Happy (Actual) Halloween

I'm still engrossed in British history thanks to my Kings and Queens book that I posted about on Monday. If I were much younger, this book would have driven me to sew myself a cape and to insist on wearing jewels to the grocery store by now. I was that kind of child. When my class studied Native American culture in grade school, I built a teepee out of pink bed sheets and a clothesline in the basement and spent several afternoons pounding corn in a bowl I made from salt dough.

Since I'm an adult now, I just blog endlessly about the subjects that interest me. Especially when they make such excellent Halloween reading. I'll even make some connections between literature and British history for you, because I'm feeling librariany today.

Number One
Classic Halloween Literature: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

Kings and Queens Connection: Robert the Bruce of Scotland died of leprosy (probably) in 1329, but on his deathbed he arranged to have his heart removed after his death and taken on crusade to the Holy Land by Sir James Douglas. Sir Douglas was killed en route to the Holy Land, so Robert's body was buried at Dunfermline Abbey and his heart was buried at Melrose Abbey.

Recent Literary Selection to Complement Gory British History and Poe: Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness creepily illustrated by Gris Grimly

Number Two
Classic Halloween Literature: The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
This is a picture book but it is in NO WAY intended for children.

Quote from Gashlycrumb Tinies: T is for Titus who flew into bits.

Kings and Queens Connection: James II

Quote from Kings and Queens: He was killed at Roxburgh Castle, in 1460, when a cannon exploded next to him and blew him to pieces. (page 71)

Number Three
Classic Halloween Literature: Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Okay, so maybe people don't rush to read this on Halloween, but it's got witches.

Kings and Queens Connection: In the Shakespeare play, Macbeth kills Duncan (his predecessor) in his home. In reality Duncan died in the Battle of Pitgaveny. Macbeth ruled in Scotland from 1040-1057 and never seems to have suffered any twinges of guilt from taking the crown. One of Duncan's predecessors was treacherously murdered in someone's home, though. Kenneth II was murdered by a noblewoman who "prepared a bizarre contraption: a statue bearing a golden apple connected to a number of hidden crossbows, which were set to fire when the apple was lifted" (page 59). Kenneth took the apple.

Recent Literary Selection to Complement Study of Macbeth: Enter Three Witches by Caroline Cooney

There are so many more interviews with dead people I'm going to have to conduct after finishing this book. Was it really necessary for you to kill Edward II in such a brutal way?

Happy Halloween!

The Marmots' Pumpkins
I love the bitty teeth.

Happy (Almost) Halloween

My friend with the dentist husband and I were discussing Halloween last week. At her house, they're giving out toothpaste to trick-or-treaters. They must. It's part of the Dentist's Oath. And I must become a spinster with fifty cats. I had to promise before they would give me my master's degree.

When I was growing up, there were certain houses on the trick-or-treating circuit that always distributed the same things. The Dentist gave us tooth brushes and The House You Have to Go to First Before They Run Out had full-size candy bars and the McKeen House had homemade popcorn balls that were only received after reciting a poem or riding on a broom around the kitchen or doing a trick. But the best house. The house to be visited right after the full-size candy bar house, was the Wonder Bread house. The man who lived there worked for Wonder Bread and LOVED Wonder Bread and shared Wonder Bread with the neighborhood every year. His mail box was painted like a loaf of Wonder Bread and he and his wife gave out little, child-sized, individual loaves of Wonder Bread.

A tiny loaf of bread was a special treat o' my dreams for several reasons. One of the main reasons was because we didn't eat white bread in my house. I had to visit the neighbors to eat fiber-free bread. And, the other important reason, it was child-sized! I took my loaf home and I played house with it on my child-sized toy dishes until I couldn't stand it anymore and cut the loaf into as many pieces as possible (to make it be MORE) before devouring it.

Those neighbors racked up some seriously good karma.

I recommend SONDRE LERCHE

This is a song from the soundtrack of Dan in Real Life with a clever animation that ends about 30 seconds into the clip. Sondre Lerche is the musician and he's making me very happy today. Sadly, my favorite song from the movie, My Hands are Shaking, isn't available on YouTube, but you can listen to it here.

Being Friends with Shakespeare

I buy the 800s (mostly literature not housed in the fiction collection) at work. In our library, the 800s are like the mistreated step-children of the Dewey Decimal System. The budget for the 800s is very small, because no one in our town reads poetry, plays, or literary criticism at the public library. So, I choose a different section of the collection to address each year, and the rest of the section gets neglected until it becomes the lucky winner for fix-up another year, when I have a new budget.

The last couple of years I've been adding mostly to the writing section, because everyone in town is writing a novel. I know this, not only because of the circulation statistics, but also because the would-be authors ask me how to contact J.K. Rowling so they can chat with her about having her ghost write their work. (I DO give them the contact info and then I send out a little silent Sorry into the universe for J.K.)

This year, I decided it's time to bulk up our Shakespeare collection and replace our battered copies of plays that were purchased in the 1960s. While I was going through the list of Shakespeare's plays, I realized that I'm REALLY close to having seen all of his plays. I've already seen some of the snoozers (I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare's historical plays, except for the version of Richard III set in Nazi Germany that I saw back in the day at the International Cinema) and the creepy ones like Titus Andronicus, so it seems logical to just go ahead and finish watching the rest. (Knowing almost nothing about science, math, and geography, it seems wise to become as proficient as possible in some area of study.) I dragged home Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline from the library last week, and I've finished the first two (seems I left the plays with the most lechery for last).

In preparation for finishing the historical plays, I picked up The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Kings and Queens of Britain, which is a BEAUTIFUL book, broken up with each ruler receiving a two-page, well-illustrated treatment. It's wonderful if you need to know that Eleanor of Acquitaine is the mother of both King John and Richard the Lionheart or that William the Conqueror was so obese at the time of his death that he came spilling out of his coffin or if you happen to be morbidly fascinated by Richard III's murdered nephews who were found (scientists believe) buried in the Tower of London (and I AM).

Now go to your libraries and check out as many books from the 800s as you can carry, so you stop causing your librarians to despair. And if you live in my town, check out Henry IV, Part I. The version from the Marlowe Society hasn't checked out since 1995.

The Librarians

It would seem that Australia is a smarter country than all the other nations of the world, because they are about to produce a TV show called The Librarians (which, you will recall, I think is a grand idea). As much as I want to see a show about librarians, I'm not entirely sure this one is going to meet my expectations. The trailer didn't fill me with an all-consuming joy or even make me laugh. Possibly because I couldn't understand all of the dialogue. My Australian translation skills are not what they should be.

Imaginary Conversations

Sometimes I imagine conversations I would have with dead and/or fictional people.

Like Wednesday when my sister and I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. At one point, Harry's concerned that he's becoming Voldemort because he's so angry all the time. My sister leaned over and said, "Maybe that's your problem right now. Voldemort." It's not, but I would like to sit down with Harry and discuss our rage.

MBC: So, Harry, why so angry?

Harry: Well, you know the entire wizarding world thinks I'm a liar but I'm also their only hope so, there's kind of a lot of pressure on me right now, but I'm too young to be in the Order and no one's telling me what's going on. And Voldemort keeps trying to kill me. The guy's such a jerk.

MBC: Yeah, I get it. Mean people are the WORST. They make me mad, too.

Or last year, I lived in this 98-year-old house so my roommates and I ripped out a lot of the carpet and repainted most of the first floor, including the ceiling in the kitchen. The paint was light colored, so we had to use primer and then two coats of paint. Every time I worked on the ceiling, I'd imagine chatting with Michaelangelo in the next life over some cold drinks (I'm fond of apple juice).

MBC: Man, ceilings are so hard to paint, right? How long did it take you to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling?

Michaelangelo: About four years. How long did it take to paint your kitchen ceiling?

MBC: Oh, probably two hours. That was spread over a few days. I live in the 21st century, though, so my quality of life is higher than yours and I expect everything in my life to be easier. And no one's impressed by my painting feat even though it was HARD.

Michaelangelo: It's a hard knock life for you. (I anticipate that Michaelangelo will have seen the movie Annie by the time we chat.)

And this morning I was thinking about the times when I see a book review and think I MUST read that and then I check the library catalog and we don't own that book and THEN I think, Why hasn't the buyer for this section purchased such a fabulous looking book?! and THEN I realize that I'M the buyer for that section and I buy the book immediately and crow to myself, I can do that because I HAVE THE POWER, which leads me to believe that I need to have THIS conversation with He-Man (because he had the power, too).

MBC: He-Man, how did you remain so humble even though you HAD THE POWER and were always defeating Skeletor?

He-Man: Well, I always wore those tiny, fur man panties. Keeps a guy humble.

MBC: Good point. You had really terrible hair, too. Sad day for you.

Good (?) Food

Yesterday I started reading Hidden Kitchens:Stories, Recipes, and More from NPR's Kitchen Sisters. So far, FASCINATING. If you read and enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, there's a section on the Ojibwe rice harvest that discusses fears about genetically modified rice harvests that you'd appreciate and there's a section about homeless communities who manage to cook for themselves using George Foreman grills and there's just story after story about food culture and traditions specific to certain populations, communities, or families. Which got me thinking about the strange food habits of my family and friends.

There are foods that would never be served to guests that are still extremely satisfying to eat. Almost essential to eat in some circumstances, because they are so comforting. My best friend in the 2nd grade was named Rebecca, and she taught me how to make fairy bread--white bread coated with butter and sprinkled liberally (think quarter of an inch high) with sugar. I would NEVER have been given this to eat at home (although I suppose I did eat cinnamon toast). We sometimes got sugar cereal as a a special treat at Christmas time, but even then we ate it as a snack, not as breakfast. However, every few years, I would come home from school, and my mom would be standing at the stove making a fried bologna sandwich for herself, a comfort food that makes me queasy. I've heard tales of Marmot Dad's childhood tang balls, Tang powder smashed into bread, and every now and then I really crave a fried potato sandwich for myself. Fried potato sandwiches violate my personal food rules. It's just a starch (a fried starch!) piled onto another starch with ketchup, but it's so delightful! I think the woman who cut my hair when I was a very little girl in Kentucky first made me a fried potato sandwich. Bless her heart.

Favorite comfort foods and odd creations?

Rageaholicism

Tomorrow my sister and I are having a Grand Day Out (marmot-free), so there will be no posting. Today you get two posts to compensate.

The last week I've had several run-ins with library patrons. Wicked library patrons. Patrons who stand next to No Cell Phone Use signs and argue with me about the rule and patrons who tell me, after I spend fifteen minutes helping them use their email, that they're disappointed because I wasn't really helpful because after I left they couldn't figure out how to hit send. (Nevermind that she didn't ask me for additional help and that if a person can't read the word send and think to click that button if one would like to SEND something, maybe email shouldn't be one's chosen form of communication!) Which is why I feel a certain kinship with the woman in this news article. Not that I condone violence, but sometimes you just want to hammer something. And in my experience with telecommunication companies, they could all do with a little hammering. Also, the title, Woman fined for hammering Comcast office, strikes me as very funny.

P.S. This other article about the hammerer is by Neely Tucker at the Washington Post. Tucker is the author of Love in the Driest Season, a memoir about adoption, that you should read.

Choctoberfest

Last night was Choctoberfest (a holiday that a friend found on another blog--the same friend introduced me to Julymas; she's such a giver). Our Choctoberfest consisted of pumpkin carving and chocolate eating. I considered a more elaborate celebration, but I was too tired. You really can't go wrong with any activity that you refer to as Choctoberfest, though. It's all about the name. If blood drive organizers knew this, blood donation would increase. Come participate in our quarterly Transylvania Heritage Service Project. Or leave out the term service project and just call it a festival. Transylvaniafest. Instead of serving Lorna Doone cookies, the organizers could distribute sugar cookies shaped like bats or Count Chocula cereal. And instead of a t-shirt, participants would receive fake vampire fangs. Everyone who gave blood would be entered into a drawing for Twilight or Blood and Chocolate or The Historian. There you go. I'll be solving the rest of the world's problems with snappy programming ideas later tody.

Pumpkin carving is not one of my strengths.

Weekend Update, Part 1

This weekend I went to the Pumpkin Walk in Cache Valley. Local groups and individuals create scenes using pumpkins. It's a little bit like food sculptures, which I whole-heartedly support. Boiled eggs for breakfast? Very nice. Boiled eggs that look like mice? Happiness on a plate.

Five Little Monkeys Jumpin' on the Bed
(I like the monkey on the right, who's already fallen off and broken his head.)

Hairspray
(I think it's freaky how much this actually looks like John Travolta did in the movie.)

The rest of the weekend went kind of like this:
1. Stayed overnight with friends in Logan

2. Visited one of my childhood homes

3. Tried to visit the book I wrote in the first grade that's in a Northern Utah library's collection (it was CHECKED OUT--apparently, it has greater literary merit and appeal than one might imagine a book about a princess and a chicken who play soccer would)

4. Perused the cheeses at an international food store (was sorely tempted to buy digestive biscuits)

5. Hung out in the lobby of a Comfort Inn for a couple of hours (the desk clerk was extremely kind)

6. Had dinner with three of my college roommates, one sister of a roommate, and four babies

Babies are nice.

Beauty

My sister and I aren't terribly skilled in the cosmetic arts. Neither of us wear makeup on a regular basis and I didn't learn to use a curling iron until I was in college. I never paint my fingernails and when I tried to paint my own toenails last year, I failed miserably. I attempted the toenail painting right before going to a party and after my paint job turned out badly, I couldn't find polish remover so I spent all night saying, "Are you looking at my toes? Stop looking at my toes. I know I did a bad job. Stop looking at them!" (MBC, you ask, Why not just wear socks and shoes? I don't want to talk about it.)

Madames 3 and 4-yr-old wanted to paint their fingernails and toenails this week, though, so I hunted up my sister's fingernail polish. Bright red Wet 'n Wild purchased for 99 cents (it still had the tag) in about 1985. Good stuff. The Madames and I set up camp in the kitchen on some newspaper. They stuck out their tiny hands and toes, and I painted them very badly. The Madames are so small! I couldn't even see some of their toenails, so I just dabbed paint in the area where it seemed like a toenail should go. Fortunately, they have no sense of style, so they were very impressed with themselves and with me. Madame 4-yr-old told me, "I'm going to preschool tomorrow and I'm going to look so faaaancy." My sister instructed Madame 3-yr-old to wave her hands in the air to dry them. She did. Vigorously. And then she waved her feet, too, which is how I got paint on my jeans. Little weasel.

If I Were Profane, There'd Be Profanity Here

Disclaimer: This is my personal blog. I maintain as much anonymity for myself here as possible, and I do not want to identify any of the people or even the city discussed below. My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my family, friends, or employer. I never vote straight party line and I dislike ugliness and confrontation in politics. I generally avoid writing anything online that involves politics at all, but today I’m breaking that rule. Okay?

P.S. Disclaimer: And anything that sounds like a death threat is, of course, not. And the amusing parts of this post are toward the bottom.

My sister and I attended an open political forum this week to hear our city candidates discuss the issues before the upcoming election. Our candidates are mostly conservative and pro giving-all-our-tax-money-to-businesses-and-development, which probably lines up with the views and desires of a lot of the city’s residents. The moderator asked questions about air quality, recycling, energy conservation, and sustainable development, though. The candidates were mostly non-committal in their responses. One candidate, though. The Candidate Who Is Going Down. He completely dismissed the questions and spoke about the issues as if they had no importance and would not be addressed by him at all, which is SO short-sighted for two main reasons.

Reason 1—Environmental and sustainable development issues have a lasting impact on the overall health of the city and if they aren’t addressed now, they will have to be addressed in different forms at a later date. Probably at a greater cost to the city (and he was quite clear that he cares about money). AND those issues are important to a lot the country (oh, and the world! Why did Gore just win the Nobel Prize!?). To completely disregard those issues assumes a lot about the concerns of the country and the community.

Reason 2—Environmentalism matters to some of the population of the city, and those people need a voice, too. If a candidate is so dismissive of issues (so dismissive that the candidate doesn’t even acknowledge the issues), he’s going to lose voters. And make enemies. As my sister was leaving she told me, “Now I’m not just NOT going to vote for him, I’m going to assassinate him.”

He doesn’t have to raise orphaned endangered animals in his back yard or even promise that the city will move to solar power, but a candidate for a public position should AT LEAST acknowledge that there are issues that may not personally interest him that still concern potential constituents.

He seems like a pleasant enough guy except for owning a share in my neighbor’s slave ship (which is all I can assume after hearing his comments), but he’d better watch out if he gets elected. At my sister’s house, the My Little Ponies pack heat.

The One About the Frogs

This event was VERY funny in real life. I'm afraid it's not going to translate well onto the blog, but you'll all learn an important lesson, so I'm posting it anyway.

I was at a dinner party at my sister's house Sunday night. We were talking about frogs' legs (What? What do you talk about at your dinner parties?) and the conversation turned to a story that I guess gets told in Sunday School classes. Or it used to. I'd never heard it. Here's how it goes: If you put a frog in a pot of hot water, he'll jump right out. If you put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually turn up the heat, though, he won't notice that he's being cooked up for a tasty dinner treat, and he'll stay in the pot. The idea is that, for example, you might not have ambitions to be a drug dealer, but you start smoking those candy cigarette things and the next thing you know, BAM, you're selling crack off your back porch. (My sister used a different example of a vice you could slide into, but I'm not going to repeat it here, because it would bring ENTIRELY the wrong kind of Google traffic to the blog.)

So, we're talking about frogs in pots and how they hop out, when my sister's friend pipes up, "Oh, they DON'T jump out. They just die." We turn to look at him. "No, you put a frog in a pot of hot water and he will NOT jump out." The frogs get cooked either way. And my sister's friend knows this because he TRIED IT OUT. He put a frog in a pot of cold water and turned up the heat. Result? Death! And he put a frog in a pot of hot water. Result? Also death. He assures us that he wasn't trying to kill frogs (and I believe him, because he's a very nice, soft-spoken attorney), he was just testing analogies.

So, you realize what I'm saying, right? Stop with the analogies! They're usually bad, and now we know that they're also incorrect and result in actual amphibian deaths. There's probably a frog drowning in a bucket of cream right this instant, because someone's been reading Sam (or is it Charly?).

Toe Blog

Right after I started this blog, I went with my parents to Cedar City. My mom hurt her toe and all through the trip she was very fond of updating us on her toe situtation. She told me that if she had a blog, it would be about her toe, and she started referring to her verbal updates as her toe blog. I'd get up in the morning and she'd say, "Toe blog: my toe looks black and blue, but I don't think the toenail will fall off" or "Toe blog: I wrapped my toe back up and I think I can wear tennis shoes today."

So, last night I had my own toe blog experience. I was getting ready to go out, and I was just about to put on my boot when two of my toes cramped up. They were not in normal toe positions. Very unpleasant. Very painful. I sat down on the floor and I explained to my toes that we were a team and needed to work together and that I didn't relish being lame at the age of 29.

I considered the treatment options available in the four minutes I had available before my ride arrived. I remembered that foot cramps come from a Vitamin E deficiency sometimes. Or was it Vitamin D? Potassium? I couldn't remember, but I hobbled into my kitchen and dug out the mulitvitamins I've ignored for the last year and took one, hoping that the appropriate vitamin would be immediately dispatched to my toes. (I knew that ice cream and hash browns for dinnner was a bad idea!) Then I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the healthiest looking thing I could find--a red pepper. Lots of vitamins, yes? I ate it.

And then I had a sudden, miraculous recovery. The Miracle of Science. I'm going to write to the Mayo Clinic and tell them all about it. Those multivitamins are amazing.

Toe blog: all toes are functioning properly.

One Quick Thing

I was just going through a purchase order and realized that Alex Bradley (or Jeremy Jackson, who I introduced you to a couple of weeks ago, because I am a friend to authors, especially if they can cook and remind me that I love cornbread) has a new book out called Hot Lunch. Go check it out of your library so that Jeremy Jackson will be my friend and because it's fiction (ya) that includes recipes, which is the best kind of fiction. AND in my library, one of the subject headings is Cooperativeness--fiction. Cooperativeness?! Is that a real word?

No Time for Blogging

I have a funny story about frogs in pots from a dinner party at my sister's house last night, but I don't have time to blog right now, because my desk looks like this, so I have to clock in and work my pants off. Good blogging later. I hope.

My Worst Job

I usually really love my job, although I sometimes experience cell phone induced rage. The other day I had to ask five people in two hours to take their cell phones out of our quiet area (preferably to the trash compactor). Everyone I talked to was shocked and indignant that I would request that they to take their loud, cell phone using selves somewhere else to discuss their hot tubbing adventures. I was shocked and indignant that library patrons (library patrons) can't read signs that say No Cell Phone Use Allowed. I could really use a taser at work. Or muzzles. Or voodoo dolls. And, yes, I have a cell phone, but I use it VERY courteously.

So, I'm saying that my job is good (you maybe couldn't tell that that was the point for a minute), but I have had a couple of terrible jobs. The worst was a temporary job. I accepted it before the temp agency told me exactly where I'd be and what I'd be doing. I was directing phone calls. At a used Mack truck dealership.

Every day I worked there, I perched at my desk between fake plants, watching daytime talk shows on a teeny, tiny TV. Every hour or so a salesman would come lean on my desk and tell me dumb and/or sexist jokes. My supervisor was a woman named Tammy with long, bright red fingernails. She met me my first day and told me all about how she had a degree in fashion but had accepted her current position right after graduation and had been there for twenty years. Having just finished graduate school, this made me want to shave my head and enter a state of eternal mourning. I could see my future and it wore acrylic nails.

I stuck it out for as long as I could, which I believe was five days. Then I called the temp agency to tell them I couldn't work there anymore, called my friends in Indiana to say I was on my way to visit them, and left the state (just for a few days of Turkish food and thrift store shopping with the friends fortunate enough to still be IN grad school). And that is how I came to apply for my current job. I had a job that made me realize there were much worse things than ending up back in Utah. The end. Moral taught.*

Worst job experiences?

*In case you didn't catch that moral, it's that if your mother suggests you apply for jobs in Utah to, among other things, assist your pregnant sister and you resist, you will be punished by working in a used Mack truck dealership. Or at a Hummer dealership if there's not a Mack truck dealership handy.

Utah Festivals 101

Since the USF is still fresh on all our minds, let's talk about festivals. I LOVE them. And I love lists. So, here's my list of Utah festivals in the order I prefer them.

1. Utah Shakespearean Festival - Cedar City
I started attending this one when I was 7-years-old. Still my favorite, despite the high price of tarts. While you're in Cedar City, visit Ye Olde Catholic Thrift Shoppe and the Pastry Pub and hike at the national parks farther south.

2. Timpanogos Storytelling Festival - Orem
I go to Laughin' Night, when all the stories are very amusing. Donald Davis performed this year. The man is a genius.

3. Soldier Hollow Classic - Midway
You know how I feel about this.

4. Sundance Film Festival - Park City
I think I'd like this festival more, if I received swag like the celebrities do. Some years I see great films and sometimes not. It's always a gamble. The film I enjoyed most there was The World According to Sesame Street, a documentary about developing Sesame Street for different cultures.

5. Scottish Festival - Thanksgiving Point
Lots of food, lots of kilts, lots of bagpiping (sometimes too much), dancing, sporting events (caber toss). Discount tickets are available, but it's worth the admission price even without.

6. Festival of India - Spanish Fork
Held at the Krishna Lotus Temple. The highlight (for me) is the burning of the 25-foot effigy of Ravana. Throwing rocks is not discouraged.

7. Freedom Festival - Provo
Provo really, really believes in the 4th of July. Maybe too much. I like the old-fashioned hearse in the parade and I had some tasty Peruvian food this year. Nothing says Happy Independence Day like food from Peru.

8. Lavender Days - Mona
Lavender Days lacks focus. You'd think the focus would be lavender. Not so. Among other things there's jousting and a Western shoot-out and paddle boats. Lavender Days is all things to all people. My big complaint is that there's not enough good festival food. I'd also like to see more food cooked with lavender (and perhaps a Lavender Queen).

9. Utah Arts Festival - Salt Lake
We attended during the day. It might be better at night, when there's more entertainment. There was a lot of amazing art, though, and I enjoyed the film screenings.

10. A number of Church pageants - Various Locations
The Church pageant is not my favorite forum for doctrinal teaching. I don't really enjoy the dancing or show tuney songs involved. I recognize that these pageants have their place and they have meaning for many people. I'm just not one of those people. In Utah I've seen the Martin Harris Pageant (Logan area), the Manti Pageant (Manti), and the Castle Valley Pageant (Castle Dale). The Castle Valley Pageant includes a little pioneer village you can visit before the performance, and I did like the village. Volunteers make pioneer foods you can sample and there are games and wagon rides. There's also a very elderly man who talks to the audience about early Castle Valley history. I liked that as well. It was like hearing stories from a grandparent.

Favorite festivals I've left off the list? Places/events I should be experiencing while I'm in Utah?

21 MORE Things About Me

I'm too tired today. It's always easy to come up with a list, though, so here's the continuation of 21 Things About Me. Someday I'll make it to 100 and then won't we all be happy and fulfilled as human beings? Yes. Yes, we will. But we won't be able to play two truths and a lie together.

1. I'm not a good bike rider.

2. After I read about 50 billion books about blind kids in grade school, I sent away for a card with the Braille alphabet so I could prepare in case I was suddenly struck blind. I practiced punching out "braille" with a needle on an index card. Mostly I practiced writing the name Melinda, because that's what I wanted my name to be if I became blind.

3. My radio is tuned to KUER.

4. My hair has never been colored, permed, or in any way chemically altered.

5. I studied Russian for several years in college and studied IN Russia one summer, but the only Russian that still easily rolls off my tongue is the sentence It depends on what you want to eat.

6. I'm the youngest child in my family.

7. The book that made me decide to be a librarian is Do They Hear You When You Cry? (If you plan to read it, be aware that it goes on a little too long.)

8. I own 5 DVDs. They were all gifts.

9. I like Thanksgiving leftovers better than Thanksgiving dinner.

10. I stopped drinking carbonation when I was 12.

11. My favorite Hamburger is the Hire's Big H.

12. I love airports.

13. I hate gum.

14. Modern dance is my favorite form of dance. I took a class in college and choreographed a dance about my Russian textbook.

15. I never reveal who I vote for in elections.

16. I love movie trailers. Sometimes I check out movies from the library, watch the trailers, and return them.

17. My favorite game to play with a group is The Great Dalmuti.

18. In the last 5 years, I've moved at least once every year.

19. My greataunt calls my eyes gander blue, because, apparently, they're a very specific shade of blue.

20. I've never taken a geography class and it shows.

21. Good punctuation makes me swoon. Funny, since I'm not a good punctuater myself.

I Do Not Care For Bugs

There are bugs in my house occasionally. They are very small, reddish, Box Elder beetle-looking bugs, so really not a bad bug as far as bugs go. All the same, I do not care for bugs. For some reason bugs seem to enjoy bathrooms. I meet them there often. As a preventive measure, I now do a visual inspection of my bathtub and shower curtain every morning before undressing and showering. There's nothing worse than meeting a bug foe while naked.

Compared to the bugs at my parents' house, the bugs at my house are NOTHING. In fact, no bug in Utah is as bad as a Southern bug. I'm about to put in a link to the bug I hate most in the world, but I'm warning you first. Seriously, DO NOT click on the link unless you can really, truly handle bugs, because the bug I'm about to unveil is seriously wicked nasty. Okay, if you want to, you can look at a cave cricket. They are my worst enemies. They live in my parents' garage and they come creeping into the house at night and one time there was one in the shower with me and I had to jump out and scream for my ever-loving mother to come destroy it. But they're hard to destroy. They JUMP.

Madame 4-yr-old on the other hand loves all animals ("except when they eat each other"). Madame 3-yr-old likes most animals, but she used to dislike "biting dogs."
MBC: How can you tell which dogs are biting dogs?
Madame: They have teeth.

For fun, Madame 4-yr-old likes to play with a set of cards featuring pictures of bugs and birds. Last year she made me play with her. Madame was good at the game (which involved turning over a card and identifying the animal and then letting the other person turn over a card), because she loves animals. I was good at the game because I can read the labels on the cards. I had told Madame about how I dislike bugs and how they sick me out and how I make Mom take them away, and Madame remembers EVERYTHING. So, Madame turns over a card and it's a bug. She pats me on the knee and says, "I know you don't care for bugs, Aunt. Try to be brave of bugs like me, though."

Chatting with the Police

So, here's a fun conversation to have with the authorities.

MBC (On the phone): Hi. So, um, I'm planning, with a group, to build catapults to use with our leftover Halloween pumpkins in November, and, well, um, are we going to get in trouble for that?

Officer: You . . . ? Wait, what do you want to do with your pumpkins?

MBC: Launch them. As far as possible.

We're probably not going to do that now, though, because it's "technically illegal." It's considered LAUNCHING A MISSILE! Snowball fights are actually a legal infraction, too. A snowball fight is just a big, organized missile launch. Oddly enough, I think dodgeball is still allowed.

Patron of the Arts

Saturday I went to Cedar City to see The Mousetrap as part of the Utah Shakespearean Festival's fall season. It rained and snowed on us the whole way there. Then we arrived and there were busloads and busloads of teenagers. I now formally apologize for any pain I inflicted by being part of a 250-member band in high school that regularly descended like a plague on eating establishments and hotels. I'm so sorry. I didn't know what a scourge we were.

The play was excellent, though. I'd never seen a play in the Randall L. Jones Theatre before, although I toured the building when I was in grade school. I was so intrigued by the vomitoriums. Such an excellent idea. We were up in the balcony Saturday, but I don't think there's a bad seat in the theater. Nice design.

As I was leaving the show, I saw a poster with Michael Sharon's photograph. I, of course, stopped to investigate. Yuletide Theatre Tour of London sponsored by the Festival in December. With my imaginary boyfriend. I put in my leave request this morning. Merry Christmas to me!

How Tuey Got His Name (as Promised)

Months before Tuey was born, my sister asked the marmots (purely for entertainment purposes) what she and Marmot Dad should name the new baby. Madame 4-yr-old considered and decreed that a girl should be named Tullah and a boy should be named Lucy. Nice. So, we started referring to the baby as Tullah. Sometimes we even prayed for Tullah instead of for the baby.

Tuey enjoying a cupcake on his birthday last week.

And then the baby was born and given a completely different name and the little girls protested. Hadn’t we all agreed on Tullah? They REFUSED to use the baby’s name. They would only call him Tullah, and, this is my favorite part, at the time, both girls pronounced their ls as ns. Think about it. Yep, they called him Tuna. Fortunately, they’re very good at shortening the names of the people they love, so Tuna quickly became Tuey. Or Tooable Cooable. Or Baddy Boy. Or the Best Goodest Baby in the World (I think that’s how that one goes). Or sometimes he’s Baby Jesus and the girls run through the house yelling for him, and the rest of us wait for the lightning to strike.

Growing up, we had friends whose names (Mark and Alicia) I didn’t know for years, because we called them Dude and Weedy. I suppose Tuey’s in good company.

Cover Art

We recently switched to RFID (Radio Frequency ID) at the library. Because of the change, we had to tag our entire collection. We weeded the collection as we went, a process librarians use to discard outdated, unpopular, and unattractive materials. A large selection of the teen books I discarded were from the 1980s and featured the most awkward cover art. I'm a child of the '80s and I remember thinking that the cover art for certain books was just lovely. I was especially fond of the fetching outfits the members of the Babysitters Club wore.

I discarded a lot of books solely because I know I won't be able to convince teens to pick up them up with the 1980s covers, even if they ARE good books. (I also got rid of almost all our Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew books. It made me feel like the anti-Librarian, but they don't circulate in our library anymore.)

Sadly, I didn't save the best covers and most of them aren't available online. I found a couple of good ones, though, and I did save one of my favorites.

Nothing but the Truth by Avi
This is a Newbery Honor book. We still own it, but it hardly ever checks out. To get teens to touch it, I have to do a whole song and dance and crawl on my knees cryinging, "Mea culpa, mea culpa! I'm the one who keeps it in the collection! I KNOW that the boy on the cover has terrible hair and that you would NEVER wear jeans that color, but you WILL like it if you just mentally block out the offending image of the boy who looks like half my sixth grade class did in 1989." I looked for a newer printing of the book to replace our copy this week, but they're still selling it with this cover!

I don't think you can really see how special the kid's hair is.

Steal Away by Jennifer Armstrong
I don't understand this next cover at all.

This is the annotation from our book vendor:
In 1855 two thirteen-year-old girls, one white and one black, run away from a southern farm and make the difficult journey north to freedom, living to recount their story forty-one years later to two similar young girls.

That's right. These girls are living in the year 1855 (or maybe 1896), and they're wearing blazers with huge shoulder pads, pegged pants, and scrunched up socks. They're dressed like the girl from "My Two Dads." The abolitionists are going to send those girls packing, when they see those pants.


Looks Aren't Everything by J.D. Landis
This is my favorite. I saved the cover. I think you all understand why.


The Lady Investigates by Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan
I really do like this cover. I saved this one, too, because I think it's excellent. It's from a book in my 800s collection (well, it's not there anymore). I'm trying to think of something I can turn it into to preserve the art in a useful way. Suggestions?

I recommend ICELANDIC-STYLE PIZZA

A few weeks ago I went to lunch with a friend and her little boys. We ate at a pizza place I was briefly addicted to, where, this particular time, they put pepperoni on my vegetarian pizza. Seems like a hard mistake to make. Most people understand that vegetarian = pig free. It was all fine, because it just meant that I got two pieces of pizza--one vegetarian and one vegetarian plus (plus pig). It made me think, though, about Pizzas I Have Known and Loved.

In two or three of my college apartments we made pizza every week for months at a time. We threw on whatever we had in the refrigerator for toppings. Lunch meat? Okay. Meatballs leftover from our spaghetti dinner? You bet. French fries and squash (not kidding)? Bring it on! I've since become more discriminating. When I was in Iceland a couple of years ago, though, I had an oddish, but very good pizza experience that reminded me of my college pizzas.

Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands off the South coast of Iceland
I think Kirsten took this picture.

My friends and I stopped in a pizza place in a small town and had a four cheese (provolone, mozzarella, brie, and romano) pizza, which was lovely. But THEN, our server, angel girl that she was, told us that we needed to eat it with jelly on top, which SOUNDS repulsive but is divine. Makes sense--brie + fruit = mmm. I haven't tried to replicate it at home, but I think this month I will.

My sister makes a really nice pizza with chicken apple sausage, and she made one with homemade pesto, tomatoes, and good mozzarella for Tuey's birthday that I couldn't stop eating.

What are your favorite pizzas?

I recommend CORNBREAD (and Jeremy Jackson)

I read Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant last weekend. There are some great essays in the collection. I especially enjoyed the contributions from Steve Almond (so far, Steve has never done me wrong), Ann Patchett, Laurie Colwin, Jeremy Jackson, and the woman who wrote about being an asparagus superhero (can't remember her name). One of the recurring themes was that when people eat alone, they eat the same things again and again. Because they can. They like it. I completely understand this. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, feeling so pleased with my life, because I can eat my favorite potato salad every day for every meal that week and no one will complain or tell their teachers who would then have my home investigated by social services because of it.

One of my favorite essays was by Jeremy Jackson. I think I developed a little bit of a crush on Jeremy Jackson when I was reading his essay about black beans and cornbread, even though he looks like he's about 12-years-0ld. And I think I can only refer to him by both names. Jeremy Jackson. I looked him up, and it turns out that Jeremy Jackson's pen name is Alex Bradley, and I've read his YA novel, 24 Girls in 7 Days. It's a mildly popular book in our library. I think it's okay. Jeremy Jackson's nonfiction writing is wonderful, though. As soon as I read his essay, I ordered one of his cookbooks, The Cornbread Book: A Love Story with Recipes for the library (ahhhh, sweet 600 buying power). It won a James Beard Award, so I feel justified.

Also inspired by Jeremy Jackson's essay, I made a pan of cornbread to go with my lentil soup this weekend. (There are only two ways I enjoy eating lentils--cooked up with sausage and rosemary or in the soup I made Saturday. In high school, I requested that my mom never make lentils on Mondays, because I couldn't handle eating a food so closely related to dirt on a day that was already a challenge for me.) Delightful. I didn't have enough cornmeal, so my cornbread had more flour than it was supposed to, which gave it an unexpectedly springy, creamy texture. I kind of grooved on it. Very comforting on a cold day.

I recommend JANE EYRE

I'm so glad I have a public forum, so I can boss lots of people at the same time now.

First up. Watch the new Jane Eyre originally broadcast on Masterpiece Theatre in 2006. It's available on DVD now and it's the best Jane Eyreadaptation I've seen.

A few months ago, I started going through a classic-book-turned-to-movie phase, so my supervisor (there are definite perks to having a young, single, British-man-loving supervisor) loaned me North and South, Wives and Daughters, and Bleak House. Then another friend loaned me the new Jane Eyre. Bless her little soul! A new and unexpected joy has entered my life.

I was already a fan of Jane Eyre. I own my grandma's matching print copies of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. They were published in 1943 with super creepy wood engraving prints, and my grandma dug them out of her garage one year and let me take them home. I was in grade school and I thought they were VERY fancy. I like the 1996 version of the movie, too. Amy and I snuck out of our apartments in college one night to watch it at the International Cinema together. I much prefer the new version, though. I'm preparing my black armband and veil for the time when I have to return the DVDs to my friend.

Here are the movie's main strengths:
1. Toby Stephens, who I consider a real treat, plays Mr. Rochester. He also stars in a wonderful 1996 version of Twelfth Night and in the less wonderful but still not bad adaptation of Possession. It's very easy to see how Jane could forgive a little thing like a wife in the attic with Toby Stephens playing Mr. Rochester.

2. It's the only version of Jane Eyre in which I actually want Jane and Mr. Rochester to get together because I like both of them, not just because they've been set up as the hero and heroine and Mr. Rochester is the only man around for miles. The development of the relationship between the two characters is nicely done.

3. The movie summarizes Jane's early years and then skips ahead to the Thornfield years. We know. She was an orphan. Everyone was mean to her. Her only friend died. It's not the most interesting part of the story, and I was happy to have it remain brief.

4. It plays on my TV without developing weird, wavy lines through the screen. The only movies I can watch without the lines are BBC productions and The Muppet Show. Very strange. I have no solutions.

So, suggestions for book, movies, music to fill the void after Toby Stephens leaves my home?