Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Yes Thanksgiving, that little sliver of a holiday we used to celebrate in the fall. It once symbolized the harvest season, now it’s Black Friday eve. How odd that the Halloween pumpkins are still freshly smashed, and the elevators and doctor’s offices are cranking up the Christmas music. Quick--unbox the Christmas tree and spray the pine scent around. St. Visa will soon be here with ruby red-nose Rudolph.

But wait. What about Thanksgiving? What about over the river and through the woods? What about eating yourself sleepy at Grandma’s house and hiding Grandpa’s teeth? If Thanksgiving were in a favorite holiday pageant, and asked how it stacks up to Christmas What would it say?

Perhaps that Thanksgiving is less produced. At least less produced than Christmas or Independence Day, for example. Any holiday that keeps you out of the Mall or Wal-Mart is indeed a holiday.

While retailers lustfully wait for the day after Thanksgiving to absorb our credit and deposit our dollars, maybe we could put them off for a bit. (The notable exceptions, of course, are Best Buy and Home Depot, in which we need to share our coin during all the seasons.)

How about not just a day of Thanksgiving, a day off from Frosty and the Workshop Elves, but a season of Thanksgiving that begins the day after Halloween when we are thankful we are less compelled to eat everything in the pillowcase, and extend that until Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving day.

How do you beat a holiday dedicated to giving thanks? No one ever got arrested for being too thankful. It doesn’t cost anything and you don’t have to wait until it goes on sale. All it takes is a little pause. Look up at the night sparklers, take a walk like it was the first time with your eyes open, watch a baby smile, feed a duck (preferably to a falcon :) ) play hopscotch, rake a neighbors leaves, buy a stranger a Coke, remember well a friend before their funeral, thank God you don’t have a headache.

Thanksgiving like many holidays began with a feast, a little meal shared between neighbors signifying their gratitude for not killing each other. Still not a bad idea. And it can be done simply without committees and crowd control or frazzled worriers sure that someone will be misplaced from their name tagged plate.

One of my best Thanksgiving memories was set in New England. We lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, just a state away from the first harvest feast between pilgrims and their native neighbors. My sister and her husband came from Utah to visit and a second sister living in nearby New York also joined us. My parents were in South Africa, while the rest of our families were spread out in the West. The meal was a simple meal, with the rich patchwork textures of Connecticut as a backdrop.

John Greenleaf Whittier penned a Thanksgiving verse and symbolized the New England gathering of "pilgrim and guest" by calling his poem, The Pumpkin.

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

As my own past is called up, rich as pumpkin pie, the pie is ever pumpkin with hand whipped cream heaped with extra sugar when Mom turned her head. Along with family in easy chatter, what also calls the past is the autumn leaf. Especially the New England treelets. I see piles and shades of gold and red, huge Crayola snow flakes (the big box kind with the built-in sharper) gathering on lawns and stony fences and meandering down wandering roads.

And as a car whisks down the path, the leaves like color fairies are set in orbit and spin to new destinies. And I think of myself, whisking down a path toward the Thanksgiving day and meal. Whether simple or complex I will soak in the kitchen smells, thank the floured aprons, the pleasant table display, the chairs filled with loved ones.

I hope my thanks includes my help before, after or during, but know I will be trusted mostly during the after phase. I washed dishes professionally once, so will I draw on those skills. And then I will look for a soft chair, a good book and someone to catch up with. In all, I give thanks, and hopefully will make a season of it.

© Shayne Clarke 2008

Halloween Dance

At what turned out to be the second-to-last house for trick or treating, I noticed that my son Danaan, age six at the time, was doing a light dance as he waited for the candy to be disbursed. Seeing the choreography was similar to steps he does in the middle of the night while trying to remember which room contains a toilet, I yelled at him to dance straight to the car. I knew time was short. And while I calculated the chance of making it home before his bladder exploded, he turned and walked straight through the valley of the shadow of tooth decay to the next door.

And yes this house proved to be his last chance for free candy. By now the dance at the door rivaled the rhythm of an early morning aerobics class. He could barely hold his bag open. He had the focus of a cat waiting for the mouse to peek out. The focus had been the anticipated candy--was it a real Snickers or the “fun” size? (And don’t we all agree that a real fun size would be a foot long?) But the focus changed. Now it was like the vulture eating in the middle of the road, who thinks to himself, “Can I take one more bite before the on-coming truck hits me?”

Or sure he could have said, “Excuse me Ma’am, thanks again for the Smarties, but I was wondering if I could use your bathroom before I pee my pants?” But of course, this doesn’t happen. And I would have bet a Big Hunk, on that one. I was six once. I peed my pants right there in the lunch room because I was afraid to ask someone where the little boy’s room was. And then I had to sit there all during lunch hoping it would dry before I had to go back to class. It didn’t.

I knew Danaan wouldn’t ask. I knew it really was the last door as he scampered down the steps and raced to the car. I also knew we were in trouble as his steps moved quickly from the high-energy, high-stepping stride of a bathroom seeker, to the slow, wide-walking waltz of a shower seeker. His face morphed from a candy thrill-seeker to the Pillsbury doughboy who just met a rolling pin.

The appropriate response to his state was unclear. There is just something funny about the walk of a kid who has just peed his pants, and as much I as wanted to bust out laughing, I had to restrain. He wasn’t sure how to respond either. This was the first time his bladder almost exploded on Candy Night.

His face was a menu of embarrassed laughter and suppressed tears. When he got to the car, I had to make a mature decision. Where do you seat a soiled kid? Do I have him waddle along the side of the car the remaining blocks home? Do I have him ride on the hood? Putting him in the trunk on Halloween was probably not a good idea. Do I go home and get the truck? Call a tow truck? And then I remember he has enough candy in his bag to keep us most saturated in calories until next October. “Hop in bud!” I say warmly. “Let me hold your bag for you.”

My 9/11

Writing a blog entry on 9/11 is I’m sure a common event today. As it should be. The events of September 11, 2001 are indelibly etched in our memories and in our hearts.

At the moment, I am out of town, as I was on September 11, 2001. Then I was in Atlanta, Georgia attending a trade show across the street from the CNN Center. There was speculation that the communication giant was a potential target. The Nation was on high alert generally and individually. My colleagues and I were for the most part trapped in the city. Airplanes were grounded. Many people from my company jumped on a bus and began a long ride back to Utah. They had no confidence in the airlines.

My bet was, that once we were allowed to fly, we would be safer than every before. I flew with confidence once we could several days later.

Reflections: I remember gathering for prayer in an old red brick church in downtown Atlanta. It may have been a Baptist, or Methodists, it didn’t matter. We didn’t gather as registered parishioners, we prayed as brothers and sisters who knew less about the world than we did a few days before. What we knew for sure was there is a God and that we were his children. How the prayers were offered or how the church was decorated mattered little.

I remember public prayers offered in groups outside office buildings. People dressed in suits or jeans circled in prayer, calling upon the almighty to understand and heal the might event unfolding before us. As groups huddled in prayer or stood trying to make sense of the events, it reminded me of terrible events and serious reflection from Nephite survivors as they listen to a still voice in the dark. Perhaps those days in Atlanta was a preview to scenes we’ll see when the still voice sounds a second time.

I remember looking for my expression of the Red, White and Blue. Suddenly pins, and hats and t-shirts were in high demand and worn be all who could. I finally found my version, a Red, White, and Blue New York Yankees hat with the N and Y spangled with stars. I wore it proudly on the plane home, and for many days after that.

New York is a sweet spot for me. I worked in Manhattan for four years, had business meeting in the twin towers, took scouts to a high rise office to watch 4th of July fireworks in the New York Harbor. I spent many days in many of the surrounding buildings also damaged on 9/11 that day. It was hard to imagine that these two giants were down, their neighbors shook too hard and so many people went with them. I don’t have the capacity to comprehend what really happened that day. The individual stories of heroism and hell. It is too big. Too many lives ruined, too many futures disrupted.

But I admire the great spirit of New York. The spirit of rebuilding the beautiful out of the smoldering ashes. The spirit of not letting despair break them forever. The spirit to fight back. It is more than just ignoring the past, of just putting it out of mind as though it had not happened. It is taking what happened and making that experience meaningful by not being enfeebled by it, but somehow being empowered by it.
© Shayne Clarke 2008

Tis The Season

Photo © Shayne Clarke

The Falconry season is getting near, and I am having happy thoughts. I think it is the same kind of feeling some people get when the first football is kick and the guy behind them has spilled his beer and semi-digested corn dog all over them, or the autumn scent of deer camp where campfires are burning marshmellow and kids tennis shoes and the mountains are ablaze with thousands of hunters marching through the woods trying to shoot anything not dressed in blaze orange, or the best man who learns at the last second that he really gets to be the groom, well anyway soon I will be flying falcons again. And that is a happy thought.

This pix is a male prairie falcon.

Trip Inside Your Head

My brother had an unusual friend. His friend was always doing bizarre things. Once he flew to New York City, dressed up in a bunny outfit and stood prominently in the crowd outside behind the Today show hosts. He was a bunny on national television. My brother remarked that he would love to spend the day in his friend’s mind, but only if he could be absolutely certain he could get out. U2 has a more pleasant version of strolling around someone’s brain. In the song Miracle Drug by U2 Bono sings:

I wanna trip inside your head
Spend the day there
To hear the things you haven't said
And see what you might see
I wanna hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all
I wanna see your thoughts take shape and work right out

There seems to be a secret desire in most people to spend time in another person’s mind. I believe we are all fascinated by what others think. This is especially true of the essayist and the reader of essays. Phillip Lopate quoted Elizabeth Hardwick writing about the essayist that, “We consent to watch a mind at work…” when we study the essay. We want to see “thoughts take shape” and to see how those thoughts might work things out. It is the process, the thinking, the mind at work that is fascinating, not just the thoughts themselves. How often have mothers asked their teenagers, “I want to know what were you thinking!” And most teenagers are thinking, “Yeah me too, how do we do that?”

Certainly there are some minds at work that are more intriguing than others. The offer has often been a penny for your thoughts, but in reality, we are willing to pay much more for that for some thoughts. It is more than just the thoughts that attract us to the essayist. Lopate refers to Montaigne that with the essayists we “track the person’s thoughts struggling to achieve some understanding of a problem.” One of the reasons essays appeal to me is when I read an essay and see someone struggling for meaning or just see how the thoughts take shape, I feel I have been invited to join them. People who have everything all figured out, or at least suppose they do aren’t as interesting as those who are struggling to figure things out and allow you to join them in the journey.

A classmate remarked recently their reticence for talking about themselves in their essays. They felt they might border on the confessional if they speak too much of themselves. Yes I believe that confessional writing has its place, and as long as that place is far from me that is fine, but it is the very thing, talking about ones thinking, not necessarily oneself, that is attractive. It is though the trip inside the head is both for the reader and the writer. And they can examine the experience together.

[This was a weekly essay I wrote for a graduate class]

© 2008 Shayne Clarke

Web site or website or Fire and Ice?

In class, yesterday we had a violent discussion about how to spell Web site. Being the Lord of the Class, I fought valiantly and won. I then went home to make sure folks hadn’t changed their opinion on the matter while we were battling. So I quote the bowtie crowd below as they continue to evangelize the spelling of Web site.

The fight is amusing and in the end the common folk usually win. Will we call the darn thing a “website” in formal communication any time soon? Probably. But the real question is whether the world will end in fire or in ice? And which will really suffice?


AP StyleBook 2008

Q. I'm just curious as to whether or not AP is considering changing Web site to website. I've read some great arguments for it--namely that Internet, or Web, is a specific place and therefore a proper noun, whereas there are a number of websites ... it's simply noun. In your response to my question, can you please explain why AP chooses Web site? – from Montana on Mon, Jan 07, 2008
A. AP decided early on that Web site was a component of the World Wide Web -- two words, capital W. However, we lowercase compound nouns based on it (such as webcam). There are no plans to change this.

Q. Why does AP insist on using the outdated "Web site" instead of the more common (at least in venues that do not follow AP style) "website"? Are there instances in which writing it as "Web site" is less confusing than "website," or is there some other reason? – from Columbus, Ohio on Wed, Jan 16, 2008
A. Actually, Web site (two words) is quite widely used by news organizations, including those with their own style guides. In any case, AP usage isn't imposed outside.

Q. We follow AP Style at our agency%3B however, it's starting to feel a bit 'old school' to continue using the word Web site (official AP Style) instead of website. I want to follow your guidelines and was wondering if you guys are making a change with regard to how you reference the word. Is it in proper in your book to use 'website' instead of 'Web site?' – from Sacramento, CA on Tue, May 22, 2007
A. We have no plans at the present to change our style on Web site.

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Chicago Manual of Style

Internet, Web, and Other Post-Watergate Concerns

Q. Which is currently accepted: Web site, web site, website, or Website?

A. A lot of people are writing “website.” A lot of people have come to prefer “website.” But formal usage still calls for “Web site,” in recognition of the initiatives of the World Wide Web Consortium (write “Web-site” as an adjective). The most elaborately formal modern American publication I can think of, the New Yorker, still writes “Web site,” but then again, they also write “E-mail,” “coördinate,” and “reëxamine”—they are very particular. We at Chicago are very particular too, and we recommend “Web site.” But our press as a whole is not in the position of publishing a single, unified publication—such as a magazine. It is easier to apply a set of standard rules and never vary from them for one publication, but rules applying to all sorts of books, articles, and other writing must be a little more flexible. Moreover, when a word gets used a lot it tends to lose any awkward edges (and what could be more awkward than a compound formed of one capitalized word and one lowercased word?). Each new book that appears on the scene presents an opportunity for an author to express a usage preference or to demonstrate a familiarity with changing usage.

But generally, I would recommend “Web site” for formal writing, but “website” for informal writing or friendly writing. Unless, of course, you prefer “Web site” even when you’re being friendly.”

Soft People

"Soft people are easy targets." Renee who cuts my hair said this in consoling fashion to her daughter on the phone. Not that I was eavesdropping.

Eating Your Own Dog Food

There’s a great phrase in business described as “Eating your own dog food,” which is loosely related to “Putting your money where your mouth is,” and has cousins eating chips and drinking ice tea all about the cliché reunion. It means if you are serious about your product, you will use it. I’m teaching English 316 (Technical Communications) at BYU, one of the local universities here in Orem, and am making my good students create and maintain a blog.

Yes this is cruel and unusual, but that’s what teachers are—it is part of the code. The code also includes wearing a sports coat and never combing your hair. But I digress (which is also part of the code) so I will return to the blog discussion and eating my own dog food. I figured the only fair thing to do as I challenged my students to a blog was to expose my little blog as well.

My blog here is a rough draft effort, to be sure, and will probably always be so, but what the hey. If I can do it, they can do it. And they will do it, because they have to, and I will fail them miserably if they don’t, and they will never amount to anything if they don’t… just joshing with you, my beloved students—blogging is still only worth 40/1000 points.

Actually, by exposing myself here and eating my own dog food, I will share the joy and pain of blogging and my students will become worthy citizens in the world of words, as Neal A. Maxwell stated once. And further, as a side benefit to me, they might be inclined to not use as many swear words in their teacher evaluation at the end of the semester.

So welcome English 316 Section 07. May we go forward with our heads held high, ours blogs filled with frivolity and fervor, purpose and pain, alliteration and assonance, Bono and Edge, Dwight and Michael, Fred and Ginger (Flintstone and Grant (Ginger’s last name from Gilligan’s’ Island)) Barry and Regan, chocolate and …more chocolate—European of course. Blog On!

Twilight

I finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer last night. Why Twilight? U2’s PopMart tour in 1997 included an outrageous stage set including a huge mirror-ball lemon. When asked “Why a lemon?” by reporters, The Edge replied, "Why not a lemon?" Why Twilight? Why not Twilight?

One of the reasons I read Twilight is to see why it is so compelling for so many people—particularly women kind of people. There is a strange energy about it. Some have talked about it in such addictive terms, like Diet Coke or European chocolate. Others, wanting to raise themselves above the common folk, look down their noses at it. Better to read Jane Austin or Emily Bronte.

Am I comparing Meyer to these seasoned standards of literature? No, not comparing or contrasting, I will leave that discussion for the academics. And such discussion rages on. There are Web sites and blogs galore that defend and critique, praise and put down the morality, the academic validity, and so forth. And then you add the Mormon spin to the whole business and it doesn’t take too many Googles on the Web to see that folks are pretty exercised about these tales.

But in the end, that’s what they are. They are tales. They are stories, and we all like to read or listen to a great story. And we need a good story to give our heads a rest from the reality of our own lives sometimes. I read Twilight to see what all the fuss is about. And now I get it. It is a compelling read, and in my view, a great story. Was it the Great American Novel? I wasn’t looking to read the Great American Novel. Did it take into consideration and treat well all the moral issues of the day? I don’t know.

Should we who are trying to be perfect by the weekend spend our time here, or much rather in the scriptures or an LDS historical novel where we at least get credit for studying Church History? I think it is possible to read Stephanie Meyer and still obtain the highest degree of the highest glory.

And actually I don’t wish to spend any more time analyzing it. There are thousands of sites doing just that. I would rather read than write about reading, so I shall quit writing and get started on New Moon, which I have already heard isn’t as good as the others, so I will start liking it from the first page.

Fresh Trapped Prairie Falcons

Fresh Trapped Praire Falcons from an old photo gallery.

Blogging From My Phone

Check it out! Blogging from my phone! Think of the possibilities. I
could blog during boring meetings, While I am lost in the mountains,
numb during piano recitals, in jail etc. Gotta love technology!
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile mobile.google.com

What Is The Deal With Blogging?

The first time someone invited me to visit their blog, my reaction was "Why would I want to read what you have to say?" The approach had a familiar ring, "And if you invite three friends, and they invite three friends, we'll fill our garages full of crap we can never sell or ever use ourselves in an average lifetime."

And then I saw a few more blogs that reminded me of Christmas newsletters. The ones where the kids are fresh from perfectland dripping wet with self-esteem and the parents, in all modesty, are doing more that year than the rest of us schmoes could possibly do in a lifetime, bless their hearts.

And then my daughters, perfect darlings themselves, started blogging as did other family members and friends and suddenly it looks there is a movement going on here--like iPods, avocados, and going to the gym.

Suddenly, I'm late. Everyone has a date to the dance but me. But wait, "You there in the back room, sweeping. Is that you Cinderella?"

So here I am blogging. I have a picture so far; I have a bunch of words tossed about. But my question remains, "Why in the world would anybody want to read what I have to say?"

And maybe that's the trick. Nobody is actually reading blogs, it is just a weird conspiracy by devious English teachers trying to get people to write again. Or maybe it is a consortium of the people making digital cameras needing distribution.

Or maybe it's just fun to amuse ourselves and the twelve people we pay to come to our blogs. And that's enough. What better amusement can one be involved in? True there is a lot actually, but what the hey, if scribbling blog droppings can be as amusing as this first blog post, perhaps I will post more.

One of my self-proclaimed titles is "writer", so maybe this will just be a place where I do that, so I can say to people I am trying to impress, "Yeah I have a blog, several iPods, and just this morning I went to the gym.

I guess if real people start to read this stuff, beyond the other three personalities in my head, I hope they (you) don't expect much. I have this weird perfectionist thing going where if I think actual humans will be reading this I will spend forever making it grammatically correct and put commas, where they should go.

I also might be tempted to skim off part of the sarcasm and make sure I don't offend people--at least on purpose. So I guess I give myself licence to dump rough draft stuff here and maybe even some stuff that is a little more polished like the stuff I wrote on a train commuting into New York City many years ago, or my thoughts on the Vermont Maple Blueberry salad from Zupas.

Well that feels like enough for a first blog entry. Now how do you spell check this stuff?