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June 29, 2006

Holy Guacamole

For me to endorse a Mexican restaurant, it has to supply the following:

--Decent homemade chips and salsa, provided free as appetizers
--Savory red enchilada sauce, complex enough that you can taste something besides chili powder
--Spicy red chili made of cubed or shredded (not ground) beef and thoroughly free of filler like beans
--Real cheese, not any kind of processed cheese food or cheese sauce
--Tacos of shredded roast beef that aren't too greasy
--Yummy guacamole

Lots of people think guacamole is really easy to make--and it is. But it's also really easy to screw up, and the main way people screw it up is by adding stuff that shouldn't be in guacamole in the first place.

The primary offending ingredient is sour cream, which people usually add because they are either ill-informed or cheap. Sour cream goes WITH guacamole, not IN it. The proper way to eat a chimichanga, for instance, is WITH guacamole AND sour cream, not WITH guacamole CONTAINING sour cream.

I make pretty damn good guacamole, and as it has been a while since I've posted a recipe, I thought I'd share it my guacamole recipe here.

Mistake-Free Guacamole

--two or more avocados
--at least one clove of garlic for every avocado you use, minced
--coarse ground pepper
--salt
--a healthy squirt of fresh lime juice (lemon juice is not an appropriate substitution--it won't be tangy enough)
--chopped fresh oregano, if you've got it, and maybe a minced scallion as well
--a fourth to a third cup of chunky salsa for every avocado you use (Make sure you have good salsa. Check the ingredients: it shouldn't have sugar in it, because that's just wrong.)

Mash the avocados by hand and add everything else listed above, stirring well with a big fork or a whisk. Don't add any kind of powdered spice mix. Don't add chopped fresh tomatoes, because tomatoes are disgusting unless they've been cooked, plus the texture is too different from that of the smashed avocado. Don't add chunks of raw onion, because the flavor detracts from the garlic, and again you make the texture weird. Don't add cilantro unless you can't find oregano--even minced fresh rosemary is better than cilantro in guacamole. Mostly the rule is, keep it simple. Guacamole should taste, first and foremost, like avocado. And don't put it through a blender, either. (My mom does that and it drives me nuts.) Even though I object to chunks of crunchy stuff in guacamole, it shouldn't have the consistency of a milkshake.

That's all! And in case you didn't know, guacamole won't turn so thoroughly brown so fast if you store it with the avocado pits in--just put them, whole, back in the bowl after you've mixed everything up.

Posted by holly at 12:36 PM | Comments (14)

June 28, 2006

I Wasn't Even Wasted

I've never been the kind of person to sit around a hotel room. I'm perfectly happy to sit around private homes, even in really amazing cities--it's not like I have to see all the sights when I go someplace, and of course one thing I want to see when I visit friends is the friends themselves. But even in the least remarkable of cities, if I'm staying at a hotel, I want to spend as little time there as possible. I'm not sure why.... Perhaps it's because hotel rooms somehow strike me as boring, impersonal, and a tad claustrophobic. Go figure.... The same goes for a cruise ship stateroom.

My unwillingness to sit in my room watching television meant I had to find stuff to do on the cruise. It helped that meals lasted a very long time: it took two full hours for all eleven people at our table to finish all five courses at dinner. It helped that I am fond of walking and enjoyed strolling around and around the promenade deck. (Though I admit I realized just how solitary my tendencies truly are when I found it a bit irritating to encounter anyone else who was also strolling around and around the same promenade.) It helped that my sister Lisa twice competed in a trivia contest and won both times, so we all turned out to support her. It helped that my siblings wanted to attend disco night.

Yeah, disco night. Lisa and I were persuaded to don feather boas and lip sync to "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor as part of a skit, while my brother and brother-in-law ended up dancing to "Saturday Night Fever." It was fun and we were all worked up and wanted to keep dancing, so we all headed to the night club, for "dance though the decades," which the DJ (who was really lame but thought otherwise) explained meant he'd start with disco (which no one in my family likes), then work his way through all subsequent decades of dance music. He swore he'd move on to 80s music (which we all love) within an hour, then promptly headed off somewhere, turning his duties over to a replacement, who was even lamer.

My sibs went to bed before long, but I stuck around because I'm used to doing things I want to do by myself and I still felt like dancing, which I love. But the replacement DJ was both inept and cursed with dreadful taste. He played "Beat It" by Michael Jackson and the floor entirely emptied, and although he apologized for starting up a song no one was willing to dance to, he let the song run through to its end. He then committed the unforgivable sin of cutting short "Vogue" by Madonna when people were actually dancing in order to play "Celebration" by Cool and the Gang, even though we'd already heard it earlier in the evening.

And let me just state, for the record, that I HATE "Celebration" by Cool and the Gang.

Then the guy played, back to back, "Born on the Bayou" and "Proud Mary" by Credence Clearwater Revival. I have nothing again CCR but I don't exactly consider them part of either the disco movement or any decade since disco.

And it got weirder: he played "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. No one danced, in case you wondered. And then, for some reason, he played "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. And in case you wondered, one person danced to that song: me.

I was both frustrated and about ready to head to bed, and one option would have been to do it then. But I love that song, and OK, you can't easily dance to it, but it was the first decent song he'd played in a long time, so I stood up and did an interpretive dance to it: all slow and thoughtful at the beginning and then when it rocked out I pretended I was in my own private mosh pit--the long hair helps with that--or channeling my inner Wayne and Garth or something. It was kind of great, but the next morning when I woke up, I sort of couldn't believe I'd done it. I didn't even have the excuse of being completely wasted at the time: no, I was thoroughly sober--I generally prefer to drink only water when I go dancing. I just for some reason decided to perform an impromptu, solitary and excessively theatrical dance to an audience of strangers.

It was even weirder and more revealing than blogging, but elicited fewer comments. I guess no one knew what to say.

Posted by holly at 12:08 PM | Comments (10)

June 20, 2006

The Power Ness of the Adam Bomb

People sometimes act like the fact that I don’t teach during the summer is due to some amazing con job on my part. Or they think that the fact that I only have to go into campus a few days a week means that I only work a few days a week. I probably work 50 to 60 hours a week during the semester, and while some of my work is highly enjoyable, a lot of it majorly, majorly sucks.

An example of that is grading. Reading good work by good students can be pleasant if not painless, but reading--and being obligated to comment on--bad work by bad students is an excruciating form of torture. As evidence, I offer you a couple of excerpts from what just might be the worst paper I ever received--I saved a copy because I knew, from the very first sentence, that this paper was special. It was written several years ago by a junior majoring in communications and minoring in English, which she insisted meant her work couldn’t possibly be unsatisfactory since OF COURSE anyone who majors in communications and minors in English MUST know how to write. I leave it to you to decide whether or not the prose below--which I transcribe just as I received it (I must note that my spell checker questions nothing but the last name of the author of the essay the student chose to critique)--is the work of someone competent at stringing together intelligible sentences.

Critique of “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” by Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” is a bold and daring piece that intrigues readers to listen to the voice of the storyteller while reading. The voice in the story is conversational, and this conversationalist in the story sparks the attention span of the reader. The technique holds the reader on edge while whisking through the piece. This not only makes the story enjoyable for the reader but sets an atmosphere and makes the author more creditable....

He does a great job changing people’s attitudes, feelings, beliefs and actions about the Adam Bomb by presenting new information and reasons that the reader may have never known elsewhere. By stating how the Japanese felt.

He used different opinions to stir up different reactions in different sets of readers. Some one who opposes the use of the bomb may not agree with the fact that, “on the twelfth of August, eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned).” They would probably still look down upon the bombing while someone who does believe in the effectiveness may not believe in the effectiveness of the atom bomb by reading all of the tortures of war.

But this works because both the different types of readers can learn more information on the different views and may think differently about the bomb after being introduced to the different opinions.

The subject is already personal to the American public, since there are supporters of war, anti-supporters of war, those for guns and anti-gun, all around the world and especially on the home front.

His strong examples of different persuasion techniques work because it gives the readers different opinions to lead on....

Although this is a controversial subject to touch upon, the just of his material presented are true and or opinions of other people. His title was the first sign of persuasion, “Thank God for the Adam Bomb.” So anyone who first picks up the book can tell that the book is going to be about how to support war. Which is a way could be a downside if someone is against war they may not pick it up, but on the other hand they may just pick it up because they may wonder why someone would want to praise the atom bomb. Then once they start reading they will not be able to stop because by reading the different opinions they will anticipate what the conclusion of the book will outcome....

With more interesting facts on war being brought up everyday, the use of the atom bomb may come up one day or another means of a highly destructible force. Society seems to have become more sensitive to the subject of war methods. The way the world is going today, more facts on the use and the power ness and meaning of the use of the atom bomb just may be needed to be brought to attention. With more and more countries bringing out and developing huge masses of machines capable of destroying large areas and high amounts of people, America may be faced with challenge of using a highly destructible means of force in order to save fellow Americans against another country. Without the knowledge of what happens to a country after the use of the Atom bomb is dangerous. Not to know may hurt instead of help. This book is well documented by stating the pros and cons of the bomb although it stirred to one side at the end, the government could use this information and conduct research on their own to know when to use the destructible forces and when not to.

Posted by holly at 1:02 PM | Comments (14)

June 18, 2006

Butchart Gardens

Victoria, British Columbia is pretty damn close to Seattle--near the southern tip of Vancouver Island, at the mouth of Puget South--and thus was our last stop. We docked at 6 p.m. Friday night and had to be back on board by 11:30 p.m. because we were sailing at midnight, for a 7 a.m. arrival in Seattle. It's an odd time to arrive someplace and many tourist attractions were closed, but one that was open was Butchart Gardens, which my mother was all gaga to see. I tend to like fancy gardens and botanical museums myself, so I wasn't at all disappointed when she bought me and everyone else in our family a ticket to the place.

She insisted it was a world famous garden, and the fact that I had somehow managed never to hear of it seemed to little reason to contradict her. Getting there involved a 40-minute bus ride with an annoyingly chatty bus driver, but it was worth it. In fact, Butchart Gardens are amazing.

I can tell you now that while their website isn't all that impressive, the gardens themselves are. I don't feel equal to the task of trying to express how stunningly gorgeous this place is, and I'm also not going to paste in a photo, because none of them capture the place, either. (Also I'm too lazy, and if you really want to look at photos, you can visit the website.) It's not like some wild natural wonder--the Grand Canyon, for instance--because it's a carefully cultivated setting, an attempt to reclaim and beautify something human beings made ugly (in this case, an exhausted limestone quarry). It's the most beautiful human-made place I've ever been, and I've been lots of places, visited lots of palaces and fine houses with fancy grounds. None of them compare to this.

The place is aptly named Butchart Gardens, since it is not one garden but many. The excavated limestone quarry is now the site of an overwhelmingly beautiful sunken garden complete with a pond and fancy fountains, as well as a strange little mound (inferior limestone they didn't bother to excavate) in the center with a staircase you can climb for a spectacular view. There's a Japanese garden. There's a rose garden. There's a pretty house and a breathtaking view of Saanich Inlet. Then there are the plants themselves: really lovely specimens of flowers and shrubs and trees both exotic and common. I saw the coolest iris: white in the middle and pale lavender on the edges.

One thing that enhanced our visit was the weather: clear, calm and warm enough that you didn't need a jacket unless you were in the shade. Still, I have three regrets about my visit to the gardens: 1) we went late enough in the season that the bulbs were done blooming (I love tulips and the like); 2) we went early enough in the season that the roses hadn't really begun blooming; and 3) we only stayed two and a half hours. I would have been happy to wander that place all day.

The gardens began over 100 years ago as a project of Jenny Butchart, who from everything I've heard was a truly remarkable woman--unfortunately I haven't been able to find a decent bio of her on the web. The history of the place is cool, but what's coolest is the place itself. You should go. You should very, very definitely go to Butchart Gardens. I quite hope I manage to go back. Soon.

Posted by holly at 3:21 PM

June 17, 2006

The Entire Earth Is One Big Toy--Let's Play with It!

I should acknowledge what some of you are no doubt thinking: OK, cruises might be fun, but they're not the most environmentally responsible way to vacation. Cruise ships used to routinely dump crap into the ocean (they're supposed to follow rules about it now) but they also used to do things even stupider and more wantonly destructive, all in the name of entertaining tourists.

One day we visited Hubbard Glacier in Yakutak (pronounced "Yak Attack") Bay. As we approached, we were allowed to go up to the front of the bow so we could lean over the railings and stare right at this massive chunk of ice. It's a damn impressive sight: 76 miles long and six miles wide at the point where it meets the ocean, and every so often it will calve off icebergs the size of a ten-story building. If you saw the chunk fall off, you'd shout, "Oh! Look!" as you pointed; if you didn't, you'd look where someone was pointing and say, "Oh, crap." You actually had to WATCH the glacier and WAIT if you wanted to see it DO anything.

And apparently that patience which is now necessary used to be considered an avoidable inconvenience. While hanging out on the bow, I talked to a guy who was on his third Alaskan cruise. He said that the first two times he went, someone would bombard whatever glacier they were visiting with sonar so that it would calve more often and more dramatically. But then someone else pointed out that since 95% of the world's glaciers are receding on their own, it probably wasn't wise to help them, and the practice was abandoned.

A few days ago, Chris posted an entry about the fact that being crappy residents of this planet should motivate us to STOP being crappy residents instead of rushing about space looking for a new home to move to after we've completely trashed this one. (Not that he's opposed to space exploration--he says that about a dozen times and people still seemed to miss it.) But he went so far as to compare humanity to a cockroach infestation, and both his basic point and that comparison pissed a lot of people off. Personally I thought the post was both funny and apt, and the fact that we would speed up the dissolution of the polar ice caps just because its cool to watch, is one more reason I think that.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM

June 15, 2006

What I Ate Then, What I Can Eat Now

I'm sure everyone wants an update on the state of my stomach as well as a report of the gustatory pleasures I enjoyed on the cruise. So here they both are.

Probably the only good thing about forcibly ejecting the entire contents of your digestive tract from any available orifice over an eight-hour period is that afterwards, your stomach is as shriveled and sour as an unripened kumquat, which means you can't put a whole lot in it, which means you lose weight.

There are a limited number of activities you can pursue on a boat, but eating and drinking head the list. Cruise lines make it a point of pride to feed guests often and well. On this cruise, room service was available 24-hours a day, free of charge. The ninth floor of the boat featured a 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet that didn't exactly stink, though it wasn't up to the quality of the formal dining room, which offered meals like roast pheasant, filet mignon, lobster or lamb chops. I ate more meat in that one week than I'll probably consume for the rest of the summer. I also ate more soup: I'm not usually a soup person, but when it's chilled blueberry soup with champagne, or chilled peach soup with a dollop of creme fraise, or chilled pear soup with ginger, well, then you're just eating a smoothie out of a bowl with a spoon, and who wouldn't go for that?

Supposedly the average weight gain for a cruise is a pound a day. I didn't gain that much, but I didn't diet, either, and I sure as hell always ordered dessert. One of the main reasons I didn't get spectacularly and instantly too big for my britches is the fact that I didn't drink much. I had an occasional fancy cocktail in some lounge while we watched the sun set, but that was it. No one else in my family drinks, and it's just no fun to be the only one at the table ordering wine. Plus it's expensive: you pay extra for fancy coffee (there was an espresso bar in the place), soda (no kidding: a Coke cost $2.89), and booze. The fact that no one drank at dinner quite flummoxed the various wine stewards, who would show up at the table to explain what wines we should be drinking with what course. They'd deliver a spiel and try to hand out a wine list, at which point everyone would turn to me, and I would say to the wine steward, "We don't drink." He would then say, "No one wants to risk drinking and driving tonight, aye?" and again try to give someone a wine list. "We don't drink," I'd say a second time, and he'd realize he wouldn't be earning any tips at our table (a 15% gratuity was added to all beverage orders) and begin dejectedly gathering up our wine glasses. But it was clear that for plenty of people, what really made the cruise a vacation was the fact that they could have not only meat but alcohol at every single meal: I can't stomach a nice plate of bacon and eggs and a bloody mary first thing each morning, but for those who can, well, a cruise is ideal.

It's nice to be able to think about food again without feeling instantly and thoroughly queasy, though I wouldn't say my appetite has completely returned. I went to see one of my local friends this evening, and we discussed the fact that as you age, it just takes longer to recover from any illness. It has been over 100 hours since I last vomited but my gut is still feeling a tad delicate and tender, and it's funny what seems appetizing and what doesn't.... I went grocery shopping yesterday, and I could think of exactly five things that appealed to me, the primary one being toast. I also had a hankering for two desserts I make a lot, the first being blueberry crumble and the second being fudge upside down cake with strawberries and yogurt. The only vegetables I could bear the thought of eating were boiled peas and palak paneer. I don't know why those things seemed palatable, but given the revulsion I felt at the idea of zucchini, or string beans, or hummus, or a cup of coffee, or just about anything else I could think of, I wasn't going to gainsay the fact that there were at least five solid foods I wanted to eat.

My friends H & K were so solicitous of my stomach that Monday night K made chicken soup and focaccia for dinner because she figured it would be easy for me to digest. It tasted good and stayed down, so she was right. Then we watched television for a while, and the show we settled on was Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. The particular episode involved him going to Canada and hunting seal with a bunch of Eskimos, then eating the entire animal--including the eyeballs--raw. I think if I'd had anything more ambitious for dinner it would have come back up at that point. I was also glad that my own arctic adventures involved foods like salmon and crab cakes rather than seal brains. Fish tacos are daring enough.

Anyway, I should be done writing about gut trouble for a while, in case you haven't enjoyed this topic. And I guess I was wrong when I said the only good thing about puking is that it shrinks your stomach: another benefit is that when you're done being sick, you remember that it's really quite lovely and wonderful to feel healthy. I feel pretty healthy--I think I could even enjoy popcorn right now, so I'm going to go do it.

Posted by holly at 10:12 PM

June 14, 2006

Where or When I Was

Early this morning I had what is for me a very rare experience: I awoke with absolutely no idea where or when I was. At first I thought, "Am I nine? Is this my parents' house?" And then I thought, "Am I in our summer cabin on the mountain? Is that why everything is so dark and simultaneously familiar and a little bit out of the ordinary?" But the ceiling was more than two feet from my face and I couldn't see any exposed two-by-fours (I got to sleep in the loft, which I loved, because it was solitary and strange and I had to climb a ladder to get to it) so I knew that wasn't the case. Next I had to figure out that I wasn't in a college dorm or a hostel in Europe. (The one period of my life I never thought to imagine I was revisiting was anything having to do with my mission or Asia.) I then asked myself, "Do I still live in Iowa?" And I actually worded it like that, with the still, which meant I was figuring out that if my consciousness had me still living in Iowa, it wasn't doing its job properly. Then I thought, "Am I on a boat? Because I was on a boat, pretty recently." And then it all came back, that I'd been traveling but was home now, waking up for the first time in a good while in my little house in the rust belt.

The thing is, I felt no distress or discomfort while I was figuring all this out. I was too asleep to discern immediately where I was, but I was awake enough to feel my mind working, and I was distanced enough from both sleep and wakefulness to stand back and simply watch my mind figure out this situation, and that was kind of fun. I felt fortunate as I cycled through various periods of my life and realized that there had been all these places in the world where I'd slept safely and awakened in the morning to go do interesting things. And I was especially comforted to discover that I was in my own bed in my own house and that I wouldn't have to get up in a few hours and get off a boat or on a plane, and that made it really easy to go back to sleep.

Posted by holly at 6:55 PM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2006

I Love Captain Olav

As I mentioned yesterday, not every aspect of the my cruise was ideal, but over all, it was pretty darn great. My mom (who made all the arrangements) went with the Holland America Line, known for having nice ships and good service, if also for being somewhat venerable and staid. It was a good decision, we all thought--here's a review of the line and the ship, in case you're contemplating a cruise yourself. We sailed on the Oosterdam, a new and spiffy ship--it really was quite extraordinarily lovely, but the one of the best things about the ship was its captain, Olav van der Waard.

There were a couple of opportunities to meet him, but I never bothered, and I still don't feel I needed to meet him. I was content to let him do his job, and he did it very well. It never occurred to me that in this day of sonar navigation and great big engines, a captain really had that much to do, but I was wrong, and Captain Olav, I soon realized, was really good at his job.

From May to September, there are cruise ships sailing all up and down the Alaska coast. A couple of times we were in port with three or four other cruise ships. But the thing is, Captain Olav always got there first, and snagged the best parking space (or rather, its nautical equivalent). When we cruised up to look at Hubbard Glacier, Captain Olav not only got there first, but got really, really close. We always arrived early; we always left on time, and the journey itself was lovely.

By the way, in case you wondered, I'm feeling better: the puking has long since stopped, though I'm still a little queasy. My friends think it might not have been stomach flu but food poisoning, since I started feeling ill immediately after a meal of fish tacos heavily flavored with cumin. Yesterday I couldn't even say those words without retching, and I don't think I'll ever be able to eat cumin or fish tacos again, but at least the clear liquids and simple carbohydrates I put in my stomach yesterday stayed there.

Posted by holly at 10:47 AM | Comments (10)

June 11, 2006

Post-Sea Sickness

About half a dozen people, when I mentioned that I was going on a cruise, asked me if I had ever read "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace (who, like me, is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arizona but who, unlike me, is fabulously wealthy and famous), an essay talking about how cruises aren't really that great after all. I have not read that essay, though I'll track it down now, but I have to say that I had a FABULOUS time on my cruise to Alaska and would do it again in a heartbeat.

This is not to say that every aspect of the trip was ideal: for one thing, I got tired of being expected to pose for photographs, with guys in polar bear or eagle suits, and to then pay $7.95 for said photos. The coffee was generally lousy. The DJ in the nightclub was annoying and played crappy music. (More on that later.) The hot tubs were closed for cleaning half the trip, because a case of stomach flu was going around and the staff was anxious to contain it (more on that later too)--this is also why they wouldn't leave salt and pepper shakers on the table. But those are small things, and I had to sit here and think for a moment in order to come up with that list of disappointments.

I could list a lot of great things about the trip, and I will, eventually. But right now I'm kind of focused on the fact that while I was lucky enough not to get sick on the boat, I started puking my toe nails up around 10 p.m. last night. As I couldn't even keep water down, I had a crappy night. However, several hours have passed since I last vomited my guts out and I just moved up to Gatorade, which I fear may have been a mistake....

I really did have a great trip, and I really would like to do it again, gastro-intestinal distress notwithstanding. But this stomach thing is a bummer, you know, because I was planning to hang out with Jim today, but for obvious reasons we would all prefer that I not pass this bug on to his toddler. That means I'm stuck imposing on my friends H&K some more. They are very gracious and accommodating hosts, but who wants a sick person running from the bathroom to the guest room?

Anyway. I'm going to lie down again.... But expect more about the trip soon.

Posted by holly at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2006

Bon Voyage

I'm in Seattle right now--have been since Thursday. I've been staying with H&K, H being one of the few friends from my undergraduate days I'm still in touch with and K being his wife. We actually fell out of contact for, like, a decade, but a couple of years ago I decided to google H, found a phone number that worked, and this is the second time I've stayed in their guest room since then. They're a lot of fun.

Yesterday K & I were at Pike Place Market and I heard someone say, "Oh, look, there's Holly!" I thought, "Huh, so there's someone else named Holly around," and then this woman came up and hugged me and I realized it was my sister.

"How did you recognize me?" I asked. She looked at me for a moment as if she didn't recognize me, then said, "Well, you look exactly like you did at Christmas."

"So do you," I said. "It's just, I don't know; I didn't expect to see you here."

But it's not really all that weird that my sister would be here, because to tell the truth she's here for the same reason I am.

In a few hours we board a ship, and we'll be on it for a week.

Over Christmas of 2004, my mother said to me and some of my sisters, "What would you guys say if I decided to take us all on a trip? We could go some place like Yellowstone and take all the grandkids, but what I'd rather do is take the grownups on a cruise to Alaska. Don't you think that would be fun?" We did indeed think it would be fun, so since then my mother has planned and paid for a cruise for 11 people: my parents, my siblings and their spouses, and me.

Mom isn't at death's door but she has enough health concerns that we're all aware she won't be around forever. She has decided that while she can, she will spend her time and money doing fun things with her family, and we all think that's a really cool idea.

So I'm going to be incommunicado for a week. After we dock I'll spend a few more days in Seattle before flying back to Pennsylvania: I'll hang out with my good friend and generous blog hoster, Jim, his partner and their son Ray. I'll have (I hope) some cool stories to share (and maybe even some photos, since I brought my camera and can take pictures with it, though I've never tried to upload anything). But to forestall any problem with spam comments, I'm turning the comments off for the next week.

Posted by holly at 5:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 2, 2006

Two Stories from the West

Tuesday when I picked up my accumulated mail from the post office, there was a postcard from a friend with a stunning photo of the aptly named Delicate Arch in Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah, foregrounded against a glorious sunset on the front. On the back was a message informing me that some guy had recently climbed said arch. He did it not once but several times during a two-hour period.

It pissed me off, you know? The guy claims he did nothing wrong in climbing the arch, because he didn't use any protective equipment, and the regulation prohibiting climbing was loosely worded enough that he didn't technically break any laws. That has been changed: now it is officially illegal to climb any of the named formations in the park.

A couple of years ago I went with my family to Kartchner Caverns in southern Arizona near where I grew up. The park rangers kept stressing that the cave was delicate and asking that no one touch anything. My family was all annoyed about this: "What's the big deal if we decide to feel a rock? It's just a rock," someone said. "It's hardly worth it to go, if all you can do is look at the formations and listen to someone tell you not to touch anything," someone else said.

I was as annoyed with their grousing as they were with the regulations. "I don't see what the big deal is," I said. "They don't let you go up and feel the texture on 'Starry Night' or run your hands along the biceps of Michelangelo's David. If something is precious and fragile, it's precious and fragile, even if it exists in nature rather than art."

I hate people who think the entire world is their playground/ pantry/ toilet, and that they should be able to do whatever they want wherever they want because it will amuse them, and take whatever they want from wherever they want because they desire it, and dump whatever they want wherever they want because they find its presence offensive and/or unnecessary, all regardless of the effects of such actions on other people or even the earth itself. Yes, we must feed, clothe, warm and wash ourselves, but we don't necessarily have to destroy beautiful or unique places in the process.

I also hate people who think the prime reason for the existence of anything is an opportunity for them to make money, as seems to be the attitude of various companies discussed in this story about the horrible results of privatization of water in California. That should be a tagline for a commercial: "How expensive is your water?"

Posted by holly at 12:17 PM | Comments (3)