Friday, February 29, 2008

Wahoo!

What I got in the mail today:

Dear Darlene:

I am pleased to tell you that our judges have selected your poem, “Patriarchal Blessing,” as the recipient of the Mary Lythgoe Bradley Poetry Award for the best poem published in Dialogue during 2007. This award was established by Mary Lythgoe Bradley, a former editor of Dialogue and a highly esteemed poet. The amount of the award is $150, as you see from the enclosed check. An announcement of this award will appear in the summer 2008 issue of the journal.

I am personally pleased with the judges’ decision to make this award to your poem, which gets at the heart of the Latter-day Saint institution of the patriarchal blessing better than pages of prose. I appreciate very much the signal contribution that you make to Mormon literature on many fronts.

Thanks for your friendship and for your support of Dialogue.

Sincerely,

Levi S. Peterson
Editor



And here’s what I sent to Levi via e-mail.

Levi,

You can’t imagine the thrill of joy I got upon reading your letter, which informed me that my poem “Patriarchal Blessing” has been awarded the Mary Lythgoe Bradley award. Well, you were a beginning writer once—maybe you can imagine it. Anyway, poetry in our culture is a too often lonely and unacknowledged endeavor, and so the award was extremely heartening to this still-very-beginning poet. I want you to know that, in my case at least, this award is doing exactly what I’m sure you all have hoped it would: it is encouraging me to continue.

The check is also very welcome. Being on a tight budget, any money that I wish to spend on my writing (including subscriptions) must come from my writing, and I’m happy for the class this money will help me to afford.

More than that, though, I’m grateful for your kind personal note. Your letter made my day and will keep me going for many months. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Darlene Young

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Book Report

Well, with the cruise and all, I've done a wee bit of reading this month. Here's a run-down.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.
This one came very highly recommended. (Well, and it’s won a Pulitzer Prize, so there you go.) It’s a novel that is told like a memoir. The author even got some old-fashioned (real) pictures of people and put them in the middle of the book, as if they were really the characters the book was about. For me, this wasn’t one of those hard-to-put-down books, but it was interesting and I enjoyed it. Shields did a fantastic job with point of view, which I am always interested in. It was cool to see how the way a person imagines her parents (or others around her) as being, the things she imagines they are thinking, affects her whole view of life. I loved especially the section at the end in which the main character approaches death—really fascinating. I would recommend this book to others, especially people who enjoy memoir.

Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni. A novel that takes place in India, primarily, about two cousins that were born on the same day and have always shared a deep, sister-like bond. There's all sorts of mystery about the background of this family that is revealed a little at a time with a big whopper at the end. I found it pretty interesting, even for just the exposure to the Indian culture, but it wasn't highly gripping for me. A pleasant and interesting read.

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs. Here’s one I couldn’t put down. It is non-fiction, and details the author’s (A. J. Jacobs) quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Besides containing fascinating tidbits that he passes along from his reading, it’s hilarious. Being a passionate reader myself, I was fascinated by the interaction between reader (Jacobs) and text (encyclopedia). He does a good job of putting enough of his personal life into the story, and connecting it with his reading, that it is almost like reading a novel. One of my best reads of the whole year.

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson. (Yes, this is the Shirley Jackson who wrote “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner.”) Some friends recommended this one to me in their shock to discover I’d never read it. I’m so glad they did! I had read an excerpt from it, but never the whole thing. It is a sort of memoir consisting of scenes from Jackson’s life as a mother. All stay-home moms should read it. Very entertaining—perfect cruise book.


The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. Another one of my absolute top reads for the year. Thanks to Johnna, my Sci-fi guru, for putting me on to this one. It takes place in the near future in a society in which the gene that causes autism has been discovered, and genetic therapy has made autism almost a thing of the past. But there is still a generation of autistic people who have not had the therapy, and who are living their lives relatively easily because of behavior modification. Then there comes word of a new surgery that might possibly “fix” the autism, and the main character must decide whether he should have the surgery. (Sounds a little like one of my other favorites, Lying Awake, in which a nun who is epileptic must decide whether to have surgery to fix it.) But there’s more too it—a sinister sense of manipulation on the part of the employer who is pushing the autistic people towards surgery. This aspect of the novel makes it harder to put down as well. I loved this book.

Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl. Well, I told you I love reading about food. You might have heard of Ruth Reichl’s other book, Tender at the Bone. I haven’t read that one but it’s been on my list for ages (couldn’t get it from the library). This one I got easily, so I read it. I really enjoyed the food descriptions and, well, the whole book, but it was slightly irritating, too. Reichl is not my favorite person, or favorite voice to read—a little to self-conscious, I guess, or self-congratulatory. Or maybe I was just sick of memoir by the time I read it. Still, it was a good and enjoyable read.

About Alice by Calvin Trillin. This was a little tiny book I picked up on impulse from the library’s “Reader’s Choice” table, and I’m really glad I did. It’s a short little celebration that Trillin wrote about the life and character of his wife, Alice. Apparently he has written many humorous pieces about her, but felt that these pieces hadn’t told the whole story about his wife. I wished this book were longer, and plan to see if I can get a hold of some of Alice’s own writings, because she sounds fascinating. She has written about dealing with cancer and other serious illnesses.

Fifty Acres and a Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas. Another memoir, this one about Laskas’s impulsive purchase of a 50-acre farm and how she comes to adapt to farm life. I guess it’s a sort of modern The Egg and I but I found myself skimming most of it and just wishing I had read The Egg and I again instead. This one tries to be cute and funny but it was mostly a yawn for me.

Bound on Earth by Angela Hallstrom. Well, I’m almost done with it for the second time (third for some of the stories in it!) and loving it just as much again. I’ve already said a lot about this book, but I’ll say it again: BUY IT! OWN IT! You’ll love it, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve contributed to the greater good of Mormon Letters. Each story leaves me aching—out of love for the characters and envy that I didn’t write it myself. I love the situations Angela chooses to write about, love the way she immerses us in POV so that we feel deeply with the characters. What a writer!

Friday, February 22, 2008

What I didn't write

I have a confession to make (brace yourself): I am a lousy cook.

It’s hard to admit this. Because I love food. I love thinking about food. I even love thinking about cooking food. I love to read recipes, food blogs, cookbooks. I fantasize about cooking.

But when it comes to actually doing it, I don’t really like to. And I’m terrible at it.

It’s tough for me, because I’d really like to think of myself as a good cook. Once, when we invited some friends over for dinner (which I had made carefully from other people’s recipes), they looked at the table and smiled and said, “I’m so glad you have a pepper grinder. We just knew you guys were the types to be good cooks.”

I just smiled. Because that pepper grinder was a wedding present. Actually, I don’t care for pepper. But I really, really liked this couple, and I really, really liked them thinking I was a good cook.

So I guess I’m the type of person that SHOULD be a good cook. Can that be good enough? Can you just try to think of me as “Darlene who could probably be a good cook, had she been born with the talent?”


And all this applies to the other thing I would like to think of myself as (but I’m not). And that is the author of Angela Hallstrom’s book, Bound on Earth. Now, Angela is my friend and knows that I mean her no malice. She also knows that I don’t mean to imply that I could or should have been the author, particularly IN HER PLACE. I don’t mean that at all. I’m truly, truly ecstatic for her. I’m just saying that I’d really like to be thought as someone who could have produced that book.

Because--well, obviously it’s because it’s a darn good book. Also because she and I could be twins in the kinds of stories we like, the kinds of situations we find interesting to write about. And also because the kind of people who are going to like her book are just the kind of people I want to like ME. I want them to think I’m the type of person who could have produced it.

And don’t even get me started on gardening. Alas to be poetess and actually have no interest in gardening. Sigh.

(Something about this reminds me of Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice, who declares something like, “I know I would have been a great pianist if I had taken the time to practice.”)

So. Well.

Anyway, if you don’t mind, please go on thinking of me as a good cook, a good and fascinating writer, and a tasteful and clever gardener. Oh—throw in interior decorator, too. I wouldn’t mind that.

However, I have no interest in being a scrapbooker. You can just skip right over me in your thoughts when it comes to that.

And after all this, I guess I won’t be able to convince you to come to dinner anytime soon, right? Well, come enjoy the hot tub, anyway. I do love to talk. That one I don’t have to fake.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Travelogue #5: Panama Canal

And thus we come to the whole point of this vacation. Which was to spend eleven days away from the kids. No, which was to observe the Panama Canal. (Truly, it was to celebrate fifteen years of life with the sweetest, kindest man I know. But the Canal was a bonus.)

So anyway. I had been preparing for this trip by listening to David McCullough's book, The Path Between the Seas, which is a really great telling of the history of the canal. Or would have been, if I had finished it before we left. As it was, I got a good grip on the pre-history of the canal, all of the intrigue and scandal associated with France's failed attempt at building it. But having only listened to it on the treadmill and once, disastrously, while "resting" (I fell asleep after only a minute or two and then had to rewind an hour of the thing maually because my mp3 player is cheap) I really had gotten through only about half of it. But it was good (still is) and I highly recommend it.

It is tradition for a specialist to board the boat as we approach the canal and then narrate, over the outdoor speakers and ship's TV system, each step of the crossing. And that would have been really cool if it had worked--but as it was, the outdoor speakers were only situated in places that had obstructed views. So we missed what was probably the most interesting aspect of the crossing because no one thought to put a speaker on, say, the front of the boat in the best viewing spot or on the lower sides.

I set my alarm early so that we wouldn't miss it, but, as usual, awoke an hour before my alarm and then had to check the time every five minutes after that. Finally, I just dressed and thought I'd go grab some juice before we got in. Good thing, because it turns out we were arriving sooner than had been announced. Here's the first thing I saw:



These are the lights of the locks as we headed towards them. And we very slowly drew closer and closer:




Although we didn't see it (because it had happened in the dark, on the other side of the ship), when we got near to the locks, some guys in a rowboat had rowed out to the ship and brought some cables to be attached to our ship. Here's a picture of the rowboat which helped leave later in the day.



These cables would not be used to propel/pull us at all--we go through the locks under our own power--but would be attached to some very powerful engines (called "mules") that would run along tracks on either side of us. Here's a close-up of one of the "mules." I exchanged a small conversation with the driver.







The mule tracks along our side:




So then we pulled into the lock:




Once inside, we waited for the water to fill from the lock in front of us. That one got its water from the one in front of it, which got its water from the lake, which is above sea level. The water is piped through tunnels from one lock to the next. As it pours in, our ship rises.

Here we are waiting for our lock to fill. The ship on the right was just ahead of us in the process.




Then, once we are on the same level as the lock in front of us, the gates open and we move out:




A close-up of the gates:




Here's what it looks like behind us after we've moved out. Notice that the bay is much lower in level than the level of the locks. You can see another ship, behind us and to the right (on the left side in this picture), beginning the process.




The whole process was incredibly fascinating to me.





We waved to the workers along the locks.




There is a road that is retractable for local traffic to cross the canal. The ships always have the right-of-way, though. (I'm told that our ship had to make a reservation for this crossing more than a year in advance, and that the cruise company had to pay a fee of more than $100,000 for it. I guess that's where our ticket-money went.) So when we were passing through, the traffic backed up and the people in the cars and busses got out and watched us go through. Here's the moveable road:




While we were in the locks, we were within about a foot of the walls of the lock. Roger could reach out and touch the side. But only when we first entered. Then, of course, the lock would fill and our boat would rise too high for us to touch the side.




The water used to fill the locks ends up out in the bay. Here you can see it pouring out of the tunnel and into the bay.




We didn't get off the boat during the crossing, but we could tell from the where we were that Panama must be an amazingly lush and beautiful country.






Our friends who went into Panama City said that it is extremely poor (where did athat $100,000 end up?). What a strange juxtaposition of technology and poverty. I will never, ever forget this experience.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Travelogue #4: Adventures

We didn't spend all of our shore time at beaches. Being the wild-n'-crazy kind of guys that we are, we signed up for some adventures as well.

The first big adventure was at Costa Rica. We had Oscar take us to "Jungle Breezes," which is a place in the rainforest where some smart guy came up with a great idea to make money. After you fork over a wad, you sign lots of waivers saying you really, really won't sue them if you die, and then you don your safety equipment.



(I never could get my helmet to sit straight.) So then you climb up to a platform in the treetop, get hooked up, and go flying:



As you can see, the jungle is amazing. The scenery is fantastic, too: we could see across the city, way down to the beach from some of the platforms. We were truly right in the middle of the jungle. Look closely and you can see who else was enjoying the treetops:



We went on twelve ziplines, some very long but none very fast. They were too fast, though, for one lady in our group, who had to climb down after the fourth zip. (She would have climbed down after the first, but there is no way to the ground from the second, third and fourth platforms.) We felt sorry for her, but we had a blast.

Our next big adventure was going through the Panama Canal, but that one's going to get its own post, so stay tuned.

In Grand Cayman, we decided to splurge a little and do something I've wanted to
do ever since our honeymoon cruise: parasailing. Rog wasn't as interested as I was, but he was willing.

First we took a little motorboat ride out into the harbor:



The water was so blue and we could see flying fish all around us. Then we got strapped into the harness:



And then we had liftoff:



The wind from the speed of the boat just lifted us right off the boat. It felt very gentle, as if we were bobbing along in a balloon. Then, as the boat kept driving, we just drifted up.

Going, going . . .



Gone!



It was so quiet and pleasant up there. I was doing backbends to look at the sky, then swinging down to look at the sea. I had a blast!

It's tradition, apparently, for the guy working the winch to tug it in just enough, at the end of the ride, to dip your feet into the water. We watched him do it to the people who flew before us, so we didn't panic when he brought us close to the water:



Only he miscalculated a little and ended up giving me a lapful of water! As he was reeling me in, he called up to me, "Sorry!" I replied, "Well, it's your tip!" He answered, "You're still out there and I've got the rope. You wanna rethink that?" When I got back into the boat with my pants soaking, I joked that I had just gotten a little too excited up there.

Coming in:







You can tell I didn't have fun at all. Roger said, "Let's do it again!"

Friday, February 15, 2008

Travelogue #3: Beaches, etc.

3 of our 4 shore excursions were to primarily beachy areas. Roger and I are definitely not beach people. We hate feeling sandy. We can't figure out how to keep the sunscreen on without spreading sand around with it (and therefore end up very exfoliated but also very itchy). We tend to hide in the shade. But I really like to jump in the waves (if and only if the water seems clean and very warm), and I had a great time splashing at all three of the beaches we visited.

The first one, in Aruba, was probably my favorite overall, despite the fact that it was the least convenient. That's because the people in Aruba don't believe in public bathrooms. There are lots of hotels around, and the beach we ended up on had a hotel nearby. Now, I'm a terrible liar and worse actor. (I had to quit my job as a secret shopper for just this reason.) So it was very hard for me to walk into a hotel at which I was not staying, acting all nonchalant, and slip into the bathroom to change my clothes. Roger's not much better, so we ended up using a bathroom only once on the afternoon we were in Aruba. Which means it was a short beach day. But that was OK, since, as I said, we're not big beach people and we were about done anyway.

Before we got to the beach, though, we walked around Aruba (Oranjustaad) for a little while, and ran into these guys.






They are everywhere, I tell you. Also roosters ran wild, too. (They ran wild at the other places we visited as well. We asked one tour guide whether people catch them and eat them and he said, "No one can catch these guys.") I don't think people catch and eat the iguanas, but you never know.

Most of the businesses were closed in Aruba (we found out later it was because it was a holiday, and not because of the Natalie thing, which was breaking news that very day). It was kind of eerie. And neither of us is a very brave tourist anyway, so we wandered around feeling awkward for quite a while until Roger spotted one of the cruiseship employees and asked him advice about the bus to the beach. Once that was settled, we were pretty cheerfully on our way.

Here's the reason I liked the Aruba beach best:




Yes, Roger was there, too. (You were beginning to wonder, weren't you?)



We're talking the whitest of the white sands (even whiter than me!) and the bluest of the blue water (although Grand Cayman came close to this) and waves big enough to jump into.

In Costa Rica (Puerto Limon), our tour guide took us to a beach (yes, it had public restrooms) where the natives hang out. I liked this beach for its waves, which were fantastic. Some of the natives were even trying to surf. The water wasn't as clean, though (although very warm). And we were anxious about our stuff being stolen (which proved to be a reasonable anxiety when Roger caught a young woman making off with his sandals).





I guess the waves were too good in places. At one point, our guide, Oscar, got a phonecall from another tourgroup leader in another part of the city who informed him that a tourist from one of the two cruiseships in town had just drowned trying to surf in Puerto Limon. Oscar wasn't sure which ship the tourist was from, but it was a 50% chance that he was from ours. We didn't hear any more about it, but I doubt the captain would have made an announcement if it had been from our boat. What a way to end a vacation, huh?

We saw some other interesting things in Puerto Limon. Oscar was a native and knew how to give us a taste of the real Costa Rica (we think). He drove us through town and out into the countryside where we stopped at the "home" of a friend of his. Here's his friend:



His friend had set out a little table with some native fruit for us to taste (I've forgotten the name of most of them). And Roger got to interact with this guy's pet . . .


. . . sloth. Oscar also took us to a Del Monte banana plantation.



I guess it's because we are programmed to, but we felt sympathetic for all of those poverty-stricken, hard-working workers on the plantation. But Oscar really emphasized that the plantation workers are NOT poverty-stricken. Rather, their jobs are considered quite good because, although the hours are long, the pay is good and the workers are provided with free houses. We saw the houses and they were not bad at all. I was a little concerned when I saw kids trying to help with the work, but then Oscar told us it was a school holiday and all the kids were off.

The third beach we tried out was in Grand Cayman. This beach was almost as beautiful as the Aruba beach, and a lot more convenient because there were restrooms, umbrellas and beach chairs for us to use. The sand was not quite as white as Aruba's and the waves were pretty darn puny, but the water was just the right temperature and felt great to play/float in. Here we are being beach bums:






We really enjoyed the walk back to the pier from the beach on Grand Cayman. We passed a lot of tidal pools that were fun to peek into.

I'm sure we saw some of the world's most beautiful beaches on this trip.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Travelogue #2: the boat again.

Did I mention that this boat was big?


Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Travelogue #1: the boat

Well, my apologies for the next few posts. It's snowing outside and I miss the sun. So I'm going to drag you through my vacation. I figure, for the amount of money we just blew on this thing, I should get to publish as many pictures as I want. So click away from here if you don't want to see more than you ever saw of me before (yes, we're talking swimsuit pictures). I'll never know you didn't stick around. And don't mind me if I munch on chocolate mints while I post these. I have a few leftover from our pillow tops each night.

So I thought I'd start out by describing life on the boat.

This was no dinky rowboat. It was easily the biggest ship I have ever seen. When we left the ship to go on our shore excursions, I would check out other people's ships, kind of like checking out other people's dates at prom, and I always felt proud that ours was the biggest and fanciest of all of them.

This was our fourth cruise. Always I have enjoyed the days at sea as much as I enjoy the days on shore. I love just hanging out and enjoying life aboard. There is so much to do! This ship had three different swimming pools. Our favorite was in the "Solarium." Here's what it looked like.

The water was cold seawater, so I mostly stayed in a deck chair reading (see a later post for all my book reports), but I enjoyed the hot tubs at night.

Of course, eating was a big part of the vacation. Every meal was huge. I would tell myself I was going to stick to granola for breakfast, and then walk by the buffet and see blueberry pancakes, omelettes, french toast with strawberries on top, etc., and my resolve would weaken. By the last four nights or so, I skipped the entrees completely because I just couldn't eat any more. Their caesar salad was incredible, so I could call it dinner and feel OK about eating dessert. By the time you leave the cruise, you are pretty good friends with your table mates and your waiters. Here is our waitstaff, Idris and Vicky. The people we sat with just happened to include a couple who live in South Carolina (where Roger served his mission) who are LDS. It was fun to hit it off with them immediately.

Sometimes the meals were "casual" and sometimes they were formal. Here we are ready for a formal night.

If you look close, you can see that Roger is wearing some medals around his neck. He won three of them onboard, two for ping-pong and one for rock-climbing. The rock-climbing made him somewhat of a celebrity on the cruise. We had people stopping us all the time and mentioning it: "You're the guy who scaled the wall so fast, right?" He was very proud. I was proud of him, too. (Think about it--there are not many sports you can excell in when you are six feet tall and weigh nothing. Those long arms are perfect for this sport.)


Here he is all proud after winning.

While he was busy climbing, I was doing other things . . .


. . . like bellydancing.

And playing a little ping pong myself.

And figuring out how to wear my new scarf.

And watching what was going on out at sea.

We enjoyed the evening entertainment each night and the movie theater on-board. My favorite thing, though, was retiring to our cabin for naps in the afternoon and for bed at night. There were always mints on our pillows and some towel-sculptures from our cabin steward. Here's our favorite, a monkey that we found hanging from our light fixture.

This time we saw and did some amazing things on our shore excursions, but life on the boat is still my favorite part of cruises.

Next post: beach time.

P.S. Please let me know whether the videos work. They work for me when I preview the blog, but when I just access it they don't work. I just get a little red x in the corner. Why is that?