Sunday, October 26, 2014

The wonders of nature

The natural world is pretty fantastically awesome.

It is almost Halloween, and while some trees are mostly bare, I'm so glad that so many are still green, because that means we still have several more weeks of changing leaves. We have a continual supply of colorful trees, instead of them all changing at once and leaving us destitute of the primary symbol of fall.

At work this week, I was reading (and writing) about the Warm Springs Bath House that the pioneers built in Salt Lake in the 1850s. And I thought, reading about it is all fine and dandy, but nothing beats a first-hand experience. It just so happens that the warm springs are on my way home, so I left the office a little early to take a field trip to Warm Springs Park. When I was a very young child (like 4), we would sometimes go to the children's museum on Beck Street, which was a bath house in the 1920s and which is vacant today. I walked around the park a bit, and I found the warm springs! They smelled like Yellowstone, and the water was what I would call tepid. They definitely would not serve as a satisfactory swimming or bathing place today. The springs themselves weren't that great, but it kind of blows my mind that there are warm springs in the middle of the city! Hot springs occur when groundwater, which is heated by the earth's temperature, reaches a fault, at which point it rapidly rises to the surface, fast enough that it still comes out warm. Since we live right at a fault, we get hot springs.

Our cat, Jenny, is a strange animal, and my dad always makes sarcastic comments about how he hates owning her, although he admits it's better than owning a dog. But recently, he has been appreciative of her, because apparently our neighbors have had troubles with rats, but we have not. Twice this week, I looked outside our side door, onto our little patio area, where there was a dead rat! For both rats, I took a shovel and scooped them up on the end of it. The tails hung off the edge of the shovel--except they weren't hanging, but rather sticking straight out. One of them even vibrated when being moved, like a spring would do. So that's what rigor mortis looks like. The second rat had its eyes all glazy and its fur a bit ruffled, its whiskers gleaming in the October sun.

On Thursday, I turned on the news in the morning and was reminded that there was a solar eclipse. So I grabbed my eclipse glasses from the last one, two and a half years ago. At the appointed time, I looked out the window near my cubicle with my glasses. A very old missionary was trying to view it through a pinhole, but I lent him my glasses. Then I invited two other senior missionaries (who are married to each other) to look at it. They hadn't known it was happening. So I was glad I was able to share the experience with them--and then they called their daughter to get their grandkids to see it too (apparently they had glasses), so my sharing caused multiple people to see it. I was surprised that I didn't hear very much about this eclipse. The only camera I had with me was my phone, but the picture isn't worth sharing. I came home early to try to show the end of it to my parents, but the clouds had gotten too thick.

On Thursday, I went to a Lower Lights concert at the Granite Stake Tabernacle. We didn't know which door to go in, so we went up this way where we walked right past the performers. I was wearing a Lower Lights t-shirt, which made them want to talk to me. I don't remember who I talked to, but I think one of them was Scott Wiley, who is really big in the local music scene. I wish I were more outgoing and had had a better conversation with them. Oh well. The concert, as always, was awesome. It was apparently a ward activity combined with a local Evangelical congregation. I didn't know we were "ward-crashing."

And since this week is Halloween, here's a little Halloween song. I spent way too much money on a used CD from eBay this summer because it was the only way I could get it (and the other songs from Mad Monster Party?).

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Get Down Goblin Valley!

This week was dinosaurian in age, even though there weren't many dinosaurs.

This week, my friend Emily asked me to teach her small third-grade class about the Mesozoic. Of course, I love talking about that, so I agreed. I took some Triassic shell fossils and tried to give a very brief overview of the Mesozoic--having to check myself before sharing too much that they wouldn't understand. I drew a foot-long line and told them that if one inch equalled 1,000 years, then at half an inch would have been Columbus, and at a foot would be woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers--but I couldn't draw a line to the time the dinosaurs died, because that line would be over a mile long. That kind of blew their minds.

Then on Friday, my parents and I went down to Capitol Reef National Park. I'd never been there until August last year, and this was the third time I've been there. Capitol Reef is an underappreciated place. It was fairly busy because it was UEA weekend. On Friday, we took a small hike through Wingate Sandstone, which was deposited in the late Triassic and early Jurassic when there were lots of sand dunes in the area. In May, I went to Capitol Reef with my Provo ward, and we went on a little hike. At that time, I was sure we were in the Navajo Sandstone--but now I think it might have been Wingate. Both sandstone formations were deposited from sand dunes, which I didn't realize before, thus my confusion.

As usual, I fully acknowledge that my photographs are terrible, with a little cheapo camera where the settings are annoying to change, so the pictures are too dark. On our walk, we saw some Indian drawings.

 At another place, there were lots of pioneer writings, which they wrote as they drove through the canyon with wagons. It was hard to distinguish between pioneer writings and later writings. I was amused by one at the end. Someone made their own writing this year, and there was an accompanying sign saying the vandals had been found and were facing prosecution. With the nature of this one, my guess is they were just ignorant people. Sometimes, there are jerk people who write directly on top of Indian writings--those people should be punished by being required to have a tattoo that says "Moron," "Jerk," "Vandal," or something similar.

We stayed at a hotel just outside the park, and we were amused by the little playset by the parking lot. My dad advised me not to play on it.

The next day, we drove up a really bumpy road (in the 4WD Pathfinder my parents bought from my sister) to look out over the Waterpocket fold, a geologic monocline where the crust has folded the strata. There are flat strike valleys where easily eroded rocks (shale) have weathered down, while the more resistant rocks stick up. In the foreground of this picture, you can see red rocks of the Carmel Formation butting up against the whitish/yellow Navajo Sandstone. The Navajo is actually older, so it should be below the Carmel, but because of the folding, it is sideways and actually appears to be above it.

Then we drove up to Goblin Valley State Park, where I had never been before. It surprises me that it was only discovered in the 1920s. In the late Jurassic, an interior sea was in North America, and near the sea, sand was deposited as the Entrada Sandstone. Because of differential erosion (shale eroding more easily than sandstone) and physical weathering, the rock forms the hoodoo goblins.



Of course, I had to play "Get Down Goblin" on my phone.

But despite my time in the Triassic and Jurassic this week, it's time to get back to the Holocene Epoch of the Neogene Period of the Cenozoic Era.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Scattered thoughts and scattered leaves

This time of year always blows my mind. So many trees change their colors and look amazing! This week I went trail running a few times. The maple trees had started to change in September, but now the scrub oaks are changing too--some of the leaves look like they were spray-painted red.

On Friday, I had to visit Provo for work. If you're one of my Provo readers, don't feel bad that I didn't see you, because I wasn't there for very long. Anyway, I only spent two falls in Provo, and I loved both of them, although I think I liked 2012 better than 2013. Y Mountain is stunningly beautiful with all the red and orange trees covering it, with a few yellow aspens at the top. And I miss that scenery. However, both of those falls I would sometimes be a little sad only to see the trees from a distance. To actually be among those trees would require organizing a hike--something I don't ordinarily feel inclined to do, especially when I had fifteen credit hours. But now in NSL, I can run through or near them, and it only takes ten minutes to run, or five minutes to drive, to the trailhead.

When I was a kid, my dad used to go around singing a Halloween song: "Halloween, Halloween, lots of fun on Halloween! Black cats and ghosts, skeletons too, clowns and witches all say boo!" Then in kindergarten, a music teacher taught us the rest: "Pumpkins with eyes, shiny and bright, make us shiver with fright! [Or something like that.] Halloween, Halloween, we love Halloween!" Recently, I Googled that song--and I found out it was a Mormon song! The few hits I found for it were from Mormon mommy blogs. I found out it originated in The Children's Friend, so I looked for it and found it in the October 1959 issue.

As I was looking through 1950s editions of that magazine at the Church History Library, I found lots of Halloween images of ghosts, witches, skeletons, and so on. I even found a story about a village of black cats who went to school to learn how to ride witches' brooms. You would never find that kind of thing in that magazine's modern-day successor, The Friend. You might find a few images of jack-o-lanterns, but no witches. And I wondered why that is. Is it because The Friend is less secular than The Children's Friend was? Is it because some people might consider witches and ghosts to be satanic or occult? Or is it because they're trying to reach a more global audience, and Halloween doesn't always translate to other cultures? All these questions arrive from one little surprising fact--that our Mormon society has its own Halloween song floating among its culture, even though it has nothing to do with the religion.

Speaking of Mormons, I saw Meet the Mormons yesterday. It is currently at 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. And I understand why. Parts of it seemed hokey. I didn't care for the narrator. It was really just an extra-long "I'm a Mormon" video. But it did have its merits. I really liked the segment about the Candy Bomber--if it had been a documentary entirely about that story, it would have been a better movie. And the convert missionary mom, who was born to sixteen-year-old parents and became a mother herself at sixteen, had an inspiring story. The movie was originally meant for Temple Square--and I think that would have been a much more appropriate venue.

I think most people who will see this movie are Mormons, who already know what Mormons are like. Most people who really need to have their perceptions of Mormons challenged are those who (1) are unlikely to see it or (2) are so hateful of Mormons that nothing could sway their opinions. You know the ones I'm talking about--if President Monson got up and said, "Go hug your grandma today, and be kind to kittens," they would find fault. Overall, I'm just skeptical of how much of a difference the movie will make--but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

I made an interesting purchase this week. I really like local artist Cherie Call, and I knew she had some original songs on a project CD. I ordered it this week, Saga of the Sanpitch, a combination CD and art book about Sanpete County, which was originally called Sanpitch. Some parts of it seem like what you might buy from a museum gift shop, but overall I was impressed with the quality; there are lots of local folk musicians singing about the county's history. Mostly I'm impressed with the Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts's endeavor--the plan is to create one about each of Utah's twenty-nine counties, with two being made about Salt Lake County. That's a massive undertaking, though, and I'm not sure how they're going to do it. The music isn't available as downloads, and it's not sold in stores. I think the only place to order it is from their website. But I'm telling you all about it because I'm impressed with the idea and I don't know how they'll be able to do it all.

I could have written some more things today, but I didn't want to bore you with all the details.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

A Is for Apple, B Is for Birthday, C Is for Conference

I feel like this wasn't an overly eventful week, even though it was.

In fact, I find myself most amused at the oddly specific dreams I had: a horrible second date with a girl named Kelli, a new intern at work named Nigel (neither of these people existing in real life), and Walmart restrooms containing rooms for religious rituals, such as infant baptisms.

Monday was my birthday, but it wasn't very eventful. We had cake, and I got some presents, but all of them need to be returned, either because they weren't what I wanted or they didn't fit. (Don't think I'm just picky; my mom says she knew her gifts were a gamble. My sister got me some awesome socks, including ones with dinosaur fossils, but they're too small.)

My birthday means that I'm 26, which means that I'm no longer on my parents' insurance. So with the help of an agent, I got set up for insurance. Earlier this year, in a political post, I said, "Obamacare is a good idea in theory, but in practice it has some major problems." I still feel this way. I'm glad that I've been able to be on my parents' insurance until now. But when we tried to get me set up, it wouldn't let us in. So then we had to call HealthCare.gov, and we were on the phone for like an hour--probably more--with two different people who didn't know what they were talking about. The next day we were able to talk to someone who knew what he was doing--but it still took longer than it would have if we had been able to get into the site.

Except for Monday, I worked from home this week, because all my tasks have been ones that didn't require being at the Church History Library. I was supposed to go to Provo, but they weren't ready, so it will probably be this week. (It had better be.) I'll have to be back in the office this week. But I learned that I can stay at my job until the end of the year--so now that I have an insurance plan set up, it makes my job hunt a little less urgent. Which is good.

It's really unusual to be excited about an apple, but I was. We have apricot and plum trees and grapevines that all yield fruit. We also have an apple tree, but it has never yielded good apples--they never got big or ripe. Our neighbor's tree hangs over into our yard, and their apples are decent, except they usually have worms. (I was thinking about how "worm" today means either the worms in the ground or larvae of various insects. It's still a very broad word. But Old English "wyrm" meant snake, dragon, and pus, and I think it meant worm as well, so the meaning has definitely narrowed a lot.) Yesterday, I actually found a good apple from our very own tree! It made me so happy. In more than twenty-three years living at this house, I don't think I've ever had an apple from that tree.

It was conference weekend, and I even got to attend the Sunday morning session. It's the first time I've attended conference there since I sang in the choir nine (!) years ago. Of course, there were protesters there telling us what we believe. I didn't realize how nice it would be to actually be there. But I was disappointed they didn't have any foreign speakers that session, because I wanted to see how the subtitles worked. (On TV, they just did voice-overs.) When they put a picture of President Hinckley (who was the prophet last time I was in the Conference Center) up on the screen, I noticed that he was being photobombed by Brother Brigham:

Also this week, I've been fasting from Facebook. So if you've been wondering where I was, that's why.