming home with more books than I could read in a year, let alone the three-week library limit. I remember hating recess in fourth and fifth grades because I couldn't take books outside with me to read and my teachers wouldn't let me stay inside and read (unless I was sick, and I admit I feigned sick to stay inside). I remember book fairs that I would drag my parents to so I could find books to read. I remember joining endless book clubs and spending more of my parents' money on books. Needless to say, I loved reading.

As I left childhood and entered that confusing time called adolescence, my teachers decided it was time to determine the rest of my life, and suddenly all they could think about was helping me (and all my classmates) pick a profession. That was easy: I wanted to be a teacher. What did I want to teach? English, of course.

I hardly knew what all that meant at the age of twelve, but my life was set. I was going to college and going to teach something called English.

Though I support public schools, my public school education (at least high school) did not allow me to excel as I wished. I had amazing teachers, who were and are very dedicated to public education and their students, but they had to work in a broken system, or at least one that needed to change. I don't know if it is changing (I don't think it is), and I am not here to hound on the state of the modern education system. All I can say, though, is that it failed me (or perhaps I failed it?, wanting more than it could give).

That's why I started college when I was sixteen.

The last couple of years (my two years of graduate school) I've had some amazing roommates. My first one, Sarah, is amazing, and I'm still sad she moved out after a semester. She is a master's student in marriage and family therapy. I learned a lot from her about communication and relationships, both from her life experiences (she's gone through more in a quarter of a lifetime than most go through in one lifetime) and from what she was learning in her graduate classes. Her career is about saving people, saving families. What greater service could she give society than to save the most basic piece of society?

I have another roommate who is in communications and wants to study the portrayal of women in the media in Ecuador. She wants to change archaic and perverted perceptions of women in a society that desperately needs more respect shown to women. What greater service could she give to that society than to help the people of that society overcome ideologies that repress and harm half its members?

Three of my best friends are currently raising their first children. They are devoted, loving mothers, whose sole focus and aim is to give their children the best possible chance for a successful life and eternity. What greater service could they give to society than raise righteous men and women in a society filled with so much evil?

Then there's me. I sit all day and study a Victorian periodical that no one has ever heard of from a time of history that few people care about (or know about--there are many misconceptions about the Victorians). Yes, I have studied other literature, literature that has changed history. My Victorian women's literature class, for example, helped me to understand how those women writers paved the way for literature and ideas that would spark the women's movements of the early nineteenth-century and 1960s and 1970s, which have led to the equality we see today (which isn't perfect, by the way).

I often joke with other graduate students about how our theses will change the world. Yes, the Penny Post (the Victorian periodical I am writing my master's thesis on) will allow for the AIDS epidemic in Africa to end. Yes, autoethnography will cure the problems that cause the LA street gangs to murder, steal, etc (actually, really autoethnography might). Yes, Charles Dickens will convince the rich to give all they have to the poor. Doesn't this sound ridiculous? Perhaps this literature changed things in its time (Dickens's books did do some good to turn around the conditions of workhouses and schools in Victorian times), yet how can it do anything today?

This is where the study of history comes in, but I find it unsettling. I am a social literary historian at heart, but is the only purpose of literature historical? No. That is what historians claim. As a literary scholar, I must instead claim that history helps us better understand literature, which...what? That's where I get lost. What does literature do? In a world of instant gratification and lightning-fast stimulus provided by TV, movies, video games, etc., what place does literature have? Where does the 1000+ page Victorian novel fit in a world where a story can be acted out in a couple of hours?

Besides the joys of reading (escape, love of language, brain sex, etc.), why is literature important? Why should we study it? Why not just read and enjoy? Where does the Penny Post (the Victorian periodical I am studying) fit in today's world? Why is it important? Why have I spent so much time, energy, money, and life (a good thirteen years or so) on a major that may or may not touch society or may or may not change the world?

Now that I have written myself out of existence (I highly recommend The Twilight Zone's episode on the obsolete librarian, which can be found on CBS's website; it comments on what I'm discussing here) I would like to muse on why I am still doing what I am doing (despite the guilt I feel whenever I look at my wonderful friends and the great contributions they are making to society). It all goes back to teaching. I get myself out of this tangle by insisting that I want to learn all this literary stuff in order to teach it to others. What value that has, I don't really know, but I do know that teaching is less about what you teach and more about how you care (cringe; I admit I default on this a bit--caring takes more than a bit of time and energy, and academia is very narcissistic). I like to care about people, and so I want to help them understand the world as I do, thus I want to teach them.

That is one thing I find most provoking about literature: it helps humanity better understand itself. Take, for example, a recent book I read (I broke down after many moons and read Twilight). It is about an impossible love (a modern Romeo and Juliet, if you will), but instead of being a threat to themselves, one (the male) is a threat to the other (the female), and he could kill her at any moment. The book, I find, is flawed on many levels. I find the characters a little flat and poorly drawn, but the plot makes the book a page-turner, and so it creates that escape element I mentioned earlier. It does well at (what all literature, even "bad" literature does well at) providing a different perspective, another way of looking at the world and humanity.

After doing a little research on vampires (see this Wikipedia article) and my own observations of the novel, it's interesting to see how death operates in the novel. It is all about death and dying, really. Vampires come from a medieval ignorance of death and the decomposition process. Death already is feared, but what is worse than death? Not being dead when you should be, of course. In the novel, Edward (the main vampire) refuses to make Bella (the human girlfriend) a vampire because he insists that his is a cursed immortality. He is unnatural. So the insight? Humanity is obsessed with not dying and being young forever (that's all that Pirates of the Caribbean is about, except for maybe Jack; what does he want anyway?): think of all the beauty commercials and Botox, etc. Isn't most medical research focused on ways of making people live longer? Humanity is afraid of death, but maybe, as Twilight hints at, immortality isn't all that its cracked up to be. In fact, most of the woes of life and the world are related to this phobia.

Literature helps us understand ourselves better. But here is where things get really tricky. Does literature change people? Yes and no. Have all the millions of teenage girls and women (and the few men) that read Twilight given up their search for immortality? No. The failure, the failure!

Perhaps this is where literary studies comes in (alas, Twilight isn't good enough for literary studies). People are so thick-headed it takes smarter people to point out the value of literature. But wait, there's more. Literary studies is in a word esoteric, and most of society ignores the fact that much of their tax money is going to a discipline they know little about and care little about (of course, I guess most taxpayer money is like this).

Why study literature? I don't know.

Why do I study literature? I don't know everything yet, but I know literature has value. I study literature because it makes me think better, understand better, how humanity ticks. Yes, I could be in Calcutta working with humanity and seeing how it ticks hands-on, but one thing the world is losing, and losing fast, is the reflection and thinking that literature allows for.

I analyze movies (to my family's dislike) because I can't just watch mindlessly and not think. The last time I had my hair cut I saw something very sad. The hairstylist had a movie playing for me to watch while she cut my hair. It was Hairspray, which I hadn't seen yet but knew a little about. I asked the hairstylist how she liked the movie, and she said she loved it. I asked her the basic plot, and she told me. I asked her if it had some racial and equality issues (I knew it takes place in the 60s). She said oh, no, it's just this cute little love story. I was surprised. How could a movie about the 60s not have racial issues in it, especially with black and white characters? When I saw the movie, I couldn't believe that the hairstylist had missed the overarching theme of the movie. It was about racial equality, among other types of equality. How could anyone miss that? I don't mean to say the hairstylist is stupid (she's a great hairstylist, by the way), but she seems to represent a portion of society that no longer thinks.

I like to think, and because thoughts are powerful and the greatest thinkers have also been among the world's greatest social reformers (Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Muhammad, Mother Theresa, etc.), I study literature. It makes me think, and maybe someday the Penny Post will change the world.

One More for 2008

2008-12-23T00:29:00.012-06:00

Here's my last word in for the year 2008 (okay, so this turned out longer than I thought it would).

Life keeps moving along--it always seems to do that, whether you want it to or not. It's been an interesting year--2008--and though it may not necessarily be a year that I remember, what I will take away from it will always be with me.

Take, for example, my political-thought process/progress (yes, the hyphen is in the right place). I have had the opportunity as a college educator to center my writing courses on the election as a theme. I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about the economy, immigration, health care, social security, the role of government, oil, energy, gay rights, etc. After reading over two hundred papers (that's at least 1,500 pages) on these subjects, collectively, I've determined that no one really knows what they want, what they are talking about, or what to do about problems, especially politicians (how can one politician be an expert on a hundred different subjects that people who dedicate their lives to keep scratching their heads about [the economy is on my mind here, in particular]). I have become, this year, quite unconcerned about politics and the problems facing our world (yet that really annoying word "change" keeps bobbing up and giving me hope; we shall see...).

My faith in democracy (or whatever the United States government is) has been greatly challenged this year. I have been continually frustrated that the needs of the majority of the country are disregarded because a very vocal and often violent minority insists that its "rights" should be upheld with religious fervor (and I speak of more than just the gay rights issue). I have been disillusioned by the corruption in the government and special interest groups' voices that drown out what is right.

I've also lost faith in capitalism. That, of course, began with my "Theoretical Discourses" graduate course, where I read a great book, Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, which opened my eyes as to the totalitarian nature of capitalism, democracy, and all that Americans think they hold dear. That's when I decided I'm a socialist, but not really. I guess you could say I am a consecrationalist (I can explain that more if you are interested).

I've become frustrated with my state government, too. It doesn't make sense to me that members of the LDS Church would want to be Republican (I'm talking party politics now). Many core principles of Republicanism contradict the gospel. Yet the moral liberalism of Democrats doesn't appeal to me, either. (Perhaps I should end here. The "left" and "right" and "liberal" and "conservative" are all messy, and I will get in trouble on all fronts.) I guess my main point here is that I am tired of party politics. Why can't I believe in small business, families, the right of gun ownership, and the importance of some government programs? Republicans and Democrats are becoming too polarized, and that is dangerous. I suppose we shall see where the next four years take us ("change" "change" "change" really?).

I've also had several moral dilemmas that I am still struggling through. The whole gay marriage issue is unresolved on many levels. Even not being a Californian myself, because my church has taken such an important role in everything, I find that I am facing several things. I am and always will be against any form of sexual intimacy before marriage, and I will always believe that a family unit should be headed by a man and a woman wedded legally. Yet I also believe that people should choose to live the way they want, and no one should prevent them. Again, though, I believe the words of those I consider modern-day prophets who have forewarned and foretold that destruction and calamities will sweep the earth if the family structure that has been defined by God (through them), i.e. marriage between one man and one woman, is not upheld and protected in all of society (see "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" pasted below). I do not believe religious groups should not participate in politics (where in the world did that idea come from?), and anyone that wants to separate "church" and "state" (by the way, that is not in the Constitution of the United States), good luck! What a messy issue! Oh, and by the way, gay rights is not on the same level as women's rights or civil rights (why they are compared, I will never understand).

Wow! What a year. There is much more I could go on about, but I think the thing I will take away most from this year is how grateful I am to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More than ever, I am grateful for a testimony of the restored gospel, through that amazing 14-year-old boy, Joseph Smith, who gave his life for the second greatest work in history. Through him, the heavens were again opened, and God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith. They revealed to him the operation of Christ's church in these last days before the end of the world and the Father's work. Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, which restores and clarifies the gospel of Christ, since through the ages the truths were changed, removed, or lost from the Old and New Testaments.

The first greatest work of this world, of course, was the birth, life, atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we approach the celebration of His birth this week, I keep thinking that I wish we would celebrate His birth every day. The world needs Christ every day, not just once a year. I have a testimony of the reality of Jesus Christ, his birth and life as a mortal, born to a mortal mother of a literal, physical, perfected immortal Father, distinct and separate from him as you are from your earthly father. I know His mission is the center of the purpose of this, our, earthly life. I know that He will come again, and He is here with us now through the Gift and Light of His Spirit, which Light all mankind have. I am grateful as a member of Christ's one true Church that I have the Gift of His Spirit. That is the key to surviving this life.

I know that there are living and true prophets on this earth; I am grateful to have witnessed the calling and ordination of a new prophet, Thomas S. Monson, this year. I know there are Apostles on this earth, too, and fifteen of them stand at the head of Christ's church. This world is so confused and messed up, and just as in days of old (Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jesus Christ, Paul, Peter, John, etc.) Christ leads His Church, His Father's children, His world through prophets and apostles. They tell us today what we need to do, and, unfortunately, just as in days of old, people don't listen. Please listen!

This is a small bit of my testimony (I could go on about eternal families, temples, ordinances, etc.), but this is foundation, the cornerstone being my testimony of a loving Father in Heaven who sent His Only Begotten Son to live as a mortal among men who hated and killed Him. But He is here, leading and directing, loving and forgiving, teaching and prompting, all through His Spirit. How Father loves us! How Christ loves us! How They want us to come to Them and partake of eternal life! I pray for all of you that may read my insignificant words, that you will find the peace that comes from Christ, not just at Christmas, but always and forever. In the name of Christ I pray for you and testify of Him, amen.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God's eternal plan.Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

This proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

For more information on this or anything about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, please visit http://mormon.org/ or http://www.lds.org/. I am happy to answer any questions, too.

Request

2008-11-08T00:02:00.004-06:00

I am submitting an essay to an essay contest at BYU. I've pasted the essay I have been working on for several years (okay, I haven't read it for several years until recently) below. I know there aren't a lot of people who read my blog, but would you kind friends, new acquaintances, and friendly strangers gracefully read and respond to what I have written? It is written for a Latter-day Saint audience, so if you are not familiar with LDS culture, some of the essay may be confusing to you, but that's okay. The theme of the essay is the Restored Gospel and Applied Christianity (stressing the application of gospel ideals in daily living).

I feel like the essay is immature and a little arrogant, and though I wrote this at a very different time in my life when I was dealing with very different issues than I am now, I want it to be more than a girl wining about things. I want it to be able to speak to the audience and perhaps help reconcile the two aspects of myself and the culture I see around me. I also feel that some of the themes are not quite reconciled the way they could be. Thanks.

Solitude

There is a graceful snowy-white swan drifting peacefully on a heavenly lake, her neck arched gently in an “S” so the shadow in front of her becomes a perfect silhouette of her body. Her eyes are midnight and reflective, serene, even contemplative, as she floats along. You watch her from the sandy edges of the lake, perhaps on a bench, perhaps sitting on the grass feeling the harmless earth and silkily rough grass beneath your hands. It’s just you and her there on the edge of the complex, fast, and confusing world thinking and reflecting on humanity, life, the Gospel, and your infinitely complex mind.

My dad really wanted me to go. “It’s your graduation,” he said, “you should celebrate with the rest of your friends and fellow graduates.” But, I think I thought, I only know two handfuls of people at school, and most of them won’t graduate until next year. A family celebration was enough for me, and, anyways, I don’t like parties and social events and dancing and group games and such. I like being alone, with a good book, relaxing on my bed with the sun streaming in delicate beams down on my back, warming those tense spots and relaxing my shoulders until I drift off into a gentle sleep. You just don’t get that with a few hundred sticky strangers bumping into you.

The graduation party was a “special” one. It was planned exclusively by the “responsible” parents of graduates (at least that’s what they said to get more parents to help plan and donate money). This particular planning was supposed to prevent graduates from going to parties with alcohol, drugs, and whatever else “free” eighteen-year-olds feel entitled to have or do. My dad was on the committee and gave me all the inside information: they were going to raffle off a car, gift certificates, etc., and have movie rooms, dances, games, and a little bit of everything for everyone. I went to my room and curled up on my bed to get lost in some fantasy world.

My dad donated a little money; he couldn’t afford much. He was on the clean-up committee. Oh, that’s another thing: the party would go from 8 pm to 4 am. I wasn’t like a “normal” teenager, and my peak hours were not around two a.m. My dad would have to help clean up (the party would be dispersed throughout the school) before school started at 7:30 am the next day. My dad said I didn’t have to stay the entire night, but at twenty dollars to get in, I’d have to stay at least four or five hours, and once I left, I wouldn’t be able to get back in.

I refused to go, so my dad offered to pay the twenty dollars entrance fee. I declined quietly and went in search of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I was rereading for the tenth time. I felt guilty about my dad being so involved in planning the party, but I wouldn’t go. I offered to help him clean up. He said that was okay and left me alone for another planning meeting. Harry beat the dragon, alone, as he always did.

So, graduation came and went. That night I finished two books I’d been reading, started a third, went to bed about eleven (my normal bed-time was ten), and got up at eight the next morning, missing the clean-up by a couple of hours. I didn’t hear about how “cool” the party was because, well, I didn’t care about it, and I only knew five fellow seniors on a speaking level. My dad always said that to make friends, you have to get out and “be social,” whatever that means. I still am not “social” in any sense of the word, but I still get by.

My current roommates I met my junior year of school at Desert Towers. We were on the same floor and in the same ward, so we naturally got together and had fun. It’s strange though, out of forty-some-odd girls, I got to know five of them really well. I never went to parties. I made an appearance at the opening ward social (a brief half hour in which I got pelted with a water balloon) and made another appearance at the closing ward social only because I’d sat in on the meeting to plan it and felt obligated to attend.

This last summer I lived with three Japanese girls and two Swedish girls. I learned many things during that summer, but most of all, I learned a little bit about language and being alone. I was alone in that I was the only American and only native English speaker. I was alone in that I didn’t understand anything anyone said for four months. You would have thought I would have learned a pidgin or something. I love the roommates I had; they taught me more than these words can say, and I will be forever grateful for that.

I don’t remember my parents reading books to me when I was little, but I’m sure they did. I don’t remember playing with many children, though I’m sure I did. I don’t remember asking questions, though I’m sure I did. What I do remember is reading on my own, playing by myself or with a couple of friends, and figuring things out on my own, if at all. Everyone always told me I was mature for my age, but I wonder when, if ever, I was my age. They’ve always told me I’m different and separate and not like everyone else, but I wonder, when is anyone ever like everyone else?

The beautiful swan on the lake is part of eight species of swans, but there are no swans in Africa or Antarctica. The only black swans are found in Australia. The mute swan, my favorite, came to the United States as a captive animal in the 1800s, but some got free and the domesticated wild ones were born (mute swans have little, if no, fear of man). Mute swans can only hiss and grunt, and they have the same mate for life. Swans are omnivores, and they live together in flocks until mating season when the couples split off, build nests, and have cygnets. Cygnets learn by watching their parents—they can’t read—and leave their parents after a couple of years. Swans pair off for life when they are about three. Swan parents are known for their fierce protection of their young and each other; I guess that comes with living with one for life. Swans wingspans can be eight feet wide, and they are probably never more than that away from their mate. The male is called a cob, the female is called a pen, and mute swans don’t migrate. It is strange that the pen on the lake would be alone. It’s strange that I like being alone.

The Church is all about social or at least group. We go to church, to a group. We study the Gospel in groups: Sunday School. We partake of the saving, sacred ordinances in groups: the sacrament. We bless others in groups. The Priesthood, except things like Father’s Blessings, can only function with more than one Priesthood bearer. We can only be saved with another: a spouse. We can only grow and develop and learn and teach and love and live and serve with and for and because of others. The Church is full of group-revelation: Conference, the Ensign, the Doctrine and Covenants. The greatest women’s social organization in the world is a part of the Church, and I was, perhaps reluctantly, a part of it: Relief Society.

Language is imperfect, abrupt, and often harsh to the incredible subjects it must barbarically communicate. Some subjects, feelings, prompts, and impressions are so far beyond language nothing will ever capture them: at least not in this life with our limited minds. Still, I try. I try to comprehend with language because I love it.

One of my Japanese summer roommates didn’t speak much English. I think the one complete and comprehensible English sentence I heard from her all summer was, “What is your major?” She was here to learn English, and I think to take her mind off troubles in Japan. It was fun with her around. I would try to encourage her English because I love talking to people learning English and I love teaching people English. But she would literally run away if I or anyone else tried to speak in English to her. Talk about minorities: she was in a country where the closest language she could find to her own in popular culture was on the Spanish TV station.

Part of my being different was attributed, I believe, to my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t think there was ever a time that I did not know. In middle school, I think I was still running on my parents’ testimonies, and the fact that the Church was all I’d ever known. It was in middle school that I almost began swearing, learned about my druggie friends, and realized that those I’d grown up with in the Church were not the faithful that I’d thought they were.

In high school, I began seminary. I read the Bible for the first time. I read the Doctrine and Covenants for the first time. I bore my testimony for the first time with conviction. I began my daily habit of reading the Book of Mormon in eighth or ninth grade after a friend who was going on a mission said something like, “If you read the Book of Mormon every day, you will do well in school and do well spiritually.” I have never been able to prove his theory wrong.

Something happened to me between middle school and high school. I can’t place what it was. Maybe it was Young Women. Maybe it was Seminary. So many people say that they read the Book of Mormon and then fast and pray to see if it’s true. I never had an experience like that. Whenever I asked, something said, “You know; why are you asking?” My entire life “just knew.”

That set me apart: that made me feel alone.

When I was fifteen, my dad decided to uproot the family after twenty years and transplant us to foreign ground. Well, not really, but as I write about it now, I realize that what he did was incredibly brave because 1) we couldn’t afford it, 2) he was in the bishopric, 3) I was in high school, and 4) we’d never lived anywhere else. At that same time, I decided to attend college. Thus, I began my junior year of high school as “a new kid,” and my freshman year of college at the same time. I didn’t feel like I belonged in college because I was sixteen, and I didn’t feel like I belonged in high school because I went to college and was new. Perhaps that is part of the reason I liked being alone. I was almost completely alone (except for my family and a couple of friends) those two years. I wanted to go to college because I hated high school; maybe that’s why I never got involved like my dad wanted me to.

The thing about language, though, is that it reaches deeper than just association with objects. Every language contains its own world. True, language is ambiguous and arbitrary, often contradictory, but it is incredibly important. There are some words that you just can’t explain the meaning of.

During one summer, I had a Swedish roommate who was trying to learn English. One day she asked me to explain what something meant. I don’t remember what word or concept it was, but I do remember not knowing how to explain it to her. I asked her sister, another roommate who’s been in the US for almost a year, but she couldn’t explain it either, though she knew what it meant. I realized then that language sometimes goes beyond what we can explain. Sometimes we can’t use language to explain language.

One thing that sets the Church apart from other religions is its emphasis on personal revelation. Personal revelation can only happen when you are alone. Well, okay, you can receive revelation when you are with others or talking to others but aren’t you supposed to go into your secret places to pray, ponder, study, learn, read? Salvation is personal and individual. When Christ comes again, you cannot rely on the oil of others to save you. You must have your own oil. Isn’t that selfish though? Or is there a difference between selfishness and personal growth?

The party was filled with Japanese speakers, so I, not a Japanese speaker (I know only a fistful of words), felt uncomfortable and went up to my egotistical American bedroom. I shut the door, but laughter drifted up through the heat vents, and music blared from the computer downstairs. Parties are definitely chaotic with so much talking and laughter and running about in our small apartment (at least guys can’t come upstairs; I love the Honor Code). The noise is enough to fill the room without all the bodies everywhere. I think they overflowed outside because the entire ward was invited to this party (it was a going away party, too, because the birthday girl was turning the magical 21 when some good Mormon girls take a leave-of-absence for 18 months to serve the Lord). I don’t think the bishop showed up, but he could have. The food didn’t help the chaos, and I could imagine it dripping from every light, staining every couch, and being mashed into every fiber of carpet (at least the smell penetrating everything because Japanese food is so foreign in America that even the inanimate objects find it unusual).

However, I did remove myself from my little hermit-like cave, when the birthday girl’s bright face (from reading the Book of Mormon every spare moment for at least the last six years) popped into the room and, with a slight frown, inquired as to whether I would be down for the candle lighting. My heart melted at her sweet Japanese face, and I couldn’t remain a recluse for that night. The lighting was quick, and I was soon back to my little hermit-hole reading about the Constitutional Convention and George Washington for American Heritage.

That reclusive night I realized two things: without George Washington and James Madison, the innkeeper would have been British and out of a job, and parties don’t last forever: only until everyone gets full.

Zeus, when he wanted to “mate” with Leda, turned himself into a swan. The Greeks and Romans saw the swan as a sacred and important animal. Caesar Augustus used the swan as his family emblem. Historically and traditionally, the swan is a symbol of strength, purity, and power to prophesy. Socrates said as much on his deathbed. The grieving friend of Apollo’s foolish son, Phaethon, was turned into the constellation of the Swan, Cygnus. Cygnus represents grieving and friendship and is a good omen for sailors. The swan is unclean in the Law of Moses, though that may also be a mistranslation of “ibis”; but the Hebrew word for “swan” suggests destruction. The mute swan is a symbol of tranquility, aggression, nobility, and it is the swan of swans. The swan has been used as both an emblem for war and one for peace. Could it not also be an emblem for partnership and aloneness? Is it possible to reconcile aloneness and togetherness?

At that birthday/celebration party, I was alone because I wanted to be alone with a party going on, and there was that confounding yet interesting language barrier. The Japanese girl who could only find Spanish was alone. She was alone in a nation that didn’t understand her culture, life, or language. She got sick that summer from the climate change, homesickness, and the culture shock. Then, there’s me. I was alone when the party happened. I liked being alone. I chose to be alone. She didn’t; she really liked parties and hosted them whenever she could. I didn’t; I chose to ignore parties whenever I could. Language divided us; but in our division and aloneness, we were together. Perhaps we experienced the same emotions. I don’t know. We wouldn’t be able to ask one another. When she left, she gave me a hug. She told me through a translator that she wished she could have spoken to me. The feeling was mutual. You don’t need language to have mutual feelings; that’s part of what makes it arbitrary.

One night, not long after the Japanese roommate left, was Enrichment with the greatest social organization on this earth. I could have gone. My homework was such that I should have gone, especially since I spent most of the hour and a half that I would have been at Enrichment flipping through stations and watching Smallville. I didn’t go because the thought of going, sitting among women I didn’t know, listening to conversations I didn’t care about, and sitting quietly until I could safely return to my hermit-hole, did not appeal to me. I was not very social, so I felt awkward in social situations, and these were people of my same gender! Then I thought of the opportunities—to get to know a new friend, to learn about eating healthy and cheaply, to eat Dutch-oven cobbler, and to gain spiritual insights—that I lost, and I wanted to weep.

I had a roommate who had a hard time being alone. She liked being with and around people. It comes, she says, from coming from a large family (ten kids). I could see that in her. I was okay around people, and sometimes it was nice to have someone to talk to, but I liked being alone more. I’ve come to realize that I like being with a small group of friends, but to get those friends, I’ve had to go into a larger group to weed out those who are similar to me. Birds of a feather flock together after all.

I flock with the Gospel, but I still struggle. There are days I just want to hole up in a cabin near a lake somewhere and leave the world behind. Where I want to study literature and language and learn about words and their meanings. Where I can watch the swan on the lake. Where I can study scripture and come to truth and live and gain salvation with no temptation. But that is not the function and point of this life. We are to live in this world, not of it. We are to serve because service puts drops of oil into our lamps. We are to meet people and have friends and learn new things from people because in the eternities, those relationships will be what they are here, but oh, so much more. Some day we will be able to express our mutual feelings of aloneness in a language we both understand. Anyways, I want to marry someday. Marriage is essential for salvation, too. I want to be a mother. I want to write someday about my screaming two-year-old who won’t give back mommy’s pen so she can finish her sentence. I want to study the language of the people around me. I want to know how other people think and live and learn and grow. I want to with all, but apart from all, too. I want to be like the pen on the lake who, for a moment, has just drifted away from her cygnets and cob for a moment of prayer. I want to flock with my people and see the Great Bird Master someday. But, I want to have those quiet moments on the lake, too.

Maybe that’s the message of the swan.

All Those Terrible Things People Did to Women

2008-09-08T18:35:00.009-05:00

Although I consider myself somewhat feminist, I have avoided taking classes in college that focus on feminism. Perhaps this is unfair to my progenitors: I am where I am doing what I am because of those incredible women who had the guts and courage to tell men [and women, especially their mothers] what they (men and women) were truly made of. I have problems with many feminist theories, especially those dealing with making everything ever written by a woman (or man) a feminist or anti-feminist text and those suggesting that motherhood is a less-than-desirable role for women (in fact, I think motherhood = womanhood, which requires an expansion of the definition of motherhood and womanhood). Yet here I am, taking a Victorian women's literature course in graduate school.

My professor made it very clear the first day of class that this was not a "feminist" theory class, which I clearly appreciate. Nonetheless, to establish some foundations of the quite dynamic Victorian period, where women's literature really took off (I would argue this point, however, because there were many women writers before the Victorian period, but scholars, mostly feminists themselves, claim that the Victorian period is when they were the most "radical," which, again, I would argue. Of course, you could say that the Victorian period is when women saw themselves as the most radical.) we are reading some feminist theory (primarily about the period) to gain some good background.

On to my point: as I have been reading about the problems women writers' of the Victorian period encountered in their efforts to publish and begin to create a literature for/by/to women (and men), I have learned more than I ever really wanted to know about attitudes of men towards women (and women towards women, for that matter).

For example, most people considered women sexual beasts (I'm exaggerating a little here) who had to be tamed and subjected in order for them to be civil and human (they also believed that the menstrual cycle was an outlet for women's sexual desires). In fact, they believed that women were subject to bouts of depression, anxiety, and insanity (sometimes permanent) because of their sexual natures, so they did everything possible to restrict and suppress women's inner beast. Additionally, they (both men and women) believed that women were naturally physically incapable of doing many things (especially when in the "delicate" condition of pregnancy, during the monthly cycle, and pretty much all other times), including learning and getting an education equal that of men. In fact, a point I find most ironic (especially considering what we know today about this), they believed that bearing children made women weak. They also believed that women were naturally not as smart as men or mentally capable of learning what men learned. The sad part about this all is that both men and women believed this, even those women who were fighting for more rights for women. Many women writers, in effort to explain their own deficiencies, would use these reasons/excuses for their "poor" abilities.

I haven't even started on legal and property rights, which were very interesting. In the eyes of God and the church and man, when a woman and man were married, they became "one" legally. In other words, a married couple was one person: the husband. This goes back to other traditions, which held that there was a "head" of a household (a man), who was in charge of everything relating to his household. All this meant that women could not hold property, have a job, etc., and when she was married, worked, or obtained anything monetary, it automatically belonged to her husband and went in his name. Now what if a husband decided to spend everything he had on a mistress and neglected the care of his wife? Too bad for that wife. What if a husband abandoned his wife and then showed up a few years later? Everything still belonged to him. What if a wife wanted a divorce? Too bad: how can a single person divide in half? If a divorce was granted (usually because the husband said so), then a woman wouldn't have any rights to her children.

Some of this changed in the early part of the nineteenth century, but there were still social inequalities that hindered women. It was very difficult for women to get gainful employment, even though millions did, in fact, work. For much of the century, women had the same (or not as many) rights as criminals, minors, and crazy people (who, by the way, were often women, and who can blame them?).

One other aspect I find most intriguing (especially considering beauty commercials today: see my blog post on the topic) is that because women were expected to fit a certain model (the "angel" of the house, who was sickly, pale, fainting, weak, silly, perfectly charitable and kind, etc.), women purposely made themselves this way. They took things to make themselves sick; they did things (like shove their organs into their chests with corsets) to make themselves weak; they purposely made themselves the angels of their homes. No wonder there were so many madwomen in the attics (see various female novels from the Victorian period; Jane Eyre is particularly interesting). Why? Because this is how primarily men (though women proliferated the idea) defined women.

Much of this is a little one-sided, I admit (in fact, I think I am beginning to do what I often accuse feminists of doing too much of). The fact is that people honestly believed these things about women, and they even had medical professionals (yes, professional researchers who did many studies of these things) who supported the various views of women with verified observation and research. I also admit that much of the above was meant to help and support women, so I guess if you really believed much of that stuff, then acting and believe in in the above ways would make a lot of sense.

We have come a long way since then, and sometimes I think we have gone too far (the whole men-hating movement). Yet, I think it's interesting how some of the Victorian ideas slip into our society once in a while. I do believe that women if married with children should primarily be responsible for taking care of her children, yet I do not believe that means she can't have a successful career or be restricted to that one role. In fact, I admire the way that, in our society, men often take a more equal role with their wives in caring for children. That is the way it should (and I believe is meant to) be. Women should be able to do all that they can to be who they truly are: women.

I also want to say that I in no way advocate the openness in our society about certain issues (such as sex); I think there is a time and a place for such things, and our society goes way beyond what is proper. But I also think it is important to recognize the entirety of what composes a person and his or her personality: sexual, physical, mental, spiritual, etc., and not suppress it, because, as Freud can tell you, suppressing things is not healthy, and he studied enough crazy Victorian women to know.

What We Become

2008-08-22T23:49:00.005-05:00

What did you think you would become when you were in kindergarten (the garden of children)? Did you want to be a mom? a dad? a firefighter? a doctor? a dump truck driver? a teenage mutant ninja turtle? a cat? a vet? an astronaut? any number of interesting and useful occupations when you didn't know you couldn't do most of what you wanted to? What about your friends? What did they want to be? What did you think they would be?

Did you even care what you would become? Or did you just sing your heart out in music circle (not knowing you couldn't sing to save your life)? or watch in wonder as a tiny little beak slowly pecked its way out of the shell of a chicken egg? or run around the playground trying to avoid the fifth graders and boys (or girls depending on your gender) because the one would beat you up or make you eat worms and the other had cooties? Or did you actually lay your hand over your heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and somehow, in that little brainwashed heart of yours, actually mean the words you couldn't yet comprehend but somehow felt were important because you knew your grandpa fought in a place called Many or Pan and wouldn't talk about it but treated that flag with more respect than that with which he treated your grandma?

Whatever happened to the days when all you cared about was getting through those four or five hours of school so you could go home and play? when your teacher pinned homework and notes (that you couldn't read, of course) to the front of your shirt because you would lose them otherwise? when counting to ten and reciting the alphabet in song was the biggest accomplishment of your life? (Why did we have to learn to count to ten and recite the alphabet? When was the last time you recited the alphabet or counted to ten for your job as an adult?) when cooties were real and kept you from wondering about the birds and bees?

I went to an elementary school and middle school with pretty much the same kids. There were two classes in each grade in elementary school, and in middle school three or four elementary schools brought in more. But the original fifty that I pretty much grew up with and then went to my first two years of high school with, I came to know quite well. I moved away when I was sixteen.

Now, almost seven years later, I am coming in contact with some of those that I went to elementary school with or became friends with later (the Internet is an interesting thing; or is it a place?). I have been reading their profiles and backgrounds on their pages, and sometimes I am startled to see what some of then are doing or have become. Others I can barely recognize, and others I am not surprised at all the direction their lives have taken.

I have been thinking lately about our early days together, wondering if we have fulfilled what we thought each other would do. Some of my old friends I am very happy for because their lives are going well. Others I shake my head in sadness because I see that they have not realized the potential I saw when I knew them better.

I wonder then what I have become, am becoming. I guess I have not yet arrived anywhere in my becoming process. Perhaps, then, they, too, have not yet become anything.

But are we on the right track? Are we becoming all that we can become?

Warning: This Is a Rant

2008-08-02T14:13:00.004-05:00

So yesterday I stayed up late to watch my favorite show (it even beats House), Monk. It comes on at 11 pm Friday on USA (channel 57 for those with Comcast cable in Utah). Not that I am advertising or anything. It is just a great modern twist on Sherlock Holmes. It is about an extremely obsessive compulsive detective who left the police force when his wife was killed in a car bomb. Her death is pretty much the only case he has never solved, and it drives him crazy (quite literally). He has a private practice and does consulting for the police department. His obsessive compulsiveness (along with his photographic memory and other talents) gives him an eye for detail that helps him solve really bizarre murders. The best part about the series is that it is hilarious and clean! That is so rare with today's TV shows; even House is hard for me to get through sometimes because of its dirty jokes.

After the show, I went to my room to get ready for bed, and IT began.

Let me explain: The neighbor who shares a bedroom wall with me likes really loud music, the booming rap kind that requires a subwoofer for some reason. He (yes, I know my neighbor is male because that side of the complex is all men's housing; if you don't attend a BYU school, then you probably don't understand why half a complex is men's housing and the other is women's. Ask me, and I'll explain) especially likes to play this music beginning at about 11:00 pm or thereabouts.

So last night, again, I had to deal with this obnoxious neighbor. He likes to turn the music so loud (or the bass up so loud), that the wall shakes, and I can barely hear myself think. The worst part of it is that he does it in the middle of the night! Hello! People sleep on Friday nights! At least I do. Maybe the rest of the world pulls all-nighters, but not me! I believe in Ben Franklin's great proverb: Early to bed and early to rise makes a woman healthy, wealthy, and wise. Now, I don't know about the wealthy part, but I do believe strongly that a regular and early sleep schedule keeps me healthy and wise. I get sick if my sleep schedule gets too out of whack (one time I got about four hours of sleep every night for a week, and then I was sick for two weeks after). Now, you may argue that 11 pm is not "early" (or maybe you think that that is outrageously early, whatever). I only stay up late when there is a show I really like to watch (like Monk). So there.

Anyway, I absolutely, positively, completely, and irrevocably hate rap music (and I do not use that word--hate--lightly). In fact, it isn't even music. It's a bunch of wanna be singers spouting off derogatory remarks towards anything and everything (women tend to be a popular topic). There is little musical talent with rap. Sure, maybe they can rhyme, but so can a two-year-old. I place much of "hard" rock in this category, too. It takes little talent to be able to scream at the top of your lungs a bunch of words that make little sense strung together between groups of more derogatory language. I am not a strong believer in such things as "high" and "low" culture, but when it comes to such music that I am describing, there is no doubt that rap, etc., falls in the category of lower than dirt culture (if it can even be considered that).

The worst part about that music is that it is morally degrading. Granted, I don't know how anyone understands what these people are "singing," but the lyrics are awful (you wonder how I know this if I never listen to such music? I have been forced to drive with enough people who listen to this stuff to know the subjects and words the music uses). And it isn't just the lyrics. The instrumental part of it is also degrading. Music is supposed to uplift, but such music far from uplifts but tears down whatever moral compass or spirit that resides within us. Why do you think the artists lead such terrible lives? Yes, they get into drugs and stuff, but why? Do you see classical artists and composers leading public lives of self-destruction and desperation? No. Why? I think it has something to do with the music. More on this in a minute.

I especially dislike the need for this music to be blasted at full bass and volume to the entire world. Why? All it is doing is making the music players morally corrupt and deaf. Do we really want a bunch of morally corrupt deaf people wandering around? And why must they subject the rest of humanity to their "entertainment"? It's a lot like people who smoke. Smokers are killing themselves just as much as they are killing the people they smoke around (will anyone but cigarette companies deny this?); it's the same with music. Those who blast their music to the world are affecting the world just as much as they are affecting themselves. If you want to be a morally corrupt deaf person, that is your choice. But don't force other people to follow you.

An anecdote: One time my family was camping next to Bear Lake (Utah/Idaho border). We had some particularly obnoxious neighbors who blasted their rap/metal/whatever music all Saturday night long and into Sunday. As we were leaving to go to church, my dad lowered his window and turned up the volume on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast we were listening to, Music and the Spoken Word (every Sunday morning). That sure showed them! (Actually, I think they were somehow still asleep, so it probably did nothing but satisfy my dad's desire for revenge.)

I might add that booming music gives me a headache, and it is especially bad at night when I am tired and trying to sleep. I have tried earplugs, but my ears are hypersensitive to things being pushed inside of them, so that is almost as bad as just enduring through the music.

Honestly, if people want to listen to what I think is terrible music, all the power to them, but it is when they conveniently forget that there are other people in the universe that I get upset. Why can't they think of other people? How can they be so selfish and inconsiderate? I know that some just don't care about anyone, and think that they should be able to what they want and people just have to live with that. That's a terrible way to approach living. Maybe someday they will need to rely on the people they have ignored, and maybe those people won't be willing to help.

One more point and I will leave this rant (which I could go on about for forever). I believe that the language of the heart, of the spirit, of God is music (you thought I was going to say love, didn't you?). Music is the only universal language that everyone can understand. Most of the best composers who have ever live have been German or Italian, and they are just as loved in their own country as in countries of other languages. There is nothing like music to bring inspiration from On High (ask Southern Baptists), and music is an important part of Latter-day Saint worship (in fact, I think it should be a more important part). But, unfortunately, all good things can be used for evil, too. This is the case with music. Music that is degrading and demoralising and depressing, music that makes you feel worse or just the same after you have listened to it, is music that will never get you closer to God. But music that uplifts you, that makes you want to do and feel better, that encourages you, that makes you better than you were before--this will send a prayer to God that will be answered, and you will never be the same again.

Who Are "They" to Tell Me What Beauty Is?

2008-06-28T16:31:00.012-05:00

Take, for instance, beauty product commercials. "They" claim to be creating products that women "need," but do women really need to have long dark curly eyelashes or red rosy cheeks or firm, smooth skin? Are these things essential to survival?

No.

Instead, what beauty product commercials do is they create the "need" for their product by defining what they think beauty is. Sure, they may be "reflecting" the definitions of beauty that proliferate in society, but those things only proliferate because of the commercials, the image the commercials present. (Movies: aren't they themselves commercials for a particular kind of "beauty"?)

This is what "they" (whoever or whatever that is) say "beautiful" skin is: young (baby), "flawless" (defined as no moles, warts, sun spots, veins, pock marks, freckles, hairs etc.), tan, smooth, soft, etc. Then "they" produce a host of products to defy age, make flaws disappear, give a "perfect" tan, make skin smooth, soft, etc. As for eyes, "beautiful" eyes start with long, dark, curly lashes and then various colors to supposedly "enhance" the "natural" beauty of the eye color. Here follows various eyelash products and eye colors to do these things. Then they also say what beautiful legs are: tan, muscular, smooth and hairless, etc. Don't get me started on clothing! Shall I go on? I can, but perhaps I will progress to some sort of a point.

The one that amazes me the most is hair removal. Granted, there are sometimes hairs that grow in annoying places, but most hair has a purpose! Wow! Amazing! To think that our bodies were designed (and, yes, I mean "designed") to be a certain way for a certain reason. Again, there are "abnormalities" and problems that can occur, yet what "they" seem to be saying is that our bodies are ugly and we have to change them in order to be "beautiful." Um . . .

I woke up one morning and groaned when I realized I needed to shave my legs. "But wait," I thought, "why do I need to shave them? If I don't care about hairy legs, why should I care about anyone else?" Perhaps that is root of the problem: we care too much about what others think about how we fit in to what "they" want. How silly! Are we all twelve-year-old trying to impress our first crush?

When it comes down to it, aren't "they" out for money? Isn't that what commercials are all about? They just want to convince you that you are ugly so that you will feel bad and buy their products. Why should you feel bad about being who you are? What God created you to be? Why is there a need to feel "beautiful," according to these standards?

What if everyone stopped caring about what everyone else thought? What if we focused less on what we should look like and more on what people really need? You know, those things like food and water and homes, which are essential to survival, which so many people in our society (let alone the world!) somehow survive (or don't) without?

What if we stopped spending so much money on looking "beautiful" (a multi-billion-dollar industry, by the way; someone is getting rich, off of your "need" to be beautiful!) and instead gave that money to the local homeless shelter or gave that money to the family down the street who just lost their job or even to the people trying to find the cure for AIDS to save the dying children in Africa?

Now, I do not think we should stop taking showers and go live in the woods dressed in loin clothes (Tarzan could use the company, I guess); after all, good hygiene is still important, and, let's face it, women for some reason, like to "look and feel" good (how can I deny the pull of "nature"?). But do we need to look and feel good according to some arbitrary definitions of beauty that change (wow! beauty standards change? Yes, I'm afraid they do. In fact, "they" would be appalled at what "beauty" was a hundred years ago) and that have nothing to do with who each individual is and what she (or he) looks like? Anyway, what feels good about underwear that squeezes your body to fit to a certain shape or cutting yourself as you try to shave in the shower or plucking out those "annoying" hairs?

Why not be yourself and forget about what others think and quit conforming. Here is where I will bring up God again. He loves you for who you are with or without the beauty-making stuff. In fact, do you think there are beauty products in heaven? Wow! They probably don't even have deodorant up there!

Reflections on My First Two Semesters of Graduate School

2008-04-23T17:05:00.003-05:00

I entered the interesting world of graduate school bright-eyed and busy-tailed, waiting to make a difference and exceed everyone's expectations. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but somehow it was something I wanted more than anything else in the world. Life takes us places we never knew we would go.

My first semester was thrilling and engaging. I learned a few things about myself I hate to admit, but I had discovered that maturity is really about seeing your weaknesses and trying with all your might to overcome them while not making a fool of yourself. I realized early on that I am not quite as intelligent as I always thought I was (and what everyone else thought I was), and that graduate school is not just about working hard, as everyone will tell you. It takes brains to do what needs to be done, because that is what is expected. Those with fewer brains can get by on hard work, but it really is gruelling hard work and brains looks so much easier. That is all that I have done this year, working hard, hard gruelling work.

I realized that I care more about what people think than I have always claimed. In the world of academia, though, reputation is almost everything, and, unfortunately, reputation is based on what others think of you. But what is most important is what you think of yourself. If you are calm and confident, that will shine as the bright north star to guide everyone to what you want them to think about you, reputation being what you want others to think about you.

Of course, as my graduate coordinator wisely told the first-year graduate students in our "Introduction to Graduate Studies" class, the fact that we were accepted into the program signifies that we have what it takes to do well. The admissions committee does not just let anyone in.

That was enough to get me through the first semester.

At this, the end of my second semester, I wonder really what I am doing. I have worked harder this semester than I have in any of my life; my life has been utterly consumed by school (I look at those around me dating and hanging out with friends all the time, and I think that those things would never fit in my life at the moment). Especially the end of the semester has been difficult: I had one week and one half one week to write two seminar papers and a portfolio. As a writing instructor, I feel particularly exposed when writing: if I do not do it well, should I really be teaching it?

Now that all is typed, printed, and submitted, I turn to my tasks this summer: reading, reading, reading, and more reading. I enter the phase of my master's degree that will consume my life for the next year: my thesis. In addition to this, I must prepare for the dreaded GRE subject and general test and begin preparing for entrance into PhD programs.

Life just never ends, does it? But it is a good life. Work is enjoyable; now that I have time between terms, I find myself being lazy and becoming bored, and I am not enjoying myself.

On to summer! And the brave new life that hath such interesting things in it. (Sometimes I wished I lived in a Shakespeare play; which is it I am alluding to?)

Something I Wrote a While Back. Any Feedback?

2008-01-05T11:55:00.000-06:00

Walking from School

Today, I stood, waiting for the light to change. Isn’t that the way it almost always is? I at least find myself always waiting for lights, waiting for that red, mechanical un-handlike hand to switch over to that little green man (why is it always a man; or maybe it’s a unisex representation of humankind, which is even scarier). Then I have to cross the street, at least half-way, before the red hand comes back to warn that my way will soon become the car’s way and death is imminent. Some people ignore that though, and I’ve never seen anyone get hit.

So after I crossed the intersection, I started walking down this long sidewalk next to a faculty parking lot. I reached the end of the lot and crossed another street, looking both ways as I was trained to do as a child. I started thinking about this essay. Mind, it’s been mulling around in my head for days, weeks, months, maybe even years—I just could never quite articulate it. My thoughts kept drifting in different directions, and then I thought of the next street over from the one I was walking on.

I sometimes take different paths, walking from school. A change of scenery, of pace, comes with renewal and a kind of peace. I used to love walking down the other road because the gutter along the side was amazing. It hadn’t been cleaned in years, and sported many botanical wonders. I always thought the gutter would make a great essay. The best thing about this gutter was that it grew things. Trees, bushes, strange mutations of snake grass, onions or leeks, and grass all grew with strength and vigor. The gutter was filled with so much dirt, grime, sewage, animal waste, and whatever else ends up in gutters that it created a wonderful blend of manure enough to satisfy many plants, and animals. I even saw a snail the size of a tennis ball in there once. Someone cleaned it a month ago, and it has lost its flavor.

My mind drifted to the gutter street when I found myself on another street. This street sports new condominiums. Across from those condos resides one of the most interesting places I know of. This area is mostly student housing with a few “normal people” somehow living randomly between all the college-goers. A duplex couple-housing unit faces the condos, but while half the duplex houses students, the other half houses normal people of a sort. An older couple live in the house. I see them sometimes under the tree in front of their duplex sitting on a lopsided chair/bench thing, a 70s-looking chair that is a robin-egg blue and tattered and quite rusty. The chair is really only big enough for one person, but there they often sit entwined together in a very non-sensual, unromantic position, arms draping about one another in a lazy, languid way, sharing a box of cigarettes, staring at those who dare to walk by. I dare, but always regret it. I pass them in a coughing fit.

I didn’t see the couple today, but one cold winter’s day, the woman approached me and my roommate as we walked to school. She wore what looked like her husband’s red lumberjack shirt, grayed and tattered with stains on it. Underneath this, she had on a pair of gray sweats that may have been white at one time. She also wore a coat, opened, but tattered and dirty. She carried a cigarette in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. Her hair was gray, white, blond, and dirt all stringy and dank. She walked towards us with a gait that reflected her old, gnarled face, yellow and black teeth that grew at random angles, and yellow eyes, dull with ignorance and a bit of what I think was shame. She begged for “just a dollar.” She hadn’t had any food for breakfast, and she didn’t have any money.

I mumbled that I didn’t have any money; I didn’t, but I felt really guilty. Even the thought that I was probably helping stop her drug problem by not providing her with money to buy more cigarettes didn’t help my guilt. I hadn’t had breakfast either because I was out of food, too; but I still felt guilty. Maybe I felt guilty because I was walking to a university where I was getting an education, and she was wandering the streets in ignorance.

One other interesting feature of the woman and man’s house is the fact that real pieces of headstones surround the yard, as a kind of hedge I guess. I wonder if the man is an undertaker or works at a place that makes headstones. Today while walking, I noticed the headstone, top broken off, lying in the gutter. I wasn’t curious, or brave, enough to look and see what it said, but I suddenly felt a wave of anger. Though these headstones don’t actually belong over a grave (they are probably mistakes or headstones that broke), it still feels disrespectful to me to have them in the gutter, in the yard. It’s quite morbid, too (though we get away with it at Halloween).

I walked through a primordial cemetery filled with headstones this summer with my roommate who loves ancestors with a passion. As I walked, I almost felt as if I was walking in the most sacred and holy place ever created. I could feel the spirits and lives of those buried beneath my feet. I studied their graves, noting early deaths, spouses, children, and late deaths. I wished to touch the headstones that date back two hundred years, but something stopped my hand. This place was only to be looked at, but never touched. Headstones are a symbol of death, but they are, for me, also a symbol of sacredness. I have so many ancestors buried beneath the ground, and I could never imagine disturbing their death-sleep of rest.

I know a little of my ancestors. I think it is a sad thing when people don’t know of the past, of their past. One ancestor I’ve always been drawn to. Her name is (Sarah) Elizabeth Mills Oakden Whitaker. She dawned a fiery red-headed beauty on a little island called the Isle of Man off the coast of Ireland, and she crossed the plains of the America West when only fifteen. A group of Sioux braves came upon her little wagon train one day, drove away some cattle and horses, and teased and tormented the children playing away from the safety of the wagon circle. My stalwart great-great-great grandmother, who insisted on being called Sarah because she didn’t like Elizabeth, took a large stick and hit one of the Sioux braves. He, in turn, carried her off with him to the Sioux Indian village. Never had those Indians seen the likes of Sarah. The squaws had never seen red hair before, and it took a few horses and some flour for her family to get her back again.

Yes, Sarah, really only a child, took the heart of the wagon train guide, Charles, and threw it back in his face when she married his brother, William. Yes, this woman’s brother-in-law, Charles, killed her husband (Charles said it was an accident) when she was only sixteen years old and eight months pregnant with her first child. Yes, this woman married a man (Thomas) she could never love, but he loved her until Brigham Young told otherwise: her heart was given to the father of her first son and how could a woman love a man who married another woman, young Hannah Waddoups, without her consent? Sarah was forced to nurse Hannah, whom she loathed, when Hannah became ill with pregnancy. But Sarah still had ten children with her husband.

Sarah is buried in a small cemetery in a small town in Utah. When I was about thirteen, I convinced my dad that I wanted to find her grave. It took us an hour, but we found her that Memorial Day. We put flowers on her grave, noting the dieing irises someone else had already brought. Without her, I would not be alive. Without her convictions and desire to walk for thousands of miles across a mostly-uncharted wilderness, her thousands of descendents would not be here today. That, I suppose, is why I feel strongly about graves and their stone markers.

But it’s amazing what can grow out of the gutter, out of the lives of the dead. I think of every person ever buried in a cemetery. Think of their lives and all they came in contact with. Think of their families, friends, loved ones. Think of the legacy that the dead have left behind. Think of the ignorance and learning and thoughts and love of those ever only dust now, rotting, rotting, rotting six feet under. Think of what that rot has produced: this world.

I came to another light today; waited; crossed; continued my walk. I looked south to the mountains there. Behind them is the cemetery I walked through not so long ago. Beyond them are other cemeteries containing others who created me. Beyond that, the world.

Today I had a thought: what if I didn’t stop walking when I reached “home”? What if I kept walking behind the mountains to stand in their shadows and walk among the dead? What if I walked beyond and found other headstones of my ancestors? What if I walked beyond all, into the world? Isn’t that what an education is all about: learning to enter the world and do something before you crumble and rot beneath grass, silk, and wood? I don’t know, but I do know that rotting can start before death, and I don’t want to have yellowed eyes of ignorance.

The world of blogging

2007-12-12T22:45:00.001-06:00

It's strange to me, this world of blogging. What I've browsed through haven't been what I would expect. They're mostly like personal websites put on a blogging site because it's free. Well, I say. Let my blog be a true blog, where I express my ideas and get response. It becomes a conversation. That is what a blog truly is: the conversation of ideas. And what's with advertisements? That's just cheap to me. Ideas are free and clutterless. Conversations are educational and nonmaterialistic. Living is about learning; learning is about discovering. Discovering is about living. It's an endless circle, you see.

Let us converse, now, you and I (and everyone else). Let us learn together about life. Ask me anything. I dare you.

Why is it when we all get into elevators we stare at the floor and study each other's shoes or stare at the emergency information and memorize it or look at the ceiling and wonder if it really has a trap door like in all the movies? Why don't we look at each other and talk? Why don't we smile at each other and laugh about the strangeness of cramming ten strangers in a four-by-four box to travel ten or one hundred feet together? Why don't we talk about the weather or the state of the economy or how we're dissatisfied with our presidential hopefuls? Why don't we learn about each other and discover the inner workings of a piece of the thing we call humanity?

In the beginning...

2007-12-10T12:20:00.002-06:00

So I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. It all began with my friend suggesting I check out her blog. I then realized that I could have my very own blog. Wow. And for free. Even better. So here I am. I'm not really sure why I'm blogging or to whom I'm blogging or even how I can justify doing this when I have a million other things to do that are much more important. But here I am. And so are you if you are reading this.

I discovered the meaning of the name of my blog while studying for the GRE (a test designed by the devil himself I believe). Tyro means novice. Erudition means earning mainly through books. I believe these words describe me. I'll let you make of them (and me) what you will.

So here I am. Putting myself out to the universe of the World Wide Web. Perhaps my ego with expand as I believe millions of people are reading my very profound and unique thoughts. We're all egotists, you know, but I more than any other.

You may applaud now.