but if you're really looking for my heart...

check here. (yes, that is my mother.)


with these people.




I know this is a super old pic, but it might be one of my all-time favorites.

I left my heart in San Francisco

This weekend Cait came to visit.

We rode cable cars.


Checked out Coit Tower.


Looked at the bridge.



Strolled through Chinatown...


and made a few other stops along the way. Yay for visitors!

happy hirthday hane

dear sister,

remember that time when you were babysitting and you wrote me that letter about all the fun things that we would do when the parents were away (which probably included the old standbys: house, school, playing with boxes, dressing David up, taste testing concoctions at the kitchen bar), and at the end of the letter you made a big promise about not being bossy, likely trying to win back my love after the last time you made me pull you around in the box or sing only/all boy parts from the disney tunes while you sang the princess parts? i dare say that letter worked, little miss bossy boots.

To you I attribute:
-my love for music, country to opera and most of what's in between (though I take credit for the Beatles.)
-my love for loud music in every room of the house, and shall we say the student has surpassed the master?
-whatever fashion sense i have, including with make-up, though you have always had a more artistic vibe for all that. let's not forget the era of platforms, particularly the rubbery velcro ones, or the backwards sweater, or the bell bottoms, or the insane number of times you tried to pull my hair back from my face with a barrette.
-my compulsion to turn every slight event into a memory.
-my love of air-popped popcorn. you fueled my ego pretty big on this account, convincing me that no one makes air-pop like i pop, and thereby ensuring that i would make it at your whim anytime you asked. though i've usually made it for myself before you ask.
-my silliness.
-my ability to sing along with music in the car.
-my wardrobe, since half of it is yours
-my free-spirit tendencies
-my self-esteem, as you encourage me way more than my skills merit

To many hours staying up late in bed, watching movies, singing, cooking, hiding from swim lessons, and so on:
You are my biggest fan.
(this is a line where tone is everything--comes from a movie, or maybe just from Steph...)

But really. Love you sister. Love you muchas smoochas. Thanks for keeping things interesting (see picture above).

P.S. I know you don't feel like you're something amazing with your baby boy, but I do. And Mammina is proud.

We've got some lucky girls

I've started working at a summer camp, so Teton Valley Ranch Camp (pictured above) has been on my mind. When I worked at TVRC, having never worked at a summer camp before, I was very aware of what I thought were problems in program, operation, management, etc. I was the typically arrogant low-level worker who feels underappreciated and overworked and so on. Now, having worked at two other camps and grown up just a very little bit (measuring maturity by milimeter), I see TVRC for the remarkable camp that it is, and TVRC's management as equally extraordinary (Tom, I'm talking to you--not that he or anyone from camp would read this in a bazillion years).

I had a dream in today's early morning: I was visiting camp and everything had changed. It was all business and science and "education"; the camp was under review and suspicion because it didn't produce quantifiable intellectual results. It was being sold and no one seemed to care about what would be lost. I tried to defend the camp (this part is ironic because I have done little to nothing in reality to preserve or support camp since working there despite my love for the ideals, for which I feel bad) and I spoke to as many people as I could about what camp does for kids that you can't quantify or see on a test, and how intellectual brilliance is not sufficient for society. It was actually a really depressing dream. I love that place.

I like analyzing my dreams (you may remember this from the TopRamen dream a while back.) This one, like most of my dreams, seems pretty clear. I have a new job, so camp is on the brain. Reading between the lines, you may guess that this camp...is a far far distant land other side of the world cry from TVRC, and I've been adjusting my expectations and standards. I had a brief conversation last night about "No Child Left Behind" and I'm frustrated by uniform tests across the board and how people have to sell out at various levels to meet standards that may or may not be effective. I'm frustrated by "what's best for the kids" not being what's best at all, and I'm frustrated by the complicated reality of summer camp here, which is a place to put kids so parents can do other things.

This bottom picture is me coming back from my rough ride at TVRC. That was a magical day.

Noteworthy

I read this article in The New Yorker called Show and Tell: Should Creative Writing Be Taught? (read it here) and it was interesting stuff. Old news stuff, mostly, like academia is a closed circle full of inbreeding (they produce the critics and the literature) and blah blah blah, but still, maybe you should check it out. I enjoyed it.

Today I ate chocolate cookies baked by "the Bishop's personal chef" (we're talking the Bishop of Oakland I think) and, honestly, I thought they'd taste better than they did. Maybe the Bishop has particular tastes.

Last night I touched sand for the first time since coming to California. I felt salt water on my face though I still haven't touched the bay or the ocean.

Last night I thought the stars were falling, every single one of them. Rather, low wispy clouds were moving north and the stars were staying put. Still lovely, but not as lovely.

Two days ago I saw a homeless man standing on a street corner. He moved as though he was shooting the sun into the sky over and over; swish--straight net, every time.

I heard on the radio that Arnold Swarzschenaguare has decided to replace all the California public school textbooks with online textbooks, because "the Internet is the most effective way to learn in the classroom." Really?

I read another interesting bit on education in the opinion section of the San Fran Chronicle (read it here), which quoted G.K. Chesterson saying education "is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." I agree. I also agree with the sentiment, "In a famine, you do not eat your seed corn. It might fill your belly for a day, but it will ensure a horizon of barren harvests." Education is the seed corn. The argument as a whole might be a little underbaked, but I do like seeing people sticking up for education (even if they do come from the UC board of regents.)

Just some thoughts.

Manifesto

I believe in a future that is better than the past.

I believe in love.

I believe in doing well by my body machine, and I believe in beautiful food being goodforme food.

I also believe in sweets.

I believe in redemption, in change, in forgiveness, in I'M SORRY, in the smell after rain.

I believe in people meaning what they say, and words saying what they mean.

I believe in art making a difference. I believe in humans as creators. I believe in creativity.

I believe in education could be the future that is better than the past; I believe in try looking at things a different way; I believe in families are education. I believe in education. I believe.

I believe in life having a purpose and me having a purpose and even the rock in the center of BYU campus whose purpose is unknown having a purpose.

I believe in community, belonging, home.

I believe in natural light and windows rolled down and dirt under fingernails.

I believe in something bigger than me, and bigger than you, and bigger than us and them, and that something bigger is God.

I believe in outside.

I believe in making plans and letting plans go, especially if either results in a conversation with an old friend. Or a new friend. And I believe in conversations making me late, making me miss class, making me happier than punctuality and class.

I believe in needing each other.

I believe in being honest about needing each other, even when we are alone and happy about it.

I believe in places that no one has ever gone, which don't make the places where people have gone and still go in great numbers any less magnificent.

I believe in broken hearts for things that are lost.

I believe in rooms full of books and reading aloud. I believe in time-of-life books, in the right book for everyone, in endless books in both directions, in reading should never be the wheel stuck in the mud.

I believe in people. I believe in the goodness of people.

I believe in special occasions.

I believe in sticking with what you care about most, even when the easier, clearer, less complicated thing to do is to give it up.

I believe in believing. I really do.

A Glass Elevator

I live next to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Except they don't make sweets inside, they make movies. And it's not like I never see anyone come in or out--I do, though not many; people glide through the parking gates on beach cruisers with PIXAR tatooed on the butt of the cushy leather seats. And instead of the smell of chocolate goodness wafting through my windows, it's the sound of a pile driver that sets pace for my pulse. (Pixar is remodeling.) And instead of big wrought iron gates, there's a long stretch of wall that is covered in pink blossoms. So, no. It's not Wonka's Factory, but I do think that there is magic behind those walls and somewhere inside in a secret secret room there's the secret to happiness.

Everyone knows happiness can't be bought. Let's set that thought aside, then, and imagine what it would look like if it could be bought, or how much we'd be willing to pay.

Happiness Exhibit A:
Tuesday night HAPPY hour at Teacake Bakery. I have not been on the mad cupcake bandwagon that's been sweeping the nation (don't you just love phrases like saaawweeeping the nation?), but I have been on the eternal "sweets are the goodness of life" bandwagon. And while I don't go for the frosting shots, half off cupcakes are right up my alley.

Apparently, after rereading, I'm only willing to pay half price for happiness. I'm a cheapskate, a miser, a SCROOGE.


I can never finish the wild ambitions I start on. As my tennis teacher once told me, I lack follow through. (I've also heard this often from people on the other end of my answering machine....) I should remember this when I start an a), b), c), or 1), 2), 3) routine. If I would just leave off the numbers, no one would ever know I had petered out.

Back to happiness though, Leo whatshisname tried making a Happiness Machine in Dandelion Wine, which may be the best book of the summer (every summer, in fact), but his machine ruined everything. Technology has advanced, and I'm sure if Leo could simply get through those gates to that secret secret room where Pixar keeps the key....

In other news, I've hit upon the ideal analogy: temp agency employers = parol officers. I get my daily check-up call to see if I've gotten into trouble and if I'm keeping my "skills" up for the distant day when I will be assimilated back into productive society. Their condescension reminds me that they make their money off of my transience, and perhaps don't mean it when they sickly sweetly encourage my efforts to get off the streets of unemployment. Morticians need dead people, cops need criminals, temp agencies need me. Ahh. To be needed.

And last of all, a line from Joan Didion: "Some women fight and others do not."