A pretty, great state

Back in the 80s, there was a slogan for Utah: "A pretty, great state." Of course, it didn't take long for that to be mocked as "a pretty great state." The creator of the slogan defended it, complaining that people ignored the comma. Comma or no comma, "pretty" and "great" are the most boring adjectives I can possibly think of (except for maybe "good"). This week I got to experience the beauty and splendor of this beautiful, splendid state.

There are people who love to criticize and complain about Utah. If you don't like Utah, then by all means, don't come or live here!

My mom had her spring break, so I headed out with both of my parents to southeastern Utah on Tuesday morning. My mom doesn't hike, so I think they were glad that my dad had a hiking buddy. We visited Arches and Canyonlands National Parks back in 2006, so it's been a while.

First we stopped at Dead Horse Point State Park. Apparently we went there on our 2006 trip, but I don't remember it. My dad and I hiked along one of the rim trails. It was a lovely desert environment, sort of a mini Grand Canyon.

After Dead Horse, we went into Canyonlands National Park. We went on the short, easy hike to Mesa Arch, which was crowded, and with good reason. My mom even went with us. On this hike, I broke my rule about not talking to strangers. I heard a man talking to his family about sandstone and basalt, but he didn't remember how granite formed, so I explained it to him.

We went to various overlooks in the Island in the Sky District. At one of those places, I went on a short (less than two miles round trip) trail run past all the people. It was flat and easy.

Then we spent the night in Moab. I spend a few minutes in Moab back in September, when I was visiting all the county seats, but we spent more time there this time.

On Wednesday morning, we headed into Arches National Park to hike to Delicate Arch. Back in 2006, we saw it from an overlook, but this was my first time going to the arch itself. I was also surprised it was my dad's first time. It was not a difficult hike; the average person could do it, but being in good cardiovascular health helped. Towards the end, I was a little uneasy with the drop-offs, but I do have a real fear of heights and slipping. If I can make it past the "scary" parts, anyone can. We did get a little warm on the hike, and it was the morning in March. I think this would be a terrible hike in the middle of a summer's day—no shade whatsoever.

I had always envisioned Delicate Arch as being on a flat plain, so I was surprised that it was on the edge of a bowl. I didn't like walking on the bowl, but it worked out. Though there are few people in my pictures, there were lots of people at the arch. Delicate Arch symbolizes Utah perhaps more than anything else, and it was great to finally see such an icon for myself. It really is spectacular. Well worth the hike.

'Cause I know that it's Delicate.

I liked the arch's shadow.

We also stopped at the petroglyphs and Wolfe Cabin on the trail. The petroglyphs are between 1650 and 1850 because they have horses.

Next we headed to the trail for Landscape Arch. My dad and I split off to see Tunnel Arch and Pinetree Arch.

Then we headed to the precarious Landscape Arch. My mom made it to this one.

Then we headed to the Windows District. I went on a little trail run by the Turret Arch, North Window, and South Window. There was a primitive trail that I wanted to run on, but it was so primitive that I entirely lost it. I didn't want to get lost or fall off a cliff, so I just turned back the way I came.

I also ran across the street to Double Arch, where I ate a Carrot Cake Clif Bar in the shadow of the arch. I did get a little sunburned from that day's hiking and running.

Near the entrance of the park, I noticed a fault in the rock layers. Then I learned there was a sign pointing it out. I was glad that I noticed it without knowing it was there.

That night I wandered through the stores of Moab with my parents. In one, I found a postcard that matched the shirt I just happened to be wearing.

On Thursday, we went to Newspaper Rock, which had many ancient Native American petroglyphs, including six-toed feet. I think these are totally fascinating. There was some more modern graffiti, but it was more than fifty years old. I find it a little comforting that we seem to be better as a society about valuing these ancient artifacts.

We headed into the Needles District of Canyonlands. My dad and I went on a short hike among potholes, which are depressions in the rock that fill with water and support living creatures. At first, they were all dry, but then we did find plenty of wet ones.

We saw little shrimps in many of the puddles, as well as some swimming insects.

At one point, there was a mom and two kids, and the kids were stepping in the potholes and throwing rocks in them. All throughout the park, there are signs telling you not to touch or disturb the potholes. Were these folks simply uninformed, or were they apathetically and pathetically reckless? I didn't know what to do. After they stopped to marvel at some of the creatures in one of the ponds, I heard them wondering what they were. So I once again broke my rule about not talking to people, and I said to them, "They look like shrimp. But if you put your hands in the water, it can destroy their ecosystem." I hope I was able to educate them. My mom said she saw a ranger get on the trail, so I hope the ranger caught them and educated (or reprimanded) them, because a ranger has more authority than I do.

As we headed back out of the park, I wanted to see an ancient granary on a tiny side trail.

Then we headed to Monticello. We did sealings at that temple, my first time there.

The next morning we drove through Bluff, which was settled by Mormon pioneers who went on the grueling Hole in the Rock expedition. (Not to be confused with Hole N" the Rock, a tourist destination between Moab and Monticello with inexplicable punctuation.) We looked at the Bluff Cemetery.

We went to Goosenecks State Park. My current bucket list is to get to every state park, so I was glad to get this one crossed off. It's not worth a special trip to see it.

Then we headed into Natural Bridges National Monument, which was apparently the first National Park Service area in Utah. I think I liked this monument better than Canyonlands. We went to an overlook of Sipapu Bridge, the world's second-biggest bridge. I didn't think it looked that big from a distance. There appeared to be some small trees that filled a good amount of the space.

Then my dad and I went to hike down to the bottom of the bridge. This hike might be a little strenuous for the average person, and there were several places where they had to make it more accessible. There were three ladders, many handrails, and a metal staircase.

It was fantastic to actually be at the bottom of Sipapu Bridge. It was much bigger up close than it was from a distance. What I thought was a small tree was actually a large tree. It was very impressive.

Then we went to an overlook over some ancient kivas, Horsecollar Ruin. They were amazing, even though I could only see them from a distance.

Then we drove through Capitol Reef. We stopped at the visitor center, and we were going to eat a picnic lunch, but it was too windy. We didn't do anything else, but Capitol Reef is my favorite of Utah's national parks. It has the spectacular sedimentary rocks that the others have, but I also love the petroglyphs and the fruit orchards.

 My rankings of Utah's Mighty 5 are:

1. Capitol Reef
2. Zion
3. Bryce Canyon
4. Arches
5. Canyonlands

On our way home, I wanted to eat at Sunglow Family Restaurant in Bicknell, because as far back as high school I heard they served a pickle pie. It was my half-birthday, which meant that I could eat non-seasonal things without breaking my rules. So we got a sampler of four pies: pinto bean, buttermilk, oatmeal, and pickle.

 The pinto bean was sweet and enjoyable. It tasted very familiar, but I can't place the flavor. 8/10. The buttermilk was like a lemon custard. 7/10. The oatmeal was kind of like an oatmeal cookie; it was my favorite. 9/10. The pickle tasted the most like its namesake, sweet pickles. The texture was similar to a pumpkin pie, and it had a bit of the taste of sweet pickles, yet it still tasted like a pastry. 8/10. I would gladly eat a whole piece of any of them.

It really is great to go out and live an interesting, fulfilling life, rather than just a digital one.

"Nature is nice, but I wish I could take a quiz to find out what kind of donut I am."

Incoherent

I didn't have a super eventful week, so I don't know what to blog about. I have various ideas, but I don't know that I want to make an entire post about any of them. So I'm going to make brief observations about many things.

***
Since I don't have employment-provided insurance, I have to use Healthcare.gov, and I have used agents to help me sign up. This week, I needed to update my income. I was going to have my agent do it, but I logged into my account just to see what information I needed.

Well, the website and system is so messed up that just by me logging in and not even really doing anything, it messed up my application. My agent got quite mad at me because he thought I had opened up a can of worms, but then it wasn't as bad as he initially thought. I find it frustrating that the system is so fragile that I can break things just by looking at it. It's been years, but there are still a lot of kinks to iron out.

Some people want to throw it all out and start over, but that will just bring in a fresh batch of problems. Why don't we just fix what we already have?

***
I tend to be very sentimental, and I remember a lot of things. This makes it hard sometimes to get rid of things. "I remember when I got this on that Thursday five years ago. I don't want to get rid of it!" But I'm trying to get better at not holding on to everything. There's three things that help with that.

(1) Once in a while, I will catch parts of the Hoarders TV show. I don't want to be that. I wouldn't classify myself as a hoarder, but I don't even want to approach that.
(2) Marie Kondo. I haven't even watched her show, but her rhetoric has infiltrated society. I ask myself is something brings me joy, and that helps.
(3) Daughters of Utah Pioneers museums. I've visited several such museums in the last few years, and they tend to be brimming with random nineteenth- (and twentieth-) century items. It's like someone was tidying up and donated the antiques, and the DUP didn't want to say no, but now they have too much stuff. Sometimes I like to hold on to things for their "historical" value: "This item is a relic of 1980s pop culture!" But when I see those museums, I realize that there are already enough artifacts. Too many, even. We don't need to keep them all.

***
As you all know, I take holiday candy very seriously. For each holiday, I have a mental list of what I officially classify as category 1 treats, meaning they are iconic to the holiday. For Easter season, which kicked off this week, category 1 consists of chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks (Peeps), jelly beans, carrots, carrot cake, eggs, and chocolate eggs. (This week, I have had carrot cake cookies, carrot cake muffins, carrot cake Dove Promises, Peeps cereal, and Peeps creamer.) Last year was the first time I classified chocolate eggs as category 1, as I kept finding references to chocolate eggs in pop culture and other things. But now I'm trying to define exactly what a chocolate egg is. Does size matter? Does it have to be 3-D egg-shaped, or can it have a flat side? A Cadbury Creme Egg is definitely a chocolate egg. But what about Cadbury Mini Eggs? I say so, mostly because they're so popular at this time of year and they show up in other things. (I don't like the red and green Cadbury balls for Christmas, because they just taste like Easter.) But if Cadbury Mini Eggs are chocolate eggs, then so are M&Ms eggs. Lots of people praise Reese's Eggs (and I agree that they're better than Reese's Cups), but I wouldn't consider those a chocolate egg—they're more like an egg-shaped candy bar, because they are flat. I'm still working out the definition of a "chocolate egg." Yes, this is what I spend my time thinking about.

***
Since I eat too much seasonal candy, I've been looking forward to the snow melting so I can get back on the trails and git rid of my pudginess. (Streets don't beckon me the way trails do.) Well, the snow is mostly gone, but then it's been rainy. And I'll be out of town this week. I just hope I don't miss the glacier lilies before I can finally hit the trails again.

***
This Is the Place resumes officially on Saturday, but I have been there many days in the last few weeks, helping with field trips, trainings, etc. When people ask me if I like it, I tell them, "It would be a great job if I didn't already have a degree." I'm trying to do a better job about enjoying the moment. I ignore most "inspirational" stuff shared on Facebook, but one of them a few months ago pointed out that we shouldn't spend our time at work wishing we were not at work. The pay isn't good, but it is a fun way to spend my days. You know me, I'm a conceited know-it-all, so I like telling people about what I know.

***
It makes me so happy when I wake up in the middle of the night and see my cat sleeping on my bed next to me. When he comes to sit on my lap, I think it's so he can get warm or have physical needs met. But when he sleeps at the head of my bed, he's not getting warm or getting petted. I can only assume it's because he likes to be with me.♥

St. Patrick's Day

Over the last few years, I have come to enjoy St. Patrick's Day more than I used to.

It has always been part of my holiday canon, and when I was a kid, the idea of leprechauns and pots of gold really captured my imagination, and we would always have a green-dyed meal on March 17—rice, potatoes, pizza crust, eggs, etc. I would get mad at Easter stuff before St. Patrick's Day.

I have never quit liking St. Patrick's Day (it is a holiday, after all), but in college, I adopted a bit more cynical of an attitude. Why should we have a holiday that focuses on one specific culture, when we don't really pay attention to any other cultural holidays in the United States? I'm not Irish. (My latest ethnicity estimate has me at 11 percent Ireland and Scotland, and I think the bulk of that is Scotland.) And I abhor drinking. I honestly believe that our world will not get better as long as people turn to alcohol for recreation.

Truer words have never been spoken by an Old Navy ad.

In more recent years, I have come to enjoy and even look forward to it. It has definitely surpassed Valentine's Day in my opinion. I think there's a couple of reasons.

First, I have moved beyond the kitschy leprechauns and food dye to actually doing more in the weeks leading up to Paddy's Day. Don't get me wrong; I love dressing in head-to-toe green, and I have been eating mint-, pistachio-, and lime-flavored foods all month.

But I have made a habit of listening to Irish or Irish-inspired music, reading Irish folk tales, and consuming Irish or Irish American food. I know that a lot of what passes as "Irish" is actually more American than anything (e.g. corned beef and cabbage), but I'm American, and we are celebrating an Irish American holiday, so I am 100 percent OK with Americanized things.

Yesterday (March 16), I didn't attend the St. Patrick's Day, but I stopped at the Siamsa after-party, which had live music from local Irish-inspired bands, Red Branch and Murphy & the Giant. They were on a stage that opened to an outdoor area at the Gallivan Center.

There was a little girl running around, probably between five and seven, who seemed a little...different. As the second band was setting up, she said, "Hey, you guys!" I didn't hear the whole conversation, but I think she asked if they wanted to see her dance. The fiddler said sure, and she did a little kid dance. Then the fiddler made a mistake by saying, "You'll have to dance when we start playing." Then, for the entire time the band was setting up, this girl was walking throughout the stage, behind the curtains, etc.

Once the band started, she was up on the stage doing her weird little dance. She had befriended two other little girls who were also dancing, but at least those two girls appeared to have had some actual Irish dance lessons, and they were not roaming among the band on the stage. Even as the band was playing their set, the weird girl was walking throughout the stage, talking to the drummer while he was playing. Where are this girl's parents?

The normal girls stayed on the side of the stage, but not the weird one.

Then it got weirder. There was an older woman, old enough to have gray hair, who apparently had some mental disability, and she got up on the stage and began "dancing" next to the little girls! But her dancing was more like rhythmic stepping. I felt so uncomfortable with the awkwardness of the whole scene, and I wonder how embarrassed the band was. It was so weird. Oh, and at one point, the weird little girl came out and talked to all of us spectators—I couldn't understand what she said to me, but I think it had something to do with the oversized green T-shirt she had on, and the next thing I knew, she was on the stage again, with her green shirt in her hand (she had a white shirt underneath), and she swung it around and threw it off the stage, as though it was a striptease!

A few years ago at Barnes and Noble, I bought A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, a collection of nineteenth-century folklore, and I have been reading a tale most nights before bed. Irish people get mad if you spell it "Patty's Day" instead of "Paddy's Day," and some of them also get mad that we use four-leaf clovers in the context of Ireland or St. Patrick's Day. I deduced that we Americans used four-leaf clovers because we already had them, and we connected them to shamrocks and the expression "Luck of the Irish." Again, I was fine with this—I'm an American, and in America, we celebrate St. Paddy's (not Patty's) Day with four-leaf clovers.

Well, in this book, I found reference to four-leaf shamrocks guarding against fairy and witch spells. So four-leaf clovers might have an Irish connection after all, even if it isn't as prevalent as we make it.

I think the other thing that has helped me appreciate St. Patrick's Day is having a broader context of American history and American holidays. I haven't really done any research into Ireland or the Irish diaspora, and I have done only minimal St. Patrick's Day research out of curiosity. But just being aware of other contexts has spilled over.

Years ago, the Salt Lake Tribune published an article claiming Utah is the least-Irish state. (Google and Facebook's search algorithms make it very hard to find, so I'm not linking to it here.) Our primary Irish connection is that the Union Pacific Railroad was built by Irish workers, and it was completed at Promontory Summit. It was hard to know about the Irish contribution to America because of where I live.

But now I am more aware of other things: George Washington declaring a St. Patrick's Day, the Irish Potato Famine that sent immigrants to the States, Irish immigrants influencing our Southern accent, Irish regiments in the Civil War. I even helped write a footnote about the Irish Troubles of the 1980s. 

In my lifetime, it seems that St. Patrick's Day has gotten bigger, but it has mostly been the kitsch and drinking that have gotten bigger. Fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, it seems there was more interest in Irish culture in general and in St. Patrick himself, even if you weren't Catholic. Bing Crosby recorded many Irish American songs, but it's hard to imagine a mainstream star doing that today. (Ed Sheeran has a couple of Irish songs, but he's not American.)

Does St. Patrick's Day belong in the twenty-first century? After all, it might be considered a day of cultural appropriation and degrading stereotypes.

But I think it does belong. It wasn't that long ago that the Irish were a persecuted group in America and oppressed in their own land. Current events show that we're still struggling with accepting and embracing people and cultures who are different from us. St. Patrick's Day can show us how it's done.☘

A less interesting week

Last week's post was very popular. I'm pretty sure my page views this week won't be the same.

I had a job interview on Tuesday. It was one of those jobs where I applied just so I can feel like I'm doing something, not a job I necessarily want or expect to get. Therefore, I didn't mind that the interview was really weird and impersonal.

I have continued doing research downtown several days a week, and on Tuesday I also decided to stop at the state office of tourism, since I had never been. I was amused last year (after attending March for Our Lives) when I noticed the sidewalk said "Wall Ts" instead of "Wall St." I'm not the only one who noticed that.

On Wednesday, I worked at This Is the Place, giving field trips and other things. My boss wanted me to learn more about the park, so he gave me his master key and I went around opening buildings and giving myself a tour. That was fun.

Thursday morning, I had a dentist appointment, and finally they made no comments about my flossing. The last few times, they told me I need to be more aggressive, even though I floss every day. So maybe I've finally mastered the art of flossing.

I wanted to go swimming later that day, but when I got there, there was a swim meet, so I couldn't. Maybe it's a first-world problem, but I find it a little odd that the closest public pool is still a decent distance away, and even then, it has weird hours and closures, since it's the only one nearby.

My laptop has gotten extremely slow, and when I was in California, my computer whiz brother helped me remove some viruses to try to make it faster. It made it a little faster, but not completely. So this week I reset Windows to try to improve it. It didn't. In fact, it made it worse because now there's a lot that I have to redo. I've had all sorts of problems with this computer, so I don't know if I'll go with Toshiba again.

For the last few years, I have listened to Irish or Irish American music in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day. This has been both traditional folk music and the popular Celtic rock that blends traditional with rock instruments. My favorite of all the Irish-inspired bands is Young Dubliners, and every year they tour the West before St. Patrick's Day. This year, I decided I wanted to see them live. (I'm increasingly more interested in doing things around holidays, instead of just decorations and food.)

So on Friday, I headed to the Commonwealth Room, a new Salt Lake venue, to see their show. Their opener was a local rock band called Folk Hogan. They had an accordion, a mandolin, and a banjo, but their sound was more of a rock sound. It seems that rock music is gasping for breath right now, and more popular bands are relatively clean cut. But this was more of a typical edgy rock band, with long hair and questionable lyrics. I liked their sound, but it was hard to understand what they were saying, and I think I'm glad of that. They played for an hour, which is the longest opener I have ever seen. I thought they wore out their welcome.

Then Young Dubliners were out. Their band had rock instruments but also a fiddle/violin and a tin whistle (or something like that). I thought it was hard to understand Folk Hogan, but Young Dubliners was worse. I don't know if they were standing too close to the microphone, or what. But it was really loud yet muffled at the same time. I know that there are always issues with sound quality in live music, but I think that's the worst I had ever heard it. I really like their recorded music, but I did not enjoy the live show that much.

I liked the Irish color scheme of the lights.

Also, I hate making remarks about people's appearance, but the bald fiddle player looked like he belonged in a Halloween monster movie. I got scared every time I looked at him.

I might see them again if they were in a different venue, and if they did not have an opener, but this was not my favorite concert.

The venue served alcohol, and I am a little troubled that they didn't do more to ensure people had designated drivers. This week, I was reading an article about the new .05 blood alcohol law in Utah. Studies have shown its benefits to public health. But the American Beverage Institute doesn't like the law (I wonder why...), and a member of it criticized the study: "Studies citing a significant drop in traffic deaths are 'deeply flawed' because they rely on a broad deterrence effect, meaning that drivers at all blood alcohol concentration levels, especially high ones, would be persuaded to not get behind the wheel after consuming too much alcohol after a .05 law is implemented, he said."

Um, they say this like it's a bad thing. Anything that leads to a drop in traffic deaths is good, and anything that deters people from drinking and driving is a good thing, and to say otherwise is stupid at best and evil at worst, with selfishness, greediness, and laziness as other attributes in between.

Also, what gets me is that the .05 law is being considered by more progressive states like Oregon and California. People complain that Utah is too conservative (...and it is), but now that Utah is doing something progressive, those same people are complaining. Sheesh!

Here's a cheesy poem I whipped up three years ago:

If you will drink whiskey on St. Patrick's Day,
You better had listen to what I will say.
For if you are drinking, and some of you are,
You must not be thinking of driving your car. 

Now, drinking and driving's a terrible crime—
Endangering others for ease or for dime.
Go search for the cabs, or call up your friends,
That the lasses and lads may have happy ends. 

For if you drive drunk, then I certainly dream
That banshees salute you with doom-telling scream.
May the road rise to meet you on your way to the cell;
May the demons all greet you as you go down to...well. 

So do us a favor, and always drive sober.
Don't press your luck on a green four-leaf clover.
If you heed this message, then all will be fine
As on corned beef and cabbage we joyously dine!

Anyway, don't drink and drive.

I had to work more yesterday, helping to train new people.

Then today, I used my rock collection to teach elders quorum. But it didn't fit as well as I had hoped.

Incognito

Over the years, my appearance has changed drastically.

2006

2010

2012

2018

This has been due to weight loss, different glasses, facial hair, and natural aging.

(Remember that viral "age challenge" from a couple of months ago? I gotta say, I think I look better now than I did ten years ago.)

All this has often allowed me to go incognito without even wearing a disguise.

I will often be in a public place and see someone I know, or knew, but they have no idea who I am. And being the introverted, socially awkward man that I am, I don't say anything to them. I'm usually not in the mood for a conversation. And I feel awkward saying hi to someone if I have to explain to them who I am. But I can't say hi without telling them who I am, or they would be creeped out that a stranger is calling them by name.

Often these people are from my home ward. I once had a terrible seminary teacher who beat into our heads that under no circumstances were we to call adults by their first names. So thanks to him, when I see when of these people, I don't know whether to call them by their first name or by Sister/Brother So-and-So. So usually I just don't call them anything. That's a minor thing, and yet it is one obstacle of many that prevents me from talking to them.

I can't tell you the number of times I had to introduce myself to someone I already knew, or the times people didn't recognize me. I thought about listing some examples, but there are too many. A few weeks ago, I was at a restaurant and saw two women from my home ward. I didn't know how to initiate a conversation with them, and I don't think they recognized me—even though one of them might be reading this blog right now!

Yes, being incognito brings its own share of awkwardness and discomfort. But it's also nice sometimes to be anonymous. When I see someone I know and don't say hi to them, I feel bad. (I have to remind myself that they didn't say hi to me either, so I'm no worse than they are.) But if people don't recognize me, they have no idea that I didn't say hi to them.

But, alas, I can't go around doing horrible things (vandalism, streaking, pushing old ladies down stairs), because there are enough people who knew me more recently who would recognize me.