Utah: It's Not Just for Mormons

Xander and I just returned from what might very well be our last vacation without kids. We decided to go hiking and camping in Utah. I was skeptical about Utah at first, mostly because I was disappointed that we couldn't also go back to the Grand Canyon and to New Mexico. I didn't think Utah would be interesting enough to stand on its own. Anyway, I'd like to apologize to the state of Utah for underestimating its coolness. The camping and hiking were great. The people were incredibly friendly. Even the long periods of time we spent in the car were fascinating because the landscape changed so much. We made a giant loop around the Grand Staircase, starting and ending in Colorado. One of the most awesome things about our route was being able to see features hundreds of miles away, which just underscored the enormity of the forces that created these features. Everywhere we went, we could see where we were going or where we had been. In northern Arizona near the Navajo Mountain and Kaibab Plateau, we could see all the way to Bryce Canyon and into Grand Staircase-Escalante. In Bryce, we could see the Kaibab Plateau and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. In Capitol Reef, we could see the Navajo Mountain as well as Bryce. In each of these places you can see evolution at work, which is really what makes a trip through the region so fascinating. It was an amazing vacation, and I wholeheartedly recommend going there if you've never been.

The theme of the trip was "Stuff We Wouldn't Do with Babies." We went on a few really great hikes, which I'll post about later. In order to get to these hiking spots, we did a lot of driving. I brought a whole bunch of yarn to crochet on the road and accomplished almost nothing in that respect because I spent the entire time looking out the window. As an East Coaster, I hadn't seen a whole lot of desert. We've both been to Arizona, and we've been to the red desert in Wyoming, but northern Arizona and southern Utah are a whole other class of desert all together. For much of the trip, we felt like extras in Total Recall. There were days when we drove for hours through barren lands, only occasionally passing other cars, praying our rented Prius--got over 50 miles per gallon, by the way--didn't break down. Here are some photos from the driving portions of our vacation:

Driving through Colorado


Being Tourists at Four Corners


On the Way to Monument Valley


Storm in the Desert


Near Mexican Hat


Driving through Monument Valley


Thinking About Pioneers


At Lake Powell


Classy Camp Dinner


Monuments, Natural and Not


Bryce Canyon


At Bryce (Kaibab Plateau and northern part of Grand Canyon at back right)


In Kodachrome Basin (great campground!)


Capitol Reef


In Arches

When Cancer Changes Your Appearance

We just got back from spending some time in the states (more on that soon), and my inbox was jammed with messages from most of August. One of them was an email to let us know that a friend's husband had an article published in The New York Times. The author, Brian, has been struggling with illness for most of his life and yet manages to maintain a positive outlook that puts most of us to shame. We know about his story through his wife, whom we met at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which serves as a spiritual home to some of the most amazing and kind people we have ever met. Anyway, you can read his article here. Brian also keeps a blog, which you can read here.

Gardening Successes

I finally have a cucumber! Well, it's not really a cucumber, yet, but it's got potential.


And some early green onions. They're still working, though. The best part about them is that I can clip off the greens anytime I like for cooking, then harvest the bulbs in the fall.

Fort Xander

We recently had a visit from our buddy Ira, who is just about the most adorable one-year-old on the planet. Xander decided to entertain him by building a fort in the living room. I sat by and watched, happy Xander was getting some baby time. This is the guy who, when I stumble into the kitchen most mornings in search of coffee, unexpectedly bursts forth with the statement, "I want babies!" To which I say, "Yes, dear, but can't I have some coffee first?"






I think Julius might be hoping for babies, too.

Add Some Stiles to Your Dials

Back in New York, where we young and poor and happy, we used to spend Saturday nights in the summer listening to the radio. I would make dinner while we listened to Prairie Home Companion, then we would sit down to eat and listen to Big Band Sounds with Danny Stiles, the self-proclaimed "Vicar of Vintage Vinyl." This may sound like a pathetic way to spend a Saturday night, but we loved it. We had nothing. We lived in the smallest apartment you've ever seen. We called it "Wall View," because the view from our window was of the wall of the adjacent building. To see if it was sunny out, you practically had to stick your head out the window and turn it sideways. But we were really happy there. And Saturday nights were the best.

Anyway, when we left New York, we fell out of the habit of listening to the radio on Saturday nights. But every now and then I still get a craving for Big Band Sounds. Not that long ago, I decided to check to see if we could tune in to the show from Canada. And in the process I found something even better. You can stream Danny Stiles 24/7. It's like an audio time capsule. So anytime I feel like taking a trip down memory lane, I can.

God bless The Internets.

Morning Math

Julius likes to help solve problems. We haven't yet had the heart to break it to him that Xander's lap will soon be filled with babies.

Immigrant Haikus

I was going through some old emails recently and came across an exchange with my friend Molly. Molly and I occasionally send each other random haikus just for fun. We write haikus about work, about school, about city life, and basically anything that strikes us as odd or amusing. Molly is a rather talented haiku writer--much more so than I am--and we all hope one day she will publish a book of her New York haikus. Maybe if we're lucky, she'll grace us with a haiku or two in the comments. Please?

Anyway, I came across the following haiku that I sent to her last winter that pretty accurately reflects my mood back then. I remember that day very clearly. I had waited over half an hour in minus-something-or-other-degree weather for a bus that never showed up. I was ignored at the boulangerie because I stood in the wrong line. And then I couldn't understand anything the woman behind the counter said to me. I cried over my pain au chocolat. It was pathetic.

I just want to say
Desolée pour mon francais
Comment dit-on "ugh?"

As much as I'm enjoying summer, as the days grow shorter and shorter, it's hard not to let thoughts of winter creep into my mind. I know it's coming. I remember how traumatic it can be. But I won't think about that now. I'll think about it tomorrow.

Works in Progress

We've got a whole bunch of new things planned for Molasses this year. There will be more scarves, necklaces, and goofy stationery as well as (we hope) a selection of affordable "Recession Toys" made from recycled materials. Here's a sneak preview:

Beads


Purple Alpaca Scarf


Felted Mice


Lacy Summer Scarf


Baby Blanket


Warm Winter Scarf and Hat Set


Colorful Pull-Through Scarf

Preparing for January in August

Xander and I work hard to eat locally-grown food as much as we possibly can. As you might imagine, the growing season in Quebec is rather short, so we've been freezing and canning a bit this summer in preparation for winter. Last April, I was ready to claw the eyes out of anyone who mentioned potatoes. This year, although we don't have the ability to put away food to feed us all winter, we'll at least have some summer treats stocked away for those days when we need something that isn't a lentil or beet.

Finally!

Casualties

I love Mad Men. Love it. Xander does, too. Just like with our other TV obsession, Lost, it started innocently. We watched an episode online. And then another, just to see what happened next. To reach a good stopping point, you know? Then, as we watched episode after episode after episode, we realized there is no stopping point. We had been sucked into a world in which we understood exactly what it meant to need a fix, just one more hit. Just. One. More. And really, we promise, it will be the last one...

We had discovered televised heroin. And we liked it.

Having used up all of the available Mad Men episodes online, we entered a period of forced rehabilitation. But we know a new season is coming up, and we want in. Sure, we were okay without it for the last few months, but we're starting to get antsy. Really, really antsy. We dug around online, searching the farthest reaches of Internetland for a season three hook up. Alas! We found none. In desperation, I decided to contact our old supplier to see if there was anything he could do:

Dear CTV,

I have been combing the internet to find out if CTV will carry Mad Men Season 3, but I have had no luck. Will this be part of your programming? Online or on television? When will it begin?

Thank you very much for your time.

Alana

I waited, hoping for news. A few days went by. Nothing. And then, I finally got a response:

Dear Alana,

Despite it being a critically acclaimed remarkable TV series, we simply could not achieve the viewership to justify a renewal. The series spills into most Canadian markets on AMC (there is no opportunity for simultaneous substitution) and is also available on major VOD platforms - 2 areas that ultimately cannibalized our ability to commercialize the series to where it needed to be. In an economic environment such as we find ourselves today, it meant we had to make tough choices in terms of renewals. Unfortunately, Mad Men is one such casualty.

Sincerely,

CTV

Crushed.

So seriously, Canadians. Help me out here. Where can we get our next fix? I need one. Badly. I'm starting to get, uh, a little, uh, crazy. You know. You know. I feel like, you know--what's that moving on the floor over there? Is that the carpet? Is that a cigarette? My skin's itching. Is my stomach getting bigger? Am I pregnant? Oh god. There's a man walking down the sidewalk outside. He's got a briefcase. He's looking in our window. Oh god. That bottle of scotch is starting at me. Uh, I, uh...

Um, In Case You Haven't Noticed, We Do Not Live in a Post-Racial Society

Nothing, I mean nothing, annoys me more than hearing privileged white folks cry "racist!" I'm not saying that racism only goes one way, but none of the whiny people we've heard from recently are suffering from anything except fear. There are a handful of white people out there who appear to be scared shitless that they are becoming minorities. They've reacted by behaving like uneducated fools. And for the most part, I really believe Americans will recognize that these people are acting like idiots. But I know there are pockets of people who will agree. People who only want race to be a factor when it's their own on top. They're more than happy to benefit from generations of white privilege, they're comfortable making judgments based on their white experience, but they go bonkers when they hear a Latina woman admit that her perspective as a minority might be inherently different from theirs.

I read a couple of good articles along these lines last week. The first article came from the New York Times:

The one lesson that everyone took away from the latest “national conversation about race” is the same one we’ve taken away from every other “national conversation” in the past couple of years. America has not transcended race. America is not postracial...Beer won’t cool the fury of those who can’t accept the reality that America’s racial profile will no longer reflect their own.

The second article is the result of a project in which several parents got together to discuss what it meant to be white, how white privilege works, and what they can do to raise anti-racist children "from the ground up." The article comes from Anti-Racist Parent:

Paying attention to how our child becomes white is about a lot of things: and we already know that we don’t know half of them. Sometimes it means paying attention to all of the ways in which being white gives her a kind of “get out of jail free” card, a kind of free pass into better jobs, more income, and less stress and struggle...

Raising white children is really about just plain raising our children to pay attention to all of who they are. We can’t protect them from anything. The best we can do is prepare them to carry the tools they need to weather the multiple storms their lives will bring them. That’s why we call the work we are doing with our young children, “laying the groundwork.” Our intent is to support them to experience themselves and the world around them in a way that will feed their ability to not only do anti-racist work but also be anti-racist “from the ground up.”

To me, I think the most important thing to recognize is that becoming anti-racist is a daily endeavor. And I think it's worth the effort, because I believe most of us are aching to heal these wounds. But people need to stop expecting that everything will just fix itself, that we'll all just wake up one day and have a "post-racial society." Moreover, it's not as though race is the only civil rights issue we have to conquer. We still have women's rights and gay rights to work through. With so much to accomplish, we need to stop pointing fingers and get to work.

On This Day in History


On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was launched in Japan on Hiroshima and, three days later, on Nagasaki. You can read the original New York Times article here. The Exploratorium in San Francisco has launched an online exhibition of photographs taken after the bombing in Nagasaki by the photographer Yosuke Yamahata.

I remember awhile back when the Smithsonian was working on an exhibition on the Enola Gay. There was a lot of controversy over what information should accompany the exhibition. There were many who believed it would be irresponsible to exhibit the Enola Gay without discussing the aftermath of the atomic bomb and the effects it had on the citizens of Japan. Those opposed, and there were a lot of them, believed that it would be unpatriotic to consider the possibility that the bombings had been a mistake. (The common argument has always been that the bombs ended the war early and thus prevented further casualties, a convenient argument that of course cannot be proven.) The popular view won out, and the exhibition ultimately "told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender." Years later, the Smithsonian added a small section about the atomic bomb to its permanent exhibition. This exhibition did briefly consider the effects of the atomic bomb on the citizens and included some photographs of the devastation. I'm not sure if it is still there, since I have not visited the history museum following their recent renovations.

If you have never seen photographs of the aftermath, I recommend looking at the Yamahata exhibition. To me, it highlights the worst of what we are capable of as humans. Maybe it's because I spent so long working at a Holocaust museum, but I firmly believe there is little to be gained from only looking at the positive moments in our history. If we know as individuals that we sometimes learn the most from our failures, then perhaps we should extend that to our identity as a nation. We have to resist the urge to cover up and defend what is ugly. In doing so, we cheat ourselves of valuable opportunities to grow and risk the possibility of repeating our mistakes.

Gatineau

Our friends Bret and Robin, proud owners of an automobile, invited us to come along on a camping trip to Gatineau, a park just north of Ottawa. We couldn't possibly turn down such an opportunity, so we loaded up last weekend and spent a few days in the woods. Gatineau is not quite as isolated as the other parks we've been to, so it was a bit noisy. But otherwise it was a great weekend. We ate great camp food, played an amazing battle of Munchkin, hiked, canoed, heard loons sing and watched them dive for fish, took naps, encountered bear, chased away a raccoon who was determined to get into our tent, got eaten by mosquitoes, ate s'mores, and had an all-around excellent time.














AND I perfected a new dance to help keep the mosquitoes away. Yes, everyone you hear in the video is making fun of me, but they all had their faces eaten off and I didn't.