Sweltering Spring

Hi. I put this picture at the top of the blog because otherwise, the Facebook thumbnail was a closeup of my crotch.

Sometime within the last five years or so, I learned that green carnations were once a thing for St. Patrick's Day. I don't remember how I learned it, but I did. And I also learned that green carnations were associated with Oscar Wilde, and consequently they became associated with queer culture.

On Monday, I was looking at the Oxford English Dictionary entry for "leprechaun"—as one does—and came across this quote from March 1960: "Gifts and refreshments were provided for the audience, with green carnations, bowties and traditional leprechaun hats." That reminded me of green carnations, so I wanted to buy one. So I Googled and was surprised to see that Smith's sold them! So Monday evening, I went and bought a bundle of three carnations for the next day.

I only go into the office once a week, and this year St. Patrick's Day happened to line up with my day in the office. So I wore my green shoes, green socks with Irish flags, green pants, green belt, and green shamrock shirt. And I also wore my green carnation, but no one said anything about it, and it was a little tricky to keep it upright.

Many people complimented my outfit at staff meeting. I have earned a reputation among my colleagues as a fashionable person, which is a bit strange, because I don't think of myself as being that fashionable. Our director said I was very "on brand," but I don't know whether she meant "on brand" for the holiday or "on brand" for me. 

The director was wearing snake earrings but no green, and one coworker told her those were the snakes that Saint Patrick drove out of Ireland. Our assistant director got up and asked people to raise their hands if they weren't wearing green. Then he held up a pair of salad tongs and said they were "HR pinchers."

We have a lot of boxes of old materials to go through before we move into a new office space in June, so my time in the office was spent looking through old papers from the '90s and early '00s. There are some interesting finds, such as a handwritten letter cancelling the subscription to Utah Historical Quarterly because the subscriber "has gone to be with the Lord." My boss let me play my St. Patrick's Day playlist while we went through the boxes.

For dinner, we had corned beef and cabbage (I would say I made it, but my mom cut most of the vegetables for me) and Irish soda bread from Smith's, which was the sweetest soda bread I've ever had. (I didn't have time to make my own this year.)

And my mom also made these potato candies. My all-time favorite candy is the See's St. Patrick's Day Potato, which I didn't get this year, and it is a nougat candy. But apparently the more traditional Philadelphia candy is one with a coconut filling and a cinnamon coating, and I ordered some from Amazon last year. This kind that my mom made is more like the Philadelphia version, with a coconut and cream cheese filling, coated in cinnamon.

After I finished working, I ran on the Wild Rose Trail in green shorts, green shirt, and leprechaun hat. (Unlike the quotation above, by "leprechaun hat" I mean a hat with leprechauns, not a hat for leprechauns.)

And I spent the evening watching The Secret of Kells, which has grown on me quite a bit, and relevant sitcom episodes.

The next day I got to wear my carnation again, because my friend Connell invited me to a screening of the silent film Salomé from 1923, held at the Utah Film Center. It was based on an Oscar Wilde play (hence why I wore the carnation), which in turn was based on the New Testament story of Salome asking for the head of John the Baptist. (Back in 2012, I made this Facebook post: "My semantics textbook gives 'Herod gave Salome a nice present' as an example. I don't know about you, but I hardly consider a head a 'nice present'...") It was an interesting cultural experience. I can't say the entertainment value holds up a hundred years later, as it was very slow paced. I think it's the first time I've watched a silent film all the way through. 

Then on Thursday evening, I attended an event at the Church History Museum for practitioners of public history to talk about their projects about the Mormon Trail. Most, maybe all, of the panelists, were not professional historians. It was just an OK evening. One of the participants was musician Clive Romney, who I've followed for a time. More than a decade ago, he was leading a project with other musicians to release an album about every county in Utah. They only released three, the last one back in 2015, so I asked if there will be any more. He told me he's devoting all his time to trying to save the Great Salt Lake, specifically by writing a play (or something like that) for children to perform.

As I was leaving the Church History Museum, There was a pickup truck with the tailgate down, and it was full of a chair and lots of books. One of the books fell out. The truck drove off before I could catch it, but I picked up the book from the road; it was a boring book from 1920 about court cases. I'll probably just recycle it. (If the truck driver cared about the books, he should have secured them better.)

Yesterday I went to the North Canyon Trailhead. Fortunately, the main North Canyon trail was still too snowy to go on, so I went up to Cave Peak instead. I say "fortunately" because at this point, we want as much snow to linger as possible. 

This is the main trail, and I turned around here to go up to Cave Peak instead

Guys, I am so sad and worried about our winters. We had a snowless Christmas, New Year's, and Valentine's. Now Eastertime is more like Memorial Day. And I remember our late snow in 2021, and our record-shattering September 2022. Will we ever have normal Christmases and Easters again? We have a president and his uneducated followers claiming that climate change is a hoax, denying all the expertise of scientists, just as they do with vaccines and diseases.

Meanwhile, I'm over here limiting my plastic use, eating less meat, driving an efficient vehicle, voting for candidates who care about the planet, taking short showers, using our own cherries and apples, pulling up invasive plants, and recycling. And my efforts just feel so futile. I'm worried about our seasons and our lake, and yet I feel like I'm already doing everything in my power.

Anyway. I'm happy for Eastertime, and I was able to get up all the Easter decorations.

I got this bunny four years ago at the start of my existential crisis

I got the deviled egg / salt at Target last year because I loved it, so I had to get the umbrella/cloud and carrot / watering bucket yesterday

I reminisce about how wonderful last Eastertime was: nice and long, trying lots of Cadbury Mini Egg cookies, seasonal ice creams, cherry-blossom soap, singing "Were You There?" as a partial solo, making chocolate carrot cake, new Easter musical recordings, more appropriate weather. I don't expect this year to be quite as charming, but that's OK.