My New Year's resolution for 2024 was to get rid of something every day, and I've been able to keep it up. Books are one of the things that I can get rid of.
However, my job with Utah Historical Quarterly means that more books come into my house than go out.
Various publishers and authors send us books that they want us to review. As book review editor, it's my job to find reviewers for them. (It definitely has been out of my comfort zone to send so many unsolicited emails, but it's been a good experience.) But not all of the books are worthy of a full review. When that is the case, we usually publish a book notice instead, a paragraph that merely describes the book without analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. And it's my job to write the notices. So I have a large collection of books for which I have written notices, and many that I still have to write about.
I wrote all seven book notices for the latest issue of UHQ
On top of that, this year I'm on the book awards committee, so this week I brought home a stack of books that I will have to look at to see if they're worthy of awards. (I'm not going to read all of them word for word, just enough to know whether they're worthy of consideration.)
And then there's all the books I already have. I accumulated many books in grad school, and I had a colleague recommend to me that I keep them. I can't keep that advice totally, but there are many important books that I think I need to hold on to, because I might need to reference them in my work at some point.
I have a shelf devoted to books that I've worked on.
I have a shelf devoted to books about holidays.
And I like buying books when I visit bookstores: "I've heard about this book! I would love to read it!"
I still have several books that I really want to read and intend to read. I'm really enjoying Benjamin Park's American Zion. I plan to read Charlie Brown's America by Blake Scott Ball, Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott, Chosen Path: A Memoir by D. Michael Quinn, and America's Public Holidays, 1865–1920 by Ellen M. Litwicki. Sometime.
But here's the thing: I don't do much recreational reading. Since I read for a living, there are so many other ways I want to spend my time.
And when I do read, I read almost exclusively nonfiction. I don't think I've read a novel since 2015. I prefer nonfiction, but it's not exactly the kind of material that calls out to me to read it. I read it more for learning and a sense of accomplishment than I do for entertainment. I liked the Harry Potter books, but even then I was in no hurry to read the sixth and seventh books when they came out.
I'm not the most organized person (I'm trying to do better), so I have various stacks of books throughout my room. I have downsized some this year and took books to the Book Garden in Bountiful. And I still have other books that I plan to get rid of. But it's hard when I actually have valid reasons to have and keep my various books.
Since last week's post was only a short post to keep up my thirteen-year streak of never missing a Sunday, this week will cover two weeks. I will divide it into sections so you can navigate to the part(s) you are more interested in.
Leaving on a Trip
On Monday, April 1, as I was doing laundry, our dryer made a weird buzzing sound. My dad immediately heard it and couldn't get it to work. So my parents opted to just buy a brand-new drier, since my dad worried about lint hazards in the old drier, which I believe we got around the turn of the millennium. Does that count as an April Fool's prank from our house? My dad was not happy to have to replace the drier right before our big trip.
On Wednesday, April 3, I joined my parents on our road trip down south. We stopped for lunch at a diner in Kingman, Arizona, before we made our first destination in Phoenix, the first time I had been that far south in Arizona. I loved how they had saguaro cacti just growing freely. Saguaro are so iconic of the desert, yet they only grow in Arizona, Sonora, and a little bit of California.
We stayed the night at the home of Susan and Bill. Susan was my mom's best friend back in our old neighborhood. We moved out of that house back when I was two, so I have only fleeting memories of that house/neighborhood, but we did visit Susan's family sometimes when I was a little older. (I have a memory of their kids bursting into our old house, and the son Brett went into the kitchen and started chugging a bottle of vanilla. I'm 99 percent certain this was a dream. Also, I always thought Brett was named Bread.)
Susan is losing her short-term memory, so I think that was sad for my mom. But they had a cat named Willy, so that was the highlight for me! (They also had a rambunctious dog named Buddy, but I don't care about that.)
National Parks
On Thursday, April 4, we arrived at the western side of Saguaro National Park. I loved seeing all the saguaro! We went on a short nature walk. I never realized saguaro were so big.
That night, we stayed at a hotel in Tucson. There was a greenway right next to our hotel, so I went on a walk. I even saw a roadrunner! It was a perfect evening, and I had some envy for Tucson. But I probably would be less envious in August than in April.
On Friday, we went to the eastern portion of Saguaro National Park and did another nature walk and a short scenic drive. I just adore this desert. (Since I work in Utah history, my muscle memory wants to type Deseret instead of desert.) Cartoons tend to portray the desert as big expanses of sand with a few saguaro, but the Sonoran Desert is not like that at all. There are all kinds of prickly pear cacti, barrel cacti, cholla cacti, and other plants. I'm sad we didn't get to spend more time there.
Then we headed into New Mexico, which is Arizona's twin, but it's like the twin that didn't graduate from high school and still lives in Mom's basement. It doesn't have the Sonoran Desert, so it will never be as cool. But it still has some cool things. We went to White Sands National Park. Most sand is made from quartz, because it takes longer to erode than other minerals. But at White Sands, the sand is made from gypsum, the same material used in drywall. We stopped at the dunes, and the texture of the sand reminded me of cornmeal. I got down on the sand, and the wind was blowing the sand against me, which was uncomfortable. Just lots of white all around.
We stayed the night in Alamogordo, NM.
On Saturday, we headed out. It was snowing as we drove through Cloudcroft, NM, a village at more than eight thousand feet in elevation.
We went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There is an elevator that goes down into the cave, but my dad and I opted to hike down (and took the elevator back up). The process for going down was really confusing, and the rangers gave us conflicting information. I could tell that one ranger really did not like her job.
It was an amazing place to be. But I have been in other caves before (Lehman, Minnetonka, Timpanogos). Carlsbad was like the other caves, just on a bigger scale. It was really busy inside.
Every time I go to a cave, they make a big deal about the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, and that was something I learned in elementary school. But first of all, why are there different words for them? And second, why is it important for me to know the difference? Like, why did I learn the mnemonics to remember the difference in fifth grade, yet I never learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act until grad school?
Then we went into Texas to go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We went on a small walk but did very little here. It's my understanding that there's not a lot to do in this park.
There is a little pool of springwater
There were some homes there from the early twentieth century
And then we were done with the national parks. We spent the night in Carlsbad, NM, in a hotel with a vintage kitchen.
An egg carton built into the fridge!
Solar Eclipse
On Sunday, we drove to the home of my cousin Shane and his wife, Sarah, in Keller, TX, outside of Dallas.
On Monday, we drove to a park about thirty minutes away, and Shane's family also came. Lots of people came to the park, but it was less busy than I expected. We put on our eclipse glasses and watched partiality. There were spotty clouds, so we worried whether we would see totality.
But! Just before totality, the clouds parted, and we got to see the whole show. As totality began, people cheered. We got to see the corona around the black shadow of the moon. It was as dim as twilight, even though it was the middle of the day, and a few planets were visible. It was just as I remember in 2017. And then as totality ended, everyone cheered. I really feel happy that I've been able to see two total eclipses in my adult life. And in 2045, another eclipse will go directly through Utah, and I expect to still be in Utah at that point. But that is a long time from now!
I didn't try, expect, or plan to get a good picture of the eclipse. This is just proof that I saw it.
I wanted to stop at Krispy Kreme to get eclipse doughnuts to share with Shane's family.
And that was really the end of my trip.
Coming Home
On Tuesday morning, my parents dropped me off at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport while they continued their road trip. I had a long time in the airports, so I got to do lots of reading: a couple of books for work, and two whole chapters of Benjamin Parks's American Zion.
I had a layover in Phoenix, and on the way home, I enjoyed looking over the land. I saw several grand canyons, and I suspect one of them was the Grand Canyon. I'm pretty certain I saw Lake Powell, and I think I saw the San Rafael Swell.
Now, I don't like to talk about gross things, and you probably don't like to read them, so you might want to move to the next section. When I got home, Reggie had had diarrhea all over the house and himself. So much of my free time for the last several days has been spent cleaning the floor and his fur. And I will still have to do a deep clean. That has been a significant frustration.
NCPH
Part of why I came home when I did is that the Utah Historical Society (my employer) was cohosting a conference with the National Council on Public History. So on Wednesday evening, I attended the plenary session and got my conference badge. The badges came with different colors of lanyards to indicate how comfortable I am with physical interaction. I got yellow to indicate that I'm fine with fistbumps but not hugging and would rather not shake hands. It's so nice to have a socially acceptable way to say I don't like hugging!
I attended sessions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It can be exhausting to attend that many sessions. But of course I was being paid to be there. I was able to introduce myself to several historians whose work I have admired, and I talked to a few of my classmates from grad school. I think the networking was more beneficial to me than the sessions themselves, though I liked those as well. I think my job with the Utah Historical Society will have me attending many more conferences in my career. We lucked out that this NCPH conference was in SLC this year.
Whew! Good job if you made it through the whole post this week.
This will be a short post because I'm writing on my phone. I'm on a road trip with my parents; we're currently staying at my cousin's house in Texas so we can see tomorrow's eclipse (fingers crossed the weather cooperates!).
We went through Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and now Texas, my first time in NM and TX. We also stopped at four national parks, my first time for all of them:
Saguaro,
I am in love with the Sonoran Desert
White Sands,
Carlsbad Caverns,
and Guadalupe Mountains.
I will provide a longer travelogue another time, when I am back home. Have a good week!
On Monday, I had my weekly video call with my boss. As I mentioned previously, her two-year-old son likes to say hi to me and will often say "Want Mark." This week, he was very clingy to his mom, and at one point he was eating her hair, then saying "Icky." But someone else joined our call, and I could tell that the toddler was saying "Off." My boss later told me he was saying, "Want her off! Want Mark!" It was funny, but I could tell my boss was flustered.
On Wednesday, I went on another steep bike ride to the top of Summerwood, but I went a different route this time that was just a little longer. It was really hard, and I thought, "I can't stop, because if I do, I'll never get going again." But I was still pleased that I was able to do it—and yet, while I was going up, another cyclist went fast past me. He said, "Have a good ride!" It was another reminder how I'm not a cyclist.
On Thursday, the Utah Historical Society hosted an event with the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City. The winter 2024 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly is a collaboration with the consulate. To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the consulate (1911), there was a Spanish-language publication a few years ago in Mexico. For UHQ, we had the articles translated and then published them in English.
It was a real headache to edit this issue. There was one article that I was sure had been translated by a computer, because the translation was so bad, but apparently it was a human. (I don't know whether the translator was bad, or if the original publication was bad.) Some things had been mistranslated. For example, one article talked about "Marquis de Frazer Mont wheat," but that was actually marquis wheat from Frazer, Montana. One writer made a claim about Latter-day Saint business practices, but when I looked at the citation, it was a sarcastic anti-Mormon article from the Salt Lake Tribune, so the facts were wrong—but the writer, not having English as their native language and not having a background in Mormon history, didn't get that. With every article for every UHQ issue, I clean up the citations, which usually means finding the original sources. That's hard in English, but it was especially hard with Spanish sources. (I took four years of Spanish in high school, and I was really good at it, but I'm not fluent, and I only got a 2 on the AP Spanish test.)
Anyway, the event was to honor the publication. We got the print copies in the nick of time (and it still hasn't been published digitally). Some of the authors came, including one who flew in from Mexico, and the Mexican consul himself was there. I had a lot of impostor syndrome: I did do a lot of work on the issue, but it wasn't my idea, and I hadn't really communicated with all of the authors. I must admit that it was hard for me to pay attention during the presentations. But at the end my boss pointed to me as someone who helped out a lot with the issue, and the woman who kind of spearheaded the project seemed excited to meet me.
I found the image for the cover in the Utah Historical Society's digitized collection.
Since I worked on Saturday last week, I got to have Friday off, which also happened to be Good Friday and my half birthday, as well as the thirty-third anniversary of us moving into our house. I went to the pool, and there was a group of special-needs adults there. One of them came into the locker room meowing. Like, it sounded exactly like a cat.
It's on my bucket list to visit every state park in Utah, and I thought it would be a fun day to go to Utah Lake. Even though I lived in Provo for four years, I had never been there. Most state parks are reservoirs, so I want to save them for the summer so I can swim and paddleboard in them. But Utah Lake has so much algae that I don't anticipate swimming there anytime soon. I went with my mom, and I walked around the edge of the lake. It was a lovely place, and I'm glad I got to see it. But it makes me sad with all of the environmental problems it has. And I'm not a fisherman or a boater, so I don't have much reason to go back.
Yesterday (Saturday), I colored Easter eggs with my family, which is always fun. These are the ones I made.
The plain ones are actually from brown eggs, which colored better than we expected
And my mom—I mean, the Easter Bunny—still prepares Easter baskets for us, even though I'm a grown adult. I appreciate that. But only my niece and I got chocolate bunnies.
Then last night, my ward (among others) was asked to help with manual labor at the Bountiful Temple while it undergoes annual maintenance. I was in a group that tore up the carpet in the celestial room. We pulled up the carpet, then pulled up the black padding underneath. Then we had to scrape the glue off the concrete floor. This was difficult work, even though I think I'm more fit than the average person. It certainly was strange to be in the celestial room, with its white walls and chandeliers, but drenching myself in sweat while performing manual labor. We wore white jumpsuits with casual shoes. Probably the only time I'll wear Easter-egg socks in the celestial room.
This morning before church, I made carrot cake for our family's Easter lunch. I used a cookbook from the 1970s that is falling apart, but it was one of the best carrot cakes I've ever had, I think. Carrot cake is my all-time favorite dessert, but I only eat it at Eastertime.
I made the cake and the frosting, but my mom actually frosted it and put the decorative carrots on
I sang in the ward choir at church. I sing tenor—I think I'm better at bass, but I like tenor better (when I can hit the notes), and tenors are harder to find. For both our songs, the tenor line was really weird and unintuitive. But I think I got it down and it worked out—even though I had to sing falsetto because it was extra high.
I thought about explaining how I like to treat Christmas and Easter equally, and how various factors have made Christmas bigger than Easter, but I don't feel like it right now. Maybe another year. It makes me sad when Easter is in March, because it makes April less exciting, but next year it's late. I'll just leave you with this song, "I Wish I Was a Whisker on the Easter Bunny's Chin," which I genuinely, unironically love.
