"I know why you're always tired..."

I was telling my friend Steve that I always fall asleep places--in school, at church, and now, each morning during my Barbri review class.

"My family--" I said, "we can fall asleep anywhere. It's a family thing. We heard once that you know you're under-rested when you can lay down on the floor of your office and fall asleep in ten minutes. We laughed when we heard that because we can always fall asleep, almost anywhere and at anytime." Steve looked nonplussed. "It's a family thing," I said. He said nothing.

Tonight, I called to ask him a Barbri question, and halfway through the conversation, Steve interjected emphatically (emphasis like this being something of an anomaly with him): "I know why you're always tired. I see your light on in gchat until like...two in the morning! Falling asleep in class. Ha! It's not a family thing. You're tired because you stay up late!"

I laughed. I laugh. I thought back to two nights ago, when some new boys were over, and one said to me, "Are you a night owl?" and I began to say "not really," when Michelle made a sort of snorting/knowing/objecting noise, and I looked at her, and she said, "You are a night owl. Yes, you are!" She turned to the boys and said, "I go to bed, and when I wake up, Sarah tells me things that happened to her after she went to sleep. Things she's learned, conversations she's had, things she's done. Sarah has this entire life after I go to sleep."

(Note: Last night after Michelle went to sleep, I drove her car to Las Vegas. And back again.)

I remembered back to my second year of college, when I had a roommate who went to bed consistently and uncomplainingly at 9 pm. She did work early in the morning, admittedly, but to go to bed, every night, during the summer, at 9 pm STILL requires discipline and decision-making the likes of which I had not yet theretofore seen. So, one day, I asked her: "Jacqui, how do you know when it's time for you to go to sleep? How do you decide when your day is done and you should go to sleep?" She said, almost without blinking, "I go to bed when I've done everything I need to do." I was baffled. She had a to-do list. When she'd completed it, she went to sleep. Wash dishes--check. Fold laundry--check. Do visiting teaching--check. Next up? Bed--check.

I realized then that I was a sort of nocturnal optimist--that each night I stayed up late and late and later, waiting, waiting, waiting, just in case the best part of my day was still ahead of me. Thinking (irrationally, I know) that if I stayed up just a little bit longer, the day might bring its best treasures. Boys? Lovin'? Cookies? Transcendence? I'm not sure exactly what, but something. Something GREAT.

Having identified it--and becoming more committed to the sheer and almost overwhelming goodness of sleep--I thought I had left those voluntarily nocturnal ways behind. I really, honestly thought I had become a different girl, more committed to sleep, to good habits, to daytime living than I was in my pre-grad youth. All these years--all these years, I thought I'd changed.

But it is 12:41 am, and I am up entirely at my own volition. And when I'm falling asleep tomorrow during my review class (as I inevitably will), maybe it will not be the product of some mysterious narcoleptic family tendencies. Maybe it will be because I went to bed--again, again, for the umpteenth night in a row--at an indecent and ungodly* hour.

* "Retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated." D&C 88:124

The Memorial Day Weekend Wind-Up

Well, I'm well back from my whirlwind mid-Atlantic East Coast adventure. I saw my foster brother Joe in his new Marine Man mode. I had my toenails painted by my nephew Soren (his first time nail painting; I was grateful he was willing--my nail painting is profession-confirmingly bad). I jumped into a cold, cold pool, courtesy of the many enthusiastic demands of my intrepid niece Coco. I raced Dan and Nate in an underwater swimming competition (Dan won, but I like to think it was a close race). And I realized, once again, I am my parents' daughter, as we three similarly and delightedly negotiated our South Carolinian hotel's breakfast offerings.


Once back in DC, I reconnected with former and future roommates--Alison, Jeanette, Erika, Becky, Stephanie. I cartripped from DC to OBX (North Carolina's Outer Banks) in a baby blue convertible VW with J-Lym, E-Borg, R-Rygg. In North Carolina, I spent two afternoons on a beach, one morning at church, one morning running and panting through the hot (hot!) NC sun, and two evenings choosing couch-chatting with the girls instead of crowd carousing with the young single adult LDS masses. I reconnected with Rich A., the first boy I ever went on a date with; with Maren R., a blonde-headed woman out of my Stover Hall heart and past; with Bobby H., a law school compadre expatriated to DC for year; and with Jed B., a white-toothed and smiley-faced law student friend, with whom I had two Welch's fruit snack fights (the second of which, I have to say, he totally won).


And then, given a day by myself in DC, with an empty house, all my friends at work, and all my Barbri books and supplies around--I watched an entire day of TV. I opened with Fever Pitch in the morning (a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy I'd never even heard of, surprisingly satisfying) and, in the afternoon, I stocked up on 3, 4, maybe 5 episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City, a Bravo-network reality TV show (of course). And then I did a short run before a short trip to the airport and a 5-hour, TV-full flight on JetBlue back to OAK (and to Reija, who so kindly picked me up and returned me home).

That is my Memorial Day Weekend report. I did not hike the Grand Canyon. I did not visit a long-distance boyfriend. I did not decide to go medical school. I did not make any professional or academic headway. I did not even meaningfully consider the wartime sacrifices of those who lived and died in ages past. (Memorial Day Weekend doings of some I know and love.) But I did have a good, good time. A good time.

And I will remember that.

Probably.

The New Awesome

You know what's the new awesome? Unsubscribing from all of the commercial lists that automatically generate me emails. I have, in the past, just deleted those that come in. Whipwhip, check box click button, deleted. But I've decided--maybe I should just use those two clicks to hit the unsubscribe link (always hidden at the bottom of the email) and then to hit the "confirm remove" box that inevitably comes up and see if I can free myself from the files that bind.

It's a gosh darn liberating feeling.

Here's to a lighter, purer inbox of tomorrow!

Two Recipes

I'm about to head off for a week(end) on the East Coast (DC to SC to GA to DC to NC to DC to home because, among other things, my sort of brother Joe F. is graduating from marines boot camp, and I'm going to get to see him, my parents, my brothers Dan and Nate, and Nate's kids, all in the beautiful southern locale of Parris Island, SC--how appropriate is that for Memorial Day?), but before I go, I wanted to post these two recipes I collected at a recent surprisingly satisfying enrichment about cooking.

I plan on making both in my near future lifetime. (Thanksthanks, Rechele.)

Edamame Puree

• 2 1/2 C cooked edamame (without pod, of course)--you can put more (the recipe originally called for 2 1/2 lbs of cooked edamame, but Rechele made it first with the smaller amount, and I liked it better)
• 2 lg garlic cloves, minced or pressed
• 1 1/4 t fresh thyme, chopped
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 1/2 t salt
• pepper to taste
• 1/2 C extra virgin olive oil
• 2-4 T water

Combine all but olive oil and water in a food processor and pulse to a coarse consistency. Slowly add olive oil with motor running. Adjust seasoning. Slowly add water to reach desired consistency.

Serve on crackers or--what did Rechele call them?--crustinis. Crustinis. Little slices of sourdough bread, toasted with a bit of olive oil. So, so good.

Omi's Coconut Curry Cheese Ball

• 11 oz cream cheese, softened
• 3 heaping T sour cream
• 1/2 C currents (or raisins)
• 1/2 C chopped cocktail peanuts, salted
• 1/2 C chopped green onions, chopped fine
• 2 t curry powder
• sweetened flaked coconut
• mango chutney (if desired)

Mix the first six ingredients together. Put coconut on wax paper. Roll cheese into a ball on wax paper. Put cheese ball in refrigerator. Serve with mango chutney (optional) and crackers (less optional).

I really liked this second recipe--I'm all for curry--but it was a little sweet for me. Maybe the currents are less sweet than the raisins I had it with? Maybe I'd put in more curry and more salted peanuts and less raisins and more sour cream? Maybe I'd put in more green onions chopped less fine? I don't know. Something. In any case, it was super tasty, and I'm make it (and experiment with it) again again for sure.

Let me know how it goes. Semper fi.

"It's like elf food."

I watch what TV I watch online via a site called hulu.com. You have to register for it (it's beta right now; beta, of course, being internet speak for hip*), but it has a good sampling (and clean design supporting) some of today's best shows. The downside is that during each show, you have to watch "limited commercial interruptions," which means anywhere from 3-5 15ish second commercials. There is not a wide variety of commercials.

A particularly frequent commercial is a Citi Card commercial, in which a couple go to an exclusive restaurant, enjoy the decor, the ambiance, the service, the wine--and then the food comes. It is, as the husband/boyfriend says, "like elf food." The scene changes, of course, and we see the couple happily/hungrily grabbing chips at a convenience store, as they buy real food and end the commercial by toasting each other with dingdongs or Hostess cupcakes or something. (You can tell I've watched this commercial too often. I have, as a final recourse, taken to muting the commercials to at least avoid the haunting, tinkling music and ergo keep my sanity.)


Tonight I went to SF to hang out with Kristine, a good friend who moved there last year. We walked the streets of the Castro, where she lives. We climbed a beautiful hill and walked a park that gave us a view of both sides of SF--towards the bay and towards the sea. We wandered down Market and Valencia, looking for a place to eat. We passed up Thai and Indian (they've been feeling too sweet for me lately, which is ironic, seeing as I just downed a late-night bowl of chocolate frozen yogurt/banana/chocolate chips/mini chocolate peanut butter cups/and milk) and an Italian restaurant with only five dinner entrees and a room full of patrons but only one female. (This is the Castro, after all.) We ended up at Farina, a lovely looking Italian place that boasted a 40-minute wait (it was a beautiful evening, and everyone and his mother was getting out to eat). Kristine and I were hungry--we'd walked this big hill--and we were eager to eat, but we put our names down and dutifully meandered till she was called.

Once in, we drained our bottle of water, manhandled the four pieces of bread they gave us, and chose quickly before our server could forget we were there. I ordered pasta with pesto, green beans, and patate (potatoes). $20.

I was told once, by somebody, that a true serving of pasta is one-half cup. I was also told by this someone that American restaurants typically serve pasta in two-cup quantities. (Just another example of American gastronomic excess.) Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you--I almost found myself wishing I'd ordered the primo and the secondi whatever, cost be darned, just like the menus always intimate I should. On my plate, my little pesto pile was very much like elf food.

It was such a small pile of green, on such a big plate of white, that I wanted to laugh. In fact, I did laugh. I laughed between each of my ten bites, until I scraped the plate clean of sauce, ate the basil garnish, and cried.

Afterword: But you know what? Afterwards, I wasn't particularly hungry. Turns out maybe one-half cup of hand-rolled, homemade pasta is a serving. Dieticians, you win.

*william corrected me: hulu.com no longer requires registration, which maybe means it's no longer beta, which maybe means that while it's both more user-friendly, it's also more mainstream and is quickly becoming both (a) (revenue for) the man and (b) closer to jumping the coolness shark. That being said, I've recently watched more than 30 hours of hulu, and I was supremely grateful. Note: If you are watching a show on hulu and you are being limitedly interrupted by the new commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups--you've scored. They're all music and printed text that is, all things considered, comparatively witty. No muting required.

Blogroll

You'll see that I finally (finally) added a blogroll to my blog. If you have or know of a blog you think I should have linked here, let me know, and I'll likely/happily add it. I tried my hardest to be comprehensive, but I'm just in the collecting phase. If your blog was forgotten, do not think I don't love you. I probably do.

Probably. :)

"What have you been doing since graduation?"

I've been blog-quiet of late. I will admit that I haven't even been particularly busy.

It's true that graduation weekend was (happily, happily) jam-packed. My family came for the Great Weekend, during which we lunched at Melville, hiked the Dish, surfed in Santa Cruz, ate at Pluto's, shopped at the Milk Pail, prepped for my graduation barbecue (which included, among other things, the preparing of six homemade sauces, three kinds of buns, four kinds of grilled "meats," eight kinds of cheese, more than 2o sundry toppings, and I'd guess more than fifteen pounds of hand-made sweet potato fries), served my graduation barbecue (to more than 70 people--thanks to all who came), mingled at the law school, chatted, attended my graduation (which was blessedly short), toured Escondido Village and our old haunts (we even took a picture of us kids lined up in front of the bush we always used as family photo backdrops during our California years), attended church at the First Ward, dinnered with the Pearsons, opened Peter's mission call, reclined at my favorite park, and ran (literally ran) to get Rick's classic ice cream. On a sunny Monday afternoon, we stood in the Palo Alto half-shade, red-faced and sweaty, licking ice cream on cones and being glad we'd run and glad we didn't have to run home. And then the family was gone, and I was left without family, without school, without obligations to my name.

So I watched TV.

Over the course of four or five days, I caught up on The Office, 30 Rock, House, Top Chef, one episode of Hell's Kitchen (one episode was enough for me), and, finally and engrossingly, Friday Night Lights. And I watched Ironman (pretty fun) and Spellbound (a long-time favorite). Sunday came, I repented from my TV watching, and I determined to live this week anew.

I've stayed home mostly. It's strawberry season here (is it strawberry season everywhere?), and they're sold red and fat and freckled by Hispanic men and white women who stand under tents and on street corners. I eat the strawberries greedily, whole pints at a time. I think the acid is starting to burn my mouth. Still, still, it's 10:19 pm, I've eaten a bowl of Reese's Puffs cereal and I'm one cut strawberry into making a bowl of strawberries I'll cover with milk and eat while I listen again and again to Jose Gonzalez's "Heartbeats" on repeat.*

Yesterday I spent prepping for the 22nd birthday of one of the best women I've ever known, and before I showered at night, I was covered in fingerpaints and glitter; I had permanent marker streaks on my hands and one red birthmark-like star on my right elbow, the imprint of an unthinking lean onto the pants I was decorating for Jane; and following the traditional and celebratory cake-throwing at her birthday dinner, I found cake in my hair and in my ears. I showered at 9:00 pm and washed the glitter, the cake, and the paint down our bathtub drain (the permanent marker star stayed behind) and then I watched Cold Comfort Farm.

That's my story. Everyone's been asking, "What have you been doing since graduation?" And this, this is my answer. I've done some dishes, some laundry, some errands. I've run a few times and watched a few movies. I've eaten a lot of strawberries, celebrated a woman I love, hung out with people I admire, and slept in.

A good living this. A great living.

Come next week, I start studying for the bar.

*I've embedded "Heartbeats" on the page for your listening pleasure. Good goo, it's a beautiful song. Feel free to listen to it on repeat as you read this post. That's how I wrote it.

Another Red-Letter Weekend Moment

What are the chances that when Peter's mission call came, 9 of the family would be in the same place? (And that I, the Californian, would be one of those 9?)

Japan Tokyo Mission--Peter is the good stuff that's coming.

(My newest favorite part of this picture? That Reija's tambourine makes a cameo appearance.)

One Highlight from My Weekend

Consider:

From Paradise, Returned

Appropriately, I finished reading East of Eden, John Steinbeck's pseudo retelling of the Adam & Eve/Cain & Abel story, early, early this morning sometime, as my Delta flight sped 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, carrying me from Hawaii--land o' pineapple soft serve and sand like cornmeal--to northern California, Steinbeck's erstwhile home and the low-hilled setting for this book.

Man, it was appropriate on multiple levels.

And while I'm gearing up for the Great Weekend (in which my parents and seven of my eight siblings come to celebrate with me as I graduate from el school of law) and, consequently, may or may not be around to make satisfyingly updated posts on this blog--even to tell you the details of my fun and lovely trip to Hawaii--I did want to take a moment right now to say this: Steinbeck might be genius.

[I'm searching for this great quote in East of Eden about Americans as being both terribly courageous and terribly fearful simultaneously, among other things. Anyone know which one I'm talking about or where it is?]

Hello, world.

I am done with law school.

Note: But law school is not yet done with me. I officially graduate on May 4 and will participate in all sorts of festivities surrounding that, including the Final Cleaning out of My Locker and the Emotional Abandonment of My Cubby. But if I do nothing else--if I do nothing else--chances are 99.999999999% that I will end up with a J.D. after my name. Who would ever, ever have guessed?

Sarah's Sacrament Meeting Talk (March 16, 2008)

I gave a sacrament meeting talk on March 16. It was in all kind of a ridiculously wonderful day. The other single LDS 3L also spoke, in sort of a law-student-themed meeting (the third speaker was a non-lawyer woman). The other law student, my friend Mike, had two law student friends who said they'd come to church if he spoke, so he finally asked the bishopric if he could give a talk. They said yes (probably yes!) and invited me too, I think because they thought it would be cute.

We invited our classmates to come. About twelve(!) did. One even drove down from Berkeley (an hour or so drive) and arrived early to the 9 am meeting. It was wonderful--wonderful--to see them sitting in row after row after row, mixed in with my wardmates, grouped in pews on the right side of the chapel. I also had a beloved former (and future?) roommate from DC in town, and for some reason, the chapel was packed. It was a beautiful morning. The topic was the Good Samaritan.

Turns out the Second Ward has taken to recording sacrament meeting talks. Yesterday, I was emailed a copy of mine. The sound is a often fuzzy and a little edgy, but I'm almost entirely comprehensible. I hope you enjoy it. (Note: The talk begins with a reference to the squirrel story, which, awesomely, I posted a few weeks. It's a great story. One worth revisiting.)

https://stanford2nd.davidrixnelson.com/files/2008-03-16/SarahOlson.mp3

A dating theory.

This is my newest dating theory. I'm going public with it. (Remember, it's just a theory, meaning (a) it's not even "true," necessarily, and (b) even if is true as a general principle, as a rule, there will be exceptions.)

Relationships may begin because two people like each other's best behaviors, but relationships end because either one or both people do not like each other's worst behaviors.

Thoughts?

Oh man, so cute.

Last year, I got my dream calling*: sacrament meeting program maker. Every other week, I make my ward's sacrament meeting program.

Over the course of the last six months or so, I've tried to tone down both (a) the amount of time I spend making the program (I'm not really a perfectionist--most of you know this--except for when it comes to text and graphic design, turns out) and (b) the edginess of my designs (I have often ignored left-to-right sort of reading styles and once put a picture of the bishop's face next to his name in the program--so great). I worried that my programs were distracting from the real purpose of sacrament meeting (renewing our sacred covenants with God, for one) and were garnering undue attention (kind of the way my father has worried that a pink tie my sister gave him for Easter earns him more compliments than he's comfortable with). And, too, I began to feel heaven try to tell me that "it's about the people, not the programs." Which is true and makes me laugh.

Knowing all of that, I did want to share the program I made for this last Sunday because, I have to say, it was so, so cute.

Rather than using a full sheet folded in half, I used quarter sheets and folded those in half. Oh MAN. So cute.

Note: Usually I avoid using the traditional sacrament meeting program template for my programs, but in honor of the particularly diminutive nature of this week's program, I decided to go straight-up traditional. I even put a picture of the Savior on the cover, which admittedly I should do more often. (I realized that I've put more pictures on the program of nature--and some shamelessly ripped off pictures by Ansel Adams--than I have of religious scenes, perhaps leading investigators to wonder if we are, in fact, pagan. Note: We are not.)

And, of course, a story: Saturday night, I was in the law library making this program, and when I was done, I was so excited about it--so, so excited about it--I turned to the law student in the carrel next to me. I don't know him well--he's a 1L--but I said to him, "Can I tell you something?" He looked at me for a moment and then, seriously, said yes. I showed him the program and, super quickly, explained lay clergy, volunteer service, callings, sacrament meeting, the tradition of sacrament meeting programs and their full-page folds, and said, "And this is the program I'm bringing to church tomorrow. Isn't it so cute?" He nodded kindly. I was pleased. And then he said, "Actually, when I looked over and first saw that, I thought, 'That is so cute.'" "Really?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "Really."

And before I left he said to me, "Tell me how it goes tomorrow!" At church, the first counselor began sacrament meeting by holding up my program and saying, "As you can see, we don't have many announcements today. And, the Second Ward is going green!" Then the bishop winked at me from the stand.

On Monday I saw my friendly 1L and told him that the program had gone well. In fact, I said, "It went over huge."

*In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, each full congregation is called a "ward." Since we don't have any professional clergy or paid church workers, all of the jobs to serve the congregation are done by members in the congregation as volunteer work. We don't volunteer, lobby, or nominate ourselves for these positions; rather we are asked by the congregation leaders to do particular jobs, usually for a few years at a time. An assigned volunteer job issued in this manner is called a "calling." Right now I have two callings (having more than one calling is not unusual): I make the sacrament meeting program (the paper program handed out to parishioners at each Sunday's church service) and I teach a doctrinal lesson once a month to the women in my ward, which I will do this Sunday, if you're reading this and want to come.

Breakups.

They are tricky. So, so tricky.

But I do want to tell one story:

A boy I knew had had his heart broken by a girl he really liked. And his family, consequently, talked kind of badly about her. She wasn't good enough for him, she treated him badly, she needed to grow up and stop being so superficial and insecure, if they ever saw her again, they'd somethingsomething. Some of this was in jest--they are loving people--but some of it was said earnestly, in their hurt for their brother/son, whom they loved.

Most of the times I heard them say these things to my friend, he would try to deflect it. He would say, "No, no, it's okay. It's fine. I did x, y, or z, and that wasn't good."

Once, on one particular day, she came up in the conversation, and his brother made some comment about her and how she was a bad person, and my friend looked his brother in the eye and said, firmly, kindly, "She's doing the best she can."

I decided then that that was one of the most Christ-like things I had ever heard a person say. And I knew that if he and I ever broke up (yes, we were then dating), that he would treat me well, subsequently, and that I would not have to worry about how he would talk to people about me, including the ones closest to him, including his family. We later broke up, and he has treated me well, and I have not worried.

And I have tried--tried to remember to try--to follow his example in all of the situations I can. Even though, I want to acknowledge, that it may not always be true. We may be 100% confident that our ex did not try as hard as he/she could; still, still, I think we should treat them as though they had. I don't know. I'm not sure I can defend it, except that any other idea makes me feel sad inside. And this story makes me feel happy and full of grace and truth.

The Face(s) of Procrastination

The Squirrel Story (the Original!)

I have told and re-told this story to some of you and here--here is the original, courtesy of Dave Shoe (a friend in my ward, the speaker of the story) and Rix (the ward member assigned, apparently, blessedly, to record sacrament meeting talks).

Squirrels. Shoe. Genius.

http://www.mediafire.com/?endnjxm1p3c

Reader's Digest and the Promise of a Brighter Tomorrow

I'm wondering if every family has its schemes for success. I know some who've started frozen yogurt businesses, some who sell handmade hunting arrows, some who play harp and violin and flute and perform at weddings. I've read about those who talk about starting egg farms (The Egg and I). I hear tell of those who record primary songs in foreign languages and sell the albums to members abroad. And I know of at least one that jokes about buying planes to live on islands and off their wealthy son-in-law (mostly, mostly in jest). My family--we, too, have our scheme. Schemes. Now we talk about making movies and writing television pilots and, actually, media production of all kinds. But before this, before all this, there was the First Scheme. And the First Scheme was Reader's Digest.


For instance, today my roommate Reija (a high school science teacher) had this as her gchat status:

Me (doing problems): Oh! There's a spider on my chalkboard! Kids: AAAAAAAAAHHHHH! Me (poking it with a pen): It's alive! Kids: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Me: Don't worry I'll just draw a circle around it and label it "spider". If it leaves the circle, the you can scream. (Three minutes later) Kids: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

My brother Peter, also friends with Reija via gchat, chatted me about it, saying this:

It is brilliant. It shines.

And then, whammo, he added:

I keep trying to think of how we can turn it into a Reader's Digest joke, but I'm having trouble.

It turns out, my parents--okay, mostly my mother--would and do often take advantage of family gatherings, even informal moments, to talk about ways we can make money, as a family or as individuals. "We're funny," someone says. And my mother pipes in: "You should write something for Reader's Digest." And someone usually adds, "We really should," shaking his/her head to show that yes, in fact, it's astonishing that, for whatever reason, our destiny with Reader's Digest has not yet been made.

This Reader's Digest moment arises, of course, because of the fine-print promise embedded in the front matter of the Reader's Digests that fossilize in our bathrooms and rest scattered from time immemorial throughout my grandparents' mountain cabin. The promise is something like this: Submit inane and mildly funny joke-meets-short-paragraph. Get paid $300. Lightning will strike.

To my family, this possibility that we could, with a minimum of effort and typing, cash in on the invariably small and funny moments of our life seemed/seems like the golden egg, the cash cow at the end of the rainbow, the promise of a new tomorrow. This is, after all, America.

That's it. That's the whole spiel. This is our original idea for making money, and it, despite its seeming out of sync with the times (doesn't Reader's Digest strike you as being anachronistic, even though it features hot commodities like Tina Fey?), it comes, it resurfaces, it haunts. You should know, though, that though we've done a lot of thinking about it (after Peter's comment, I'm realizing that my thinking times 9.5--one for each of my siblings, plus one for my mom, and .5 for my less-invested dad--is a lot of thinking), I don't think anyone in my family has ever submitted anything to Reader's Digest. Not to "Life in These United States," not to the general non-true joke column, certainly not to "Humor in Uniform. "

Yet, yet, faced with something true and short and funny (specifically, a pithy kind of funny), what does Peter do? He tries to turn it into a Reader's Digest bit--for the possibility of $300 and the satisfaction of fulfilling my family's long-held dream. Just a boy wanting to make his family, his mama, and America proud. Reader's Digest. America in your pocket.

"These Women"

There's a moment in one of the early seasons of The West Wing where, at the end of the episode, the West Wing staff are chatting over chili that President Bartlet has made after work. And, because of the greatness of the internet, I've been able to find the script of the exact moment. (A West Wing primer: Bartlet is the President. Josh is the Deputy Chief of Staff. Leo is the Chief of Staff. They are looking at a room full of their colleagues, including their rockstar female colleagues: CJ Cregg, Donna Moss, Mrs. Landingham.)

BARTLET
Look at this, will you?

JOSH
At what sir?

BARTLET
I don’t know why, but nothing makes me feel quite so good as the sight of colleagues,
enjoying each other outside work.

JOSH
So, what were you guys talking about?

BARTLET
We were talking about these women.

JOSH
Yeah?

LEO
We can’t get over these women.
 
http://communicationsoffice.tripod.com/1-05.txt

I have thought about this moment. I've had this moment, this moment of looking at the women around me and being delighted and in awe of their greatness. Their genius, their goodness, their buoyancy, their depth and kindness and nimbility. Maybe it's the product of my last nine years of living exclusively with other girls, but I have a profound testimony of the goodness of so many women.

Last month, or maybe the month before, a friend of mine got up during our fast & testimony Relief Society meeting and bore her testimony. It began as you would expect: "I'm grateful for my Savior and for this church. I know that President Hinckley is a prophet" (this was likely before President Hinckley passed away) "and I love this ward." But then she took a stand: "I love this Relief Society, and I want to say that I want you sisters to be happy. I want you to get the man of your dreams, and I don't care if he's the man that I want and you get him. I want you to be happy, and I will root for your success." (Essentially. This is essentially what she said.)

We were delighted. I was delighted. This is a hard thing to say, I think, because it's such a sensitive subject. How do we say--how do we mean--that we are glad for each other's romantic successes, even when it means that we do not have the success we want in the moment we want it? It seems funny that it's even an issue. I wonder about women's reputation for cattiness, and I've been glad to have so little exposure to it. But still--in our community, small as it is, we may date the same people. We may like the same men. We may hope for successes with the very people that others want to succeed with. And I think the answer--the only comfort I've received--comes from my belief in the goodness of so many women. This is what I figure: If there's a boy so cool that I like him, then I'll probably like the women that he likes (maybe--maybe--even more than I liked him). So, if he chooses another one over me, then I can take comfort in my happiness for her--that she, this good woman that I do or would like, is getting attention from a good man.

So, a story: The first boy I sort of dated at BYU was named Brent. I didn't know we were dating until after we'd broken up. In post-break-up talks he said, "So when we were dating..." I said, "We dated?" And he said, "Yeah, but then when we broke up..." And I said, "We had a break up?" (I was totally excited.) After we broke up, he started dating this other woman named Kirsten. I wondered about her--he and I were still friends--what she was like, how I would feel if/when I met her, what I should think about the whole thing. But then, one night, maybe at a poetry reading at Brent's, I met her. And you know what? She was awesome. Awesome. She was smart and cool and pretty and great, and she helped Brent dress better (which he needed) and got him to watch movies (which I never could)--good movies, ones I like. And they got married and they have three or four kids, and sometimes I get baby announcements from them. And I delight that he ended up with someone as great as she.

That's my story. And I'm sticking to it.

To: The World / Re: Email Dread

If you've emailed me recently, you may have received my "vacation responder," which indicates that because of a newly dead laptop and some traveling (NY first, Utah now), I'm without meaningful email access. "Sans meaningful email access," the email says. (Today in the shower I considered my choice of the word "sans." It sounds pretentious when I think about it, but then, I usually use it without thinking about it. Thinking about that, I realize that one of the reasons I use it without thinking--sans thinking, if you will (as a great ex-boyfriend once said to me, "Of course I will")--is because I first learned it in Mme. Ulin's seventh-grade French class. Not, NOT a pretentious place to learn a word. Le chat = cat. Parce que = because. Sans = without. Le biftek = steak. Steak? Really? Weird.)

Anyway, the point of this blog is not sans. The point of this blog is my email. I have told some of you this before. (Most recently, tonight, Reed C., who wins the award for being the fourth boy to respond, even unwittingly, to my Hey Boy post.) When I don't check my email regularly--meaning, multiple times a day--I start to dread it. I fear the email. It's not the pile-up, per se. I find a great deal of satisfaction in selecting emails to delete. (I know, I know--I have gmail and I still delete. Reckless. Backward. Something.) It's not the load of emails I dread. It's the content. I'm always afraid that I'm going to get emails that say one of three things:

1. You're stupid.
2. I hate you.
3. You owe us money.

And I do get these emails. They don't say these things this explicitly, usually. They say things like:

1. You're stupid. AKA "You didn't turn in that journal edit when you were supposed to." "You didn't submit your income tax form when you were supposed to." "Your library books, which you thought you returned, you didn't, and they're now overdue."
2. I hate you. AKA "Oh, it's okay you didn't visit teach me last month. I feel uncomfortable when you come anyway. And I've decided to start attending a family ward." "Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to come have lunch with/go to church with/ever see you again. Have a great summer!" "Sarah, I know we haven't talked in a while. Since our last date, in fact. I'm doing great. I'm dating X." "You left the house a mess. We will discuss this when we return. Or not." "I just got the test back that you graded. I think your grading policies are irrational and flawed, and the professor has said he will back me up on that."
   
3. You owe us money. AKA "Your credit card/car insurance/health insurance/rent/utilities/library fine/bar review course/bar exam/income tax/chipping-in-for-so-and-so's-birthday is now overdue. Please pay up. 300%."

Note: Some of the above can fit into more than one category. Also, some of these sentences are a dramatization. I've not received each of them exactly, but I have received each of them essentially. (Thanks, Justin S., for prompting the clarification.)

Just listing all of that makes me feel ill. And makes me feel like an irrational worry wort. (Are there worry worts of any other kind?)

But that's the point of this post: to purge. So that's my story. That's what I fear. My email. Admittedly, people are very kind, and God/life/my parents have given me a huge safety net, so the chances that any sum of days away from even my finances is get-over-able. (Another moment brought to me by my socio-economic status.)

Eventually, I confront my email. I weed through it. I delete, respond, apologize, cope, pay up, change. And then I get back on the bandwagon and become an email junkie once more.

But if you or your well-meaning email gets caught in the cross-fire, I apologize. You hate me, I'm stupid, I owe you money, I know. I'll get over it. And I'll write you back.

With love,
Sarah

Hey Boy

"Hey boy [da-dun dun dun da-duh] why you didn't call me?"

I've embedded a second song on the lower right part of this page. It's one KT found, of course. (She's the finder.) And it's catchy and includes a multiple-choice list in the lyrics, which we totally dig. Also of course. (We've sung it so much around the house that Michelle can sing it too, even though she's never actually heard the recording.)

"A. You're gay. B. You've got a girlfriend. C. You kinda thought I came on too strong or D. I just wasn't your thing, no ring."

I dedicate this song to, among others, Graham D., seat 11D, exit row, JetBlue, JFK to SFO.

"It's not a lot that I want, just some talking. Really you've just injured my pride."

Which, in the case of Graham D., isn't necessarily true. (Has my pride been injured? I'm going with no. Sources say no.) But it does make for a great song lyric and, ergo, a totally singable song.

(Note: I'm wondering: Do boys like this song as much as the girls I know do?)

Added note on April 5: Graham D. called me today. FYI. :)

Tapering off.

I wanted to post again, to say something calming after the weekends described in my last two posts. Things have calmed down substantially in my world, back to pre-Spring levels. Maybe even calmer than that. Today Michelle and I watched three movies. (We felt justified because she's on Spring break. I decided to live vicariously through her.)

We watched:

• Say Anything

A classic Michelle had never seen. My favorite part remains the "If you were Diane Court, would you go for Lloyd Dobbler?" moment, but a new favorite is the scare quotes Diane uses when she tells Lloyd she loves him for the first time. "I love you." "What is that?" he says. "You're talking like that girl Sheila." It's so great.

• Benny & Joon

Michelle kept wondering, "Do you think Mary Stuart Masterson goes around thinking, 'I kissed Johnny Depp'?" I kept thinking, "Aidan Quinn is so good looking. Where did he go?"

• The Scarlet Pimpernel

A Hayes family classic, apparently. Sink me, it's a charming movie. With such amazing (and amazingly heavy-looking) wigs.

And Michelle made chocolate-chip cookies for lunch. And I didn't even get out of my pajamas, until it was time for institute choir.

(But, for the concerned parents out there who may be reading, I did do laundry and I did run to the institute for choir tonight and I did pack for my little trip to Utah this weekend. Productive things, all.)

In short: Rest assured, world. I am lazing about.

This Weekend: A Weekend in the City with the Family

It is my family's twentieth-anniversary-in-New-York year. We've been in New York now for twenty years (well, twenty come August 21, 2008). And, due to an unprovoked confluence of events, we began our celebrations this weekend.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning (see post below), I flew to NY to be with the family. Peter came back from school, at the tail end of his glee club's Spring Break Atlantic Coast tour. Anika and her husband and kids came down from Syracuse, and Jacob, Rachel, Rebekah, Mom, and Dad stayed (for the most part) exactly where they were on Long Island. (The other siblings and nieces and nephews were with us, but primarily in heart.) And, with this crew (and some adopted others), we participated in an unprecedented number of cultural events in one whirlwind weekend of such beautiful greatness.

Friday, March 28

Appalachian Spring
With family and friends in tow (and babysitters and niece and nephews at home), we drove into New York City to see a modern dance performance at Julliard. The draw? "Appalachian Spring," by Aaron Copland, our family's favorite piece of classical music, as choreographed by the famous Martha Graham. There were two additional pieces on the program--we're having trouble recalling their titles now--but Appalachian Spring was what we were there for. It was absolutely one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And I felt like my love for the music all these years was justified. I knew, I guess, what I was doing when I started loving that piece. My mother gave my father a record of Appalachian Spring on their wedding night, and they have been playing the record since we were small. The piece is quintessential Americana, and it was written as a dance for eight people--a bride, a groom, a preacher, a pioneer woman, and four silly girls, dressed in light blue skirts with bonnets and frilly sleeves. The set was spare, with a Shaker rocking chair on stage right, for the women to sit in, stoically, happily, periodically. The bride and groom looked clean-faced and sunny. The pioneer woman never shook, never wavered, as she lifted her leg high above her head, as she comforted the bride after the preacher (a creepy, creepy guy who spent too much time with the silly-sleeved girls) seemed to reprimand her or the groom for something, for something. I sat in the front row between brothers Jacob and Peter, with Rebekah and Rachel and friend and friend, friend, friend to our left. It was beautiful to be there and, of course, we danced down the street on our way to the parked car, on our late-night way home.

Saturday, March 29

I. Sunday in the Park with George
In true Olson fashion, Mom and Dad needed to go down to DC for the day, so I took them to the airport at 5:30. After dropping them off, I slept in their bed on my mom's heating pad until 9:30, when I woke to rouse the crew and usher us all out the door. We drove and parked and subwayed for over an hour until we wound our into midtown and then, la, we were at the theatre. And we were going to see Sunday in the Park with George. My parents first saw a production of this in the mid-80s, when it came out. It has never been on Broadway, I don't think, though it won a Pulitzer Prize in the wake of its original off-Broadway production. It's a musical by Stephen Sondheim, with book by James Lapine (yes, the duo that wrote Into the Woods--the similarities were more obvious to me this time around), about the (fictional) life of impressionist artist George Seurat. My sister spearheaded the viewing, purchasing tickets for the whole family ("gifts," she said) and corralling enough of her friends and our loved ones to merit a group ticket discount. We sat in literally the last two rows high on the highest mezzanine, and we watched, trying hard (at least, Anika and I were trying hard) not to sing along. We've been listening to the original cast recording since 1986 or something, and Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters' performances are as much a part of my brain waves as--I don't know, as that creepy line from the New Testament recorded tapes we used to listen to as kids ("My name is Leee-juunnn. Legion means many. There were maaaan-y devils inside that man."). Or more. Since I know the musical better than I know the Star-Spangled Banner. And that is not hyperbole.

Anyway, it was beautiful. So beautiful, to see it on stage, surrounded by these people I love. The performances weren't as great as Patinkin's and Peters' (but whose are? they're the best), but I did cry. Anika was cutting onions next to me. No, the themes--I kept wondering--why did these themes resonate with me when I was seven? ten? twelve? sixteen? Seurat loses a woman he loves because he cannot focus on her, can only concentrate and work on his painting, on seeing and creating. And she loves him for his genius and his vision, but she is trying to become a better person--to learn to read, to be able to focus, to make good decisions--and she is trying to be loved in a real, human way. Maybe the piece is about a detachment I always toyed with. I'm not really a tortured genius, but I do have desires sometimes to don lab coat and poke at people, prod them and exploit their humanity (via writing mostly), rather than meaningfully interact with them. Maybe I felt that from when I was a child, or maybe I saw that in my brilliant siblings, or maybe I just felt the truth of that--that that's a tension that sometimes, awfully, sometimes happens. But mostly, I think, mostly now, I feel like the woman's character. I dated a composer, a music composer, and I wondered what it would be like to be forever with a man who thought more easily and fully about chord structure and tonality than about me. I loved him for his brilliance of course. For his genius. Everybody does. But we would listen to romantic music, and I would think, "This is beautiful. I wonder if he is thinking of me." And I would look at him, and I would know that he wasn't. Maybe it wasn't his just his love for music--maybe he just didn't love me that much or that way--and this is a possibility I'm willing to accept. But still, I wondered about it, about a life like that, attached to a genius who, in order to produce, would need to hide in a corner--literally, in a dark corner--and not talk, not be interrupted, not see me or us or our children. But then, after that, after all that, or intermittently throughout it, would pull out this beautiful, incomparable, inexplicable moment of genius. The music of genius. And he would keep working, trying always to produce something more beautiful, more true, more lucrative, more genius. And I would try to make dinner and keep the kids from being always dirty and always fighting.

I have lived with genius(es). Daily, it can mean trouble. But good goo--what a world we would have without genius. The woman, Dot, says all the insightful things in the musical, actually. And, at one point, she says this: "But most, George, of all. But most of all. I love your painting."

II. The Harvard Glee Club
It's true. My brother Peter is in the Harvard Glee Club. He and his friend, another LDS freshman, showed up at our house Friday afternoon, with tuxes in tow. They came with us to Appalachian Spring, to Sunday in the Park with George, to the cheap (but satisfying) Chinese restaurant we frequented after the show, and then, la, it was their chance on stage. Or in nave, as the case was. We went to St. Bart's and watched them sing with the 60-ish other boys of the Harvard Glee Club. Tuxes with tails, Harvard fight songs, and a tall, tall Episcopalian church on a Saturday night make for a funny time (and some unwitting similarities to movies like Chariots of Fire). And Peter came down afterwards, so happy, so invigorated by his fist-pumping and the glory of the tone of these sixty earnest men. And it was a delight to see Harvard doing what Harvard does best--be great.


That's it. Then we wandered back to the subway, back through a number of subway transfers, and we danced and waited and missed trains, and then walked through the midnight of empty streets in Queens and drove our way home. I went to bed with my family and friends still up and talking, drinking hot apple cider and eating such good chocolate. It was a nice background for my prayers.

Last Weekend

was a quite a story. Thursday, March 20, to Wednesday, March 26.

It involved:

• the birthday of Reija!
• grading 28 3000-word term papers
• some sleep
• a rock-paper-scissors tournament (best two of three) that I lost, alas
  
• making and helping to decorate approx. 60 cupcakes and 60 miniature cupcakes
• Melville's hosting of a one-hour cupcake/birthday party for Reija, with lovely guests and tulip-ed/tiered cupcake display
• missing the Friday midnight deadline for my journal work
• some sleep
• a Saturday (early) morning temple session with roommates
• a breakfast at Southern Kitchen with roommates, at which we all ordered biscuits and gravy and the original hot chocolate with sprinkles (among other things)
• getting an extension on my journal work (blessed ABCW)
  
• a lovely trip to the park
• realizing that our friends hiking in Yosemite were going to be late to visit us
• beginning to copyedit and bluebook four journal articles (approximately 200 pages of legal academic text)
• temporarily "stealing" three folding tables and sixteen folding chairs from the institute (thank you, thank you, BC and JS)
• realizing that our friends hiking/backpacking in Yosemite still hadn't contacted us and were going to be really late visiting us
• calling the park rangers at Yosemite
• a late-night Saturday trip to Safeway, in which, as expected, I saw other Mormons (in this case, three)
• some sleep
• Easter!
  
• the birthday of Michelle!
• a lovely birthday morning for Michelle
• calling the mothers of our friends missing in Yosemite
• teaching Relief Society about fruit (fruit in the scriptures/fruits of the gospel/Christ as "firstfruits") with the help of Ashli, our resident sage/arborist
  
• exchanging phone calls with the park rangers at Yosemite, as they found our friends' car and began to make flyers and search plans
• making 10 lbs of mashed potatoes, 16 cups of apple juice-rosemary-cream chicken gravy, 12 lbs of chicken, one pan of roasted garlic cauliflower
• finally hearing from the missing friends (no longer missing!), who'd gotten lost in the ice and snow and who'd fallen down an icy mountain but were, in all long-term ways, fine
• overseeing the making of 5 lbs of sweet potatoes, fruit trays, tomato wedges, 2 lbs of asparagus
• eating the most unbelievable oatmeal-date scones
• eating such beautiful torte-type desserts and pear-ginger pie
• chatting with such delightful people
  
• 100% avoiding doing the dishes (thanks, JW and BC and KT)
• a trip to Emeryville to rescue a returned (and tired) hiker
  
• a late-night tour of campus and Palm Drive
• some sleep
  
• a breakfast of more scones, bananas, English muffins
• the beautiful half-shade of a Palo Alto morning
• a rock-paper-scissors tournament (best two of three in best three out of five) that I totally won
  
• lunch for four from Pluto's
• a lovely, perfect trip to the park
• some experimental explorations with Woody, a plastic figurine with a parachute
• a night tour of campus
• a failed trip to The Counter
• a typically marginally successful trip to Wahoo's
• a typically mad rush to the airport
• eating in a booth (man, I love booths)
  
• some wrong turns back to the parking lot
• a midnight return to Melville
  
• missing even the extended deadline for my journal work
  
• some sleep
  
• a 4:30 am wake-up to finish my journal bluebooking and copyediting
• the grading of 156 finals (well, only two questions of the final)
• the giving of 28 final grades
• meeting my noon grading deadline (thank goodness)
  
• more trying to finish my journal bluebooking and copyediting
• a lunch of leftovers (such great leftovers)
• more trying to finish my journal bluebooking and copyediting
• a dinner of leftovers (SUCH great leftovers)
• super fast and wild packing
  
• a late-night trip to the airport (ah, RM and JW--thank you)
  
• some practice flirting with the ticket agent, who told me he would "work [his] magic" to get me out of a middle seat
  
• unexpectedly landing in an empty row on a 100% full plane (note: practice flirting may have paid off)
  
• finishing my journal bluebooking and copyediting at 1 am, PDT, approximately 30,000 feet over the earth
• stretching out on my empty row and, with coat as cover, getting some sleep
  
• an early am arrival in NY
• hugging my cute and late-to-school family
  
• an early am uploading of my journal bluebooking and copyediting (finally, finally, unbelievably done!) (ish)
  
• and then, Wednesday morning, finally, some recuperative, happy, post-end-of-quarter sleep in my sister Rachel's soft and brightly colored bed.

It was--it was a great weekend. Such a great weekend. Also--no, that's it. Just a great, great weekend.

Last Final

It's 3:45 pm. I'm fifteen minutes away from beginning what is the last final I will take this quarter, this semester, this degree, maybe this lifetime.

Finally, the final final.

I wanted to say.

(And now I'm off to find a binder to put my notes in and then to Legislation and beyond.)

Melville at the Ballet

Tonight we went to the ballet. My roommate Michelle caught wind that the San Francisco Ballet was performing West Side Story, and that was it. We were in. In truth, it was a tribute to Jerome Robbins comprising three pieces all originally choreographed by him:

• Fancy Free (Robbins' first piece of choreography or, at least, his first professional one) was about three sailors on shore leave in NYC during WWII. Of course they meet two girls--not enough girls--and try to dance and vie for the female attention. The women like it, then they don't, then they do, then, you know, they don't. And the men find themselves chasing a third--the blue-dressed girl posing so coyly to the right here (see photo). This ballet inspired, apparently, the WWII movie-musical On the Town (a movie I borrowed more than once from the Sayville Public Library, back in the day, liking it, of course, for its white and bright depiction of WWII homefront culture, which I always love, but also for its presentation of a female paleontologist, one of the female leads, which I thought was probably pretty hip and cutting-edge for a film from that era) and was Jerome Robbins' first collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, a collaboration that turned out, pretty quickly, to be a good idea.

• In the Night, in which three pairs of lovers each dance a love duet under a moon and a starry sky, before they take the stage together for a final scene of meeting, greeting, and, before too long, whisking away with their loved one for places they'd prefer to be. The nocturnes were played by a solo pianist. (Is that necessarily true? Are nocturnes necessarily solos for piano?) It was, actually, super lovely. The three couples were choreographed to represent different kinds/stages of loves: the first was a young couple, eager and happy; the second, an older, more mature couple, representing a more stable, restrained, and consistent love (though this was sometimes a little hard for me to discern in the dancing, except that their costumes were brown and gold, much more staid-ish than the grey and lavender of the young couple--I got that: older couple, drabbier colors; younger couple: prettier stuff); the final couple wore black and a sort of rusty reddish color--they were kind of a fiery pair, passionate and temperamental, who reconcile eventually when the female dancer kneels before the proud lover and with both hands, lightly touches his waist, his thighs, his knees, his feet, finally resting her head and her arms on the ground before him. Powerful stuff, I tell you. (Powerful if, as the program noted, problematic. I wasn't worried too much about the woman's offering as problematic--women make mistakes and need forgiveness too, yes?--mostly because in all, it was super, super beautiful.)

• The final piece was West Side Story, which was moving and great, but perhaps primarily because we were watching the most famous and cool moves from the movie performed live and on stage. Jerome Robbins choreographed the movie and then reproduced some of the dances for that Jerome Robbins revue that was on Broadway in the 1990s (Jerome Robbins Broadway, I think), so this was authentic (and hot) stuff. There were the Jets and the Sharks, greased hair and tees, snapping and fighting and leaping. It was a thirty-minute version without dialogue but--are you ready?--with singing. The dancers--some of them--sang. The program had a very interesting little article about the process of coaching the dancers, classically trained in the art of restrained movement, to become vocal performers, to feel confident even making vocal noise on stage (one dancer said that it was fun to speak without having to feel guilty that someone might hear her). A few of the numbers ("Something Coming," "Somewhere," maybe more) had professional singers in the wings singing in place of the dancers, but the chorus numbers were all dancer-singers (again, just the ballet's company dancers, not musical theatre special hires), as well as numbers like "Cool," "Puerto Rico," and probably whatever else there was. Anyway, it was--it was lovely. And when it was over, we clapped and clapped, and I didn't feel strained, even, by the three curtain calls.

So that's it. Melville hit the ballet. Classical ballet tends to bore me, I think (as does, alas, often the opera). I am the girl who likes my country pop-y. But give me ballet meets Broadway? I'm there.

I found one!

One of my classmates mentioned a game (I forget the name) in which the goal is to try to find a search phrase that elicits only one Google result. I played for my first time tonight, and this was my first winner:

krista "hero's cape"
WINNER!

*This is the second result on a Google image search for "krista hero's cape" (no internal quotation marks). There were no results for "krista 'hero's cape.'" (I wonder if there will be now. Hm.)*

You? Submit winning entries in the comments below.

(Also: This entry reminds me of one of my favorite words--"winningest." Winningest. As in, the coach with the winningest season is Coach Taylor. The first time I heard it was on some sports show, and I felt like while all of us English types were off arguing about the that/which distinction, the sports aficionados had been playing our game and making some competitive headway. Winningest. And the athletes say we use half-dollar words. So great!)

P.S. Don't neglect the post I posted yesterday re the scriptures. (I'm afraid that posting today will make it seem like the one I posted yesterday is somehow no longer important to me, is outmoded. Just one example of blogger fright.) I'm hoping for some comments, any comments that might move the ball forward. The Book of Mormon is true, yeah? And truth is one eternal whole? Let's do some exegesis, folks. A little textual interpretation. Make both judges and scriptorians proud.

Consider: A Scriptural Juxtaposition

A friend recently pointed me to these two scriptures. Do you have thoughts about how they relate?

2 Nephi 2:5
And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.

Alma 29:5
Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience.

I'm just beginning to wonder, but what I'm wondering is if there's significance in the difference between "men" (or "all men") of 2 Nephi 2:5 and the "he" that shows up in the second half of Alma 29:5. So maybe we as men (as in the human race) have, generally, been instructed sufficiently to know good from evil. (Perhaps via the commandments, maybe? Prophetic revelation and instruction throughout time?) And, too, we've been confronted with good and evil (see TV). But it is he (the individual, an individual) who knows the difference between good and evil that will have according to his desires. Only those of us who have actually internalized the lessons of right and wrong, of commandments, etc., will get what it is we want, whether that be ultimately good or bad.

Too, if there are those of us who, for whatever reason, missed the lessons that "all men" received--the general lessons of good from evil, the lessons of the prophets and the commandments--and, as individuals, are truly ignorant of the specific iterations of difference between good and evil, then we will be blameless. (Note: That's really not appropriately a "we" sort of statement. Twenty-seven years of regular church attendance, daily scripture study, being prayerfully parented and righteously roommated means that a lot of the right v. wrong stuff I, like "men" in general, have learned. I'm trying to be on board.)

Or something? Other thoughts? Counter thoughts? Asides?

Transparency

I found this in my archives. It is the text of a speech I gave for a one-day speech workshop I participated in last year. You may have heard this spiel before (very possibly in person), but I thought I'd post it here. Note: I'm not sure I feel this way, exactly, about love anymore. Or, at least, I'm not sure I'm actively promoting this theory these days. These days I'm trying to keep my head down. Love better, talk less. I'm not sure I'm really doing either very well. Snika-peaks, this post is for you.

I believe that transparency is the way we love.

My freshman year of college I lived on the first floor of a large, all-girls dormitory. Across the hall lived two girls—Krista and Anna. Krista was the salutatorian of her high school in Oregon. She always spoke in a baby voice and she loved princesses. Her roommate, Anna, was a very small girl. She looked very much like a thirteen-year-old boy, as the old people she later worked with at a senior citizens’ center told her. In high school, Anna was a very shy girl. A very shy girl, who had no friends. So she decided that, when she came to college, she was going to like people and be social.

Anna quickly became the center of our floor. Our leader and our resident sage. One day, I was talking with her about my life—as we all did because she was the coolest girl on the floor—probably about some boy I was trying to negotiate, and she said, offhandedly and knowingly, “You can’t love someone if you can’t talk to them.” She said it like I agreed with her, like I already knew that was true. And I remember nodding. “Yup, so true.”

But over the years, I’ve remembered that and thought about it. What Anna was saying was kind of audacious. She was saying, you can’t love someone, if you can’t talk to them. You can’t love someone, if you can’t talk to them.

I think this means at least two things: One, it certainly means that if you find yourself unable to say things that are meaningful to you to another person, then you probably don’t love that person. That an inability or a reluctance to say things to someone else is a sign of deeper troubles. But two, I think this means something else, something harder. I think it means that if we don’t talk to people, if we don’t say meaningful things to them, if we don’t have the ability or the capacity to communicate how we feel and what we think, then we are not doing the work of loving. We are not loving.

There are people who disagree with me about this. They say that they are able to show their love for people in ways other than by talking, by being really good at body language, or something. And it’s true that we do communicate a lot of things by what we do and how we act, apart from the words that we say. But I say this: you may be very good at body language, but the person you’re loving might not be. And talking is so cheap (economically speaking). It might be, it turns out, an issue of least-cost avoiding.

For instance, in Brian Greene’s book The Elegant Universe, he says (apparently, according to an erstwhile boyfriend) that one of the ways we know that we are living in at least four dimensions is that there are at least four things you have to tell someone in order to successfully arrange a meeting with them. You have to tell them where to be longitudinally, latitudinally, altitudinally (how far up from the earth), and at what time. For example, meet me at the corner of 24th and Broadway, on the third floor, on Tuesday at 3.

You could, it’s true, try to communicate all of these things via body language. OR, or you could just say: hey, let’s meet at the corner of 24th and Broadway, on the third floor, on Tuesday. Talking is a low-cost way of communicating and it allows a level of specificity and fluidity that body language does not. But the point is this: if we don’t communicate these things, if we can’t communicate them, then we won’t end up where we want to be with the people we want to be there.

What I’m arguing for is transparency. I think we have a responsibility, the necessity, to be as transparent as we can be in at least our personal relationships with people. We can’t love someone, if we aren’t telling them what we’re thinking and how we feel about it. We aren’t loving them if we aren’t telling them those things. And we aren’t making it possible for them to love us, if we aren’t trying to make it easier for them to tell us what matters to them, if we aren’t trying to make it easier for them to be transparent.

I do want to recognize that we are all bad at this. We are all bad at this. You are bad at it, and I am certainly bad at it. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if talking were law school, we’d all—all—be in the lowest tier.

But the Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard says that there is no such thing as talent (except in the fields of music, mathematics, and chess—and if you have such a gift, you’d know it by now). She says that we like to believe that people are born with innate talents because we like to think that the amazing things they do are easy for them, “that Rembrandt painted because he ‘had to’.” She says: “We want to believe all these nonsensical things in order to get ourselves off the hook.”

Loving people is hard work. Talking to people is hard work. Transparency is hard work. But valuing transparency, working towards transparency, is the stuff of loving. That’s the clarion call: transparency! Transparency. It’s the way we invite people around us to be where we are. It’s the way we end up where we want to be with the people we want to be there. Transparency is the way we love.

Mothers Who Know Consume Less

Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world's goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all. Their goal is to prepare a rising generation of children who will take the gospel of Jesus Christ into the entire world. Their goal is to prepare future fathers and mothers who will be builders of the Lord's kingdom for the next 50 years. That is influence; that is power.

Sister Julie B. Beck, "Mothers Who Know," October 2007 http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-775-27,00.html

I have thought about this passage from Sister Beck's talk about every week--maybe more, maybe less--since I read it in the weeks after General Conference. (Though I attended all four sessions of conference, it's true--I was asleep when she gave it the first time.)

More often than I think about this passage, however, I think about these:

http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/2932364?origin=wishlist

I bought these last month at Nordstrom Rack, and I wear them, um, almost every day. (They are, as a consequence, wearing out already. They were not meant to be worn this regularly, I'd imagine. Or to walk the daily parking-lot-past-construction-site-to-school route I take. In February rains.)

Mothers who know consume less. Mothers who know--they reduce, reuse, recycle. They control their appetites. They buy fewer things, make do with fewer things. They don't, probably, probably not, spend Friday evenings looking at their shoes instead of at the faces of the friends they're playing board games with. (It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen.)

I am not yet a mother, but as Sister Beck said yesterday, this single life is a time to take care of one room (and/or sharing the chores in the rest of the house) and one life to prepare for the time when I'll take care of many rooms and many lives. (Jazz fingers.)

Mothers who know consume less, and I spent twenty minutes--or more--searching online to find a picture of those shoes just so I could post them on my blog. (Not necessarily an act of consumption, but an act of only marginal productive returns.)

I know that Sis. Beck is not issuing a call to asceticism. She's issuing a call for restraint, for lower materialistic standards, for reflection and redress and, to invoke an Austenian allusion, retrenchment. ("You must retrench." Name the book/movie.) And this is something that I, in my new/burgeoning Palo Alto/law school aesthetic need to heed. Hear. Adhere to.

Do all twenty-somethings go through this? Do all/most twenty-somethings, maybe females, married or not, hit their mid- to upper-twenties and find themselves having scaled up into serious materialism and a life in which "retail therapy" has (a) lost much of its stigma and (b) seems to have actual therapeutic effects? This is where I am right now, ish. Ish, of course. (The sometimes reality of my money situation and President Benson's talk on pride are checks on this process, of course, as well as my reluctance to embrace a fashion-frenzied lifestyle my parents--and I, in my saner moments--always eschewed.) I guess my question is (this blog post is rambly, you may have noticed) this: what's the deal? Why is this materialism effective/affecting me? What's its hold, its appeal? Why does it even gain traction? Beauty? Self-improvement? A desire to be thought pretty and to be around pretty things? Straight up pride? Hm. Hm. Hm.

I will continue to think about this. I will go home tonight, make the "Frrrozen Hot Chocolate" I've been ogling all weekend (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/109560), and I will think about consuming less, as I drink my daiquiri-smooth, made-with six-pieces-of-gourmet-melted-chocolate-and-whipped-cream (today, cool whip) frozen hot chocolate.

But I will drink it slowly, and I will think for a looong time. (You think, too?)

I May Have Drunk the Kool-Aid.

Note: I realize that calling for change itself is foolhardy. As one snarky commenter on the youtube site wrote: "Change? From what? To what?" A worthy point. But that is where our processes come in, yes? Debate, representation, discussion, compromise, enaction, enforcement, refinement, and more voters to the booths. Also, the man who wrote this is named Jon Favreau; he is Obama's chief speechwriter, and he is 26 years old. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20speechwriter.html?scp=1&sq=jon+favreau&st=nyt