I'm Baaaaaa-aaaaacccckkkk! Friday Fiction! Ish...

After a week hiatus, I am back to the blog, and for this entry I am going to keep it simple.  It's Fiction Friday everyone, and as I was walking through the chaos of the city streets, instead of paying attention to where I was going I was thinking of my favorite books.

I apologize in advance for not REALLY keeping these to fiction.  But they are great books and ones I think that everyone should read:

In no particular order:

Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Marking the Sparrow's Fall by Wallace Stegner

Upon examining this list is there is only one female author, and she writes non-fiction.  Is it that I am more attracted to so-called "masculine writers" or that I am more interested in a "male" style of writing?  Are there specific styles that lend themselves to masculine and feminine voices in literature?

What do you think?  Who would be on your list?

Thankful Thursday

Today I hiked in Pine Valley in the southwest corner of Utah. The image is from the Forsyth canyon trail.

I got lost.  About 3/4 of the way down, I realized that the creek I had been following was on the wrong side of me. I came to the clearing and instead of the dirt lot I had parked the rental car, I was in a clearing of scrub. Brittle, scratchy scrub.

I am now lying in a cozy condo in Park City and blogging about it, so I obviously found my way, but I am thankful, honestly, that I'm not hunkered down under a log shivering through a freezing night.

Wilderness Wednesday

This is where I hope to be today for Wilderness Wednesday.  Eagle's Crag, in Rockville, UT, just south of the Zion National Park entrance.  It's a short hike, only 5 miles round trip, but I wanted to acclimate to the altitude with something short in a beautiful place.

See, I'm headed to Utah today via Las Vegas to do some hiking, see some friends, and recharge my batteries.

New York City can be depleting.  I have wonderful friends here.  There are beautiful parks.  But you know what I can't find in New York City?  Solitude.  Alone-ness.  Quiet.

I'm a Gemini with monkey mind and a somewhat insatiably curious nature, so it helps me to take myself hiking and quite literally, like a small child, wear myself out.

Tea for Tuesday

There are some things in this world I simply don't understand in the I-can't-possibly-wrap-my-brain-around-this-kind-of-cruelty-horror-ignorance-etc. way.  Like the Holocaust.  Or child molesters.  Mass murderers and purveyors of homophobia, xenophobia, and people like Assad in Syria murdering his own people so he can stay in his own diabolical dictatorship.  You know who else I would add to this list?  The Tea Party.

Now, they don't exactly fit under the "cruelty and horror" heading I had listed above, but for me, where they really do fit, as a party platform, is under the heading of ignorance.

I am sure there are tons of really nice Tea Partiers who bake cookies and say nice things about gay people and may even have rational conversations with those who oppose their views.  But then I read this:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/16/anti-gay-tea-party-speaker-screams-at-lgbt-protesters-we-will-not-be-silenced-by-faggots/

"Scott Lively is an anti-gay hate merchant who is known as a “professional worldwide hunter of homosexuals and top proponent of ‘gay cure’” as well as a supporter of Uganda’s ‘kill gays’ legislation. So it wasn’t very surprising that Lively was allowed to be a speaker at a Tea Party Tax Day rally in Boston, Massachusetts on Sunday. It also wasn’t a surprise that LGBT protesters would hold a counter rally against the hatred."


That's just the first paragraph of the article, here are paragraphs two and three. 

“Reports from attendees were that in response to disturbances by protestors, one of the speakers said from the podium, broadcast across the loud speakers at the Commons, “We will not be silenced by faggots.”

"Police then arrived and forcibly broke up the LGBT demonstrators and left the Tea Party alone. The Boston Police Department is now investigating reports that officers used excessive force while breaking up the LGBT counter rally."

I won't say that every individual in the Tea Party espouses this kind of hatred because I don't believe that every Republican is a money grubber and every Democrat a tree hugger.  But I do believe that there are common threads that hold the tapestry together, and well, if your tapestry includes treating others as the Tea Party does I'll give them a big pass and remind them that there are people of consciousness in this world who can deal with people who oppose them without using ignorant epithets.

I'll close with this:

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” 
― Harlan Ellison

Monday Musings

I'm sitting here at the desk in my room, tossing from hand to hand a rubber purple ball with sparkly liquid inside.  $5 at Borders before it went away and over the chatter of animated male voices, I can hear the little ocean  inside the ball make that "slish" sound as I catch it.

Today is Monday Musings and there are many things that I am musing, mostly what to write for Monday.

See, I fear that I could become insufferable in my tendency to vent my liberal political leanings, that I could alienate family and friends by speaking of Mormons, that I could bore you all with my need to wax poetic about trees and sunsets and moons.

So I muse the world inside the ball; I tilt my head and listen to the boys in the living room; I make note of my headache and try to make plans that seem obstructed my inability to know what the future brings, I smell the lotion on my hands as I bring my hand to my face and feel the little dog by my feet.

Musing with inaction, or rather, creating a plan for action later.

Friday Fiction

As many of you know, I'm in a book club.  We've been reading together going on six years (I think) and we have read probably over a hundred books.  Though to accommodate one another's tastes, I have been forced to read books I would never have picked up of  my own accord:  Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), The Stories of John Cheever (by, remarkably, John Cheever), Catch-22 (Joseph Heller), Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek (Annie Dillard, and, by the way, one of the worst books EVER), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), A Knight in Shining Armor (by Jude Deveraux of the "heaving bosoms" genre), Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) and American Psycho (by Bret Easton Ellis, though I will confess, I LOVED it.  It's sick and misogynistic but completely fascinating).  That's a terribly small and unjust sampling.

We met a couple of weeks ago over brunch on the Upper East Side at The Chat Noir to have some food and conversation.  At the end of our meandering discussion of the book and whatever side trails we find the conversation leads us, we pick a book.  All the Iphones/blackberries/androids come out of purses and pockets as we scroll through the best seller lists, look up author names, and think of subjects that we want to explore.  Then we reach a consensus and voila!  Another book or two is chosen and we wander into miasmic Manhattan.

They picked my book.  And while I feel safe saying that my book club compatriots consider me well-read, they're not necessarily thrilled about my ideas because they usually have to do with hiking, nature, or messed up people doing stupid things.  So I was very excited when they all agreed to read Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

I adore Wallace Stegner.  His fiction is certainly noteworthy but I am more a fan of his essays on conservation in the American West.  My favorite book of his is Marking the Sparrow's Fall.  Stegner grew up all over the west as part of a restless, homesteading family, but he found himself living his teen years in Salt Lake City and chose to call Salt Lake City his home, though he taught at Stanford (where he met Edward Abbey, one of my favorite authors) and in the east (though I can't remember where).  

His love of Salt Lake City is not the reason I adore Stegner, though it may factor unconsciously into my adoration.  He sees people.  There is an excitement that rises in me when I read a poignant passage and my heart starts to swell because I know the truth of it.  And that's how Stegner makes me feel.

This is the passage that brought me to tears the other night (just read the book to get the context):

"The vision of her floundering in the wake of the concentrated helpers and their feeble charge turned my distress into outrage.  Not at any of the helpers, not at Charity's willfulness, not at the solidarity of women collaborating in what only they could do as well, while excluding male intrusions.  No, at it, at fate, at the miserable failure of the law of nature to conform to the dream of man:  at what living had done to the woman my life was fused with, what her life had been and was.  What she had missed, how much been kept from her, how little her potential had been realized, how hampered were her affection and willingness and warmth.  The sight of her burned my eyes."

It doesn't matter if this doesn't touch your soul, there are many other passages in many other books that may do just that.

Thankful Thursday

Well, I have 58 minutes to get in my thoughts for Thankful Thursday, and it's going to be short and sweet.

To begin:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ann-romney-defends-role-as-stay-at-home-mom-after-democratic-pundits-remarks/2012/04/12/gIQACeopDT_story.html

In case you're not aware, today the news is all abuzz with word that Hilary Rosen, a democratic strategist, essentially said that Anne Romney cannot with any veracity comment on the plight of women worrying about the economy because she has never worked a day in her life.

That may be true, as in, Anne Romney has never held a job in her adult life.  Mittens, I'm sure, has made it financially feasible for Anne to be a stay-at-home mom, which, let's not joke around here, is incredibly hard work.  I once read something a long time ago that said if stay-at-home moms were compensated for their hours, they'd make somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000 a year.  Anne Romney has a gaggle of children, albeit grown.  I will never fault any woman for choosing to stay at home if she is financially capable of doing so and chooses to.

First world worries.

While in Africa, millions of girls have to worry about this:

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2313097.html

The link is an article to female circumcision, aka genital mutilation. You read that right.  Most often performed by their mothers with whatever sharp implement happens to be laying around.

If you'd like to move to Iran and decide your marriage is no longer working, you can look forward to this:

http://www.iran-e-azad.org/stoning/women.html

Stoning.  In the 21st century.

So, I'm thankful that today, this is what we in America are all worked up about.  But let's not take our eye off the ball.  There are bigger things to worry about.

Wilderness Wednesday

This was the view from my front yard growing up.  Well, actually, you have to go a little west and north, as this is the view from Mt. Ben Lomond from the east, but this was the mountain looming over me.  She is 9712 feet above sea level and when you get to the top, about 8.2 miles from the North Ogden divide, you will have a 360  view of Northern Utah; Willard Bay and the Great Salt Lake  to the west, Willard Peak to the North and East, and the city of Ogden and all points visible south.

I was one time at the top of this peak, with a girl and her brother who lived in the neighborhood (if you can call those long, Utah blocks "in the neighborhood.").  She lived around the "corner" (again, a phrase I use loosely because it was probably a half mile walk) and she had horses.  One summer day, moving toward late afternoon, he suggested we ride their horses to the top and back.  I wish I remember this girl's name.  But she was fascinating to me with her long blonde pigtail braids, cut off jean shorts and her flannel shirted brother.  She seemed like a real cowgirl and I, not that far removed from my early childhood in southern California, was enthralled.  I knew nothing about horses or hiking but I wanted to be prove my cowgirl mettle, and in the dust of late afternoon, headed up the mountainside.

We did make it to the top, but I remember nothing about being there.  I remember, however, being terrified the whole time, especially coming down.  I was sharing the saddle with the girl and the horse, and the distance between my elevated self on the horse and the ground suddenly became magnified as the horse walked precariously downward.  The trails were suddenly too narrow, the specter of falling off the back of the horse, the horse getting spooked and bucking us off loomed large as I imagined tumbling down 200 feet of rock face to my certain death.

We made it back just as the sun descended beyond the Great Salt Lake, and I resolved to myself that I would never, never, ride a horse for hiking ever again.  I have been true to my word (though for more complicated reasons other than just not liking that particular experience), but I have not been back to the top of that peak.  The trailhead is about a fifteen minute drive from my parent's house, and well, it's time.  If I start early, I can do 16 miles in a day.  I did 17miles in a river (I'll tell you about that hike later).  Mark my words, all, this peak will be hiked!

Stand Tall Tuesday

This is Ashley Judd.  Ashley, at first glance, is the daughter of Naomi Judd, sister of Wynona, and a very successful actress in her own right.  She also happens to be very smart,  having graduated with a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.  She has given her time to innumerable philanthropic projects, including Defenders of Wildlife, Equality, Eracism, and the International Research Center on Women.  


But you know what people want to talk about?  They want to tear her apart for looking "puffy" on her new television show.


"But, the actress writes, the conversation is really a misogynistic assault on all women."  The article in its entirety is below.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/09/ashley-judd-slaps-media-in-the-face-for-speculation-over-her-puffy-appearance.html

This is a reflection of a larger problem that is happening in our society, and without going into it too deeply, I will simply say that there is a larger denigration of women happening right now, with men going on about how Jessica Simpson, who is in the last months of her pregnancy is fat, how remarkably beautiful and smashingly bodied Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz at the Oscars were "long in the teeth."  Now we have lawmakers working very steadily at stealing reproductive rights that women have legally had since 1973, quietly signing laws that take away women's equal pay, etc.


Please read the above article, everybody.


I am in a business that regularly castigates women for not being thin enough, young enough, pretty enough, and fill in whichever "enough" strikes you personally.  And last but not least, know that you are "enough" of everything.

Monday Musings

This is a painting by Utah artist Jon McNaughton.  He came to my attention a few months ago, when I saw his work, "One Nation Under Socialism" below:



Initially, I was completely furious that I was being bashed over the head by his didactic, screaming, heavy artist's hand.  Then I was livid that he was telling me what to believe with his paintings.

As you can see, they leave little to the imagination.  The painting below is by Arnold Friberg, also a member of the Mormon Church.  If you have been to the visitor's center at Temple Square, you will see many of his paintings depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon.



I listened to a podcast on Radio West (http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/32912-art-politics-and-paintings-jon-mcnaughton) featuring McNaughton and I was prepared as I started to really him.  But I couldn't.  It turns out he's a level-headed guy.  His speech isn't full of hateful vitriol as one would assume from his paintings.  He is not anti-Obama, in fact he says that he believes that President Obama was fairly elected and McNaughton has no "birther" type leanings.  He went on to say that he believed that the country started to take a socialistic turn under the administration of George W. Bush with the implementation of the bank bailouts in 2008.

It begs the question, then, "why not pictures of Dubya burning the Constitution?"

He admits that the paintings are meant to be political and hard-hitting (he recently sold "One Country Under Socialism" to Sean Hannity for six figures).  He also admits that the paintings are not terribly nuanced, that they are message heavy.

What I think is interesting about the paintings is that though they are heavy-handed and lacking in imagination, he is starting a conversation.  And with this being the "Mormon moment,"  with the likely ascendancy of Mitt Romney to the Republican nomination, well, how do Mormons feel about their moment in the spotlight?  How can Mormons answer the stories that are spinning through the media right now (and admittedly, a lot of the spin is full of misinformation, written by people who are not Mormon and clearly didn't ask any Mormons before they published)?  How can the Mormons give accurate information to an electorate largely skeptical of Mormons and their beliefs?  Is it more about Mormon culture (largely giving, conservative, Republican, pro-life, etc.) or Mormon doctrine, which can veer into the misogynistic and spooky?

I am curious to see how this unfolds.

Becoming Unstuck

I know it's been a while but I've been feeling...well...stuck.  I am constantly ranting to my friends about politics, religion, the Republican War on Women, feminism, ad nauseam, etc.  Needless to say, I have great friends who tolerate my musings. : )

Mostly, what I've been realizing is that I feel an acute sense of helplessness.  The news screams at me, "Syria, Assad, starving children in Africa, Iran, Israel, Russia, Bombs, Romney, Santorum, Mormons, Keith Olbermann left current?!" and mostly I want to cover my head with the sofa cushion and just drink frappuccinos.

Enter my delightful co-worker, published author, and creative delight, Mary.  She has been a great champion of my writing; encouraging, cajoling, suggesting and unconsciously, yet decidedly inspiring.

You'll see her ideas coming to life here:  A blog a day, each day with a theme that I feel passionate about.  I leave it to you if you want to check every day, but I'm interested to see where this road goes.

Cursory ideas include:

Monday Musings
Tuesday ?
Walkabout Wednesday
Thursday ?
Fiction Friday

I would love to hear your ideas for Tuesday and Thursday.  Things that push my buttons are politics, religion, feminism, land use issues, etc.

Please, leave your suggestions in the comments or post on my facebook if you so desire.

So, c'mon!  Let's go for a ride!