Slow news week

I didn't have a lot of interesting things going on this week. And that's fine, because I will be busy most Saturdays for the next while. August 22, I will be going to Topaz incarceration camp; August 29, my ward has an outing in Midway; September 5, I will be in Montana; September 12, I'm going to Danger Cave; September 26 is the Restore conference; October 3, I will be at Wasatch Mountain State Park; October 24, I will be in Portland for the Western History Association conference; and November 14 is the Gather conference. That means I'll only be free September 19, October 10 and 17, Halloween, most of November, and all of December. But some of those days I will need to visit Logan, Cedar City, and Moab to complete the Independent Bookstore Crawl.

I went swimming on Monday and Tuesday this week because of the heat, and I went swimming on Thursday because of the rain. Though it flooded in some parts of Utah, there was no flooding where I was/am. At the Thursday swim, I swam 2,000 yards, the most I have ever done. 

I went running on Tuesday. And on Friday, I ran a route that was new, though I had been on all portions of it before. Connected to the Wild Rose Trail is the Eagle Crest Trail, which I pass frequently but have only been on a handful of times, because it is unpleasantly steep. (I thought it was called Eagle Ridge, but I guess they changed the name.) Well, now the new Bonneville Shoreline Trail (2021) cuts through the Eagle Crest Trail, so I was able to take BST and then go up the upper portion of Eagle Crest, which bypasses the excessively steep portion. This Friday run was more than five and a half miles total. 

And Saturday, of course, was North Canyon, which is my default for weekends because it's shady and not too busy. One portion of the trail is an aspen grove where there is an aspen stump directly in the trail, and there's some kind of mushroom growing on the stump!

Back in 2020, when I went up North Canyon almost every day, I began piling up rocks to block an unofficial shortcut on the trail. Six years later, the piles are substantial. 

This is the lower portion, and I think some of the rocks have washed away over the years from storms.

This is the upper portion. I can no longer toss rocks on here, because there are almost always lizards on the rocks, but they run away before I take the picture. I have to gently place the rocks down.

In February I took my bike in for a tuneup, which improved the brakes and the right shifting, but it made the left shifting worse. I took it back in soon thereafter, and the mechanic made some adjustments, but she told me to pedal faster and push the lever harder. That didn't help, and when I did my triathlon in May, I had to go up a hill in third gear because it wouldn't switch to second. So I took it back again yesterday, and they're going to look at what they can do, though the mechanic seemed a bit skeptical. Am I being fussy and picky? But I think it's reasonable for me to want my bike to work properly. I'm more likely to ride my bike when there's snow on the ground, and as I think about upcoming bike rides, I actually dread it if my bike isn't going to shift properly when I'm going uphill. Sigh.

That's it for this week!

Goatheads and postcards

Sometimes August weeks are just finding joy in ordinary things, or in doing new things that aren't all that unusual. The week actually started off cool enough that I was able to go running in the evening, which I haven't been able to do since before the Fourth of July. And several days a week I go out to pull up goathead plants. In 2022, I adopted a spot on Marialana Way, and I keep going back to pull up new plants. I'm confident that I have pulled up hundreds, maybe even thousands, of baby goathead plants there, thus preventing them from growing more. And yet even after four years, more keep coming up, meaning the abominable seeds are viable after at least five years. This year I've adopted a new spot where Lacey Way becomes Center Street. I've also seen other places where they grow, but I can't pull them all up. It's not my job to save the world all by myself.

Yesterday (Saturday), I found some really enormous plants on my usual route, but they were off the sidewalk a little bit, where there are a lot of weeds and it begins to go into the gully (and someone's property). That means I hadn't seen them until they were so big. So I pulled them up. Since I had just run seven miles in North Canyon, I felt a little woozy in the heat.

Within the last few years, I learned that there is a restaurant in Salt Lake called Goat Head, and since that is the plant I love to hate, I felt like I had to go there. So that's what I did yesterday. It's not that exciting of a thing to do, but it was new and different. Unsurprisingly, as I walked down the block to Goat Head, there were goatheads growing in the sidewalk.

Since I'm flexitarian, I had a vegan sandwich with seitan. But I was very tempted by chicken and cornbread waffles.

Now, you might recall that in April, I went to Ken Sanders Rare Books and bought a bunch of vintage postcards for Washington's Birthday, Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Two weeks ago, our neighbor Laura gave me a whole box of vintage postcards she had collected for Christmas, Halloween, Fourth of July, Valentine's Day, and even one St. Patrick's Day. (I'm not posting them all here, because there were so many.) 

Well, once I was done at Goat Head, I decided to go back to Ken Sanders and look at the postcards again. I'm glad I did, because the last time I went, I had completely missed their section of New Year cards! And I bought additional postcards for holidays I already had.

Though I own and buy too much stuff, I think there are several reasons why it is valid for me to buy these postcards: (1) They are only one to three dollars apiece at Ken Sanders, so they don't break the bank; (2) I literally work in history and have been interviewed twice by local news outlets to discuss the history of Pioneer Day and Thanksgiving, so these postcards are related to my career interests; (3) since they are old and already exist, I'm not contributing to mass consumption; (4) they are small and don't take up much space. I don't know what exactly to do with them, but I enjoy having them and looking at them. So here are all the ones I bought yesterday!

I was surprised how many New Year's cards had horseshoes and four-leaf clovers! I had never heard of that motif before.

I think people actually believed the cherry tree story!

I love this autumnal scene. In the nineteenth century, Thanksgiving was seen as a wintry holiday, but by this time (1910), it had shifted to autumn.

I love the acorn cap

. . . and the spiky seedpods. 

I love that image of the Mayflower. The cashier asked me my favorite of the postcards I was buying, and I said this one.

I love the corn! They sure loved cherubs.

More horseshoes and four-leaf clovers!

I love the icy, snowy scene here! (And the clovers!) I hope we get another snowy New Year's.

I love the cars in these whimsical scenes

The back of this card specifies it was for Lincoln's Birthday

And this one is specifically for Washington's Birthday. I assume that's Betsy Ross, but it doesn't say so.

I like the holly. The cashier liked this card.

This is such an interesting card! The Pilgrims are more historically accurate than they're commonly displayed, since there are no buckles and they're wearing colorful clothes. Interesting to have the "Indian" looking in through the window instead of at the feast. And is that snow? I love that it's framed by a wishbone and red, white, and blue.

Governors used to issue Thanksgiving proclamations every year before it was always on a set Thursday, and it's fun to see a proclamation featured here.

Despite the fall setting of the earlier Thanksgiving postcards, here's a winter one! This combines the nineteenth-century winter ideal with the twentieth-century Pilgrim mythology.

Just love that orange pumpkin

I've seen live turkeys and cooked turkeys in Thanksgiving imagery, but this might be my first for dead, unplucked turkeys. Of course, this was before you could buy a frozen turkey!

End of July

I don't love the last week of July. It's just hot and boring. But it's over now! This week was relatively uninteresting.

At work, I continue to go through boxes of old files from my predecessors. One of the most surprising finds this week was that in 1985, a Nigerian high school student wrote to the Utah State Historical Society, sending money for trousers, cap, shirt, and bag. I have so many questions: (1) How did the student find the Historical Society's address, and (2) why did he think they would sell clothing? The man who answered the letter sent the money back. It is fun to get paid to go through old things.

On July 3, I wondered if I could get rid of 250 things in honor of America 250. That took longer than expected, and I didn't make it. I had added things to it over the last few weeks. On Monday, my parents and I went through our DVD shelves and got rid of DVDs we don't care to keep. So I was able to reach my 250 goal! It wasn't in time for the Fourth of July, but it was still in July. Independence from clutter (in theory at least).

Because of the heat, I went swimming Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday's forecast was cooler, so I hoped to go running, but it was cooler because of a big thunderstorm, so no running. But yay for thunderstorms!

On Friday, I thought it would be fun to make progress on my Independent Bookstore Crawl, so I drove out to Eagle Mountain to go to Spellbound Books, which is in a trailer. There's just this random lot with food trucks, a mobile convenience store, and this mobile bookstore. This bookstore was entirely fiction, mostly romance novels, so I didn't buy anything. But I got my map stamped! 

I also went to Walmart while I was in Eagle Mountain. It's fun to see different parts of the state, even if I'm not doing anything special there.

Saturday, August 1, I ran up North Canyon before it got too hot for the day.

chicory

Richardson's geraniums

Though I finished before it got too hot, the rest of the day was really hot, and just driving around made me hot. I drove down to Mapleton to see my cousin Tammy's new house. Then I went to Provo to go to another bookstore from my map, Planted in Pages, which sells both plants and books. I don't know how to care for plants, and most of the books were fiction again (though I did eye some cookie cookbooks), so I didn't buy anything. I know I'll be in Provo again this year, but I wanted to get that bookstore out of the way. (And it occurred to me I should have gone to this bookstore when I went to the Spanish Fork and Springville stores, but oh well.)

So now I have five bookstores left! These are harder to get to: Smithfield, Logan, Midway, Cedar City, and Moab. I think I want to end in Logan or Moab, because those stores sound like bookstores that will interest me more.

And it's August now! I don't love August, with its heat and dearth of holidays, but I have so many fond memories that happened in August. (There's still more than a month before Labor Day this year, and Labor Day isn't even one of my canonized holidays.)