Great Weekend Get-Away



Path and apricot trees in Grandpa Joe’s Orchard



Times are hard; money is tight; we’ve been through a cold spell, a heat wave and another cold spell.  We haven’t been to Dry Creek since spring break, since before this blog was started.  And we almost didn’t go this weekend because without telling us, Tyler planned a movie night while we were finalizing our own plans.  Marci, like I, didn’t have a social life in high school.  But, unlike me, she wants to make sure our children don’t suffer the same fate.   I think, hell (that’s heck with spice, my fellow Mormons) if I survived, so can they.   But as I’m married, I do whatever my family wants.  It’s just easier that way.  So, America’s youth descended upon our house Friday night to watch Insidious and I went to bed so that we could leave early Saturday morning.



Everest’s root-beer cake made for Tyler’s previous Movie Night



It was worth the wait.  We loaded up the ark (Chrystal Blue Persuasion) with the five of us, two dogs, four baby chicks, a bookcase, two boxes of books, suit cases, bags of dirty clothes and 80 bucks of gas.  You just can’t do that in a Smart Car, no matter how hard you try.  I’m going to miss this van when we eventually downsize.

Highway 89 was beautiful--the Virgin and Sevier Rivers churning with spring melt water even though we only received 60% of our normal snowpack.   The meadows were green and the Tushar Mountains were still very white.



We arrived a little after 1:00.  For only being there 27 hours, I accomplished a lot.  Wild rye and other weeds had grown lofty where we’ll eventually put in a patio.  I have high flower beds along the foundation of the house edged in boulders.  Below that, I have a river-stone walkway with flowering ground covers, but everything was so grown over you couldn’t even see the flowers.  I weeded between the rocks.  I hate rye because it grows up in between flowers and its roots clump in big thick tangled balls.  So, when you pull out that thick blade of grass it often brings with it all the flowers you want left in the ground.  Further out, away from the flowers, I used our nifty weed-eater, which has four wheels and pushes like a lawn mower, but underneath, instead of a blade, has extra thick line.  It will cut through anything.  (Note to self:  next time home, look at the brand name so that I can plug in ADVERTISEMENT here.)

Then, I mowed the lawn at the old trailer, which feels like an acre.  Other than a very narrow strip at the front of our new house, I’m not planting any more grass, but because of family reunions and history of the property, I’m keeping the lawn at the trailer.  The kids love to play football and tag there.  In the center is a giant Ash which shades it most of the day.  During the heat of the day, camp and lawn chairs slowly move over there.

 After that, I mowed the natural grasses--mostly cheat grass--around the old pig shed, which is now a mock western town--hardware store, motel, diner and bar--and then over by Grandpa Joe’s apricot orchard. 

The Saloon portion of a pig shed I converted into Wild Turkey Flat, Nevada,

a mock Old West Town

The South entrance to Grandpa Joe's Orchard in memory of my stepdad.

I ended my workday by making hamburger soup.  Thirteen deer stood in the field outside in the dusk as we slurped it down with good rolls.  Then the family watched War Horse, as I fell asleep on the family room floor, exhausted.

This morning I was up at six-thirty, ready to cram in an eight-hour work day by 3:00.     First, I took our push weed-eater to one of the last stands of wild rye.  Once we let the alfalfa die, the entire field was invaded by rye.  In the spring, it’s long and green, and on a wet year, almost looks like corn, but I’m incredibly allergic to it, and in the summer it dries out and makes it so you can’t walk anywhere without leaving a horrible-looking pathway of tumbled, bent, broken yellow blades--not too unlike the forest after St. Helens blew her top.  It’s also an incredible fire danger.

Fortunately, the Fish and Game department introduced wild turkeys into the area twenty or so years ago, and apparently wild turkeys love wild rye, for each year since their introduction we’ve had less rye.   (Insert ADVERTISEMENT FOR TURKEYS HERE).  There is only one stubborn rye stronghold left, near the remains of the hay barn, which to my dismay, my parents tore down many years ago.  Until last year, I still had the foundation, but the county asked for the concrete for the irrigation pond, and we won’t get into all that as it’s still a sore spot (along with the missing combine, the missing chicken coop, the missing stanchions, and the missing outhouse, which looks great fixed up as a tool shed at another house in town).  Okay, okay--forgive and forget least Christ remember every little blot on my record.  Anyway, I whacked down the rye before it established its Amazon hold, moved giant, rotting two by eights which were made when 2 x 8s were 2 x 8s. Even now, half buried for many years, they are incredibly heavy.

                Then, I took the driving mower to the rest of what we call the island, which was created by our driveway loop. 

The "island," a natural grass area I mow into a lawn--although it's rye and cheat grass. 
It still looks nice after it turns yellow in late summer.

                On top of this, I watered 25 oaks, seven cottonwoods, one pinion and numerous aspen, as well as a lawn, a rose garden and two flower beds.  I also walked up to the upper irrigation pond, turned off the water in the field and routed more water down to the lower pond.  I’m tired, but I feel great.  I could live my life this way--even if I have to flip burgers at Burger King to make it happen.

                Sometimes where you are is more important than what you do.  For now, it was a great weekend get-away--just what I needed.  Now, I just need to figure out how to get the incredibly rich to pay to be my slave labor.  Do you think I can pull off a dude-garden experience?  I’m sure everyone laughed at the café when the first rancher said, “You know, I think I’ll charge rich city-slickers an enormous price to come and herd cows for me.”  (Insert ADVERTISEMENT for Dry Creek Dude Gardens here.)



Dry Creek Gardens:  Plant Memories Forever by Working on a Real Farm



Instead of Reading this Mediocre Poem Composed by a Gray-haired Middle-Aged Man in Checkered Flannel Pajamas Bemoaning Life’s Little Let-Downs You Could Explore the Physics of the Impossible.

I am damaged goods.  Perhaps

we all are.  The fat kid who didn’t

know how to be

skinny.  The beauty queen

who didn’t know how

to be more than

beauty, her mind like wildfire

enclosed, smothered within

a perfect shell--talking all the while

of boy friends and painted toenails

while bridges of cable spanned

gulfs of water and glittered

in strands of steel notes.

And of course there are old loves.

We all die several times

before we find the right one--if we are lucky.

My heart was ripped out thrice

by perfectly good women, and each

time I tried to reassemble it, nothing fit

right, but as I had to get to work,

I just forced bolts

on with a pipe-

wrench and threw

the extra parts in a dirty yellow

pail.

Now and again I wake up

In the night and realize

even with you here

I’m simply not right.

So I tinker

with bailing wire words,

try to make her perfectly-dimpled

smile  finally fit for me, not him.   Closure I want,

I guess.

But everything refuses.

My past I can’t love, can’t hate.

I don’t even know where it all

goes. 

Finally, I slide

the bucket under the bed, read the Book

of Mormon or Murakami.

6:00 a.m.  The alarm goes off

like a wind-up bird.

Living Art Day by Day: The Paintings of Lloyd Brown

Lloyd's painting of our irrigation pond.

 

I have no idea how to introduce my brother’s art, except to introduce it.  Lloyd has been painting consistently since he was five.  As I’m nine years younger than him, I have never known a Lloyd who is not working on a painting or a drawing--ever.  I am certain I’m a poet for two reasons:  First, he fostered in me the desire to create from an early age.  Second, there was no way I could compete with him, and so I had to find another outlet.  At first, I thought it’d be architecture, but it turned out words are my concrete, my wood, my steel--the structure of a line, a stanza, my solid, my void, my frozen music.

But, I’ve never been the artist Lloyd is.  My artistic output has waxed and waned with the seasons of my life.  Much of the time I have been quite content not to create.   Lloyd, on the other hand is one of those rare people who truly is an artist.  His entire life has been spent creating, day after day, sun up to sun down.  That has made him more than just a good artist.  There are many of us that can claim to be good at what we do.  We teach, we read, we listen, we go to art openings and open mic nights.  We produce here and there.  We may even be important to the local scene.  We enjoy the arts and our lives wouldn’t be complete without them.  I’d like to think that’s me.

But Lloyd is an artist on a completely different level.   Like Picasso or Paul McCartney he is destined to go down in history.  I have no doubt whatsoever that both my posterity and the posterity of my sister’s family will be well-taken care of by revenue from Lloyd’s art.  It’s unavoidable.



This is of Notch Peak from his Highway 50:  Loneliest Road in America series,
a combined project we planned together in 2005,
which was to culminate in a show and book.  The show occured. 
The book did not--at least not yet.



That’s not what is important to me.  I hope it doesn’t ruin them as legacy so often does.  But, I’m glad to have been a part of it, and I hope like me, my offspring will be moved by his vision to create here and there in their own ways.  Life really is not the same without art.  I used to hate the title of the anthology, Poetry Like Bread.  Having been poor much of my life, I thought it was somewhat pretentious.   A starving man needs food not art.   Older now, I realize there are more ways to starve than one.

Lloyd, thanks for providing a feast for generations to come.



This is also from his Highway 50:  Loneliest Road in America series.
 I believe it's near Hazen, Nevada. 
If that's incorrect, I'll edit this post later.



At this Moment

Navajo Village--A warm, balmy breeze blows from the south.  Tropical clouds diffuse most of the sun.  If I were to close my eyes, I would picture grass huts, white beaches and turquoise waters.  But there’s no need.  The weathered juniper post of the shade house in the foreground, the Hogan and sand hill in mid-ground, and the hulking monolithic sandstone swell in the background are enough.  And though I am lucky to be here, and have this amazing place to sit and melt into my surroundings, chances are you have your own sacred place at this moment. 

It may be a window seat overlooking the front lawn and the spread of suburbia, kids riding bikes or skateboards down the street. 

Or, it may be your office window--shiny metal boxes flooding through the last play of light and shadow on downtown’s concrete canyons at the end of the work day. 

Or maybe it’s midnight.  Something has gone wrong in the OR.  You’re the unlucky housekeeper called into mop up the mess.  Although there’s more blood than usual, it’s the same old routine.  There’s the CD player on the medical cart.  If you’re lucky, there may even be some Fleetwood Mac or Eagles to play.  The Dance.  Gloves on, you unlock the wheels and move the bed.   A metropolis of red spreads out from the center of the room, a galaxy spiraling out towards the cold edges of existence.  Even here, mopping up what remains of someone’s life, there are patterns to contemplate, meaning to see in dots, blobs and code.  It’s not that you’re heartless; it’s just what good would it do now to do more than witness?

It is not where we are that keeps us from entering the moment.  It’s our useless battles with the mind.  I ruined most of my day obsessing over the fact that neither Marci nor I had noticed there was a posting for an elementary position in my hometown.  I’ve been checking for openings obsessively for months, but not the last couple of weeks.  It posted two weeks ago and closed two days ago. 

Nothing can be done.  There is only the moment.  Marci talks to a couple from Germany outside the female Hogan.  Sunlight ignites her blue blouse and ricochets off the silver of her Concho belt.  There is the distant sound of traffic.  A single bird chirps, and as always, light plays on the sandstone folds of the rock behind.  

 We needed that job, but losing this moment won’t help things. 

The Navajo Village; Reflections on El Paso, Juarez, Many Farms; Sustainability, Windows and Light

I want to write today about sustainability, windows and light.  This didn’t come to me all at once, but slowly, as the sun cut its path from east to west and darkness settled deep across the landscape.

Yesterday, we had a special fundraiser for the Boy Scouts at the Navajo Village and it was bitter-cold, which is unusual for Page, especially this time of year.  The two hogans were warm, oil barrel fireplaces humming in the center of the log-rooms, shafts of rain, sleet and snow filtering down through hole in the roofs at the center of the room, sputtering off the top of stoves in short bursts of steam. 

But outside it was intense--especially after a bitter-wind drove the clouds away and a yellow light cut across the landscape, igniting the rocks behind.  It was uncomfortably beautiful.

Large Hogan after the storm passed



Tony, Everest and Tomas dancing in the cold.



Then night fell hard, quick.  I worried about my flowers and assumed today would be much the same.  So, I was in no hurry to get up and go outside this morning.



When I finally did, I was quite surprised:  warm sunlight, stillness, birds chirping, a perfect spring morning.  As we were going to church, Marci commented, “Why couldn’t it have been like this yesterday?”    That would have been nice, but I know from experience, not near as memorable.  There is something about hardship, especially the elements, that draws us closer to the essentials of creation.  My most memorable moments camping were at the time the most unpleasant--tent whipping violently in the night, vegetables frozen in a solid block of ice at the bottom of the cooler in the morning--these are the moments I relish later, although they were most uncomfortable at the time.

I can’t help but wonder if the same is true with our lives.  Will we look back from eternity and cherish the moments of death, unemployment, spiritual uncertainty most?  Those moments where we were forced to grow?  I think perhaps so.

This brings me back to sustainability.  A few days ago I was looking at other sites.  Most left me empty, which doesn’t say anything negative about them--just something about me.  They provide very practical information on topics such as reusing rain-water or composting.  Both things I want to do.  But most of the sites don’t provide that slow, reflective talk, which loosens the mind and allows unknown treasures to drop.  To me, it is that dialogue with our creator, ourselves and each other that is at the center of sustainability.

I did, however find one sight which approached what I’m looking for.  I’d like to share it, in case you are looking for something similar.  It’s called Backyard Agrarian and is found at http://www.backyardagrarian.com/sustainable-living-blog.html.  What really impressed me was the site’s description of sustainability:

Backyard Agrarian living isn't about any one thing. It's about how all things are connected. It's about going through life day after day, making observations and continuous adjustments. It's a new way. It's about how we feel in times of birth, death, frustration, joy and how we respond and act  and how we see the connections between our human stuff and what's going on around us. This blog isn't about any one topic. It's about day-to-day thoughts on exploring an agrarian-minded world view.

I know that’s what sustainability is to me--what I need to be sustained physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Not one thing, but multiple. 

This brings me to windows.  I was rereading Kent Nerburn’s, Small Graces, which is probably my favorite book, when I came across the following passage:

Whenever I’ve had to move from a house, the memory I have carried with me--that has most animated my spirit --is always the memory of the light, and the way it cascaded in through the windows and illuminated the passing moments of the day.

That immediately brought my own flood of memories:  the light igniting the chipped paint on the window seal in my fifth-floor apartment in El Paso, the spread of the international city of Juarez y El Paso del Norte glittering below on both sides of the border.  There was also my window at the budding Cinco Puntos Press (where I worked as an undergraduate student) which overlooked the bridge between Mexico and the United States.  I often stayed late during a very unhappy time in my life because there was something about the stream of shiny metal boxes flowing between the countries that made me feel better. 

Or what about the morning light outside our apartment in Many Farms?--a monolithic sandstone butte glowing on the horizon through lacy curtains, the foreground still in dark, blue shadows, Semi-trucks lit-up in yellow lights at the 7 to 11 station across the paper-littered field. 

Views from our house at Dry Creek, March 19, 2012

These small graces get us by.  I now leave you to your own.

End of Innocence: Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Rio Brown, age 13

Rio in the garden, age 6, picking the Forbidden Fruit

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Innocence is an object of purity.  When life begins the human is pure and completely innocent. This can also be seen in some religions and governments, but as time goes on the item becomes corrupt.  I believe that Robert Frost is telling of this innocence that exists at first, but is almost impossible to stay for all of its existence.

The beginning of the poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" says "Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold."  I find this to be saying that at the beginning of almost everything there is a purity.  That purity is the gold and it is an object, a trait that is the hardest thing to keep and it is "Her hardest hue to hold."  Corruption eventually reaches it and changes it to something no longer pure.

Secondly, Robert Frost keeps telling of this innocence and corruption that occurs over and over in different ways.  One of the ways that is most obvious is the reference to the Garden of Eden.  A perfect place in which Adam and Eve were placed to live.  At first Adam and Eve were perfect and incorrupt.  It was at this time that the serpent tempted Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit and of this item Adam and Eve did partake.  They were banished for disobeying a command and becoming corrupt.  "Then leaf subsides to leaf /  So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day / Nothing gold can stay".

Levels of innocence can be possibly good and bad.  In the beginning of the American Government it was an almost pure thing and a very effective government.  As time went by more laws and changes in laws took place.  We are now drifting away from that one document that holds us together as an innocent government, the Constitution.  As we drift away from the Constitution, the government becomes corrupt and loses it's purity.  "Nothing gold can stay."

Robert Frost was one of the people that noticed the corruption that exists in our life and that we start out so pure and innocent but as we go through our life we lose that innocence and become corrupt and lose the "gold" that we have "Then leaf subsides to leaf."

Van Morrison, Bill Bryson, William Least Heat-Moon, Nostalgia & Finding My Way Home

For the first time since I started the blog, I have no idea what to write.  So, I’m putting on some Van Morrison and pulling out Bill Bryson.  Not knowing what to write never seems to stop Bill.  He dared write A Walk in the Woods about hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail after admitting he drove part of it and hiked the rest with his incredibly out-of-shape hiking companion, Stephen Kratz.  If Bryson can be a naturalist, then there’s no reason I can’t be a sustainable-living guru, gas-guzzling seven-passenger van and all.

No airs, nobody to knock you down.  Just doing.  Always putting one foot in front of the other.  I flip through The Lost Continent, looking for something funny, but instead, a quotation I find triggers what I really want to say.  The quotation goes like this:

On another continent, 4,000 miles away, I became quietly seized with a nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him (pg 12).

(Grandpa Joe on the ATV with Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)

Foolish or not, that is why I’m returning home to our land at this time.  I lost both my dad and step-dad in less than the space of a year.  I’m not depressed, but I’m ultra aware something is gone that can never be replaced.  And yet somehow I also know something good is ready to grow in that space.  You shouldn't foolishly try to fill voids to dull the pain, but you shouldn't ignore strong impulses either.  A void is a fertile space for universes to unfold, but timing is everything.  With time the wound will close and there will be nothing to occupy that space.  William Least Heat-Moon wrote Blue Highways in such an empty space.  Had he waited, it simply would not be the same book.

I’ve learned that from poems.  What is a life, but a poem in progress?  If everything is planned, it grows stagnant.  Sometimes impulse is the best of who we are.

Anyway, my dream hobby farm was my step-dad’s dream towards then end of his life.  So, Grandpa Joe, this foolish act is for you.  I can never thank you enough for the life, love and example you’ve given me.

(Grandpa Joe, Rio & Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)

Small Graces: Everyday Easter Moments

(Jack yawning outside the kitchen window)

My favorite William Carlos Williams poem, “Pastoral,” begins:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk the back streets

admiring the houses of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong…

He concludes,

                No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

Maybe everyone begins to feel this way as they age.  Maybe not.  But when I was younger I wanted to accomplish things.  Halfway through my undergraduate studies, I had an intellectual crisis because I realized chasing the American Dream was not for me.  Not because I doubted its plausibility, but rather because the quest felt hollow.  I became angry, depressed.  Later, after meeting Marci, I decided maybe that dream wasn’t so bad.  The chase puts food on the table and it’s nice to be able to pay the bills.  Older now, I still believe that dream to be good.  On one condition--becoming doesn’t overshadow being.  That’s what all the great spiritual leaders of time have attempted to teach us, from Buddha to Christ--that there is more to this temporal life than most are aware of, and if one can truly learn to enter each moment fully, the temporal world will take care of itself.

Jesus, for instance, tells the fishermen, Peter and Andrew to “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of Men and they straightway left their nets, and followed him” (Matthew 4: 19-20) without worrying about how much time and money they’d invested into their boats and nets, now all for nil; or what the neighbors and family would think; or even whether or not their retirement plans would suffice them in old age.  They were tuned enough into the moment to know what they should do, and were confident surving would take care of itself.   Jesus stresses this faith in life and the moment again when he says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead” (Mathew 8:22).

The Buddha came to the same conclusion before Christ was born:  the physical world is both reality and an illusion simultaneously and we can glimpse the eternal reality in the ordinary if we will but slow down enough to see between the lines, the molecules, atoms, and the subatomic particles.

(The dishes I washed after Easter Dinner) 

In other words, if we will put our spiritual selves first, life will take care of itself.

This does not mean to tune in and drop out.  One way or the other crops have to be harvested if we wish to eat.  Work is a part of life.  But it shouldn’t consume lives.

One way to keep the spirit alive is to simultaneously live the sacred and profane by ritualizing the little moments.  Shabkar says in The Flight of the Garuda, “No matter what arises, when you perceive your original nature, the joy arises automatically--and what joy!”

(The Easter eggs Everest, Rio and I colored next to the bottle of vinegar)

Although, I have to work at it, I want to get to a place where I’m continually aware of my original nature--that I’m a son of God who has been placed on this earth for a very specific purpose--no matter what I’m doing, whether it be dishes, taking out the trash or, if necessary, shoveling bullcrap for a living.

Multicultural Jumble, an Evening among the Navajo, or Blogging Woes:

(Hogans at the Navajo Village Heritage Center)

I just wrote that title hoping it would help the site, drycreeksustainable.blogspot.com, get more hits.  I spend every evening among the Navajo.  Sometimes I wish I could get away from them, not because they’re Navajo, but because they’re family.  My wife, my kids: they’re family.  They’re also Navajos.   Therefore, that title is absurd.  I apologize.  The marketing gurus back at the office called me to the Conference Room, which is the cold dusty food storage room--influence of the Mormons, who I also want to get away from sometimes, not specifically because they’re Mormon, but because they’re family.  (Hell, I mean heck, I want to get away from the Mormons most of all--primarily, because I’m one of them, which in itself is irritating, not because I’m Mormon per say, but because I’m me). 

Anyway, the gurus are neither family nor Mormons.  (Marci didn’t get who these guys are; that’s because they’re a product of my imagination--I’m fiction writer too, although apparently not a very good one.)  Anyway, they’re mathematicians who sold out their dream of solving the meaning of existence through the perfect equation because they thought they’d make more money in the business world.  Most of their colleagues did do exactly that, including my friend Carl, who has been happy ever since.  The difference is that these guys never learned to lie well.   And you can’t succeed at anything you do half-heartedly.   Even a lie must be lived well.   As a result, they’re a mean, bitter group--all two of them.  And they’ve just informed me that my data doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

 (The Power Point Presentation from the Boys in the Backroom)

After doing some research, which they left up to me, because apparently writing isn’t a real profession unless you’re on the New York Times Best Seller List, and yes, they do have the graphs to show that indeed I’m not a writer.  Therefore, they said, I’d better learn math and marketing as well as metaphors and alliteration.  So, I did some research, and apparently, if that blogger is more knowledgeable than this one, blog entry titles are part of the key to success.  The right title will either make or break you on any given day.  The boys in the backroom said I should put it to the test, scientifically prove it, so to say.  Thus the title.

According to the experts, another secret to blog-entries, is keeping them short and concise.  Obviously, I’ve already failed at that with this.  So I’ll save An Evening among the Navajo for next time.

Why Do I Journal My Reading? by Marci

I like to think I’ve grown into the reader I am today.  I don’t like reading the same types of books over and over again.  I like to challenge myself.  I try to get out of my reading comfort zone.

Maybe when I started keeping track of what I read is when I decided to challenge myself.  I wanted to have something to write about a book, something other than the plot.  When a book speaks to you, the plot becomes a little less important.

In 2003 I decided I wanted to keep a written record of the books I read.  I mainly did this because I couldn’t remember everything I wanted to-- about the books I had taken the time to read.  A few years later, Steve gave me a little journal called “Books to Check Out”.  There was a section called “favorite books/passages.” I had never thought about copying down my favorite passages.  I often underlined my favorite parts, but the books didn’t always belong to me so writing in them wouldn’t have done me any good.  Now I have a “review” journal and a few “quote” journals.  The quotes are almost always longer than my reviews.

Here’s my first review:

A Dry Spell by Susie Malony

Completed in the wee hours of June 23, 2003

A banker named Karen Grange writes to a rainmaker named Tom Keatley. 

The town of Goodlands, North Dakota has had a drought for four years.  Karen hates having to foreclose on the people of her community.  She has finally found a place where she fits.

Vida Whalley takes revenge and plants a seed of fear into the people by secretly causing bad things to happen.  She becomes possessed by a woman whom the author leaves us clueless about.  We only know her name and that she lived on the property about 100 years prior to Karen Grange.

The spirit is punishing the town and Tom must fight it in order to bring the rain.  The spirit kills Vida and tries to kill Karen.  After she nearly dies, and they are both struck by lightening, Karen and Tom fall in love.

I liked the book.  The author should have told us more about the spirit and why it is so angry.

Here’s the first book I copied quotations from and the book review that goes with it:

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage, 2004)

“His genius was betrayed by lofty and indomitable traits of character which could not yield or compromise.  And so his life was a tragedy of inconsequence” (pg. 174).

“Why should the wealth of the country be stored in the banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meeting and call them riots?” (pg. 315)

“To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story.  There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness” (pg. 396)

The Review:

June 27, 2006

I don’t normally read nonfiction or historical fiction, but I enjoyed this book.  I agree with the reviews from Esquire because I am asking myself, “Why didn’t I already know this historical information?’

I learned quite a bit about architecture and the history of American Architecture.   I learned that Frederick Law Olmstead had some very strong views about landscape architecture and designed central park.

John Welborn Root and Danial Hudson Burnham started an architectural firm in Chicago and made some great changes.  Root came up with a way to solve the problem of Chicago’s lack of bedrock by inventing the floating foundation.

The White City sounds like it would have been awesome see.  I learned a lot about what was going on in 1893. 

The Murderer H.H. Holmes seems to be a pretty terrible guy, much like any serial killer.  The science of how he might be thinking, and how he plans and gets away with his crimes is interesting.

It would be cool to be a profiler and try to figure out how these people think.   

My Vision of Sustainable Living

I thought today that I better discuss my vision of our experiment in sustainable living.  I would say “our” vision, but while talking to Marci on the way to work today, she made it clear that, as of now, it's only my vision.  Referring to herself, she said, “I have no vision; that’s your thing.”  It’s not that she doesn’t support the move; she does.  But the blog, the hobby farm, the sustainable lifestyle--that’s my dream.

Reading and writing book reviews, that’s her thing.  She’s been doing it religiously for several years.  Some of her avid reading history is recorded at goodreads.com.  You can find her reading history there.  Since 2004, she has read, quoted and commented on at least 262 books.    Soon, she’ll also be posting here.

(Oregon--If the weather is cold enough,

the beach nice enough, Marci might leave her book at the house)

Back to sustainable living:  According to Wikipedia, it is “a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources and his/her own resources.^[1] “  (Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_living)

This brings me to my first confession.  We own a full-size seven passenger Chevy Van, clearly not something an environmentalist should be driving around.  That is unless you take into consideration the lifestyle we were living at the time we purchased it.  We were both teachers on the Navajo Nation in a very rural community.   The nearest full grocery store was thirty miles away; anything beyond that (clothing, auto-care, doctors, vets, etc.) was close to ninety miles away.  We also are a family of six.  We tried very hard  not to go to town more than twice a month.  In our Mini-van that was pretty difficult because every inch of space was occupied by flesh.  Or at least that was my justification, and while we lived on the Rez, the van did seem to make perfect sense.  As soon as we moved to Page, it didn’t.  But once you have a car, the most environmentally conscious thing to do is to drive it until it won’t drive anymore.   And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve told my boys, who all have their greedy eyes on it, that I’m going to be buried in it.  That will save the materials needed for a casket and recycle a van in the process.



(Crystal Blue Persuasion stuck at the entrance of our property)

 Anyway, I see our sustainable lifestyle being implemented in phases.  Phase one involves gardening and canning.  That will begin this summer.   I’ve already created three 8 X 8 garden beds, or 192 square feet of garden space.  Not enough, but a good start.  Tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, onions and a variety of peppers are the planned crops for this year.  We already have mature apricot, peach and plum trees on the property and for the past couple of years have canned a little bit of jam.

(Rio, July 2005, in one of our three apricot trees)

Next year, we’ll purchase chickens for eggs and plant a large-scale root garden--potatoes, yams, carrots, beets and radishes.

Although, I have no intellectual or spiritual problem raising animals for food, for I eat meat, I’d never be able to raise an animal and butcher it.  Therefore, any small farm animals will be pets only.     

We already gather all of our own wood for heating on the property, and always have.  I know that fireplace emissions are not great, but it saves money.  And as we only burn wood that naturally falls from our own forest, no deforestation occurs.

(Grandpa and Mitchell cleaning up part of our wood lot, September 23, 2006)

("The Sacred Grove"-- our biggest mapples on the property)

The reason I want to design Italian and native Great Basin Gardens is because they require less water than most other types of gardens.  The idea is to create a huge aesthetic on as little water as possible.

This project is even more about family than it is the environment.  My brother, Lloyd is an artist, who sells primarily out of Valley House Gallery in Dallas, Texas.  He lives just up the road, as does my mother.  My sister and her husband live thirty minutes away.  I want to build something that will last for generations--where family and land are one.  Not that everyone will live on the property.  At some point that will become impossible if the property is to retain its natural beauty.  However, there will be a central location that is unequivocally considered home.

At least that’s my vision.  Follow along and see how we do.