mountain Lyon notes

We now return to our regular programming

2012-02-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

I apologize to my regulars for my neglect over the past week--I didn't get out and comment as much as usual. I was involved in a writer's blogfest. It was a time-consuming, wonderful experience. It boosted my modest number of followers. And it made me wonder, if they came for the writing exercise, will they stay for what I normally do?

I don't talk about writing all the time.Usually this blog is about the things I do away from my desk. It's about looking for beauty in an ordinary day on the drive home from work, when clouds cover the sky and ice coats the river bottoms. Maybe I'll find it, maybe I won't. Maybe other people won't see the beauty I see, but I don't think I can stop myself.

Writing and photography are like that.

Character Blogfest #3: Flash fiction

2012-02-10T06:09:00.000-08:00

Here's my last installment in the I'm Hearing Voices Character Blogfest. The rules: Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words, MAKE us feel it!

Danelledrove away, laughing in amazement. Stealing Aria's wedding dress hadbeen too easy.

On theother hand, she'd spent a lifetime building the trust she had justbetrayed.

Sheshook off the thought and drove to the backside of Douglas Elementaryand its battered old Dumpster. She ran to the trash bin, swung openthe lid. A stale smell wafted up—the odor of layered food spatters.The waste from Tuesday's school lunch lay inside: half-frozencafeteria turkey dinner with cranberry sauce.

Danellereturned to the car, gathered up Aria's dress and carried it to theDumpster. A soft breeze ruffled the tulle. She held the gown over theopening. A ribbon slid past her hands and dangled, swaying. Sheloosened her hold and tilted her arms down. The fabric sighed, itscoolness slipping past her palms in a slow back bend over yesterday'sturkey dinners.

Herheart constricted. She clutched handfuls of silk and drew the dressback. Danelle held it to her chest, turned and strode back to thecar. There she arranged the gown carefully over the passenger seat.“I can't commit dress murder.” She spoke to the dress. “It'snot your fault.”

Her cellphone buzzed on the center console, displaying the eighth ignoredcall since her escape. She tossed it onto the back seat. “So.”She turned back to the gown. “I've got three hundred dollars in mychecking account. Where do you want to go today?”

I owe a huge thank-you to blogfest organizers Angela Cothran and Cassie Mae. Their effort has introduced me to so many excellent writers. It's been overwhelming, actually--I'll have to finish my blog-hopping over the weekend, because there hasn't been time to see everything. What I have seen has been wonderful. Thank you, everyone who has stopped by.

Character blogfest installment two: Dialog

2012-02-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

This is the second installment in the I'm Hearing Voices Character Blogfest. The rules: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialog--no backstory, no internalization, just talking. Maximum 250 words.

Bart:Somebody's got to ask you if you've got a plan.

Anthony:I'm working on it.

B:Really? And you're gonna put it into practice before you starve inthis hellhole? 'Cause I'm thinking it's about time you admitted thisain't working. Or am I missing something?

A: Nah.You've summed it up.

B: Soyou need a cheap car?

A: Yeah.A truck. I'll hire out as a handyman.

B: Ahandyman?

A: I'mdecent at it. All those years patching and painting at home.

B: Yes.But there's one thing you can do better than anybody else, and itcould make you rich.

A: Idon't want to pimp my gift. I want to get rid of it.

B:That's not gonna happen!

A: Iknow.

B: Itwould be a mistake anyway. Just look at this from a businessperspective. There are crime labs that spend a crap-load of moneyanalyzing DNA, comparing fingerprints, vacuuming a crime scene forhairs. You could skip all that. You could help people.

A:Uh-huh. I can barely take care of myself.

B: You'ddo a lot better if you'd just quit fighting it. All you'vegotta do is sit down next to the guy who did it for thirty seconds,and there you go. You found the killer. You know where the body is.

A: Yougonna let me buy one of your trucks or not?

Character blogfest #1: Character on the couch

2012-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

This is an interview between my fictional main character, Anthony, and a mental health professional. It's the first installment in the I'm Hearing Voices Blogfest.

Q: What is your biggestvulnerability?

Everyone confesses to me. They justhave to be within ten feet of me for thirty seconds. This has beengoing on for about two years.

Q: Do others know this, or is it a secret?

I've told my brother, Bart, and hebelieves me. I've told the rest of my family, and they don't. I nevertold anybody else.

Q: I think you're delusional.

You're sitting too close, Doc. Youneed to move at least three more feet away from me.

Q: I'll humor you. Isthis better?

Yeah.

Q: Okay, then. What do peoplebelieve about you that is false?

A lot of people think I can't fail.Women tell me I'm hot. Everyone says I'm talented. They can't believea guy like me could lose two jobs in three months, but that's whathappens when you know the boss's worst secrets.

Q: What would your best friend sayis your fatal flaw?

Bart would say I'm a wimp.

Q: Why?

I have asuperpower and all I do is whine about it.

Q: What would Bart sayis your redeeming quality?

He admires my self-control.

Q: Why?

I've gotmore than he does.

Q: What do you want most? What willyou do to get it?

At this point I'd settle for paying the bills. I'll even use my gift to make money,if that's what it takes. As a detective I can work in isolation mostof the time. And when I am working with people, I'm getting the absolute truth out of them.

What's your favorite blunder?

2012-02-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

This morning I was pleased to find three comments waiting for approval--and horrified that I'd misspelled the word "clouds" in the post title. I went straight from, "Wow, I got comments!" to "Dang! People saw that!"

It wasn't my first mistake. I don't know how long my profile said, "Somebody's gota do it" instead of "gotta." Not that "gotta" is really a word, but if I'm gonna (goin a?) get slangy I might as well spell it right.

This neglectful editing harks back to my newspaper days. The hardest work went into the story. The headline was dropped in last, usually by an editor, right before the copy rushed to press.

One Christmas morning our editors wished everyone "Season's Greatings."

A typist in Classifieds once announced that a Dalmatian puppy being offered for sale had a health problem. The ad should have said, "has shots," but the typist hit the "I" instead of the "O." The ad ran for free.

My sister Ilene Olson, news editor at the Powell Tribune in Wyoming, looked up this old gem (which, I should point out, was from a different paper): A strong winter storm headed for Wyoming on Wednesday. The Wind River mountains and the Salt and Wyoming ranges expected 12 to 16 inches of snot this morning. That news made the Leno show.

Ilene also alerted me to this gem from Rock Springs, Wyoming: Northwest College Picks Nose. (The college chose a man named Del Nose as its rodeo coach.) The headline made the Leno show, too.

Bad editing continues into the information age. My favorite Internet ad, which I've seen many times, announces: "Snoring is a silent killer."

What's your favorite blunder?

Caught in the clouds

2012-02-03T16:39:00.000-08:00

I had to drive through Sardine Canyon this week, under the very best of conditions: roads bare and dry, snow on the ground, dynamic sky. I pulled over and shoot a few photos at the Sherwood Hills turnoff...

...and enjoyed a few minutes of beauty in a hectic day. It was worth the pause.

Old wood

2012-01-31T15:31:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of falling-down house and old barn shots on other blogs. I apologize, everybody, but you know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I hope these scenes will be around forever. I fear they won't be. This barn may look familiar, but I've never photographed it before. Its color reminds me of another favorite, though.

I guess I can't expect this old fellow to stay standing much longer, but I like the shapes around his base.

I was in a good mood when I shot these, but they sure look melancholy. It was another brown winter day.

Free photos! Freeee photos!

2012-01-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

I could have uploaded this image from my hard drive. Instead I got it off Google, where it's available to anyone who does an image search for "wheat and mountain." (If it looks familiar, that's because I published it on Blogspot in an earlier post.) Those who click on the image in the search results will end up on my blog--but that doesn't stop them from using it without giving me credit.

Two bloggers I've been following have worried about the free-wheeling share-a-thon made possible by technology. And they've worried on opposite ends of the issue.

One was unhappy when a photo he'd shot was used by a business, without permission, recognition or compensation.

Another has written a lot about SOPA in the US and other international efforts to clamp down on illegal sharing. His conclusion: these efforts go too far and hurt innocent people.

But piracy is a real problem. Another writing friend notes that on average, an author makes $9000 a year. It's not like the pirates are stealing from the rich. But for me, the biggest issue is choice. An author may choose to give away free e-books as part of a promotion. They should also be able to choose when to stop that promotion and start charging for their work once they've built up a following. Retailers offer sales to get people in the door. When authors put their work out there, they risk starting a 100 percent off sale that goes on forever.

As for SOPA and the international treaties, I haven't studied them out. I've added them to the booklets I get from the mutual fund company and the software terms of use agreements that would take two hours to read. I struggle to find the time to cook dinner. There's just way too much boring information to sift through.

Maybe somebody has a vested interest in my ignorance... kind of like those guys trading derivatives on Wall Street.

For now I've just gone with it. A lot of the traffic that comes to my blog is brought there by Google Images. I know it. For me the increase in traffic is worth it. I've bought the theory that if people get random things from me for free, they will someday be willing to pay me for specific, good work.

I could watermark my photos. I could post them in a low enough resolution that they wouldn't copy well. For now, I've just put them out as they are.

But I'd probably be richer in the future if I started studying up.

Cabin fever

2012-01-22T16:39:00.000-08:00

We had two days of ugly winter rain before it switched over to this: snowflakes the size of a silver dollar (that's bigger than a Euro). Now the water that pooled on the fields has turned to ice, with snow on top.

I wish I could say I'm out on snowshoes all the time, but I'm afraid I've spent more hours putting together puzzles than tramping in the snow. This weekend an outdoor adventure was frowned on. The mountains got hammered with a heavy snowfall and now the slopes are unstable. The radio keeps reminding us that if we get buried in an avalanche, we could die. So I've relied on Wii's Just Dance for most of my exercise. That, and puzzle building.

This is as exciting as it gets. Actually it is something of a miracle that these three furballs were in a good enough mood to take a nap this close together. I guess hard times brought out the best in them.

Meanwhile, this one found the chocolate stash I kept in my snowshoeing backpack. This is her saying, "What does that mean, 'induce vomiting?'" (Just kidding. I took this photo long before we had a veterinary emergency.) My son and I performed the procedure and she's doing fine. I don't think she learned anything at all.

Two months' difference

2012-01-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

This is shot from the middle of Cache Valley looking south, from the brow of Old Main Hill. The evening light was too good to ignore. It was early November.

Nearly the same view today, at about the same time. Winter's back.

Another November shot taken the same night as before, looking farther down the valley at an approaching squall.

And here it is again, with the squall already here.

Sun-dappled snowscape

2012-01-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

I knew I needed a winter sport when I made a list of everything I loved about winter and realized it was all food. Trouble was, my one brush with alpine skiing... Never mind. Some stories are better left untold.

Snowshoeing, on the other hand, takes a lot less coordination while providing an incredible workout. Plus, you have time to snap a photo of aspens. These young trees were probably bent by snow loads. Believe it or not, there's a serious shortage of snow in this picture. My guide said this area probably had five more feet of white on it last winter. We've gone from one extreme to the other. In fact, it was a pretty long drive getting to snow that was deep enough to use the shoes.

We had a white Christmas--well, white and brown. After that was a freakishly warm spell.

Now it's cold again, but still no snow. Skiers are upset. Winter-haters are delighted. I'm just hoping there will be a drift on a hill somewhere in a week or two, when I strap on the snowshoes again.

Book Talk: Inheritance

2012-01-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

When I picked up Paolini's last book, my first, most important question was: would it be better than Brisinger? My answer was yes. Definitely. In fact, Inheritance did what many fantasy novels fail to do: it made its non-magical characters as fascinating as its magical ones. Be prepared, some scenes are pretty gruesome, but you won't be bored and the characters won't be flat--not even the females.

That said, this isn't a perfect book. Its ending is a bit long, which is a huge contrast to the action leading up to the climax. When I was reading that part I was lugging the book around to take advantage of five minutes here and ten minutes there. I literally didn't want to put it down. But after the action ended, Paolini spent a lot of time tying up loose ends. I'd have been happy with less.

My son would have, too. But before he reached the slow ending, he had plenty to say.

"This book has so much more action than Brisinger, it's almost too much. Even for me. There's a lot of fighting."

"Roran's a really good fighter. What would happen if he was a dragon rider?"

"What do you think is going to happen with Eragon and Arya?"

Paolini rolls the answer to that last question out to the very end. I stayed with it. Overall I'd say the book was a satisfying read.

Attention, writers! A chance to get fresh eyes on your work.

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'll be joining the I'm Hearing Voices Character Blogfest in February. I shun contests where I only have to follow somebody or leave a comment, but this one actually makes me work, and suddenly I'm interested.

For those of you who just come here for the photos, I'll find a way to keep it interesting. Fellow writers, click on the image and check it out.

Farm critters

2012-01-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when the light is good I just have to shoot something. Here's Chicadee being Queen while I was out feeding goats one morning.

Tonight, for about sixty seconds, the sun beamed some pink rays between the clouds before it set. I was there. So was this Brown Swiss.

The light on this shed isn't particularly good, but this structure has fascinated me over the years. We've had canyon winds that toppled newer, squarer sheds, but this one is still upright--I don't know how.

Barbershop

2012-01-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

Just one photo today, from close to home. This tiny barbershop sits downtown. When I first moved here I wondered if it was a working shop because I never saw it open. I worked in another town during the hours of operation. Eighteen years later it's still offering haircuts to people off the street--and just before Christmas I caught it at the right time.

Book talk: Loving Harry Potter 5 for all the wrong reasons

2011-12-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

So much of the expert advice on writing is about advancing the plot, moving the story ahead, cutting out unnecessary detail. Harry Potter 5 breaks those rules, and it's a better book for it.

All this is old news, but I re-read most of The Order of The Phoenix over the holidays, just because I like it so much. And also because I appreciate its brief but gentle treatment of mental illness.

My absolute favorite scene is when Neville, a minor character, realizes his friends know that his parents are mentally ill. His bossy grandmother is there, and she tells him what to do and how to feel. But Neville takes his own approach, which is shyer, sweeter and in the end much more courageous.

Another wonderful minor character was the socially awkward Luna Lovegood. My favorite scene with her is at the very end of the book, when Harry stumbles onto Luna in the hall on the last day of the term. At first he wants to hide from her. Then, when he realizes that she knows how odd she seems to everyone else, he feels sorry for her. By the time he walks away, he is very glad to have talked to her.

I thought it was sad when Luna told Harry that their schoolmates played tricks on her. Bret disagreed. "She wasn't sad about it," he said. "She was handling it just fine."

And she was--which may explain why her strangeness is so likable.

She and the clumsy but determined Neville are the reasons I've read Harry Potter 5 more than once.

My favorite five photos of 2011

2011-12-26T11:35:00.000-08:00

It's impossible to separate the pictures from the way I felt when I shot them. I won't even try. So here are my favorites from 2011.

#5: Wild Rock Garden

If you click on this you'll see the flowers growing on the hillside. After a wet spring they bloomed thicker, longer and later than I've ever seen them. It was our reward for living through all that rain. My other favorite thing about this photo: it was taken about five miles away from my house.

#4: Snow Canyon

I can't choose a favorite photo from Snow Canyon, but this one will do, even if it doesn't show the sand I was lounging on, or the warm breeze I was enjoying at the time. I could have gone shopping on the day I took this picture. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy spending money, but I'm glad I wound up here instead of at the outlet mall.

#3: Indian Paintbrush

Every time I saw this spiky, spunky plant on the trail, I felt connected to my home state. It's Wyoming's official wildflower. (This particular one was growing in Idaho.) I love its color, its beauty and its tenacity. The day I took this photo it was one of the last flowers standing on the mountainside. Bloom on, my friend.

#2: The Old Barn

This scene was a bright spot in a dark winter. It inspired a watercolor painting by Franz, an artist and fellow blogger. I attempted to shoot it again a little while ago, when the Christmas lights on the side were lit, and another blogger, Adrian, edited that shot until it was a decent piece of near-nighttime photography. Which means that this barn on a Richmond, Utah back road has been the subject of two European artists. You've gotta love the Information Age. (The photo will enlarge with a click.)

#1: Bret at the Wind Caves

I don't usually publish family photos on my blog, but I don't think Husband will mind. It was a nice shot on a beautiful day.

Have a happy new year.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

Wherever you are, may you find yourself in a warm place with good food and people you care about.

Best of Blogs 2011: Advice

2011-12-23T07:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the best advice I got from a blog in 2011:

Whatever you're doing, do it 100 percent. Think like a sprinter, not a marathon runner.

I stumbled onto that gem through Twitter. Sadly, I can't remember which blogger gave me that advice, or I'd hat-tip them. I liked the post, but I didn't realize how often the philosophy would come back to me in the coming months.

The idea is to focus completely on the task at hand, and here's my interpretation. Working on a project in the office? Really work on it. Minimize the distractions, both virtual and real. Writing a book? Set a realistic daily writing goal and meet it. Don't even look at social media until you've met it--but chances are if you're in the creative flow, social media won't even tempt you. Spending time with family? Then it's time to leave work at work and stop obsessing over a writing project. My execution of this idea hasn't been perfect, but since I've been more conscious about it I have been freer of a feeling that used to nag me all the time: The one that used to say, whatever I was doing, that I should be doing something else.

So thank you, professional blogger who I should have bookmarked. I'm off to meet my writing goal.

Writing resolutions

2011-12-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

When I took my novel to an editing workshop in April, an edit of the first 150 pages by a bestselling author was part of the package. David Farland, the author/teacher, liked them and said I had a good, publishable idea and a pervasive, wry sense of humor.

But he also noted that my main character was missing the first third of his character arc--which is writer's talk for the journey that turns a protagonist into a different person at the end of the book (or series) than he was at the beginning.

My main character, Anthony, came into the novel as a fully-formed detective, comfortable enough with his confession-inducing gift to use it professionally. (People confess to him automatically, if they're within ten feet of him and stay around him for more than 30 seconds.) I hadn't told how he became a detective. I didn't want to. I'd mapped the story out enough to know it would be sad and that he would behave badly in it. I wanted to write about Anthony at a different point in his life, when he was sadder, smarter and kinder.

Besides, if I were going to write all that, it would take a whole other book.

I took a lot of Dave's other suggestions, went through a massive editing process and started looking for agents. But in the back of my mind, a little voice kept saying, You're wimping out on your story.

Which brings me to a snowy October morning, as I was walking from my car to work. In one of those fantastic visits from the muse, I knew what Anthony's first case should be. What was more important, I knew I could write that unhappy story and still make my readers smile.

It was an unforgettable moment. The first snow of the season was drifting down and a beautiful song played in my head. When an idea comes like that, I can't say no. So I'm in the process of writing a prequel to my first detective novel. Its working title is The Truth Inducer, and I'm loving it. I always love writing.

If I still love it when I'm editing and looking to get published, I'll know I've got a keeper. Maybe even two keepers, since the second novel will feel more complete.

I'd love to share my first chapter, but I'm saving it for a contest for unpublished material. When that's over, I'll give it its own page on this blog.

Empty

2011-12-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

First, I'll keep a promise to Holdingmoments in this re-shoot from a couple of posts ago. It looks better in daylight. I still don't know its story.

Staying on theme, here's another shot from close to home. This is an old sugar factory across the tracks, at its most flattering angle. (I left out as much of the graffiti as I could.) This area used to produce a lot of sugar beets, but the crop lost its profitability--and popularity--in the early 1970s.

I will revisit the old barn, I promise--but not today. It wouldn't fit in this post anyway. It's not lonely enough.

Can this pic be saved? Part 2.

2011-12-13T17:40:00.001-08:00

Wanna see some amazing editing?

My blogging buddy ADRIAN answered the question of my last post: can my very bad night shot (the broadside of a barn) be saved? Take a look at his answer on his photo editing blog, Seeing to Pictures.

I will revisit both of my bad shots soon, when the blasted cold I caught goes away. Till then, stay warm and drink some hot chocolate.

Can these pictures be saved?

2011-12-11T19:16:00.001-08:00

Can this image of the old barn at the Bend in the Road be saved? Maybe not. I sharpened and made it smaller, but it still looks like it was shot without a tripod in low light on a noisy ISO setting. Which is in fact what happened.

Abandoned old house. I don't know the story, I just like it. Again, the shutter speed was too slow. Should've taken the tripod. Maybe I'll try again.

I wanted to go snowshoeing and get some photos of aspens in snow. Instead I did Wii Fit and took these close to home. Aw, winter's hard.

Mission Christmas

2011-12-08T07:26:00.001-08:00

I remember Trieste in 1990. I always do this time of year.

I was there for a mission for the LDS Church. The kind of mission in which a young adult shares her deepest, most personal beliefs with strangers. By Christmastime I was over being surprised that most people didn't want to hear it. It was a much bigger shock to discover that in Trieste, there were people who did want to. They wanted to hear from churches of all sizes and shapes. They were fleeing Albania as its repressive government was falling. To hear them tell it, God was not allowed in their country, and they missed Him. Sharing with them was an incredible experience.

I'd like to thank my friend Andrea for this photo of me and Sorella Southam during our mission days.

Which brings me to Christmas Eve, when our little group of missionaries met. Some of us were sad to be away from home. As we talked about the reason we were there, we gave each other examples of the love of God. In that little gathering I experienced a delicious, overwhelming feeling of peace. Twenty-one years later, that memory remains one of the brightest jewels in my treasure box.

I'm not alone. As I was driving to work this week, I heard a commentary by Steve Eaton, a Deseret News columnist and a genuinely funny guy. I emailed him and he said I could share this snippet:

When I served a mission for the LDS Church, I had a mission president who was determined to teach us the "true meaning of Christmas."

He wrote our parents and had them mail all our gifts to him, so that he could withhold them from us in order to give us a chance to adjust our thinking away from home and toward the people we were serving. He told us that we were to go out on Christmas Eve and find someone who was alone and had nothing to give to us. We found an old woman who lived in a home that had no electricity and warmed herself around the flames of a gas stove.

We sang Christmas carols with her in that old dark, broken-down kitchen, but ended up failing in our quest.

We were supposed to find someone who could not give back to us, but that woman infused our Christmas with such joy and gratitude that I have never forgotten it.

Hmm. I guess that wasn't laugh-out-loud funny. To get that part, you'll have to read the whole column.

Judging from his writing, though, it sounds like we had something else in common: we wondered if we'd ever feel like that again. I just want you to know, I have. That's the kind of giver God is.

Book Talk: Fablehaven

2011-12-01T18:20:00.001-08:00

I read the whole Fablehaven series summer before last, one right after the other. They were so fun, I missed the books when I finished and wished I could find something like them the next summer. The most delightful thing about them was the dinner conversation.

It's probably because the book's two main characters include Kendra, a bookish girl who thinks before she acts, and Seth, an impulsive boy who courageously leaps before he looks. They are siblings who end up spending their summer vacation on a preserve for magical creatures--a place as dangerous as it is wonderful. Since we have children who relate to both Seth and Kendra, it made for some passionate discussion.

I was the last of us to read Fablehaven, so my kids were constantly asking me where I was. "Seth is pretty impulsive, isn't he?" I said once, when I wasn't very far in.

"Wait 'til Midsummer Night's Eve," all three of my kids replied.

I hope I'm not giving too much away to say that the choices and events of Midsummer Night are hugely pivotal in the book. And while I think of Fablehaven as a delightful, fun romp, I have to hand it to author Brandon Mull for throwing in some life's lessons. Choices have consequences. Some problems require creative solutions. Deals should be made carefully.

I'd definitely recommend this book, so if you're looking for something to read with your kids over the holidays, this would be a good pick.

Holiday cliche`s I would like to shut out this year

2011-11-26T07:34:00.001-08:00

Our cat, Goose.

I've come to understand I love Christmas--I just hate what the corporate machine has done to it. My goal: celebrate it my way and leave the TV off as much as possible. Here's a list of things I'll try to miss:

5. Any play, radio or TV program that ends with a cute child saying, "This is the best Christmas ever!"

4. Commercials that imply you will need to buy a diamond or a car if you want your wife to mean it when she kisses you.

3. Any ad that makes it sound like a diamond or a car is a normal Christmas gift. And please, quit changing Christmas carol lyrics to sell cars.

2. Commercials featuring smiling models in Santa hats, handing each other gifts. Also, commercials showing holiday decor that costs more than my car.

1. Footage of shoppers clawing past each other to get $5 off a toaster.

Oops. It's already too late for that one.

Thankful

2011-11-22T15:07:00.001-08:00

For a harvest.
Red beets and orange squash, apples of all colors, a little cooking skill.
Home-canned tomatoes-turned-red-sauce on rotini.
Cornbread and gravy and a husband daring enough to put them together.

For mornings too rainy for work.
Sunshine between storms.
The choice to avoid bad weather.
The will to work in the snow.

For the charm of a small town main street.
Afternoons on a mountainside, golden light, red leaves.
The hard, heart-stopping moments that make me realize what I have.
Family. Faith. Peace. Humor. Tenacity.

For a quiet day with food and friends before the mad shopping dash.
I'll skip it this year.
I have what I need.

On the Beartooth Highway, Montana

You, too, can earn a mediocre Klout score

2011-11-16T17:00:00.001-08:00

A while back, Klout changed its algorithms.

For those of you who don't know (and it's fine with me if you don't), Klout is one of several services out there that rate people's online influence. When it first came out, the professional bloggers I follow criticized it for being inaccurate. I found it a little disturbing from a privacy standpoint, in an earlier post.

Since then I've left the scientific analysis to other folks, but I noticed my Klout score corresponded pretty closely to my twitter activity.

Recently the influence measurer changed its yardstick to include "more networks," and a flurry of blog posts issued from professional blogs. Most could be summed up this way: I lost Klout points, and I don't care. It's all a crap shoot anyway.

Inexplicably, I picked up17 points in the Great Klout Shift. And while I've read Klout's brief description of the changes, I'm not really sure how the tool crunches numbers. My best guess is that it took this blog into account. Its following is small but chatty.

My score is still an F on the grading scale, but it's also significantly higher than it was. So here's my advice to people who want to learn from my success: Get people from outside America to follow your blog. They comment often and say positive things. And because they "interact," the soulless measurement gods will smile on you.

Thanks, chatty followers! I also appreciate the Americans who read this blog; those who comment and those who come for a quiet visit.

Tune in next week for my advice on defusing a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Stinky

2011-11-11T15:16:00.001-08:00

What do you get when you cross this...

...With this?

We'll find out in six months.

The billy is a guest at our place, providing services that will hopefully bring us kids in the spring. He arrived this week and the men went out to help our neighbor unload him. "I guess I'll go take a look at the stinky, smelly goat," I said.

"Don't call him that," said Oldest Daughter. "He's going to be the father of your kids."

He's a handsome thing, for a critter that smells like rotten goat milk.

"Man," my son said, "the females aren't going to let him anywhere near them." But they did. Which made my son wonder if he could attract women by not showering for a while.

The women in the family all spoke together: "Don't try it."

Comparing iPhone and Nikon images

2011-11-08T18:34:00.000-08:00

This scene was shot from my iPhone during the Wind Caves hike. It's taken me this long to work out how picture mail is done.

The same scene, same day, same lighting, almost the same framing on my Nikon D40. I wanted to see how they would compare.

In my opinion the Nikon won. Whew! I don't have to feel foolish, hauling it up the mountainside like that.

Both images are unedited, straight out of the camera.

September, November

2011-11-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

September...

November.

It's not all bad. We're almost done with canning and look forward to months of pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, bisque, borsht, apple crisp and frozen-pepper fajitas. I love peasant food.

NaNoWriMo

2011-11-01T06:19:00.000-07:00

Writers will recognize the jumble of letters at the title of this post for what they are: insanity.

For the rest of you, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens in November. The goal: write a book in 30 days. (Notice, it isn't about writing a GOOD book in 30 days.)

I just want everybody to know, I could do it. By the end of the month my family would be living on cold cereal, my dog would have made many messes on the rug, the goats would be wandering the neighborhood looking for food and my husband would be fighting the urge to divorce me. I would be a caffeine-soaked wreck.

I think I'll cheer everyone on from the sidelines and stick to my regular writing schedule. You go, crazy writing friends. See you in December.

Cutting the cord

2011-10-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

This week's news: we went wireless. It was time. Lately most of the calls to the land line were from telemarketers and people who knew us slightly and wanted a favor. (Um, if anyone I know is reading this, I still want to fix dinner for anybody who needs it. Send me an email and I'll send you my phone number.)

I made the call to the phone company to discontinue service a few days ago. "You've been with us a long time," the customer service lady said. "Is there a reason you're discontinuing now?"

"The expense," I said. "We use cell phones now."

"Are you sure you don't want to keep a basic line?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

She walked me through the business of ending our relationship. At the end I found myself babbling in typical break-up fashion. "It's not your fault. You've been great, you really have."

I drove to work feeling sad. I"m now part of the modern world: easy to find on the Internet, impossible to find in a phone book. I felt more virtual, less real. I never realized I felt attached to a copper line.

I'll get over it. I'm learning to like text messaging. And I'll probably have my new phone figured out before it breaks.

Eclipse: another book talk

2011-10-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Twilight fans might want to leave in a minute. But before you go let me give Stephanie Meyer credit for creating an original, gripping story that appealed to romantic women of all ages. Nobody's arguing with that. Let me also say that I loved The Host, her book aimed at adults.

All right, fans, now you can go.

I started Eclipse already disappointed because Bella got back with her vampire Edward. I expected this meant she'd hand her new-found personality back to her boyfriend. It wasn't quite that simple, but by the middle of the book, I didn't care much. Edward was controlling, Bella was trying to keep up a relationship with two gentleman monsters that hated each other. Even Edward's sister, who had been nice enough in the first two books, helped Edward dictate Bella's life. I didn't like any of them very much. Well, I still liked Jacob a little, but if I were him I'd have gotten out of there a long time ago.

Some comments from fellow readers:

"Do we really need to hear how beautiful Edward is one more time?"

"Alice wasn't even herself."

"Bella should have figured it out. You can't expect your ex to stay friends with you forever."

Our conversations didn't really cover much new ground, so I've written enough. I finished Eclipse because I started it, but I haven't felt much of a need to read Book #4.

The next book conversations will cover the Fablehaven series.

Smart Phone: the multi-tool

2011-10-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

No, these horses are not pulling a load downhill. I'm holding my cell phone crooked, in this photo taken years ago on an unforgettable night. Unforgettable because the sun was beaming horizontal golden light onto the race track where this horse pull was taking place. It lit up every detail, every line and curve. The metal embellishments on the harnesses gleamed as if they were gilded with dew. What was even more amazing--the grandstands weren't usable so we were allowed to set up camp chairs right in front of the action.

And I forgot my camera.

I shot it with my cell phone. And for years these photos languished there because I didn't have a data plan on my phone and couldn't email them to myself. Later, I got a new phone. I gave my son my old micro SD card, he did some techno-wizardry, and behold! Here are those images.

I remember it as more stunning in person. I definitely remember the ground being more level (I edited these, but I used Picnik, which doesn't correct for a crooked camera). But it's nice that I have at least something from that night. I guess a cell phone is a little like a Swiss Army knife--it can do many tasks, it does none of them all that well, but sometimes the best tool is the one you can put your hand on.

Book Talk: New Moon

2011-10-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

It was hard to talk to my teenage daughter about the second book in the Twilight series.

I liked the main character, Bella, a lot more in New Moon. That is to say, I liked her once she gave up acting like her life was over because the gentleman vampire boyfriend left her. She was growing a personality of her own, and that seemed like a good thing.

But it was hard to talk about with my daughter because this new Bella who made her own decisions made so many horrible choices. She still lied to her father, just more often.She started picking up risky hobbies. And while I liked her new friend Jacob, he pulled her into yet another dangerous world. At least he wasn't bossy. If I had to choose between two gentleman monsters, he'd be the one I'd choose.

I said as much to my girl, but she still liked the vampire. He was protective and mysterious and older.

When the movie came out, we watched it.

"I was glad when she decided to stop acting like a zombie after Edward left her," I said. "It was time to stop with the nightmares and waking up screaming."

"That part almost made me cry," my daughter replied.

I hope I said something tactful after that. Something other than, If she were my daughter I would have tossed her out in the snow. I'd have left her there just long enough to wake her up.

Maples on the Wind Caves trail

2011-10-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

We keep thinking every hike might be our last, but so far the weather's held. I've blogged about the wind caves before but the color this time was amazing. I'm starting with a view from the destination, looking down the mountainside. I'm not sure this photo shows how steep it is. The hike is on a south-facing slope, less densely wooded than the north side of the mountain opposite, and with fewer aspens, more maples.

It's time the maples had a post of their own.

This is from the descent. I'm out of order.

Looking back through the cave at the mountainside.

Maple trees with some unidentified white stuff in the middle (yes, white stuff is a scientific term).

Here's the white stuff close up.

If you want a look yourself, it's a short drive from Logan up Logan Canyon. We wanted to hike the Crimson Trail on the other side, but it's under construction.

Have a good weekend.

Book Talk: Twilight

2011-10-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Twilight has a lot to make parents nervous. Maybe that's what earned it the #10 spot on the American Library Association's 2010 most frequently challenged books list. It features Bella, a girl who lies to her parents, dates a boy she knows is a vampire and gets sucked in--no pun intended--to a world that is horribly unsafe. She does it all for love.

I let my girl read it, and I'm glad. It's not because the book is a classic. But Twilight did open up a neutral door to some important discussion. How much control should a boyfriend have over your life? Do you absolutely have to keep dating somebody, just because you love him? Can a guy be sweet and controlling at the same time? And how do you tell the difference between love and raging hormones, anyway?

Our conclusion: Edward the vampire was a very nice guy, but he was bossy, too.

We got that settled, and it was on to book number two in the series.

I love books, not just for the pleasure of reading them but also for the joy of talking about them--sometimes over the dinner table. Periodically I'll bring some of that discussion here as well.

Missing Trieste

2011-10-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

This is Castello Miramare castle, a few miles northwest of Trieste, Italy.

Blame it on bloggers. I ran into a Triestino photo blog and spent several minutes in such a nostalgic reverie, I didn't notice the author stopped posting eight months ago. Trieste Daily Photo is still worth a look. It shows the city's everyday, weird beauty.

Trieste isn't much of a tourist town, but I grew to love it after living there as an LDS missionary in the early 90s. I went back with husband in 2003 and took some photos that are not nearly as good as I thought they were at the time. We hit the city in October during the Barcolana, an annual sailboat race that brings in competitors from all over the world. With all of them in the streets, Trieste takes on a more touristy feel.

I want to show Bret Trieste without the crowds, but the boats were beautiful.

I looked for a more up-to-date blog and found Life in Trieste, with a couple of Barcolana-related posts. Ah, the memories. Mostly I remember asking for directions in the run-up to the race. I'd forgotten enough over the years, I needed a little help. I got the reply: "Sorry, I don't know. I'm a foreigner, too."

I also remember some potato gnocchi that I haven't been able to duplicate at home. The meal was worth the wait outside a crowded restaurant.

I'll have to try it again this winter. Ciao, Trieste.

Re-post: The Afternoon Bus

2011-10-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

I am riding the bus when we reach the stop at the middle school, where a dozen children slouch around the sign. Some are shy, some bear that look of patient misery that I associate with my own middle school years. Unfortunately it’s the exuberant Little Miss Foulmouth who sits behind me. Again.

“I love Ronald,” she shouts to her friends close-by. “Love him. My boyfriend hates it, but he can’t say anything cause he likes McKenzie and she’s a motherbleeping bleep. Seriously, she’s such a bleeping hypocrite. Oh my bleep, is that Wyatt? WYATT, COME OVER HERE! COME ON, WYATT, YOU BLEEPHOLE!”

Her cell phone rings, and her voice transforms. It could belong to an angel who volunteers at a nursing home. “Oh, hi, Mom. How are you? I’m on the bus. No, the community bus. Yeah. I can get off at home or your office. I'll do what works best for you. When can you go home? … Okay. What would you like me to do?”

I whirl and snatch the phone out of her hand. “Hello, Mom,” I say.

“Hey!” the girl shouts, but I’m already on my feet and walking to the front of the bus. One of the factory workers stands and moves into the aisle, blocking the path between Miss Foulmouth and me. The driver keeps his eyes on the road. The girl stands aghast, her mouth twitching.

“Who’s this?” says the voice on the other end.

“I ride the bus with your daughter. You should ask her what she talks about after school.” I am already walking back to Miss Foulmouth. “If she were my daughter, I’d want to know. Anyway, here’s your girl back.” The factory worker steps aside and I give the phone to the girl, whose face seethes with fury. “Mom?” she says into the phone. “Mom, I don’t know! She just took it! I don’t know why!”

I can’t hold back a wide smile. The bus stops to let off a woman in scrubs, who sneaks me a thumbs-up as she descends. I catch a fleeting smirk on the face of the bus driver, a paunchy former teacher who has a sense of humor.

The only thing that would make the moment more sublime is if it actually happened. Well, okay, listening to the girl happens every day I take the afternoon bus, but I’ve never actually snatched her phone. Still, the daydream gets a little better every time. Watch out, Miss Foulmouth. I’m about to introduce myself to your mother.

This is a re-post from the days when nobody read my blog. I no longer see Miss Foulmouth on the bus, but a lot of other memorable characters have replaced her. I may write about them, too, someday...

Fall in Williams Canyon

2011-10-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

We went to the hills before the rains hit. I'm so glad we did. I'm writing this post on one of those early fall days when I wonder if it's time to turn on the furnace. At the very least it's time to start wearing socks. I haven't seen a blue sky in a few days, so it's nice to remember this walk.

An Indian Paintbrush, blooming into the fall. I'm gaining new appreciation for my home state's official wildflower. It's a tough beauty.

Wild mint (if any local botonists can tell me which variety, feel free). The wet spring was good to this aromatic plant. It flourished until this year's hikes smelled as good as they looked.

I wish you all the best of the season.

To see it for yourself, drive through Emigration Canyon just north of Preston, Idaho. We took the Williams Canyon turn-off and walked for a bit, but you won't have to leave the road to see some stunning mountainsides.

A long goodbye to summer

2011-10-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

This photo, and the ones that follow, were taken in early September in Idaho's Gem Valley. It was taken on a trip at the beginning of our farewell to summer. It's turned out to be a long goodbye--we still haven't seen any frost where I live.

This arch is part of a structure called Last Chance canal. It was built at the turn of the century to solve a common western problem: fertile land but no irrigation water. The canal at the top of the arch carries water through a tunnel in a hill, made by two brothers. They started at opposite ends and met in the middle.

Here's a view from the spot where the water exits the mountain.

I didn't edit any of these. I wanted everyone to believe me when I said the colors are true.

Still life

2011-09-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

In art class I thought still lifes were pointless. Who buys produce paintings?

Clearly I wasn't a gardener yet.

Gardening has helped me appreciate vegetables, which I took for granted back when I didn't try to grow them myself. Oddly, when I put some work into my food I feel much more grateful for it. I know what a miracle it is.

I'll do a brief garden tour of the vegetables you see here.

Brandywine tomato: I've heard heirloom varieties dissed as having all the problems that breeders have sought to solve over the past few decades, but this one works well for us. We haven't had disease problems with it (bear in mind we're in a dry climate), it seems to produce well on a hot or cool summer, the tomatoes can grow large enough to cover a whole slice of bread and the flavor's very good. The one thing the Brandywine doesn't have is patience. You have to pick it as soon as it's ripe or it rots on the vine.

Early Thickset pepper: This one is the best-tasting pepper we've found, though we've experimented with a few different varieties. As its name implies, it has a shorter growing season so it works well in this climate. The hardest part is waiting for it to change colors. It's fine green, but fabulous when it's a mottled red. I usually harvest before the color change is complete, since I don't want to risk it wilting, and the flavor seems to peak when the red shows itself.

Garden Salsa pepper: (That's the little curved one on the right.) These peppers will have a short period when they offer a perfect, mild, lip-tingling afterburn to the food you put them in. Then they go so hot they light your hair on fire. We like them because they have a fairly clean flavor--no strange aftertaste--so they work in all kinds of dishes from all over the globe.

Crosello Barese cucumber: This one came from an Italian seed supplier, and it's a weird-looking pup. Most are more oval than the ones I pictured here. If you look closely, you'll see they are furry, which earned them the nickname "fuzzy pickles" at our house. I don't make pickles with them. I eat them fresh, and I've never had a bad one, though the skins get tough and the fruit looks more melon-like if you harvest it too late.

Most of the things you see here taste even better with a little kosher salt sprinkled on top and some balsamic vinegar and olive oil drizzled over them. I haven't dared try it with the Garden Salsa pepper, though. That's best taken in doses.

Laramie II: We took a different road

2011-09-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

In the last month, the family I grew up in has learned that my big sister, Valerie, has colon cancer; the sneaky kind that had a chance to spread before it was discovered. The kind that cannot be cured, that the doctors only hope to hold back for several months, maybe a year or two.

As you can imagine, this was terrible news, especially at first, but lately I've taken my cues from my sister. She has faced her cancer with grace and courage.

That's her story, and I hope she will write it herself. But it's the backdrop for this post. It's the reason I've done so much thinking about family and what's important and how I spend my time and what regrets I want to avoid. It's the reason that my other sister, Ilene, suggested the three of us take a girls-only trip to Yellowstone. Ilene and I wanted to show Valerie one of our favorite places in the world while she was still feeling relatively good. (Valerie hasn't been there since she was a child. I went along on the same trip, but I was a baby at the time and I can't remember any of it. For years I felt cheated about that, actually... but I sure made up for it later.)

We left last week. Valerie stopped here in my part of the world to visit with family for a few days before we packed into the car.

We met up with Ilene in Rexburg, Idaho, and that's as close as we got to Yellowstone. That's when the cancer chose to show itself for what it is, and it hit Valerie with some severe, painful complications. We ended up taking her to the emergency room. The doctor there concluded her colon had closed off and he wanted to perform surgery, but Valerie's own physician wanted her to come back home to Laramie, Wyoming for more tests. And that's why we set off on a very different trip across Wyoming on a Friday, with only some anti-nausea medication and a clear liquid diet between my sister and another painful episode. That, and a blessing from some church elders and a lot of prayer.

Ilene did the driving. I navigated and made sandwiches in the car. I fed them to Ilene, ate mine quietly and in general felt guilty that I couldn't offer any to Valerie. Gatorade was all she could manage. She also talked and laughed in the car, so we got the story-trading time we were hoping for, if not the scenery. We made it to Laramie around midnight and spent a few hours in yet another emergency room. I'm not sure why. We thought the hospital was expecting us, but admissions sent us to the ER. At any rate it was the second late night for Valerie, whose night went on even longer than mine as the doctors put her through some more diagnostic tests.

The good news didn't reach us until the next morning. Valerie didn't need surgery after all, though she's undergoing some massive diet changes. She was exhausted, though, and after a quick visit Ilene and I let her rest and took a nap ourselves.

Another bit of good news for me: Ilene was taking a photography class and needed to shoot some landscapes for a homework assignment. That's how we ended up at the summit and at Vedawoo recreational area, shooting the scenery as clouds hurried over us. The light came and went, but when it came it was incredible.

The rock formations at Vedawoo are fascinating even in drab light. They are colored by lichen in a strange interplay of geology and biology.

Here they are, spotlit. Every time this fantastic, horizontal light reached under the cloud bank, both Ilene and I started talking to it. "Stay there. Stay."

The same rock formation as the one in the above photo (right), but from a different angle.

Light like that doesn't last forever, but it remained longer than we did. We left the mountain and drove through town as it shone on lawns, turning the reds redder, the greens greener, the golds stunning.

We had dinner with Valerie's family and met some of the people in her life. The kind of people who bring a hot meal over just because they know a family's having a hard time. The ones who insist they are family, too. I am so glad we met them.

From there we went back to see Valerie at the hospital. She was looking cheerful but a little tired.

By the time dinner was over the light was gone, but I'm still amazed at the moments it gave us.

There's got to be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Laramie: the other Wyoming

2011-09-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

I've been dissing Southern Wyoming for most of my life. Any place you grow up in has a strike against it. It didn't help that I was too busy noticing everything Sagebrushland didn't have in common with the Big City.

I ended up in Laramie, Wyoming on accident last weekend, and I'm glad. It's ridiculous to go on berating a place for what it's not. You miss what it is. I spent 20 summers of my life less than an hour from the scenes you see here, but I never enjoyed them until this week.

You spend a week in Girl's Camp trying to keep this color of dirt out from under your fingernails, and all the glamor wears off.

It's time to pay my respects to the region where I first met the aspen tree. (Can you guess from which direction the wind blows in this picture?) Its white trunks and dancing leaves always leave me awestruck. I would plant aspens in my yard, but in lower elevations the leaves don't turn to gold in the fall. Bringing it to the valley seems a little like caging a wild animal.

A wet spring and warm late summer have allowed the aspens to wear their green a little longer this year, but the younger trees are starting to turn.

All these photos were taken in the area the locals call "the Summit," or the highest point on Interstate 80 between Laramie and Cheyenne. The Happy Jack Road exit brought us here. It's about as far as you can get from Yellowstone and still be in the same state. It's quiet. It's not crowded. And it's home.

Slow food, quick cheese

2011-09-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

Husband and I had the chance to hang out with other food ~~freaks~~ lovers last month, at a Slow Food Cache Valley cheese-making event. First they made the cheese, then they put it on wood-fired oven pizza.

The event was our first experience with the Slow Food movement, which celebrates the opposite of fast food. (You start with raw ingredients, end with real flavor.) That said, in this slow food event they turned milk into ricotta and mozzarella cheese in one evening. If you're curious, you can find recipes on the Smitten Kitchen and Cheesemaking websites.

Cheesemaker Maria Brym practices Slow Food ideals. You can find out more about her operation on the Brym's Backyard Blog. Both her mozzarella and ricotta cheese started in the pot, as the milk was heated to exactly the right temperature. (If you try this at home, you will want an accurate thermometer.)

This is ricotta after it's removed from the pan. A curdling agent is added to the milk. The tiny clumps are then strained to remove the whey. At Brym's Backyard, the by-product goes to the chickens. They love it.

These curds are mozzarella in its early stages. It is fussier than ricotta. While it's possible to make with pasturized milk, it fails if the milk was heated too much when it was pasturized. For the locals who read this, Maria recommends Rose Hill Dairy. A catering friend of mine is dialed into the fresh cheese scene as well. She's also checking into the milk question, so I'll report back if she finds some other brands that work.

Brym's backyard has a few barnyard creatures, including some goats, ducks and chickens. They make chevre cheese from the milk of a Nigerian Dwarf goat no bigger than my pygmies.

Here's the goat. She was shy but she did emerge long enough for a photo in uncertain light.

They served some fresh chevre, much better than the storebought stuff I tried once before giving up on all goat dairy products. The food enthusiasts there told me the nannies have to be kept away from the billies, or the milk starts smelling goatish. I've you've ever been around a billy goat, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, imagine a sweaty, cloying, horrifying stench. Then multiply it by two. That's what a billy smells like, and he apparently contaminates everything around him.

Fortunately I've found somebody else who keeps a billy, and we worked out a deal for breeding services this fall. If all goes well we'll have kids in the spring. Once again I'm wondering if I should start milking... but I don't need another hobby.

I couldn't resist another pizza photo. The plate was so pretty.

Comfort scenes

2011-09-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

I don't want to dwell on the images that broke my heart on September 11, 2001. I'll just remember the ones that made me feel better.

This hand-painted sign stood at the canyon's approach.

Shortly after it happened I took a drive through Emigration Canyon in Idaho. These photos were taken in September a year or two later, but the paint on the sign was still bright.

Maples on the mountainside

Con trails in the sky. On 9-11 all commercial flights were grounded, so the white lines among the clouds were a sign that life was getting back to normal.

What sights comfort you?

From an undisclosed location

2011-09-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

We spent a couple of days off the grid this weekend, in the sense that we ran off and visited a spot on private property. Out of respect for the owner I won't say exactly where, but it was in Idaho. I'm just very thankful he let us explore this pretty little spot, and that Husband asked him what there was to do in the area. When we came home I went through my photos and decided to run more than usual, not just because it offers views like the one above...

...but also because to get them I crossed this. I don't expect anybody to be impressed. A lot of people handle shale slopes just fine, but I don't like them. The English language should have a specific word for "fear of crossing a steep rock slope" (pietratraversaphobia?). But when I went over it, I wasn't thinking about walking on shale, or even about how the trip down might be trickier than the trip up. I was just thinking of the photo I was going to get. My conclusion: I'm not really a wimp. I just need the right motivation.

Here's a closer-up view of the spring with its fantastic colors. This photo is the best balance I could strike between contrasting light and ISO.

...And here's a view a little farther downstream.

The cliff face.

The stream as it continues down the slope.

Starting a wood-fired movement

2011-09-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm related by marriage to someone on the cutting edge of a movement.

A lot of you have heard me rave about wood-fired oven pizza from our backyard. I didn't realize, when Husband was out there designing templates and laying out firebrick, that he was a pioneer. I thought about it in more selfish terms--he was busy, I needed to help with the concrete pours and take care of the garden. It would all be worth it when those steaming pizzas slid out of the oven.

We weren't the first people to come up with this idea. I've written about all that before, in an earlier post.

After some busy days, our dream came true. We've eaten so much high-end pizza, we're turning our kids into food snobs.

Then one day, a man we'd never met called and asked to look at the oven. He wanted to build one, but he worried it wouldn't work.

It never occurred to me that ours wouldn't work. My husband, Bret, is an engineer. Of course it would work. And it does.

Shortly after that, that man and his wife took the plunge. They finished their oven in one season. (It took us two years, after work and on Saturdays. We didn't wait until it was pretty to start using it. How could we? But they were more disciplined.) Earlier this week they invited us over for a celebratory fire-up. We got together and invented. It was wonderful.

Bret is stretching his dough in this photo. It's hard for me to take Pizza Night photos because I'm busy putting the pizzas together and my fingers are coated in flour. I got this one, but the next photos were taken by Oldest Daughter, whose skills are impressing me more and more. She's taking a digital photography class this term, so she'll be teaching me a thing or two soon.

Photo courtesy of Oldest Daughter

The new oven is in a lovely spot, in a town where the city has grown up around old farm buildings that are still in use. Now and again you'll see a goat or a donkey grazing in the city limits.

Photo courtesy of Oldest Daughter

This is one of the oven builders, Dennis.

Photo courtesy of Oldest Daughter

This is the other oven builder, Carolyn. We belong to the same club: Wives Who Listen to Sleepless Husbands Who Worry They're Building The Oven Wrong.

It turned out fine, and it cooked some delicious pizza. My latest favorite experiment: green olives, mushrooms and mild sausage. Mmmm.

Thanks, you two. It's nice to stop feeling like lone nuts.

Late summer light

2011-08-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the light is perfect. It's not that rare, you just have to watch for it. We caught this view on the way home tonight. Husband was patient and pulled over so I could take this shot.

It's too bad I can't communicate the smell. The alfalfa on the edge of this field is blooming. It's like perfume.

This used to be a wheat field.

I believe this crop is Sudan grass, used as feed for dairy cattle. By the time I got to this field the light was fading, but the feathery tops were showing. The grass is nearly as tall as field corn.

These will all enlarge with a click.

Have a good week.

Too much nitrogen?

2011-08-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

Before...

After.

Converting a loafing shed to a planter is an enormous guessing game. How much nutrient is available in 30-year-old, self-composted cow manure? Apparently a lot more than we estimated. This happened without any commercial fertilizer, though we may have mixed in a few shovel-fulls of compost. I honestly don't remember.

These monster cherry tomato plants are setting fruit, so we may get a harvest if we avoid an early frost.

I think they're happy in their new home.

Witch Song: the making of a book trailer

2011-08-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

So you want to sell a book? Better make a trailer, because visuals aren't just for movies anymore. We'll get to the story behind the above video in a minute, when I interview the author.

First, it's disclosure time: Amber Argyle is the creative force behind the Witch Song book and book trailer, and she's my friend. If I'm not careful I'll sound like one of those over-emotional aunts, because I remember Witch Song when it was a few pages and an idea. It's now the fifth most popular book on goodreads among those coming out in September.

Since I like pretty pictures, I asked Amber about making the trailer.

MLN: How did you find your models?

A: It was a lot harder than I thought. I started looking for a girl and guy of around the right age and appearance, but I wanted them to be decent at riding horses as well, since we were doing riding shots (didn’t want someone falling off a horse and suing me). That limited the field a lot. I knew Marcey Cornia from the rodeo circuit, so I asked her. She was FANTASTIC about the whole thing.

Finding a guy was much more difficult. I’d ask, they’d look at me like I’d asked them to lick a rock. My cousin agreed to do it, until he learned he would have to act “lovey dovey,” then he was out. So I asked my brother—totally pulled a “you owe me/if you love me you will do this” card. Adam told me we had 2 hours to shoot it, and then he was done. We tried to get all the pics in with him first, still it went over by half an hour and he was late to dinner.

And then there were the people annoyed because I didn’t ask them.

MLN: Who was your photographer?

A: ShaunaLee Johnson (she’s also taken all my author/family/kid pictures for the last 10 years). She’s amazing.

MLN: How did you do the costuming?

A: Ugh. Another nightmare. I found a dress I absolutely LOVED online and forked out $200 for it. We waited for the dress to come so we could sew a matching cloak and the other costume. The dress took an entire month longer to arrive than it was supposed to. And when it finally came, it was an entirely different dress from the one I ordered (a much cheaper knock off). By then, it was November and we’d lost all the green left over from summer, so I couldn’t send it back like I wanted to.

With no choice but to shoot, Alice Argyle and Cynthia Forbush sewed the male costume and cloak and then we went ahead.

MLN: Where was it shot? How is it like the landscape of your book?

A: The landscape for the first half of the book is very New England, and I live in the Rocky Mountains. But we found some rolling hills at the south end of the valley that worked. The rest of the shots were in the canyon a few minutes from my house.

The second half of the book is very South American jungle. We didn’t even try to shoot that.

MLN: How many photos did you shoot? How many did you use?

A: We took about 300—200 of which were usable. Twelve made it to the trailer

MLN: What was the best thing about it?

A: Despite all the stress, it was fun. I learned a lot—like next time I will rent a costume, won’t bother with the horses, and keep it simpler. The best thing about it was how many people worked so hard without any reimbursement.

MLN: Can you show us a photo that didn't end up in the production, but that you really wanted to use?

Summer sign

2011-08-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Just one photo today. This sign is on the south end of Cache Valley, in Mendon. I don't think neon lights could say it any better.

Want a look at the real west? Hang onto your hats.

2011-08-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

Update: Kelly Smith, the photographer featured below, just won the People's Choice award in the Great Outdoors photo contest. The contest was put on by The Herald Journal in Logan, Utah. Her winning photo was the standing grizzly you see halfway down this post. Congratulations, Kelly!

The photos you're about to see aren't mine. I'm just the lucky girl who gets to put them on her blog.

I've been gloating all weekend about this post. It features the work of Kelly Smith, my boss. She's a fantastic photographer and a remarkably hard worker. She spends her vacation time at a high-altitude dude ranch, not as a guest but as a wrangler. After weeks of tough labor, she comes back with leaner muscles and an SD card chock-full of photos.

Here's an email interview with the story behind the images. They'll enlarge with a click.

Q: Give me a little background on the T Cross ranch.

The T Cross has been family owned since it was first homesteaded over 100 years ago, and has operated as a dude ranch since the 1920’s. It's 15 miles north of Dubois, Wyoming, at an elevation of 7,800 feet. The ranch sits among pristine pine forests, open meadows, pure streams and small lakes. The Absaroka mountain peaks soar to over 13,000 feet around the ranch and lead into the Washakie Wilderness. (That's the largest continuous wilderness area in the continental United States.) The land has been carved naturally by water, wind, and glaciers.

Horseback is the only way to see this country and its abundant wildlife, and I feel fortunate to be among the small number of people who experience this wilderness. Bighorn sheep, moose, elk, mountain goats, mule deer, and wolves populate the area, along with many smaller mammals. Grizzly sightings are frequent in the early summer at the ranch, often through binoculars in the evenings. Later, as the elk herds travel to higher country, so do the bears. These are truly wild bears, however, not accustomed to people like those in Yellowstone. They are elusive and disappear at the first scent of people, so guests who accidentally catch a glimpse of these majestic animals count themselves among the lucky few.

Unusually heavy snowfall this past winter has resulted in stunning wildflowers this summer, as well as the emergence of numerous new springs and waterfalls across the landscape. It's also kept wildlife at lower elevations this summer.

Q: I'd like to post your latest grizzly photo (the one with him standing). How did you get that shot? And how often do you see bears up there?

Kids, please don't try this at home. Whenever Kelly comes back with a photo like this it starts us in the office clucking like hens. Just remember three things: Kelly's grown up, I can't stop her, and her lens is a lot more powerful than mine.

Since I had located the remains of a kill, I knew bears would be down to feed in the evening. I had shot photos of two small bears the night before from under the trees closest to the remains. The evening I took this shot, it was almost sunset when this big guy appeared. I wasn’t really happy with my shots from the night before, so I belly-crawled through the sagebrush to get closer. He scented me and stood up. I clicked off maybe 10 frames before he disappeared and was pleasantly surprised when I saw this one. In the past, I’ve waited several hours for bears to appear, sometimes in really lousy weather, but they fascinate me so it’s worth the wait. And I should mention, this type of bear-stalking is NOT a sanctioned T Cross activity!

I'd also like to post your photo of horses fording the creek. What kind of horses are they, and where are they going?

Meet Big Queen and Big Pete, Fjord-Percheron crosses purchased from the Amish for the T Cross. At about 2,000 pounds each, their strength is mind-boggling. In this shot, the river was too high and fast to get a tractor across, but we knew the team could make it. The task that day was grim; a horse had broken a leg and had to be shot. The body was in a bad location and needed to be moved, so Pete and Queen were on their way to move the corpse. The young cowboy driving is 17 years old and a skillful master of the team.

Tell me about the ranch workers. Are they pretty much themselves on the ranch? Do you ever feel like you're part of a living history exhibit?

The T Cross is one of those places where you feel you've stepped back in time, and I cannot praise the cowboys with whom I work enough. The T Cross is totally authentic and a huge part of that is that the cowboys on the ranch are true cowboys in every sense of the word. They are tough, skilled young men who have spent thousands of hours in a saddle and for whom riding is second nature. They rope effortlessly, crack whips, shoot straight, and can gentle any horse. Nothing panicks them, they just deal with whatever situation is at hand with calm competence. Their manners are impeccable, hats off in the dining room and always a “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” at the ready. These cowboys and T Cross owner, Mark Cardall, are the real deal, a rapidly vanishing breed.

What's your favorite ranch photo and why?

That's tough, but it has to be the pack string gone wild. It's one of those photos you can't stage, and it captures the ranch atmosphere–unpredictable, wild, and raw. It was early in the season and we were sending some cowboys to set up our pack camp. Batman, the lead pack horse, felt good and decided to give a little buck. Unfortunately, he was carrying the kitchen and that created a racket which set all the horses off. I'm pleased to say that no damage was done to cowboys, horses, or packs, and the string headed down the trail 15 minutes later.

I'd like to thank Kelly Smith for sharing these photos. I'll give you a link to her Flickr photo stream if you promise you'll still come here once you've seen it.

Oh, all right, here it is: Kelly's Flickr Stream.

And here are links to the T Cross website and Facebook page.

A visit to Paris (Idaho)

2011-08-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Some quick Paris facts:

The town is named after one of its original settlers, whose last name was Perris. The decision was made to spell it like its more famous sound-alike, so the townspeople wouldn't have to fight spelling errors for the rest of the town's existence. Mr. Perris was okay with that.
According to our tourguide, roughly half of the town's original settlers bailed after the first winter. While Bear Lake Valley is a cool getaway in the summer, winters there make Cache Valley winters look balmy.
The town's most prominent feature is the Paris Tabernacle, a historic example of Mormon pioneer architecture that is still used for large gatherings and musical performances. (Paris was founded in 1863; the tabernacle was erected in 1888.) Free tours are available. The last time I drove through the door was open, so we stopped for a look.

Inside, the vaulted ceiling was designed by an immigrant shipbuilder. It's a boat turned upside down. From the balcony it's easier to appreciate just how high the ceiling is.

The dividers in this stained glass are made of wood. As with other historic buildings in the region, the pioneer builders used what was available, though they adopted designs that they had seen back East. They even painted the pine benches to look like hardwood, applying the "grain" pattern with a comb.

Lighting was tricky; outside it was cloudy and inside it was weak. Most of the indoor shots were taken with my camera braced on railing. Then I edited the heck out of them. I'm still not happy but if I get any more aggessive with them the quality will suffer.

The best part of this tour was the guide, a Paris native who added in a lot of detail, including a bone-freezing description of a winter in the 70s that stayed below -30 degrees F (-34 degrees celcius) for more than a week. For those of you who haven't experienced it, that kind of weather freezes exposed skin ridiculously fast. Scarves, hats and gloves are not optional, and without something over the mouth and nose, the membranes also freeze when you breathe.

There's one more reason to love summer. Enjoy the rest of it!

The Marching Businessmen

2011-07-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

This terrible reproduction of a Marching Businessman photo first appeared in the 1988 edition of the Rixada yearbook. It still captures the silliness.

The Marching Businessmen don't exist according to Google. Somebody's got to change that.

They were a bunch of guys in suit coats and Bermuda shorts who marched to music. They performed at Ricks College halftimes during the late 1980s, filling a void created after the school's all-female dance team stopped performing.

What happened to the Vikettes? There were rumors about that, something about how they were too racy for a church college. I can't confirm the stories. After 25 years, rumor and fact get entangled in my brain.

Here's what I do know: I remain the one Marching Businessmen fan who cares enough to put their story online after all these years. Something that goofy should not be forgotten.

Well, then, to stick to the facts: The Vikettes performed during athletic events. They appear in the 1986-87 yearbook, but in 87-88 I can't find them, though the Marching Businessmen show up twice. (The guys in Bermuda shorts were not official representatives of the school).

In an exclusive Rixada interview, one of the Businessmen said he'd seen performing businessmen in California, and the group modeled after them. The marchers got together every day at 6 a.m. to practice, starting two weeks before their gig.

They incorporated briefcases into their routine, using them for rotating formations and domino effects. I think one of the marchers could do handsprings. The Vikettes were probably better-disciplined, but they never made me laugh.

Sadly, I can't find any of the Businessmen's performances on YouTube, but I did find the Vikettes. (I can't take credit for the clip; somebody else posted it.) The girls predate Beyonce` and Lady Gaga, so maybe they were shocking for the day--at least at Ricks. Let the video upload and skip the first two minutes and 45 seconds if you want to go straight to the dance.

High water at High Creek

2011-07-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

This is the waterfall at High Creek, a local hike that we've done a few times. This photo was taken on a our last-day-before-school-starts hike in 2005.

And here's the same spot a few days ago, in partly cloudy light. The water was so much higher and faster this time, I didn't dare try the same shot (I got my feet wet in 2005 for that first picture, which features the middle of the falls).

I can always find Indian Paintbrush up there (that's the bright red-orange flower). It's the Wyoming state flower, and a nice reminder of home.

Finally, here's a look at what's left of the mountain snowcap.

Storytellers in the wilderness: Golden Spike

2011-07-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

There is a little museum in the middle of nowhere, on a plain-looking stretch of grass and sagebrush west of Brigham City, Utah. This is where the Old West ended with the driving of a metal spike. (Actually there were four ceremonial spikes, two gold, one silver and one gold and silver. They were made of soft metal, so they didn't actually hold anything together.)

The Wedding of the Rails is a piece of history that is easily overlooked. The railroad's significance in this part of the world has declined so much, it's easy to foget the enormous impact of the transcontinental rail line. It ended the days of wagon trains and hastened the march of Manifest Destiny. Love it or hate it, America was never the same.

The story is re-enacted many times at the tiny Golden Spike National Historic Site. This gentleman did a great job making it live again. (He's pictured here teaching the crowd to cheer, so that they could do it 1869-style when the time came.) He told the story of the railroad, then headed up the reenactment ceremony.

The trains are replicas, but they are faithful to the originals, which became iron scrap in the early 20th Century. Their loss is just one more reminder that to the rail barons, the transcontinental railroad was more about making money than making history.

The photo we all see in the history books was black and white, so it was fun to see them in color. It was hard to get a shot without people in it, but that's actually true to history. On the day the rails met, hundreds of people came out to witness it, and the news was wired by telegraph.

So why did they hold the ceremony in such a remote place? That's just where the rails happened to meet after the Union Pacific put the track down from the east and the Central Pacific came out from the west. The building of the railroad was lucrative. The two railroads would have passed each other altogether and gone on laying track, if President Ulysses S. Grant hadn't made them compromise on a meetingplace.

I've left out a lot of the story because I don't want to spoil it for anybody who goes. If you do, check the website first and make sure you catch a re-enactment. It will offer a lot more information and color than the museum does. And don't come hungry; you can buy cookies and bottled water there, but that's about it.

The yard

2011-07-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Oldest Daughter, who took the camera and ran with it on a fall evening.

Sometimes, in between frantic moments of planting and harvesting, there is a day when you remember what it's all for. The leaves may need raked or the weeds may need pulled, but the golden, irresistible light is what matters.

You have to stop and enjoy it, forget about the long grass and the weed battle. Sunday afternoons are best spent under a tree with a book...

and a friend.

Ripening wheat. Again.

2011-07-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

It's not my first photo of wheat on the way to turning gold. It won't be my last, either. I can't resist that color.

The spring was so wet, some people worried the weather would harm the wheat. It probably did in some places, but here it's higher than the wheel line hub.

Getting socialed-out

2011-07-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

When I first got on Facebook I loved it. It was like browsing through family photo albums without leaving my desk. At work I pushed for a company facebook page, then jumped on Twitter because I didn't want to miss out on any opportunity to drive traffic to our site.

After several months I started wondering if there was a return on the time investment. I must not have been the only one. (For me, the answer is a qualified yes. Facebook is now the number three referrer to our website.) Pretty soon the ranking systems began: influence scores were assigned to social media players. Klout began assigning rankings. They relied a lot on a person's Twitter use and pretty much got slammed from the start as a poor measuring tool, but more followed. Facebook started a news feed that picked and chose what it showed users, based on their clicking habits. Commenting systems even grew up independently from blogs, offering interactive features and assigning points to commenters.

I understand the concept. It's there to flag the commenter who doesn't even read the post before jumping in to say, "I've got a blog, too!"

Or maybe all this measurement is a plot to weed out the people who weren't popular in high school. You know, the ones that did their homework on time, never lifted a football or pom-pom, and were relieved on graduation day. Wow, so glad that weirdness is over!

Yeah, we thought we could blend into the adult world, but they've developed algorithms to sniff us out. Are you tweeting about Russian post-romantic composers? Posting links about how inane YouTube is? Have you never once re-tweeted a celebrity? Well, it shows on your Klout score, Dunderhead.

Meanwhile, at work we're considering a blog redesign. I'd like to incorporate an independent commenting system, but do I pick the one with weak Twitter integration or the one that--if you fail to uncheck a certain box--will flood your inbox with notifications like, "Joe Thoughtful commented on the same blog post you commented on."?

To be fair, that email-intensive commenting system will soon change. In the future you'll only be notified if someone replied directly to your comment--and that could be so valuable that I'd do more than add it to the company blog. I'd actually risk adding it to this one, despite the problems I've had integrating independent commenting systems in the past. The people on Livefyre's staff are paying close attention to what users want.

I know all this because I commented on a blog post about commenting systems. I received a lot of replies--at least, there were a lot considering I'm a former high school nerd trying to blend into the adult world.

So I'm glad I commented and received those notifications. How else would I find out I've racked up a whole nine points on a social blog commenting network?

I'll end this post with a hat-tip to Arik Hansen, a pr type who's a heckuvalot smarter than me--and that probably explains his popularity.

Mountains

2011-07-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

The glory of God is not in same-ness.

Quirky gardening

2011-07-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

We expanded our lot a few years ago. In addition to more space, we inherited some old, roofless loafing sheds, originally used for dairy cattle. We didn't know what to do with them. I'm proud to say, our two youngest children came up with the answer.

The concrete holds the heat, keeping the plants warm through those cool spring nights. This year has been unusually cold; we had a light frost in June. These guys didn't feel it. The taller plants were put in earlier. Then my son ran out of seed and had to wait until his mother brought more.

The soil is actually decades-old manure, mixed with some slightly-green goat compost. Next year we'll add to the mix.

This is the first year we've followed our kids' example and converted the remaining three sheds into raised beds. This one had the advantage of more topsoil, thanks to a construction project that happened at just the right time. So far I'm liking the experiment.

We garden on a scale big enough that we don't worry much about making it pretty. I don't really like the looks of weed barrier fabric, but without it I'd be looking at the weeds I don't have time to pull. Like the concrete, it also helps hold in heat, which melons and tomato plants usually like. (We had one year that was so hot, the tomatoes didn't set well. No danger of that so far this year.)

The white PVC pipe is part of a drip irrigation system designed by Husband the Engineer. The water emits through holes drilled into the pipe. We use these year after year, using electrical tape to cover holes we don't need, uncovering others we do, and occasionally drilling a new one. Some pipes are so perforated, all I have to do is manipulate where the tape goes. Electrical tape is surprisingly effective at sealing off the water.

And that's gardening in a place with varying water (most years there's not a lot), hot days, cool nights and a short growing season.

I shared this after looking at another experiment in straw bale gardening on Farmchick's blog. She's also posted an update or two.

What's the quirkiest gardening trick you've done?

Four-wheeling in a minivan

2011-07-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I don't have photos to go with this post. I'll tell you why in a minute. Even if I had them, they wouldn't tell the whole story. To get that you need to hear the occasional thunk of a rock on the undercarriage of the van, the sound of clay mud hissing as it passes beneath the floorboards, the soft rain splatters landing on the windshield.

There would also be me, talking to myself, promising a Dr. Pepper when it was over.

That was right before I slid into a mud-groove on the side of the road. Thank heavens a fellow traveler had a tow-strap, or I might still be there with a car-full of people. I'd have had to make explanations to several families.

How did all this happen? I took a van-load of people to church girls' camp near the high Uinta Mountains, that's how.

Oh, and I also skimped on doing my homework.

If this blog has any recurring theme, it's that I share my mistakes so others can learn. Here are my latest travel tips:

1. Find out exactly where you're going. This should go beyond hearing other people's descriptions and picking up a map printed off the Internet the day of departure.

2. Ask how many miles of dirt road lie between you and your destination.

3. If you'll be traveling off-pavement, learn if it's gravel or dirt, and how often it's graded. If possible, talk to someone who has passed that way before.

4. Bear in mind that if the road bed is clay dirt, it will become a slick, rutted nightmare if it's been rained on overnight. Remember that rain falls on the mountains on days when the valley stays dry.

5. "Short cut" often means "worse road." (I actually picked up that lesson on a different day, but it fits here.)

6. Don't bring a minivan to a four-wheel-drive event.

There is a good side to this story. People in my party shepherded me down the mountain, one enormous SUV in front, another behind. The forerunner always stopped at the crest of a worrisome hill, so I had some warning before the excitement began.

Beside me in the passenger seat was my daughter, who never lost her cool, never worried aloud that she might die. In the seats directly behind me were a young married couple that acted as my angels, and behind them were more young women who kept their composure. The wife who sat behind me is a kind woman with a soft, calming voice that said only encouraging things. Her husband goes off-road for fun (with an all-terrain vehicle, usually). I turned the steering wheel over to Mr. Four-Wheeling-Guy after I slid off the road. He promptly cranked up the Mamma Mia soundtrack on the car's CD player and sang as he drove:

You are the dancing queeeen, young and sweeet, only seventeeen!

I drank a Dr. Pepper. When we reached pavement, I got out of the van and kissed the blacktop. Well, all right, I just kissed my fingers and rubbed them on the road.

The situation that accompanies these words would've made for great photos. Unfortunately I was too rattled to take them. By the time I thought to at least get a picture of the mud on the minivan, I'd been driving long enough on pavement that the rain had washed it away. My car didn't look any dirtier than usual.

I'll still have the memories--and the Mamma Mia soundtrack.

A slice of Americana

2011-07-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today was Lewiston's Fourth of July Celebration. This year Shaylee England was on the rodeo grounds, and she was a great sport about being photographed. She even pulled her horse (I think his name was Bucky) out of his trailer so he could pose with her.

She's deeply involved in all things equine, and she wants to be a pharmacist. She is First Attendant for That Famous Preston Night Rodeo, but her duties also brought her to Lewiston for the Fourth of July events.

It's tradition for the fire department to spray a section of the city park during the festivities. Today was overcast and cool, so they didn't attract as large a crowd of children as usual, but there were a few tough souls who braved it.

Finally, here's the most unusual parade float I've ever seen. This guy is performing giant swings from a bar on the back of a truck, in a parade entry for a place that teaches gymnastics. Nice to watch, scary to think about.

I hope you all had a happy Fourth.

Introducing Anthony

2011-07-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Anthony Blackwell has an unusual ability.

If I’m within ten feet of anyone for more than thirty seconds, they begin confessing to me. I don’t know what angel or demon gave me my gift, but I do know that it works on everyone. People start with things the confessor is thinking at the time and, if I don’t redirect the conversation, they move on to their deepest, darkest secrets.

Ever since I made this guy up, he won't leave me alone. We've been together for 320 pages (a lot more in manuscript format), several edits, a writer's conference and a novel editing workshop. In the last year, as I've worked on his story, the publishing world has turned upside down.

I guess we'll figure it out together.

In the meantime, I think Anthony is ready to meet you. The working title of his story is Don't Tell Me Everything. The first chapter is now on a page of this blog.

Anthony, this is the world. World, this is Anthony.

Turbulence in the Cloud

2011-06-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

A little technology in the hands of a 43-year-old is a dangerous thing.

I reaffirmed this a week ago as I played with out latest toy at work: an iPad. We need to understand how it works, how our website looks in mobile format, and how hip people are likely to interact with us while using one.

But my education started with a pencil and paper, and sometimes I still prefer a low-tech approach. Which is why, when I started a work project that involved a timeline, I began with markers and a roll of butcher paper. Scientific people call it "muscle memory." I just used the markers because it was an easy way to color-code information and because sometimes, I want to see it all at once. (By the time my timeline was finished, I couldn't see it all at once. The best I could do is roll it down a long hall and walk the thing.)

Trust me, the timeline story will make sense in a minute.

The drawback to butcher paper is that it's not an easy way to share information, so I transferred a simplified timeline to an enormous white board. There, everyone could see it and know that I hadn't just been drawing pictures by myself on company time. But eventually the project evolved to where I wanted to share it with a lot of people instantaneously, so I made the leap to the 21st Century. I set up an interactive blog on Tumblr, created a page for the timeline, and transferred the information electronically. I did this using the iPad, typing directly into Tumblr's editor, no word processor necessary. I made sure the formatting was how I liked it, saved it and went home feeling proud.

The next day I cleaned the whiteboard to prepare it for my next phase of playing with markers. I called up the interactive blog, and felt my heart freeze in my chest.

The page with the timeline was gone. None of the many versions I had saved remained on my blog. And I had just spent a good twenty minutes cleaning the information off the white board.

I could stretch this story out for dramatic effect, because believe me, it was a bad morning. But within two hours from the time I sent Tumblr's techies a panicked email, my page was restored. Tumblr techies, thank you thank you thank you thank you.

Needless to say, my experience blogging with an iPad was scary. Word processing--and files that live on a hard drive--are not obsolete! My first thought was: NEVER TRUST THE CLOUD. But I've revised that thought to: never leave your data in just one place. Hard drives crash. Blogging platforms do unpredictable things. External had drives go funny. Servers have bad days, too. And, in the case of one fellow blogger, homes burn down. I bet she's glad that at least some of her work was stored on somebody else's server.

That's all my wisdom for today. I'm off to back up my novel a few more times.

Oh, hail.

2011-06-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

A hailstorm hit us this week. I think my plant friends will all survive, but they got beaten up.

It was a strange storm. If you look to the upper right, you'll see a glimpse of blue sky. The cloud that dumped more than an inch of rain and little marbles of hail on us didn't even reach the horizon. It was hard to take seriously at first.

I'm happy to say that the peony is looking happier today than it did in this picture.

As for the strawberries, they were uprooted and moved and treated rough before this ever happened. I didn't expect any production from them this year, and it looks like they'll live to see the next one.

Horse Pulls in Richmond

2011-06-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'll start with a confession. I snapped this when the boy's parents weren't looking. He saw the camera and posed so much, I couldn't help myself. Looks like somebody found the cotton candy.

He was in the crowd at Richmond, Utah's horse pull last weekend. Husband and I go every year, but this time it happened a few weeks after Richmond's Black and White Days cattle show. They postponed the horse event because of an outbreak of equine herpes, a disease that surfaced in Utah right before the pulls.Organizers decided to wait until the scare was over.

The pull is about muscle, but it's pretty, too. This team is from Wyoming, they're beautiful, and they have the shiniest harnesses. Too bad the light wasn't better.

Here they are in action. They took Best Matched Team in their class.

Mammoth: scenes from another world

2011-06-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Mammoth Hot Springs are my new favorite place to take photos in Yellowstone Park. It's beautiful and otherworldly and always changing. The water flows shift constantly, bringing out new colors and formations.

The park's natural beauty surrounds it all.

I'm on Travelavenue!

2011-06-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

Ripe wheat, as it appeared in late July last summer, with apologies to those of you who have seen it before. This was taken during a bicycle jaunt on a splendid day.

A couple of weeks ago I heard from Travelavenue, a global travel website. They've named me one of their favorite bloggers for 2011.

I was flabbergasted at first. I don't really get around that much. But then I remembered a revelation I had on a sublime cycling session, as I gazed at the landscape and realized that people in other, glamorous parts of the world would probably love to see what I was seeing.

So thank you, Travelavenue, for giving me my latest address in the global community. If you get a chance, look me up on their website.

Meanwhile I'll go on blogging in my own unfocused way.

By the way, I'm not done with Yellowstone yet.

Yellowstone's Grand Canyon: high country, high water

2011-06-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last week we witnessed the spring runoff in Yellowstone. It was well underway in the Grand Canyon, but some of the higher country still had seven feet of snow on either side of the road.

The above photo looks down the famous falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The water's color was deep teal last August; now it's colored by the sediment washed down by the water. On the left, a small stream is running out of a snowbank and feeding into the Yellowstone river.

Here's another feeder fall.

It all adds to the spectacular runoff that swells the river. This is a view of its most famous water feature, seen here at the wrong time of day for a good picture. This gentleman is trying anyway, and he must be onto something because when I copied his angle I got my best exposure.

On the way to Yellowstone: Mesa Falls

2011-06-13T06:44:00.000-07:00

I have been to Mesa Falls twice, and both times I was lucky to see a brilliant rainbow in the spray. I'm happy to say it reproduced on camera, though it's bigger and brighter in person.

Mesa Falls makes a big splash in Henry's Fork of the Snake River. Right now its high, fast water is just one more symptom of the wet winter and spring we've had in this part of the world. It produces lots of mist and excellent rainbows. (The patch of white that shows under the rainbow is snow.)

These aspen leaves are still small--spring is just getting started up here.

If you go: Mesa Falls is about 40 minutes north of Rexburg, Idaho. Take US 20 to Ashton, and from there get on State Road 47 and follow the signs. The falls can be viewed from two pull-outs, one for the lower and one for the upper falls, with a short walk to the viewing area. It's a good place to stretch your legs on the way to Yellowstone National Park.

Spring at last!

2011-06-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Many of the blogs I follow were posting wildflower photos two months ago. Spring came late to Cache Valley, but we are now seeing the rewards of all that cold, wet weather.

It was the wettest spring on record. I've only been in this valley for 20 years or so, but I've never seen color like this. I hardly recognize the hillsides.

I guess there is a bright spot in all that storminess. (Thanks, Bret, for pointing this scene out to me.)

Click on any of these photos to make them larger.

Finally, a note to my fellow bloggers: I've had trouble posting comments on Blogger lately. Oddly, the trouble seems to be geographical; I can post comments to blogs in the western hemisphere, but when I try commenting on European sites I am forced to sign in again, and if the comment goes through at all it registers as "anonymous." I just can't leave an anonymous comment. It makes me look like I'm ashamed to say "I love that winepress photo, Franz!" in public. (By the way, Claudia, if you're reading this, your last series was amazing.)

I wonder if other people are having similar problems on my blog?

Elvis the Longhorn and light through the clouds

2011-05-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

My neighbor keeps a few long-horned cattle, mostly for show. The one pictured has been dubbed "Elvis" for his adoring, all-female entourage. He lives on a diary farm.

The weather has been rainy since March. It has been hard to find enough of a break in the clouds to produce a sunset, but we finally got one this week.

I was so happy I couldn't stop with one photo.

The day I interviewed Orson Scott Card in the kitchen

2011-05-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

The closest I ever came to a celebrity interview was a phone call with Orson Scott Card, author of the sci-fi classic Ender's Game.

At the time I was writing features at home for The Herald Journal. I'd compose an article in my head while I did dishes and write it while my oldest two were at school and the toddler took a nap. If I needed to conduct face-to-face interviews I found a sitter. Telephone calls could be done from home, but they could be tricky, since a call-back usually didn't come in while the toddler slept.

For this story I had sent Mr. Card a message through his website because it didn't cost anything to try. I didn't expect him to call me back. He did, though, when lunchtime was over and my son was getting ready for Kindergarten. It's an eight-year-old memory, but it went something like this:

"Hello, this is Orson Scott Card. Is JoLynne Lyon there?"

"Oh, hello!" I clamped the phone between my ear and shoulder and groped for my notepad. "That's me. Thanks for calling!"

He paused. I forgot my list of questions. I was stunned that he'd actually responded to my email, and I wanted to say something unprofessional. I'm such a big fan. I've read your stuff and I love it. Do you have any writing tips?

Eventually I recovered. "I'm working on a story about Mormon film. I wanted to ask you about it, since I know you've had so much to say about Mormons in the arts." (Films made by Mormons had blossomed at the time. It looked like a renaissance, though the movement appears to have lost some steam. Orson Scott Card was the first person I wanted to ask about the trend. As a Mormon he had done in print what the local boys wanted to do in film. He'd succeeded in a national market, despite a world view that doesn't always sit comfortably with the mainstream.)

My son paced in the kitchen and tugged at my elbow. "Why aren't we going out to the bus?"

"If we miss it, I'll drive you to school," I whispered.

Mr. Card told me about the movie his grandfather made--one that tanked. He said that when novelty wears off, only quality can carry a genre. The audience also needs to be flexible enough to accept a story that may be a little different from the one they expected.

The interview ended. I calmly thanked him, hung up and danced around the house. My son went to class on time.

I worked the quotes into the story and it ran pretty soon after that. I'm proud to say it still endures online. Well, I'm mostly proud. It's written in the libel-paraniod journalistic style that ends every paragraph with "he said."

I received a call from a Utah filmmaker a day or two after the story ran. I had quoted him, too. He really wanted a copy of the article, but our paper was so small, his clipping service didn't have access to it.

"We've all been wondering what Orson Scott Card has to say about Mormon film," he said. "This is the first time he's said anything."

Really?

I don't know why Orson Scott Card chose to speak out to a writing mom at a small paper, but I like it.

Enlightened llamas and a wild rock garden

2011-05-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

I drive by these llamas so often, I forget they're an unusual sight to a lot of people. About twenty years ago llamas were a hot item in the western US. They are reputed to be fierce sheep defenders. Ranchers put them in the flock to fight off coyotes.

These llamas belong to a coworker, friend and neighbor, so I know a little of their story. The two in the above photo are females. The males in their herd are trained as pack animals. On this evening they happened to stand in a rare ray of light that found a hole in the clouds as the sun set. That's why they look so inspired.

Here's a male. He's not used as a mountain pack animal, but he poses well.

This is a view from the foothills, in bloom with wildflowers. If it looks familiar, it's because I shot the same spot two months ago.

It looked like this in March. The weather is still cold and rainy, but we've made progress.

I edited all the photos but the last one on picnik.com, a free service that, as you might expect, is less powerful than Photoshop and Lightroom. It's not perfect and it's at the whim of somebody else's server, but it's pretty good for being free. I'm experimenting with it because I suspect a lot of people at work would like to know more about it--and I'll want to use it, too, if I'm away from my software. Picnik has most of my favorite features: crop, exposure correction, sharpening and color correction. I haven't found a way to correct for holding the camera crooked, though, which is one of my most common photo errors. You'd think I'd learn.

That last photo is beyond editing help. I took it on too high an ISO setting because I shot something in the dark and forgot to change it back. That explains the graininess. I'm admitting my mistakes so others can learn from them.

Just Shy of Paradise--an interview

2011-05-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

I've read all Carole Thayne Warburton's books, but her latest is my favorite. (Disclosure: she's my friend. The kind that hands out writing tips for free and gives me an adorable handmade pottery frog for Christmas.) Maybe it's because this book has a weightier feel than most romances I've read. Or perhaps it's because it takes on topics that I don't expect Mormon fiction to touch, like race relations and reconciling cultural differences within the Mormon faith.

The serious themes aside, Just Shy of Paradise was a fun read featuring a girl who--the story goes--was saved by an angel from a fast-running river when she was four. By the time she is 28, she's wondering why. She meets Sky, a man whose sense of honor is so great, he goes to jail for it. Their lives become connected by a fishing pole. (If you want more information on the book, click on its name.)

It's all set in Paradise, a town that really exists on the banks of the Little Bear river. The locals have had a lot of fun with the name, but it fits. On a spring night, Paradise is heavenly.

Sunset on a cloudy night in Paradise

Here's my interview with the author:

Q: Sky's time in jail becomes a spiritual awakening. How did you, as a writer, help him reconcile his Native American and Mormon traditions?

A: Scott R. Christensen's fabulous book about Chief Sagwitch brings out Sagwitch's conversion to Mormonism, and how many of the local Shoshone became Mormon. Christensen said much of the appeal to Mormonism was that the mystical side of Mormonism was easy for the Shoshone to accept. They too had a strong belief in visions. It didn't seem much of a stretch for Sky to want to reach back to his ancestors. It's my own personal belief that Mormonism should help people retain or regain a healthy part of their culture. I believe there is room for both within the church. There is a mixed reaction among the Mormon Shoshone themselves, some believing that there is no contradiction in participating in ancient Native American ceremonies, and some believing there is. I had read somewhere or seen it on television of a sweat lodge being constructed at the Utah State Prison. There is not a sweat lodge at the Cache county jail, but I wanted there to be one for Sky.

Q: Was it intimidating, creating a character with a background so different from yours? How did you do it?

A: Part of the reason I had Sky being half-Shoshone and having a Swedish mother was for the very reason you ask. I am not Native American. I can only imagine that side through research, so I figured if he's half and his mother is white, if I get things a little wrong now and again, then it's more forgivable. I did read a lot. There is a list of books I read in the back, but there was so much more that I didn't keep track of, including lots of Internet sites written by Shoshone. I was lucky enough to meet a group of Shoshone women who came to our Relief Society. Mae Timbimboo Parry (granddaughter of Chief Sagwitch and leader of Northwestern Shoshone) wrote about the Bear River Massacre and provided much of the material and photos to Christensen for his book.

Mostly, though, I know people of color. Even though things are much better now, there is still discrimination. I tried to show that through some of the culture clash in the book. I do know that it bothers some to be asked where you're from, or what are you?? based on the color of skin. I needed a character like Uncle Karl, who was still carrying a grudge, to tell stories and teach the younger Sky.

The Little Bear, courtesy of Carole Thayne Warburton

Q: How did you do the research for the history embedded in this novel?

A: Besides the reading about the Shoshone history in Cache Valley and the massacre itself, I also read The History of Paradise by Elizabeth Allen. The pioneer journal in the novel is drawn from accounts in this book. Though the journal is imagined, I tried to make it authentic in what could have happened.

A historic home in the middle of Paradise.

Q: Lily is struggling with social anxiety. It makes her do things that might seem strange to other people, but seen from her point of view they're understandable. How did you make her such a sympathetic character?

A: I did read a lot about social anxiety, panic disorders, and behavioral therapy. I needed to have a reason why such an attractive young woman was insecure and why she hadn't achieved her dreams. I thought of myself at my most insecure. Although it would surprise most people who know me, I sometimes struggle in a small degree with social anxiety. Maybe we all do. But my heart can race just thinking about making a difficult phone call or meeting someone. I just multiplied that to imagine Lily and how hard things were for her.

Q: The pull of ancestors is a theme that runs through this book, for both the white and Native American characters. Do you think it's something that everybody feels?

A: I don't know if everyone feels it, but I imagine they do. I do the older I get. My father died when I was only 22. I think about him often and much of Sky's feelings about his father come from my own feelings. I wonder what Dad would think about certain things that are going on now. I think both Mormons and Native Americans are known for their being drawn to their ancestors, so it was easy to fit that into the story. I do sometimes believe that we have a cheering section on the other side that has a vested interest in our lives--even those we never met, but who are tied to us through relationship.

My regular readers will recognize this photo, but I couldn't resist running it again, with editing.

Inner frump two: I have no first impressions left to make

2011-05-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

My dad often spent Saturdays in frenzied activity. He worked downstairs for hours on projects. Then he'd hurry up from the basement in a shirt smeared with wood glue.

"Quick! I've got to go to the hardware store!" he'd say.

"Okay," I'd reply. "We'll go after you change your shirt."

I had unusual leverage over my dad. He was (and still is) legally blind. As a teenager I could drive, and he could not. I didn't realize I exploited this. It was how things had always been. As a teenager I also knew a clean shirt was important. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

My children have no such power over me.

Saturdays--especially warm, sunny Saturdays sandwiched between weeks of miserable rain--are frantic. I dig, weed, pick up the trash that mysteriously bloomed under the snow. I scoop goat waste from the pen, come inside the house, turn off the TV and say slave-driver things until the couch is empty. I help prune trees, get rid of the slash. By the time I run out of energy I am coated in dirt and too tired to remember that some people live in the city. They spend their Saturdays doing laundry. At the end of the day they feel like they tackled a big job and--here's the part I really envy--they finished it.

I take a breather, buy hamburger buns or gas up the van, trailing the smell of burnt weeds. Now and again my youngest looks at me as I announce I'm leaving. "And you're wearing that?" she asks.

Sometimes I change. Usually I just walk out the door. I've been in the same small town for seventeen years. I have no first impressions left to make.

Shoes: a sign of my inner frump

2011-05-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

My dress shoes look too casual.

This is because my dress shoes ARE casual. I realized this as I was comparing my feet to the fashionable feet around me. Somewhere along the way I decided joining the over-35 crowd meant I didn't need to wear heels anymore. Or hose. Which would be fine if I never went anywhere that those things are expected.

Unfortunately I spend time in places where beach footwear is inappropriate--and I have been told so. This did not sink in at first because I never wear sandals with straps between my toes. Ouch. I might as well wear heels. Recently I realized bare legs and shoes with no backstrap probably fall into the beach category. Dangit.

My dress shoes also look prematurely worn. True dress shoes hurt feet. They go off the instant I get home. But when I started choosing comfortable shoes, my best footwear stayed on as I watered in the green house or walked out to the goat pen. A thin film of mud sometimes formed between my feet and my sandals. Not surprisingly, they wore out faster like that, looking rattier by the week.

So I'm going to have to break down and buy something fancier. Something I can't wait to get off my feet when I get home. Something that will stay looking nice long after it goes out of style.

I hope everyone I set an example for is listening. I'm doing it for you.

An evening in Paradise, unedited

2011-05-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

I went to Paradise, Utah, to shoot some landscapes that inspired my friend Carol Thayne Warburton's new book, Just Shy of Paradise. I should save all my photos for my review, but I had to share these in advance.

These images were shot just minutes apart, but the second was taken with a larger aperture. The result was shorter depth of field, better detail on the wheel line and more color variation. Both photos are straight out of the camera, unedited. Both were taken on a cloudy evening that barely let a sunset through.

I like the second photo better, except that I should have framed it without the branch in the upper right corner.

Which do you like?

Lesson #1 from editing class with David Farland: Why did you write the book in the first place?

2011-04-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

One day into a week-long editing workshop with David Farland, my head was buzzing. It might have been the post-midnight drive to Southern Utah the night before, but it was more likely the rush of ideas.

I jotted them down. I can't remember everything Dave said now, but I do know what significance his points had for me. I think everyone who has ever self-edited their work gets to the point where they hate it. We cut a word here, a scene there, and we fear we left the rest bleeding on the page. After a while it feels like we're just shuffling words.

He helped me focus on some more fundamental questions. Why did I write the thing in the first place? What did I want to accomplish, besides tell a story? Were there themes I wanted to develop? And did I succeed?

I was surprised to discover my mission was incomplete. I wrote a list of goals that I am now working on, shoe-horning some more writing time into the corners of my life.

Another bit of advice from Dave: Set some goals, and target them to different levels of reader. You want a deeper theme? Write it, deliver it naturally, but toss something in for readers who may miss it. Maybe you can work in a stellar action passage.

I went to my hotel room, wrote until my brain felt fried and discovered I was having fun again. It was a great feeling, even though I knew what was ahead:

More work, work, work.

That's where I am now. But at least I'm doing it with purpose.

Snow Canyon part 2

2011-04-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

The sun and clouds were dynamic that day, spotlighting the rocks here and there.

This shows the peculiar mix of spring color. I especially like the sky. Up north we haven't seen much of it.

I usually don't see a lot of sand, either.

The black seams are lava flows--10,000 years old or so.

I loved the lines in the stone.

Snow Canyon

2011-04-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

Forget the photos I posted last. If I'd have known I could be taking these instead I'd have left the local trails and gone to Snow Canyon. This gem of a place is along a four-mile stretch of road--but what an incredible four miles! This was taken from the top of a sand dune.

In addition to beautiful stone and soft sand, the canyon has some lava flows. This one was spotlighted by a ray of the sun as it sank.

I've got lots more, but it can wait.

Red rocks, green spring

2011-04-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

I spent a few days in the desert, in Saint George. This place will be like an oven in a couple months, but right now it's enjoying its best season. I went there for an intensive writers' class, so you're seeing the fruits of a fried brain.

Flowers in the rock.

I don't usually take photos of houses but I snapped this one. I like how it blends with the surroundings.

Rough photos, rough-coated horses

2011-04-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

I intended to shoot the landscape tonight, but horses stole the show. They weren't content to stay in the background.

Usually horses lose interest when they understand I don't have sugar or carrots, but these guys all wanted me to pet them. They posed very nicely.

I did not edit these photos. I'll admit it, I'm in lazy Sunday mode.

The snow on the mountains behind them is becoming a concern in this part of the world. A warm, wet winter has turned into a cool, wet spring. Electronic sensors that have been set up in the summits tell us there are nearly five feet of water up there (that's how deep it would be when it melts; the snow is much deeper than that) and it's getting a late start coming down. A sudden warming could bring it off the mountain in a flood.

In drier years the mountains have mostly melted off by now; this is one of the highest snowpacks we've had since climatologists have started paying attention to such things. It's good news for Bear Lake, the great reservoir to the east of us. It's bad news for anyone living on a river bank.

The barnyard king

2011-04-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

When we raised pigs, I realized there's a reason selfish, greedy behavior is called piggish. A number of sayings have grown up around rooster behavior, too--and a lot of them don't sound fit for a family blog. There are reasons for them, though.

A rooster clearly considers himself superior to every other being; the other barnyard rooster he has bested, the hens he herds about, even the humans who cross his domain. When I first photographed this fellow he ran away. By the time the photo session was over he stopped running and started sizing me up.

He didn't know his reign was about to end. He terrorized the other rooster on the property and was clearly viewing my mother-in-law as his next challenger. He became more trouble than his chicken feed was worth. He ended up in the soup pot.

A lot of chickens do, after much shorter, more crowded lives than this rooster lived. He was the barnyard king, running free. Still, I remember the proud, strutting figure he cut on his last day alive and think: There must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Thirteen steps to leave your lender

2011-04-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is a rant. Before writing it I wondered if I should actually name names, since it's not my style to use my blog to publicly make fun of a humongous corporate institution. Then I realized that before I took my story here, I did try to talk it out with Bank of America. The conversation went something like this:

Woman's calm, computer-generated voice: Are you calling to make a promise of payment?

Me: No. I'm calling to pay off my loan.

Voice: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. If you are calling to make a promise of payment, press one.

Nothing I tried got me a real human being. But that part happened toward the end of the story. The beginning was much happier.

Step One: We found out our local bank was willing to refinance our loan for more than a percentage point lower than our current interest rate, with no closing costs and without lengthening the term of the loan. At the time I didn't feel any animosity toward Bank of America, other than wishing my lender wasn't in the evening news so often. But it wasn't personal; it was normal apathy toward a corporate giant I didn't choose. (We took out a mortgage from a local mortgage company, which sold it to ... I can't remember. They sold our loan to Countrywide, which went under following the crisis of 2008. Then Bank of America absorbed Countrywide and took over our loan.)

Step Two: Our new prospective lender asked BofA for the payoff amount for our loan. The response: They could snail mail it for free, or fax it for $30. If they mailed it we can expect it in eight days.

Step Three: I don't know how long our new prospective lender sat on this information. I only know I found out because I called them. That's when I made the huge mistake in...

Step four: I said let's just have them mail it. I can only explain it as a visceral reaction to a bank slapping me with a stupid fee, but it was total foolishness. I would probably have paid more than $30 in intrest over the eight-day period. I also wrongly assumed that BofA meant it when they said we'd receive the payoff amount in eight days.

Step five: After a couple of weeks I called the local lender, who had not received our payoff amount. Maybe they sent it to me, the borrower, she said. I start sorting through places the mail might have landed if a child brought it in and didn't tell me.

Step six: After a few more days with no mailed payoff, I told the local bank we'll pay the money to get the faxed payoff. It arrived promptly.

Step seven: Our scheduled closing on the refinance was delayed a few days because the local lender wasn't quite ready yet.

Step eight: The mailed payoff amount arrived at the local bank, postmarked weeks after it should have been. The loan process started in early February. The postmark was mid-March.

Step nine: I received a call from BofA's debt collection service, because I didn't make any payments while waiting for the payoff. This call was made by a real human being, who listened when I explained that I stopped making payments because I didn't want to mess up the payoff amount. She promised to make a note of it and warned that debt collection procedings will continue until BofA got their money.

Step nine: I called BofA's customer service number, which routed me back to the debt collection department. I connected with another human being, who assured me that this is in no way BofA's fault. I said I didn't want this messing up our credit rating. She gave me the date on which they would report us to a credit rating agency.

Step ten: I called the local lender, who promised to overnight the payoff amount to BofA as soon as it was legally possible to do so. We would have two days to spare, but she urged me to call BofA and let them know when the money is coming.

Step Eleven: I called BofA, but this time nothing I did connected me to a real person. For the record I never swore or yelled at the people I talked to, but for BofA the conversation was over. Finally I just told Calm Voice what she wanted to hear. At least the collection calls did not repeat themselves.

Step Twelve: We signed the papers.

Step Thirteen: The lender sent the payoff. It arrived on time.

BofA got their $30 fee, plus the interest that accrued while we waited for them to tell us how much money to pay them. I finally got to write the blog post I'd been composing in my head for the last two weeks.

So what did they do with that $30 fee? I don't know, but I don't think it went to customer service.

Colors of early spring

2011-03-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is a friend's vet clinic--an old converted grain silo. Inside it is small and lively and sometimes it sounds and smells like cows. It belongs in a book, so I put it in one of mine.

The long winter left its mark on this old barn.

Blue grain silos.

The skies are still cloudy, but the fields are coloring up.

It's hard to keep clean and dry in wet weather, but at least it's warmer. These fellows are losing their winter coats.

Five things you can't do with DSLR video--and other lessons

2011-03-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Video is a wonderful thing. A moving image can say so much more than a still one. The medium is a lot less forgiving than still photography, though, so if you've fallen into the "I'll fix it in photoshop" mentality, remember there are some things you can't do with video (at least not with my software).
1. Crop

2. Frame vertically.

3. Sharpen

4. Change the background

5. Make the colors warmer or cooler.

The advantage of DSLR video is that it can be done anywhere, and you can vary the depth of field in much the same way as in still photography. The disadvantage: so often it's not done in a controlled environment, and if the light is low, your depth of field is tiny. Here's a list of things I wish I'd done in the past few weeks:

1. Found a dark background when I interviewed a subject with white hair.

2. Searched out a place with less ambient noise when I interviewed a group of people outside.

3. Framed better.

And here are some things I did right:

I gave the external mic a road test when it came out of the box, first comparing it to the camera's built-in mic (it was better, and it should have been, given the price). I took it outside to see how it handled wind (the answer: not well. They make fuzzy covers that help, which are, of course, nearly as expensive as the external mic.) I even recorded a guy playing folk guitar (it sounded wonderful, but he was shy and begged me not to use it except for my own research).

Finally, before an important interview I did some testing with my kids. I tried different backgrounds and a tighter or looser frame. The result was more confidence going into the interview and a better product when I was finished.

What have you learned from DSLR video?

A new bonus in flashless photography: character

2011-03-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Within a couple of days of experimenting with higher ISO settings I was stunned to discover how much detail the flash had been robbing my photos. It washed out the folds in cloth, for example. If I can avoid it, I don't use a flash anymore.

A while back I took a flashless photo of a woman who planned to use it professionally. After she left I brought it up on the computer and instantly knew two things: first, that I was looking at a beautiful image. I liked the lines. I didn't just like them because they were a faithful representation of reality. I liked what they said about her. This was a face that smiled a lot--a face that God had given perfect bone structure. It was aging, but nobody would accuse it of aging badly.

The second thing I knew: The woman in the photo would hate it. Sure enough,when I emailed it to her she fired back: "Don't use it."

All she saw was wrinkles. I'm vain enough, I get it. But I still think our youth-worshipping society is missing something. Like character.

I really wish I could show you that photo. It was lovely.

Note: The effects of a flash can be mitigated by reducing its power or duration. It can also be bounced of a white ceiling or wall so that the subject is only illuminated by softer, reflected light. Still, in my experience it washes out some detail.

Just for a laugh

2011-03-25T13:32:00.000-07:00


Fat cactus


Silly Goose

These are old photos that won't win any awards, but they still make me smile.

Outside it's still beastly weather. I'll look for something new when there's a break in the rain and snow.

There's a place for the small local blog

2011-03-22T14:38:00.000-07:00


Mountain and receding snow: a rough, immediate portrait that would never make it to the tourism council's website.

A while ago I decided to research the areas of Denver and Boulder, Colorado. What I wanted was a Rocky Mountain version of Farmchick's blog; a look at an area from an observant insider, as opposed to a journalist (who mostly just tells cautionary tales) or a real estate agent (who puts a little too much gloss on everything). I still haven't found the blog I was looking for, but the search made me realize something.

I love small blogs.

For my job I read big blogs that look at life from a how-to angle: How to increase your SEO, How to boost your ROI, How to not suck on Twitter. They all have their place and I've learned a lot from them. But with a few exceptions, they all start sounding the same after a while.

Off the job I prefer a slice of life. I like knowing how a place looks on a rainy day (and I get it, thanks to bloggers like Adrian and J on Tour.) I enjoy the journey I take with other photographers who work to improve their art. I like reading other writers who go through all the same battles with revision and writers' block and rejection.

Small bloggers, I salute you. Thanks for showing me the world without a sales pitch. And if you know of anyone doing similar things in the Colorado Rockies, leave me a comment and let me know.

Creeping spring

2011-03-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

Lambs follow their mother.

I kicked myself out of the house to go look for some signs of spring. I found these lambs, all lanky and long-tailed. They are fun to watch, tiny and very faithful as they follow their mothers.

Another murky day. It is what it is.

The patch of green to the right is most likely wheat. Some varieties are planted in the fall. They sprout, survive under the snow and provide some of the first green of spring.

Snow recedes up the mountainside

The south-facing slopes melt off first as the snow retreats. This was taken on a drippy day, but the step from frostbite to hypothermia is still progress, right?

bare rocky hillside, snowcaps in the background

This, fortunately, is not my garden spot---but it's growing a fine crop of rocks.

Keep on blooming

2011-03-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Snow-covered tulip

This is an old photo. It's been miserable and wet, and I've been too wimpy--or too busy trying to keep the floodwaters down--to take many new ones. The tulips aren't in bloom yet, but I keep the above photo over my desk at work. It's one of those sight-metaphors.

Instead of shooting photos I stayed indoors today and cooked Bangalor chicken in a beautiful, lime-colored cilantro sauce.

Now there's the green I've been hoping for.

Intro to video: the slideshow

2011-03-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

Today, for less than $1000, you can buy a camera that shoots beautiful photos AND decent video. It's hard to notice such wonderful capability and not use it, but making the leap from photos to video is intimidating.

It's a road I'm just beginning to explore, so any advice I offer is from a learner's standpoint. That said, here's my first tip: start with a slideshow. Why? It builds on a photoblogger's skill of taking and editing good images, and takes it one step further: using them to tell a story.

Whether you're shooting photos, spinning plots or stringing together video clips, the story is the base on which a good post is built. A slideshow allows you to add some other elements: timed text and, if you choose, a little music. I've done slideshows on an old version of Roxio and a newer version of iMovie. I like iMovie better. The good news is that video software is fairly cheap, so if you don't like what you have, you can probably do better for a reasonable price.

Speaking of music, it's a great way to create instant emotion, but be careful. If you don't want to spend a lot of time synching images to a strong beat, choose a selection with a less noticible rhythm. There are several free music sites online, and they often categorize the music clip by the emotion it conveys. Don't assume they've classified it correctly--listen, play and experiment. It's good to use those free sites, though--much better than getting slapped with a copyright infringement after synching a slideshow to a favorite song.

My last bit of advice on music: choose a music clip you like. You'll be hearing it many times over.

Finally, as you put your production together be prepared. Your production may suck up a shocking amount of time. A two-minute slideshow/video project can take several hours to prepare if you're new at it--and a lot more if you're a perfectionist. You may discover (I did) that you're hooked on it after only one or two tries, though. Adding sound and motion to pictures makes them that much more powerful.

I'll leave with a couple of examples. The first, Wheelchair Basketball, was put together by a photojournalist at the local newspaper, and it's a stunning example of the power of pictures combined with the words of the participants. It's beautiful and simple, so please click on the title and have a look.

The second is my first attempt at doing a video/slideshow presentation that would be seen by more than a few people. I picked a not-so-serious subject: the Caption-Writing Contest in conjunction with the staff party, and put it together for our Facebook page. I'm really glad I chose to learn on a low-pressure project. Even so, the list of things I learned or would do differently is long. It was still great fun. If you look at it, make sure you click on the high definition option to the right of the video, and don't worry: You don't have to be a FB user to view the video.

More planes and cars, less chatter

2011-03-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

Train outside Union Station in Ogden

Windows at Union Station
These are old photos, but I just can't bring myself to go out to shoot new ones. It's storming in the hills and raining in the valley, seeping into the snow we have left. The dampness is also seeping into the basement. It's been a very wet winter, and it's giving way to a wet spring.

1907 Stanley at the auto showroom at Union Station

Oops-didn't take a picture of the placard. Husband says it's a Knox. I also failed to crop out the child's hand in the lower right. It's a lazy Sunday.

1937 Packard

P51 Mustang. This plane was a fighter used heavily in World War II as a bomber escort. It had a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, or so Husband tells me. He pays attention to such things.

Wright Brothers' flyer replica

Fast planes, old cars, cool camera

2011-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

Front view, SR-71 Blackbird

This is a photo of an amazing plane. The SR-71 is an engineering marvel; it flew at speeds three times the speed of sound. It was used for spying, which means pictures were taken from it as it flew--and I assume they somehow turned out after being shot from a speed demon machine. The plane's tires were infused with aluminum so that they could withstand the heat generated in the fuselage from flying at mach 3-plus speeds.

Here's my favorite thing about the SR-71: It was built for intelligence, not war.

We saw it at the Hill Air Force Base museum, in some of the most difficult lighting known to a camera--dim lights from high ceilings. If you take a photo in there with a flash, you get a flat image, plus a lot of reflection off the nearest pane of glass or panel of shiny metal. The unreflected light is sucked into the dark surrounding void.


Rear view of SR-71. Husband is standing in front of the plane to add a sense of scale.

While these pictures aren't museum-quality, they're the best I've managed in that environment. I was using a Cannon T2I Rebel on a high ISO, which produces usable images in dim light without a flash. The above photos are edited, but they at least show that shooting a hand held camera in low light is possible.


The back end of a 1926 Lincoln. Note the strapped-on luggage in the back--an actual trunk that evolved into what we call the "trunk" today--or at least, that's what we call it on this side of the pond.

Here's another photo shot indoors without a flash, at the Ogden Train Depot's old car showroom. At this high ISO setting, things appear a little shinier than they do in real life, but it's a nice effect, especially on old cars.


A young museum visitor examines the plaque for a 1929 Packard.

Higher ISO settings have their limitations--light from a window still adds some glare, for example. But it's way ahead of an image-flattening flash.

I'm clearly still figuring out the capabilities of the new work camera--and I'm impressed.

mountain Lyon notes

We now return to our regular programming

Character Blogfest #3: Flash fiction

Character blogfest installment two: Dialog

Character blogfest #1: Character on the couch

What's your favorite blunder?

Caught in the clouds

Old wood

Free photos! Freeee photos!

Cabin fever

Two months' difference

Sun-dappled snowscape

Book Talk: Inheritance

Attention, writers! A chance to get fresh eyes on your work.

Farm critters

Barbershop

Book talk: Loving Harry Potter 5 for all the wrong reasons

My favorite five photos of 2011

Merry Christmas!

Best of Blogs 2011: Advice

Writing resolutions

Empty

Can this pic be saved? Part 2.

Can these pictures be saved?

Mission Christmas

Book Talk: Fablehaven

Holiday cliche`s I would like to shut out this year

Thankful

You, too, can earn a mediocre Klout score

Mr. Stinky

Comparing iPhone and Nikon images

September, November

NaNoWriMo

Cutting the cord

Eclipse: another book talk

Smart Phone: the multi-tool

Book Talk: New Moon

Maples on the Wind Caves trail

Book Talk: Twilight

Missing Trieste

Re-post: The Afternoon Bus

Fall in Williams Canyon

A long goodbye to summer

Still life

Laramie II: We took a different road

Laramie: the other Wyoming

Slow food, quick cheese

Comfort scenes

From an undisclosed location

Starting a wood-fired movement

Late summer light

Too much nitrogen?

Witch Song: the making of a book trailer

Summer sign

Want a look at the real west? Hang onto your hats.

A visit to Paris (Idaho)

The Marching Businessmen

High water at High Creek

Storytellers in the wilderness: Golden Spike

The yard

Ripening wheat. Again.

Getting socialed-out

Mountains

Quirky gardening

Four-wheeling in a minivan

A slice of Americana

Introducing Anthony

Turbulence in the Cloud

Oh, hail.

Horse Pulls in Richmond

Mammoth: scenes from another world

I'm on Travelavenue!

Yellowstone's Grand Canyon: high country, high water

On the way to Yellowstone: Mesa Falls

Spring at last!

Recommended reading 5/29/11

Elvis the Longhorn and light through the clouds

The day I interviewed Orson Scott Card in the kitchen

Enlightened llamas and a wild rock garden

Just Shy of Paradise--an interview