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December 12, 2008

Stuff, and Weather, Happens

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while.... Stuff has happened. I was sorta sick and felt crappy for a while. Then my blog got sorta sick and felt crappy for a while: some of you might have noticed that a few days ago there was an entry entitled "Testing" that consisted of the word "testing." That was because things weren't working properly and had to be tested.... But everything seems to be healthy now. (Thanks, Jim.)

Then there was this point where I wasn't really interested in my blog; I was more interested in other people's. So I did a lot of catching up and reading and a little commenting. (If I haven't gotten around to yours yet, well, give me time. I was lazy for a good, long while, and I have plenty of catching up to do.) I think plenty of us feel like that from time to time, which is good, or most of us wouldn't get many comments.

And then there was this other thing that happened, which is that I was fairly happy and busy enjoying my life and appreciating weather that was fabulous in the concrete, but sort of freaked me out in the abstract, because it belonged to another time and place, and is a fairly good indication that global warming ain't going away--and will probably be worse than previously predicted.

In other words, I was totally loving Salt Lake City because its fall weather was almost identical to the weather of my childhood in southern Arizona, 1,000 miles away and 40 years ago. And I was experiencing that weather in more than one visceral way, because the building I live in now is about the same age (80-90 years old) as the building I went to first grade in, and has the same heating system: those old steam radiators that can't be set to a specific temperature, merely turned on and off. They put out LOTS of heat. And in the process, they give off a faint but noticeable and neither pleasant nor unpleasant smell, one that reminds me of being five years old and going to first grade (yes, I went to first grade a year early) and of how much I actually liked first grade, back when I first experienced it in 1969.

So, SLC weather through the beginning of November: it's basically what I consider perfect fall weather: the low at night would be right around freezing, but each day the high would get up into the 50s or 60s. The sky would be clear, the air calm. If you were walking along in the shade, you'd want long sleeves on, just so your skin wouldn't get cold, but there was no danger of YOU getting cold--and in fact, if you were in the sun, you wouldn't want a heavy jacket on, because you'd get hot.

This is what November and December were like when I was a little girl in the late 60s and early 70s--actually, it was like that into the mid 80s, when I at least first started noticing that our weather was getting weird. But back before that happened, when winter came along, every morning you'd have to wear a coat when you walked to school, because most likely it would 31F out--or even colder. But you'd most likely carry your coat when you walked home in the afternoon, because it might be 62F. And then, at night, it would get cold enough that you could justify building a wood fire, and there would be that wonderful wood fire smell. Whenever you looked up at the mountains, you'd see snow on them, which was both pretty and made you feel cozy because there was rarely snow on you. It was AWESOME.

I've enjoyed revisiting that weather, in certain ways--it was very pleasant--and lamented it in other ones. First of all, this weather doesn't REALLY belong here--it belongs in southern Arizona, but it's fled from there. My mother told me Tucson still hasn't had a killing frost, which might not seem like a big deal, except that killing frosts KILL THINGS THAT NEED TO DIE EACH YEAR--like mosquitoes and flies and boll weevils. It had always frozen by this time when I was young--on rare occasions, we even had snow. I am sad that something that once made my home wonderful is no longer part of my home.

Secondly, I have lived in snowy places long enough that I've learned to appreciate it. OK, SLC had a big freak snow storm the first week of October. But after that, it was both too warm and too dry for snow--until Monday. This is the view from my bedroom window Tuesday morning:

Yes, I live up high, which is why the upper branches of a ponderosa pine are at eye level for me. I like it.

Here's the view from my living room:

I was glad to see the snow--it made Utah feel like Utah instead of Arizona. Plus it was pretty.

I was going to write about first grade, what was cool about it, and why I feel nostalgic about it, for probably the first time since I finished it. One reason is that in hindsight I can see that it was pretty much the only year of my entire elementary education I liked--well, I guess third grade was OK too. But this entry seems long enough, so if I do write about first grade, it will be in another entry.

Posted by holly at 1:19 PM | Comments (4)

November 28, 2008

And Then There's Copper

It's not often that I get to read about my home in the NY Times, but here's a story and a video (scroll down and look on the left side of the screen) discussing the current state of the copper industry in southeastern Arizona, which, along with Chile, "continues to rank as one of the two richest copper provinces in the world."

The article refers several times to the "Safford valley" in Graham County, but there's no such place: The name of the place is the GILA Valley; Safford is merely the county seat and largest town. (Thatcher, the town I grew up in, is the next largest--and still quite small--and now right next to Safford, though they used to be miles apart. Historically, Safford was the business center; Thatcher the intellectual and religious center, the place where the college and the church headquarters were.) There's a mention of the recently opened pit mine there, which just about everyone I knew was in favor of: sure, it was going to be UGLY, and extremely visible, given that it was just across the Gila River (hence the name of the valley) to the north of town, but hey, it would bring prosperity.

The article mentions that Safford's Main Street, which was "once full of empty storefronts with boarded-up windows, is nearing 95 percent occupancy." And I guess that's a good thing: I worked in a couple of businesses on Main Street, and it was indeed depressing to walk past these abandoned businesses. Though the tone of the article suggests that lay-offs and boarded-up storefronts are imminent. We'll see.

(by the way, in case you didn't recognize it, the title of this entry is taken from "Moonstruck," and occurs in a line delivered by the plumber dad about the virtues of copper pipe.)

Posted by holly at 8:11 AM | Comments (2)

October 7, 2008

Why My Old Senators Were Really, Really BAD

My distaste for Arizona politics increases daily.

This is long, but you MUST watch it.

Posted by holly at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2007

Native and Invasive Species

Before I came home, I emailed a friend to say I was coming into town and ask if she was busy this past weekend. She emailed back to say, "Yes, I am busy, and now you're busy too." She took me to a couple of really cool events, one of which I plan to write about more. At both events, there were plenty of people I didn't know, and she was very gracious about introducing me to her friends and colleagues, but she kept saying, "This is my friend Holly, from Pennsylvania." And I would have to say, "No, I'm not FROM Pennsylvania; I just live there right now. I'm FROM Arizona--Thatcher, Arizona, to be exact."

I realize this isn't a big deal to everyone, but it's a big deal to me. In a way that is deeply important, I really truly am FROM and OF the Southwest. I was born in Arizona and raised Mormon at a time when Mormonism was still in many regards a regional religion, and my sense of self is thoroughly tied up with a sense of place, as well as a sense of community and spirituality that derives quite specifically and literally from the place I was taught to call both "zion" and "home." It MATTERED that I was not only born in Arizona, but born in Arizona because my ancestors walked the distance from Illinois to Utah, then headed south for various reasons. Frankly, it matters to me still.

So to introduce me to people by saying that I'm FROM some place without no real mountains to speak of and a great lake and lots of rivers instead of pervasive and profound aridity is akin to introducing me as "Heidi" or "Heather," both of which I get called from time to time: even though you can see how people make that mistake, it's just not right, and it's annoying to have to correct someone on this.

And then there was what happened when I asked other people where they were from.

I realize I'm being proprietary and finicky, but really, is it so hard to understand what it means to say you are FROM somewhere? I asked one woman, "So, where are you from?" and she answered, "Here."

"Cool," I said. "What part of the valley did you grow up in?"

"Oh, I grew up in Chicago," she said. "But I've lived here for twelve years, and that qualifies me as a native."

"Actually, no, it doesn't," I said. "Three of my four grandparents were born in Arizona before it became a state, and they lived here their whole lives. Spending twelve years here doesn't make you a native when there are people who are born here and die here 80 years later."

She was miffed by my response, and while I can see why, I also think I'm right. And I don't see what's so hard about saying, "I grew up in Chicago, but I've been here for 12 years and I really love it--it felt like home as soon as I got here." OK, it involves more words than just answering "here" when someone asks where you're from, but it's A) more accurate and B) more informative.

My brother-in-law was born and raised in Gilbert, which when he lived there was a farming town but is now on of the fastest growing areas of the valley. He has a job that involves meeting a lot of people, most of whom are shocked to realize that someone in his late 30s could actually have grown up in the Valley of the Sun. It's true that natives of a certain age and generation are relatively rare, which is one more reason we prize our status and grow resentful when others usurp it.

And I also realize that although *I* might be a native, my race is not, and that white western culture has imposed a way of living on the southwest that isn't the least bit sustainable or wise. One reason I have always preferred to Tucson to Phoenix is that Tucson has always had less water to irrigate with, so it's more deserty--people in Tucson just couldn't manage the lawns people in Phoenix could, so Phoenix has always felt to me even more artificial and fated to die a miserable death than Tucson does.

I wish people wouldn't move here if they aren't really willing to deal with what living in the desert involves. Living here doesn't just mean that you don't have to own a coat; it means you can't use a lot of water. But swimming pools and golf courses abound, and increase.

I hope someday to move back here, and I hope that when I do, it still feels like home.

Posted by holly at 10:20 PM | Comments (5)

November 18, 2007

Wireless and Still Unwired

I haven't posted recently because I've been traveling.... I arrived at Sky Harbor Airport (PHX, in case you care about airport codes) a few days ago so I can hang out in Arizona for the Thanksgiving holiday. What is there to say about air travel except that it sucks in just about every possible way, but is nonetheless quicker than driving or taking a train (which unfortunately is not really an option for certain kinds of travel in the US anyway)?

But I arrived. And the weather is beautiful, in that "it's way too warm for November, but that's what global warming gives us" kind of way. Seriously, when I was a little girl, beginning in November and lasting until February we had something I wasn't embarrassed to call winter: you had to wear a coat, and the temperature would drop below freezing regularly, and sometimes there would be snow. But now if you live in southern Arizona you don't every really have to own a coat.

Anyway, things are going OK on this trip, except that something about the way my wireless whatever is configured on my laptop means that I can't access the wireless service where I'm staying, so if I want to blog or do email, I have to do it on the shared computer, and as there are four children 13 and under who all want to check email and edit anime videos, I have to queue up. Right now everyone but me and one sick niece are at church, so I have the computer to myself.

If I get the wireless thing sussed out, there will be more from me, but if I don't, both entries on my blog on comments on yours might be sparse for the next week.

Posted by holly at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2006

I Am Suddenly So Freakin' Homesick

Woke up this morning well before 5 a.m., not particularly rested, all freaked out about mortality again.... I haven't written much about, because I lately haven't much inhabited, the spells of profound despair I'm sometimes subject to.... Sometimes I just worry. I bolt awake in the middle of the night, heart heavy and fast, tears already in my eyes, because the ice caps are melting and all the polar bears are going to die. Read a couple of days ago that all these new species, including the hippopotamus, have been added to the list of endangered species, and it pretty much bummed me out. "Entropy," I thought. "This is fuckin' entropy: everything reduced to the lowest common denominator, as boring and uniform as human beings can make it before they die out too."

And I also think about the fact that I'm 42 and probably about half way through my life. I sorta believe in reincarnation, and I wonder what I'll come back as.... I'm not announcing suicidal tendencies or anything--no need to worry about me--but there are times when I think, "Yeah, it wouldn't be so very bad to start all over again...."

And then I read something like this or this from Chris Clarke, which tears my heart in ways I can't fathom or describe. I realize that those of us who love the desert romanticize it terribly, and it's not because we don't know there are other places that are really beautiful. It's because, hell, I don't know.... In some ways the best thing I ever heard anyone say about the desert was T. E. Lawrence's response (at least, Peter O'Toole said it, in the movie version of T. E. Lawrence's life) when asked why he likes its so: "It's clean."

It's clean. You get dirty there, but the desert itself is somehow clean.

I spent most of my Christmas break in east Tucson at the home my parents recently purchased two doors down from my brother and his family, and one of the things I did while I was there was go for walks and look at the Catalinas, the strange mountain range to the North. The Catalinas are amazing: they're so weirdly bumpy and irregular, and they are perfectly situated to capture shadows created by the sun as it travels across the sky: the Catalinas change more than any other mountain range I've ever seen.

Like I said, there's something about all this I can't fathom or describe. The air seems clean (not that it really is these days) and clear and I just have this sense of... the sublime? Intimations of mortality? I'm just so aware of how the landscape I grew up in shaped my sense of... life as something bright and harsh. Of the world as something that doesn't much give a shit whether we manage to live in it or not, but is incredibly beautiful--and somehow knows that--whether we notice it or not. I've never not felt this sort of awe and despair and gratitude and certainty inspired by this deep visceral language-less knowledge the desert communicated to me the first time I look around and said, "Huh. So this is home."

I doubt this is making sense. Plenty of things I feel I can describe adequately. My love for my home and the reasons why the desert moves me--that I can't describe.

Posted by holly at 6:24 AM | Comments (7)

February 14, 2006

Happy Valentine's Day

My three favorite dates are December 16 (my birthday), December 25 (although I'm one of those evil pagans who prefers wishing friends and strangers "Happy Holidays" to "Merry Christmas," I still dig the whole giving-and-getting-gifts part of the gig), and February 14.

I like February 14 for two reasons: One, it's Arizona Statehood Day. That's right, Arizona became the 48th state in the Union on February 14, 1912. Because it was so fashionably late to the AWESOME party thrown by the Federal Government, I am able to say that none of my grandparents were born in the United States: three were born in Arizona before it became a state; the fourth, like a good many Mormons, was born in Mexico (which is where the polygamists went to stay polygamists, until Pancho Villa came along and told them to get the hell out).

Of course, the other reason I like February 14 is that it's Valentine's Day.

This is the 43rd Valentine's Day I've spent on this planet. For, oh, 39 of those 43, I've not had a Valentine to call my own (I even had two long-term relationships where I managed to be on the outs with my sig/ot during the month of February), but the fact that any flowers I received on such days were from my mother (she never neglects me or my sisters on Valentine's Day: she sent bouquets to all four of us on Monday) and any chocolate I got, I bought myself, hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for the day.

I just like it, you know? I like construction paper and scissors and glue. I like doilies. I like crayons and markers. I like red a lot, and pink is OK. I like chocolate. I like flowers. I like hearts. I like sending big envelopes through the US mail and I like telling the people I love that I love them, even if they don't offer to take me to dinner, call me sweetheart and kiss me passionately on the 14th day of February. (I'm not saying I'm opposed to the idea, I'm just saying it doesn't have to happen. I accept other gestures of affection and regard. One of my all-time favorite Valentine's Day presents is a garlic press my sister bought me in 1990 when we shared an apartment--I use it still.)

There have been years when I've made fudge for the dozen or so people closest to me. There have been years when I've baked heart-shaped cakes. There have been years when I've sent dozens of Valentines, to pretty much everyone in my address book. I'd rather do that than send Christmas cards--I mean, it's just so commonplace to send red envelopes in December to people you ignore the rest of the year, but who does it in February?

If I'd had my shit together this year, I would have fashioned a huge, elaborate heart of pink and red paper, a sincere token of my affection for all my friends and readers. I would have taken a photo of said creation, and uploaded it here. Unfortunately, however, that did not happen.

So you'll just have to accept this blog entry as my Valentine to you. If I know you well enough to love you, then believe me, I love you! And if we're still in the early stages of our friendship, then I like you every bit as much as I can without seeming pathetic, threatening and weird.

And if you like or love me too, please leave a comment and tell me so.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (12)

December 27, 2005

Greetings from the Valley

Greetings from "the valley," short for "the valley of the sun," the local name for Phoenix and its environs (aka "Maricopa County.") I admit this is not my favorite part of Arizona. I prefer Tucson, which has fewer people, less pollution, a better skyline, my wonderful alma mater, and a longer history. But this is where my sister lives, and yesterday I drove up here from Tucson so I can hang out with her, her husband, her four children, and her really cute dog.

It's also where Wayne's parents live, and since arriving in Mesa, I'm also hanging out with Wayne. Yesterday we went to a bookstore, walked around a mall, drank coffee, tried to find a Mexican restaurant we were willing to eat at (which shouldn't be that difficult in this part of the country, but we had a hard time) and talked about how very weird Mesa is.

Mesa started out as a Mormon settlement--one of the first temples outside of Utah was built in Mesa, and I admit it drives me NUTS when people find out I grew up Mormon in Arizona and react as if I'd told them I'd gone to a private pingpong college on Mars. "I thought Mormons lived in Utah," they say accusingly, then tilt their chins and narrow their eyes in suspicion while they wait for me to admit that I've just told a great whopping lie. At such moments I sometimes become indignant at the illogicality of such responses, as if I didn' t know full well where I was born and raised; as if Utah and Arizona didn't share a freakin' border; as if people who forged a trail from Illinois to Utah (a journey precipitated by the fact that they were driven by murderous mobs from their homes in Illinois, an expulsion that occurred in the midst of a MIdwestern winter so severe that the MIssissippi froze solid, which meant it was unimaginably cold if you haven't experienced temperatures like that but also meant that the refugees were able to drive wagons containing the few possessions they managed to salvage across the Mississippi, but then had to weather the next few days in TENTS [and the shock of the temperature--60 below zero Fahrenheit or so--was so extreme that over a dozen pregnant women went into labor] on the Iowa bank of the river), said trail requiring these people to find a way up eastern edge the Rockies, then drag their wagons up and down god knows how many peaks and valleys, before they decide to settle down in a valley dominated by a huge, smelly, inland lake saltier than the ocean, a valley they somehow figured out how to make habitable by doing things like setting up one of the best irrigation systems in the entire US--as if people who could do all that couldn't also make their way south and figure out how to build houses with big windows and sleeping porches so you can deal with the summers, even 150 years or so ago,which is when several of my ancestors arrived in Arizona.

Then there's all that missionary work Mormons do all over the world--they actually manage to convert people now and again, and some of those people reproduce. I have friends who were born and raised Mormon in places as far from Utah as Argentina, England and Taiwan.

Well, THAT was quite a substantial side comment, not what I meant to discuss at all.... For those of you who wonder why, despite the fact that I'm no longer a practicing or believing Mormon, I still feel so attached to my Mormon heritage and was so invested in my Mormon upbringing, I've either clarified things or made you even more confused.

Anyyway. My point was going to be that these days Mesa is this huge sprawling awful suburb of Phoenix, albeit one that still has a high concentration of Mormons. Every couple of miles you see the same pattern: a bunch of tract homes built around a Mormon church, then a Walmart and/or a Target and/or a Costco, then a few restaurants, including a Coffee Bean and/or a Starbucks for the heathen; then it all starts over again.

Though we mustn't forget the Sonics: a Mormon custom--one I admit I partake in when I'm here, because Sonic has good sodas--is going to Sonic during Happy Hour and getting a big ol' soda. My sister and many women like her have a special sticker on their cars when they pass through the drive-thru, the person at the service window knows they are part of a special frequent buyers' club.

I'm hoping to spend more time with Wayne today, though he may have to hightail it back to LA for work, which would SUCK, since he's one of the main people I wanted to see here. But I'm having fun with my nieces and nephews and then there's always the weather: it's really beautiful. And there's also the fact that if I want a grapefruit for breakfast, I can just go outside and pick one. Which I think I'll do now.

Posted by holly at 10:23 AM

December 20, 2005

Curbside Delivery

I'll soon be flying back to Arizona so I can hang out with my family for Christmas. I'm excited about it, for several reasons: 1) I have all these really cute nieces and nephews that I haven't seen since last Christmas; 2) I'll get to see Wayne, who will also be visiting his family in Arizona; 3) the highs in Tucson are supposed to be around 75 degrees (that's 24 Celsius, for those of you lucky enough to live someplace that doesn't use Fahrenheit, the stupidest of all non-metric measurements), which is a hell of a lot better than 25 F (-4 C).

What I'm not so excited about is the getting there part. I'm not the least bit afraid of being 31,000 feet above the earth in a big metal tube, but I don't like sitting around at the gate, waiting to get on and off that metal tube. I don't like being cramped for several hours in a seat next to a person who as often as not hogs the armrest. I don't like entrusting a suitcase full of my stuff to people I don't know. I don't getting to and from the airport.

I had a hell of a time finding a decent flight this trip--actually, I FAILED to find a decent flight this trip. My plane leaves at 6 a.m., which means I need to be to the airport around 5 a.m. The shuttle service I used to use is in the process of going out of business, and only delivers you to the airport if you want to get there during "convenient" times. 5 a.m. ain't convenient.

So I begged a ride from my friend Tom, who not only said he'd do me this favor, but didn't even seem to think I was being unreasonable in asking it in the first place.

Last night I was thinking about how great it is that he's willing to do this for me, and how I should do something to make it up to him. But that reminded me of an incident long about 1994, when someone I'll call Arianna asked me to give her a ride to and from the airport in Iowa, promising me that in return she'd find some truly fabulous gift to bestow upon me in recognition of my generosity.

I admit I thought Arianna was overstating the situation: she was flying in to the Cedar Rapids airport on a Tuesday afternoon in July. It was pleasant drive and I didn't have anything special to do instead--I mean, it's not like I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and drive through a bunch of mushy, muddy snow to get to the airport. People need rides to and from the airport: it happens. To borrow a line from Zorro, the Gay Blade (one of my favorite movies--add it to your Netflix queue!), her gratitude would have been thanks enough.

But no. Arianna made this BIG DEAL on the way to the airport about how she was going to GET ME SOMETHING, and it was going to be SPECIAL. And I will admit that on the drive to the airport to pick her up, I couldn't help wondering what she'd brought me: chocolate, maybe? A cool refrigerator magnet?

Turns out it was a fashion magazine she'd bought to read on the plane, and a bottle of shampoo and some hand lotion she'd taken from the hotel she stayed at. Wow, I thought. So that's the kind of person she thinks I am: someone so simple and/or out for what I can get that I'll jubilantly accept someone else's cast-offs.

And maybe I truly was that kind of person. Because a year or so later, Arianna was dumped by a man she loved quite deeply. About fifteen minutes after this guy broke up with her, he asked me out. I felt bad about saying yes, but I admit I said yes--jubilantly, in fact, because I really did like this guy. We dated for a couple of months.

Every so often my conscience bothers me when I think about how I wasn't a very loyal friend to Arianna. But then I think about the fact that this guy who broke her heart ended up being a good friend to me--we're still in touch, and he called me on my birthday. And then I think about the fact that Arianna thought so little of our friendship that she felt she had to bribe me to take her to the airport, and thought so little of me that she figured a complimentary bottle of shampoo and an unwanted magazine would suffice as a bribe. And then I don't feel so bad.

But I still think it's really cool of Tom to drive me to the airport well before dawn in the middle of winter, especially since he's not doing it because I'll get him something; he's just doing it because he's a good friend.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

China Crisis

OK, so I didn't come up with that title myself: It's the title of an article in today's Independent UK, about China's environmental problems. (And for those of you who don't remember or don't care to remember, China Crisis is also the name of an 80s British pop band who achieved modest success with a single called "Arizona Sky," which, now that I read the lyrics, is kind of lame, but I always liked the lines praising the vast, brilliant blue sky of Arizona.)

Anyway, this article makes some truly dire predictions, which I have no problem believing are very, very likely. For instance:

deforestation is only one of the threats to the planet posed by an economy of 1.3 billion people that has now overtaken the United States as the world's leading consumer of four out of the five basic food, energy and industrial commodities - grain, meat, oil, coal and steel. China now lags behind the US only in consumption of oil - and it is rapidly catching up.

Because of their increasing reliance on coal-fired power stations to provide their energy, the Chinese are firmly on course to overtake the Americans as the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and thus become the biggest contributors to global warming and the destabilisation of the climate. If they remain uncontrolled, the growth of China's carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years will dwarf any cuts in CO2 that the rest of the world can make.

The article then discusses population growth in China and other parts of Asia, and quotes an expert who offers this opinion:

The bottom line of this analysis is that we're going to have to develop a new economic model. Instead of a fossil-fuel based, automobile-centred, throw-away economy we will have to have a renewable-energy based, diversified transport system, and comprehensive reuse and recycle economies. If we want civilisation to survive, we will have to have that. Otherwise civilisation will collapse.

I lived in Shanghai for several months in 1991. It was the most polluted place I had ever been, though Kaohsiung, a filthy port city in southern Taiwan, ran a close second. I can only imagine how much worse it it is now, with more cars and more people and even more people who can actually afford to heat their homes in the winter. (It was also very poor.) And supposedly Shanghai isn't nearly as bad as Beijing, which becomes particularly polluted each winter.

In Taiwan, we had actual washing machines (though they were little and strange and hard on clothes and had to be monitored, with all these steps where you turned the water on and turned it off and set the cycle to spin or agitate or whatever) but in Shanghai, we just put our clothes in the bathtub and stomped on them to get them clean. Then we'd hang them on the balcony to dry. I never got used to wearing clothes that smelled like car exhaust even before I put them on. I never got used to the horrible black stuff that came from my nose whenever I blew it. I never got used to how filthy my face was at the end of the day. I never got used to the dismal sky or the smell. And it's worse now, apparently--much worse.

This morning it is quite cold in my house. I am all bundled up in thermal underwear, socks, slippers and an extra heavy bathrobe, because I refuse to turn on my heat until it's really truly WINTER, not just AUTUMN, and even then I never set the thermostat above 65 because I am A) cheap and B) anxious to reduce the amount of fossil fuel I use. I paid my gas company almost $1200 last year; I'm not looking forward to the coming year, with heating costs that will be even higher because of the various hurricanes.

I admit my hands get quite cold no matter how many layers are on the rest of me, and I guess I will deal with that by acquiring some of those gloves that have no fingertips, so you can still do things like type. But overall I don't mind this business of coping with the cold by wearing lots and lots of clothes. That was what my Chinese roommates always said to me when I complained about being cold on my mission: "Chwan dwo yifu!" or "put on more clothes! " That was about all you could do in Taiwan, because most homes did not have heat since it was only needed two or three months out of the year--that and close the windows when it was 40 degrees outside, which a couple of my roommates refused to do. (They had this idea that freshly polluted cold air wafting through our apartment was healthier than warm air that had been in our apartment for a while.)

But piling on layers of padded clothing (there is evidence that the Chinese invented quilting--quilted clothing is remarkably efficient in preserving body heat) seems to be going out of fashion in Asia, where the growing population aspires to use as much gas and oil as we do. I wish, that instead of prompting us to eat all our food by admonishing us to think of starving peasants in China, adults had admonished us to use less whatever so that there would be more whatever left over for others in the world: use less fuel, less timber, less water, less food so there will be more fuel, more timber, more water, more food for everyone else. I wish we'd really truly been taught to share.

p.s. Just for the heck of it, here's an article on Mao.

Posted by holly at 9:26 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

Self-Portrait as Recluse

A piece salvaged from old files, this was written in August 2001, when I first moved back to Arizona.

"People look better back-lit," my photographer friend told me. It's also true of mountains. This evening I rode my bike down to the Gila River a mile north of town, which involved passing the old sewer pond and the new wastewater treatment facility, both of which smelled especially bad, perhaps because it has been so long since it rained. The clouds were orange for a long time and then they were gray. The mountains had contours for a long time and then they were just a stark, dark outline before a diminishing brightness. I had never noticed before how the Pinalenos and the Santa Teresas look like a felled dinosaur, the head pointing southeast and the massive tail jutting northwest.

These two ranges, connected by a long, low ridge, look like they could be one mountain range, but they're geologically different, I'm told. The Pinalenos, which are taller and thicker and longer, have nothing in them worth mining. The Santa Teresas contain gold, silver, copper, etc, and if anyone wanted those minerals badly enough, they could get them out.

I haven't done anything exciting in the past eight years except: get a PhD, fall in love and get my heart broken, write a book. Each of these activities has hampered the rest of my life in certain ways. Getting a PhD involved being in graduate school in the Midwest for eight years. I hated many things about being in a PhD program, course work being at the top of the list, poverty running a close second. Once I finished course work and could just sit at home and read the books I needed to read for teaching or for research, graduate school became a lot less vile. I had lots of time but not a lot of money. I started to knit and quilt again. I took up yoga. I began to garden. All of that was enjoyable but it doesn't exactly rank high on anyone's list of huge thrills.

Then there was the "fall in love and get my heart broken part." I am still somewhat bitter about that whole enterprise, as it could have been avoided: I knew when I first met the guy that he had all kinds of problems and issues; I knew better but for reason that seemed good at the time and seem really lame now I went ahead and fell in love with him, and he went ahead and broke my heart. That pretty much destroyed my desire to date anyone else. It did, however, make me feel like I should just shut myself up in my house and write a book, which is what I did, and why I succeeded in getting the PhD--they don't give you one of those unless you write a dissertation.

The problem with writing that book was that it took over two years and I got fairly good at writing it but I forgot how to write anything else but it. Except for email, which doesn't count.

In the past eight years I have not: traveled out of the country; bought a car; been arrested; given birth; profoundly disappointed anyone I love (having done enough of that in the previous decade or so); left a church or a political party; joined a new church or political party; attended many rallies or demonstrations (preferring to donate money to causes I care about, because I hate crowds); saved any money; found a lucrative post-PhD job; published a book. I have: attended two funerals (my favorite great aunt and my grandmother died on the day after Easter and the day after the day after Easter, respectively, seven years ago); buried a cat I really loved after she was run over and replaced her with a cat I merely like; begun practicing yoga, which has many benefits but which, I am beginning to think, is one of the reasons I haven't done anything exciting: I have moments of inner peace and contentment and don't really feel the need to amuse myself with exotic activities or to seek out the company of very many people.

Either I am a bit reclusive or I am more content with solitude than most people, which are perhaps ways of saying the same thing.

Posted by holly at 8:09 AM

October 11, 2005

The Deep Green Door

As I mentioned, a few weeks ago a friend and I visited Kirtland, Ohio, an important site in Mormon history. I've been sitting here preparing to write the sentence, "Church history doesn't really interest me," but something stopped me, because it isn't quite true: I've always found the story of the Saints Crossing the Plains thoroughly compelling, but I think that's partly because it involves the vast, expansive landscapes of the West. I guess it's more accurate to say that "Church history in Ohio never really interested me;" all that stuff about how Joseph Smith and his hardy band of trusting converts moved hither and yon after Joseph exhausted his credit or a bank failed or whatever always struck me as feeble preamble: after all, they were moving distances of a hundred miles or so, from one small- to medium-sized eastern state with trees and stores and ROADS, to another. That is an enterprise much less romantic than carving a thousand-mile-long path across a wind-scoured landscape where you encounter more wolves and buffalo than people, and where, if you want something like grains or vegetables, you either have to bring them with your or camp for several months while you plant, grow and harvest them.

Can you tell I'm a little homesick right now? We had a string of glorious fall days, but autumn has well and truly arrived now, not as the culmination of summer but as the harbinger of winter, with vicious cold rain flung from a sullen sky. I can't help checking the weather report for Tucson.... Anyway, this was not supposed to be a post about why I still prefer the parts of this country west of the Mississippi to the parts east of it; it's supposed to be an opportunity to post a picture of myself, so I'll get back on topic.

The walls of the Kirtland Temple are now an elegant, understated cream; the building is roofed with unassuming gray shingles. However, our tour guide told us that when it was originally built, its color scheme was anything but understated: the treatment the shingles underwent to make them fireproof rendered them a vivid, vibrant red; the plaster (which may or may not have contained bits of ground china, fine tableware sacrificed by the women of the church so that the House of the Lord would glitter like the jewel it was intended to be) was a rich blue like the late afternoon sky when it's barely tinged with gray; and the massive double doors at the front were painted a deep green that various members of the staff struggled to describe: not quite olive, one said; sort of a forest green, another explained.

The (once sparkly) plaster has subsequently been covered by many coats of paint, and the red roof has been replaced. However, the building has its original doors, which were recently removed and stripped, and in the process their original color revealed. They were repainted that shade and rehung. They're FABULOUS! I had my picture taken in front of one of them, and you can see it here. The color of the door is not truly captured, but still, I wanted to share.

View image

Posted by holly at 7:58 AM