Happenings in Honduras

Well, our hope that Darren would come home from Honduras without having to deal with civil unrest there has gone unfulfilled. The Honduran military, acting under order of the Honduran Supreme Court, ousted President Manuel Zelaya yesterday and carted him off to Costa Rica, igniting a great deal of controversy in the region. Predictably, the Obama administration immediately condemned the action, citing concerns about "democracy" and "constitutional order" in Honduras when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Zelaya was doing his chavista best to subvert those very notions, and that the legislative and judicial branches of the Honduran government weren't simply going to sit by and let him do it. (It's telling that Zelaya's successor in office is a member of his [Zelaya's] own party!) Just why else would a close ally of Crazy Hugo (not to mention of "Compa" Fidel) attempt to force a referendum on the question of abolishing presidential term limits -- when the Honduran constitution expressly provides that only the Congress has the power to initiate such a referendum (actually, due to the nature of the change, I understand it would require a full-blown constitutional convention) -- if he weren't angling to become another socialist "president for life"? I doubt that the Obama administration will use any real clout to try to get Zelaya reinstated, but what worries me is that Crazy Hugo is just crazy enough to start a regional war with precisely that aim in mind.

Of course, all of this is of secondary concern to me after Darren's safety. We received a call from his mission home yesterday after the ouster, and we were told that all of the missionaries have been ordered to stay in their apartments for the time being. It's conceivable that an emergency evacuation of American missionaries will be necessary, and in that case it is likely that Darren would simply come home earlier than planned. I can't say I'd complain about that, but it would be a disappointment to Darren, who truly has loved his time in Honduras.

Bouldering at U-Mound, II

This video shows me doing the left side of the "Brett and Jill" boulder at U-Mound in the Sandia foothills on June 27, 2009. (I was there on an outing with the 11-year-old scouts in our ward.) I hadn't climbed it in a while, so I was a little "sketchy" -- hence my having to grab the edge of the arete at one point, a move that turns what is otherwise a V1 problem (steeper than it looks from this angle) into a V0 problem. But at least I can still get up the thing. What strikes me most about this clip is the fact that I'm not quite as flabby, at least when viewed from behind, as I tend to think of myself. Watching this video also causes me to realize what limited range of motion (due to bone structure -- not, say, arthritis) I have in my hips, which explains why my running stride is so short and choppy, and why my footwork, when rockclimbing, tends to be less-than-optimal.

South Peak Hike, 6/26/09

John Brewer and I finally got to do the South Peak hike today that we've been talking about for some time. It turned out to be a pretty brutal route. We started at Canyon Estates up near the village of Tijeras, hiking up the South Crest Trail to the junction with the Upper Faulty Trail, which also marks the beginning of the CCC "route," an extremely steep trail that traces a pretty direct path to the South Peak area. That took a lot more out of me than I expected, as I was having to stop every 75-100 yards to let my heart rate go down. The Sandia hiking guide says that CCC "route" is only 1.8 miles from end to end, but John and I have a running joke going about "Forest Service miles" and how they always seem to understate the actual distance. (Anyone who's read Norman Maclean will know what I'm talking about.) From there we hiked up to South Peak, where we ate lunch and then dropped down off the back through the hidden little canyon there that has a thick stand of aspens. Then we descended the west side of the mountain, taking the Embudito Trail to Oso Pass and then heading west on the ridge route (or "Whitewash" Trail) all the way down to the top of Menaul Blvd. In many ways, the hike down was almost as hard as the hike up the back side, but we wanted a challenging hike and definitely found one; however, in the end I had a great time. The photos above show (a) me striking an heroic pose on South Peak, (b) the view northwest from South Peak, (c) me in the aforementioned aspen grove just off the back side of South Peak, and (d) John on the spur trail leading to South Peak.

National Public Radio

I got into the habit some years ago of listening to "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio (NPR) for twenty to twenty-five minutes every work day (i.e., while shaving, showering, and grooming in the mornings). NPR's news coverage gets a bit of a bad rap from a lot of conservatives for having a liberal bias. Some of that bad rap is justified in my opinion, but "Morning Edition" is diligent about presenting both sides of a lot of issues, anyway. On the other hand, a bland style of delivery (which NPR can afford, due to its being heavily subsidized by the federal government) isn't quite the same thing as complete objectivity. And, as many have pointed out, a news organization can be just as biased in terms of the stories it chooses to cover (or ignore) as it is in how it presents those stories. But I have to say that the one thing that drives me to distraction when listening to "Morning Edition" is NPR's utterly uncritical acceptance of the notion that increasing levels of human-generated carbon dioxide are warming the Earth and rapidly rendering it uninhabitable -- when, in the last ten years, CO2 emissions have continued to rise but global temperatures have not followed suit. In that light, one would think that a news organization without an agenda would at least start to ask questions around the margins of the accepted dogma!

Late June Family Update

Not much is happening right now, but I thought I'd write down a few things. Darren is now less than eight weeks away from coming home from Honduras, and the excitement I'm feeling is already growing unbearable. We've talked to Kiley about possibly getting her into a better cello in hopes that she'll practice hard this next school year and win a college music scholarship somewhere. She's still trying to decompress somewhat from her trip to Australia (see photo). Devery and Easton are still living in Provo, and now Easton has begun a summer internship with Oakland Construction in Salt Lake City -- which means that both of them are commuting by bus for the time being. (I mentioned to Devery the idea of their moving to SLC for the summer, but she didn't think it was feasible since they'd just have to move back to Provo when it came time for Easton to start fall semester at BYU.) They found out that the baby Devery's carrying is a boy, and the name they've tentatively selected for him is "Mason."

Heidi and Dion are still here in Albuquerque, and Dion's son Nolan is living with them for the summer. Kayla is now two-and-a-half, and Heidi, like Devery, has found out that she's carrying a baby boy (tentatively named "Tyler"); thus we'll have two more grandsons come October or November. Kristy and Chris are still living in our ward, and Chris's car-repair shop (which he operates with his friend John) has continued to do good business. Chris now has his car-dealer's license, and their plan is to acquire cars cheaply at the auctions, fix them up, and sell them. Nicole is about to start high school; Zach is currently playing on his Little League all-star team; Alexis will be going into first grade; and Maddy and Hailee are both walking now.

I continue to struggle with sleeping at night. I'm taking Temazepam every other night now, but the nights in between have been a marked contrast, and the usual over-the-counter remedies -- diphenhydramine hydrochloride, Valerian root, L-Ornithine, melatonin -- don't even come close to having the effect of a good prescription sedative. I'm experimenting with the settings on my "VPAP Adapt SV" machine, hoping to find a happy medium between (a) not swallowing so much air that I become nauseous, and (b) not gaining sufficient benefit from the machine, in terms of addressing my sleep-apnea issues, to justify using it.

On a happy note, I plan to go hiking in the Sandia Mountains this Friday, and I look forward to traversing the mountain, from east to west, by a relatively untraveled route -- up the "CCC" Trail and down the "Whitewash" Trail -- visiting South Peak on the way.

"Well, that explains a lot...."

The following comes from the Mayo Clinic website:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. They believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

This definition sure seems to describe a fair number of people of my acquaintance! I read where someone described narcissism as a very labor-intensive sort of condition: in short, its exemplars find it necessary to spend vast amounts of time and energy reinforcing their aggrandized image of self at the expense of, shall we say, "healthier" avocations and relationships in general. Someone else called these people "emotional vampires" -- I'd probably use a more graphic metaphor to describe them, but it serves to illustrate why they should be avoided, even if some of them are victims of a mental disorder that possibly is beyond their control.

[Update 5/19/10: I was just thinking about how people in the "mainstream" (i.e., leftoid) press were accusing Sarah Palin of having NPD after I wrote this post. I've never seen a clearer case of projection in my life -- if anything, it's the media who think they're superior to others and whose self-esteem crumbles under the slightest criticism.]

[Update 12/1/10: I read today that NPD, along with four other personality disorders previously recognized as such, will be omitted from the new DSM-V when it's published in 2013; I guess narcissism is the new "normal."  Jim Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" website has implied that he believes the timing of this omission is not coincidental given the current occupant of the White House.  All I know is that the vast majority of the people I know who display the characteristics of NPD have significantly left-of-center political viewpoints, and they certainly regard themselves as normal, however nutty and unpleasant they appear to others.]

Kiley in Australia

Kiley is back from her Australia trip now, having had a great time with the other kids from the Albuquerque Youth Symphony. They performed a total of five concerts while "down under," including a charity fundraiser in the Sydney Opera House (see the group picture, above, taken across the harbor from the opera house -- Kiley is eighth from the right on the bottom row). Their itinerary was ultimately modified drastically due to predictably overblown concerns about the spread of "H1N1" influenza, which barred them from staying with Aussie families as was originally planned, but that meant they had time for additional tourist-y types of activities. One of the things they had planned to do, anyway, was to visit the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, where the kids got to pose for pictures with a koala (see other photo, above). Overall, it was an expensive trip, but I'm glad Kiley got to have such memorable experiences.

As I expected, Kiley did make AYS again for next school year, although the group's three-year "tour rotation" will have them doing only a "regional" tour next spring, probably staying somewhere within the Four Corner states. (They do a "national" tour in the second year and an "international" tour in the third year.) Coincidentally, whereas the entire group (so far as we know) had "only" four LDS church members this last year, next year's cello section alone will have four LDS kids in it.

More On Our Colorado Trip

Here are a few more photos from our trip: (1) Dorine, Judy, Mike, and I at the Strawberry Park Hot Springs complex near Steamboat Springs, CO; (2) Mike and I at the Continental Divide on the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park; (3) me at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO with a display of photos from the ABC miniseries production of The Shining, in which the hotel was featured prominently (and which I own on DVD -- the commentary on the DVD set indicates that the Stanley was where Stephen King actually conceived the story line for his book [notwithstanding the disclaimer he put in the introduction to the book], which I think is cool); (4) a pair of elk grazing in someone's front yard in Estes Park; (5) outside our suite at the Worldmark resort in Steamboat Springs; and (6) Dorine and I in front of the Stanley Hotel.

[Update 12/22/10: I might also add that the Stanley Hotel was featured in the movie Dumb and Dumber.  It -- at least the exterior, and I don't know about the "interior" shots -- is the hotel where Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels stay when they get to "Aspen."]

Trip to Colorado with Mike and Judy

We're currently on vacation with Mike and Judy P_______ in Colorado. We first spent two nights in Red River, New Mexico, and right now we're in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; we'll spend a total of three nights here, and then we'll stay two nights in Estes Park, Colorado before heading home on Friday. It's been a fun trip so far -- we haven't done a whole lot, but just being able to get away from it all and relax means a lot to me these days. In Red River, we got to see a "classic car" show, which was cool, and we drove down to Taos, saw the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge (see photo above), and shopped and ate lunch. The drive up to Steamboat Springs was longer than I expected; we actually were snowed on in Leadville, Colorado while en route. Today we went to go see Fish Creek Falls, and we saw the town botanical garden; we'll probably find a hot spring to soak in either this evening or tomorrow. Kiley is in Australia at present, and from what we've been able to gather so far, she's having a good time.

The photos above show: (1) Mike walking on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge (near Taos, NM -- where an important sequence of the most-recent Terminator movie was filmed); (2) Dorine and I on a bridge in Red River; (3) the four of us at Fish Creek Falls near Steamboat Springs; and (4) Dorine and I at the Steamboat Springs "Botanic Garden."

Darren's Last Area?

Darren is now serving in a part of Tegucigalpa (or Comayagüela -- I'm never quite sure where the line of demarcation is between the two) called "Country" (pronounced "cone-tree"), and his companion is a hard-working Guatemalan named Elder Polanco. This could very well be Darren's last area before he comes home; he wanted to serve in another small town before he finished, but possibly not at the cost of moving again so soon. His reports indicate that he and Elder Polanco currently have quite a few good investigators, and I'm sure he'd be happy to finish his mission with a few (or a bunch of) additional converts. This photo shows his district. Top (L-R): Darren, Elder Polanco, Elder Chuquimia, Elder Prescott; Bottom (L-R): Hermana Medal, Hermana Hernández. (Is it just me, or do those sister missionaries seem a little too attractive?)

[Update: I've been advised, with a chuckle and an elbow in the ribs, that just about any woman in her early 20s looks attractive to a 50-year-old man. Maybe so!]

"Gee, I always loved to write before...."

I'm finding these days that I have less and less will to write, either on this blog or in my journal; I'm not sure how many people really care, and writing doesn't even seem to have much of a therapeutic effect on me anymore. I used to sit around thinking of topics to write about here, but no longer. I don't really want to try to be a political blogger; frankly, I can't bear to think very much about politics these days. I've already written too many little autobiographical articles. I've expounded on my favorite rock 'n' roll songs, movies, and websites. I've posted too many things that could be construed (or which can hardly be construed otherwise) as critical of the LDS Church. My struggles with cognitive dissonance (bounded on one side by my belief in the divine origin and nature of church teachings and priesthood authority, and on the other by the every-day reality that highlights the seeming absurdity of it all) are ongoing. Unlike many church members, I can't seem to tuck away all doubt into some small corner of my subconscious, or else neatly separate the life I live during the week from the image I try to project to others on Sunday. I could continue writing about my sleep disorder, but it's essentially coming down to this: I can't sleep without my "VPAP Adapt SV" breathing machine, but I also can't sleep with it unless I sedate myself sufficiently to tolerate the nausea resulting from the air the machine causes me to swallow. Either way, I see myself as doomed to having to take prescription sleep meds for the rest of my life -- but, then, I've come to see that the alternative is even worse. Darren now has a little more than eleven weeks left on his church mission in Honduras; it's hard to fathom that the little boy I baptized in 1996 (see photo) will be a full-fledged returned missionary before we know it. I'm almost as scared with respect to his coming home as I was about his leaving! I really need to do more hiking in the Sandia Mountains -- on Memorial Day, I did get to hike up the La Luz Trail, south on the Crest Trail, and down the Cienega Canyon Trail with John Brewer and a group from his ward (who were training for the stake youth handcart trek that's coming up soon), but it only left me wanting more.

Darren's Eagle Scout Project

The three satellite images above show three "zoom" levels of the Carlito Spring area at the southern end of the Sandia Mountains, where Darren did his Eagle Scout service project back in 2005. Carlito Spring was originally a homestead, and back around the turn of the 20th Century it was turned into a dude ranch/resort; in recent years Bernalillo County acquired the property and at last report was trying to make it into a conference center of sorts. Darren's project was to build a footbridge over the creek at a location downstream from the spring.

The broadest view shows I-40 in the Tijeras area--Carlito Spring is the area left of center, to which the dirt road (actually two dirt roads that converge) leads. The intermediate view shows the general area where the bridge is located, slightly northwest of the dogleg in the road. And in the close-up, you can actually see the bridge, which is the lighter-colored structure in the clearing at the center of the image. And, of course, the top photo shows Darren after the bridge was completed. We haven't been back up there since the project, but hopefully the county will open the area up to the public one day soon.

[Update 5/23/12: Only now do I notice that the Google Earth images above date to 2004, or before Darren did his project; thus the bridge does not show up in them.  However, they do show where it was later constructed.  We still haven't been back to the site; I don't believe the county has ever opened it to public access.]

May Update

Not having much to write about these days (or else too much -- where would I start?), I thought I'd post a quick update on what's happening in our family. I didn't do well with Neurontin, the last "leg jerk" med prescribed by my sleep doctor, as it ended up having very debilitating side effects for not much benefit. I've since seen an internist at my employer's medical clinic, and she's given me a few ideas. I will use a steroidal nasal spray, and practice nightly sinus-rinsing with saline, to try to keep my nasal airway more open at night in hopes that I will swallow less air while sleeping. And she prescribed Temazepam, one of what I call the "big three" (i.e., most-effective) prescription sleep meds -- the others being Lunesta and Ambien -- for use on every third night, which I think is a good compromise against the advent of another every-night dependency. (I took it last night and was amazed at the profound effect it had; I hadn't realized how much of a tolerance I'd developed for these medications before quitting them last August!) I'm also going to consult with a staff psychologist about my tendency toward depression; I'm still not sure whether my sleep deprivation drives my depression, or vice versa, but I do know that past a certain point it all adds up to a downward spiral.

Dorine and Kiley are looking forward to their summer break, although both have a lot to do before the school year ends. Kiley will be going to Australia in a few weeks with the Albuquerque Youth Symphony, and, based on her audition last week (which I think was the first one I've ever seen her come out of smiling), I'm confident she'll be in AYS again next year. Darren has been out on his mission now for almost 20 months and has three months and change left; based on my own experiences, I know how hard it is to stay focused on missionary work with that little time remaining, but he still seems pretty engaged. We'll be talking to him on the phone this Sunday for Mother's Day.

Devery and Easton, of course, are still in Provo, where Devery, now 15 weeks pregnant, continues to commute to her job in Salt Lake City and Easton is attending spring classes at BYU. Heidi, who's probably about as far along as Devery is in her pregnancy, seems likewise to be doing well. Chris's auto-repair shop thus far has done good business, and we certainly hope things continue that way. The twins, Maddy and Hailee, are still cute as buttons and I love to play with them whenever I get the chance. Dorine and I hope to take a vacation with Mike and Judy in Colorado while Kiley is in Australia -- we'll see how that works out.

I can't wait to start hiking in the Sandias this summer; the first hike I want to do is an east-to-west traverse, from Canyon Estates (in Tijeras) to the eastern end of Menaul Blvd. (in Albuquerque), via the CCC Trail, South Sandia Peak, and the Whitewash Trail. John Brewer, who by a curious turn of events is now my supervisor at work, wants to do that hike with me, and several other people may come along.

(The attached photo was taken right after Darren's birth on July 7, 1988, at what was then called St. Joseph's-West Mesa Hospital.)

On Turning 50

Well, I turn fifty years old today, which I guess is a notable event in one's life, although I don't see much cause for celebration. When I turned forty, I still felt pretty young, even though it became apparent over time that my body could no longer do what it once was capable of. However, I find that at fifty I feel much older -- I guess a decade of sleeping badly will do that to a person, but understanding the reasons why I feel old doesn't make it any easier to bear, nor does it make the future look any rosier. I think I read somewhere that Frank Sinatra was fifty when he recorded "It Was a Very Good Year." I'm sure it still strikes some people as strange that Sinatra recorded such an elegiac number at a relatively young age (after all, he lived another thirty-plus years), but I too find myself looking wistfully to the past, wondering if all my best years are behind me and wishing I'd done more with the opportunities I had as a young man.

On Marketing the Mormons

I remember the marketing class I took in the summer of 1987 as part of the "core" requirements for my master's degree in business administration. One of the things that struck me most about the course material was the comparison made between American car manufacturers and Japanese car manufacturers and how each did business in the 1960s and 1970s. The upshot was that American companies essentially designed and made cars that they liked, leaving it up to their dealers to sell those cars to the public, whereas the Japanese companies actually went out and researched what the public wanted and/or needed, and then designed and made cars that essentially sold themselves. This comparison served to underscore the difference between selling, on one hand, and marketing, on the other. In the years since, I've often contemplated the missionary program of the LDS Church, concluding time and again that the church is still stuck in "selling" mode, as opposed to concentrating on improving the "product" it is offering -- that is, making church a place where people actually want to be, instead of the place where they go on Sundays, if at all, out of a sense of guilt or obligation. (And I'm not advocating offering door prizes and holding a drawing at the end of sacrament meeting.)

Thank goodness we haven't arrived at the point...yet... where we go to church for the specific and masochistic purpose of being excoriated by a minister preaching hellfire and damnation (I keep picturing Ian McKellen's "Church of the Quivering Brethren" in the 1995 film Cold Comfort Farm: "Well, I'll tell ye! There'll be no butter in Hell!"). However, in many ways, the message we typically receive on Sundays isn't much more encouraging -- and if "men are that they might have joy," one might wonder to what end we have Sunday church meetings! I'm well aware of my own faults -- I don't need to be reminded of them at every turn, as if that were going to "inspire" me to improve myself. Needless to say, there's no joy in it so far as I can see.

And, of course, this doesn't even address most of the social aspects of church membership, which often seem calculated to elevate and emphasize our differences to the near-exclusion of what we have in common. The resulting tension and disunity among members -- and don't try to tell me I'm imagining it -- is a huge impediment to the whole notion of missionary work. My in-laws mentioned to me the other day how the ward in which their daughter and son-in-law live in Connecticut has an 85% activity rate, which of course is phenomenal by modern standards. The members there often spend time together outside of church and seem to enjoy each other's company, instead of being at unspoken odds with each other. Now, it is an affluent area, and thus the ward undoubtedly is pretty homogeneous in terms of social class and income bracket -- in contrast with our ward here in Albuquerque, which has annual incomes ranging from $200K+ down to less than a tenth of that -- but, notwithstanding, they must be doing something right to achieve that kind of activity rate. The church missionary department would be wise to do some research in that respect.

April Update

Darren has received another transfer, this time to an area called Lempira, which is still in the city (and in fact is in the Comayagüela Zone, where he served previously in Flor del Campo). His companion is Elder Pac (see photo), a Guatemalan who was in his previous district in the Torocagua Zone. Darren is about to hit 19 months on his mission and, because he and his mission president have made tentative plans for him to come home three weeks early (so that he can attend fall semester at BYU), he only has about 4½ months left. He's still enthusiastic about the work and has been blessed, in the main, with excellent companions.

My sleep situation is still rife with uncertainty. I'd more or less come to the point where I decided I needed to go back on prescription sleep meds, actually asking my sleep doctor for a couple of prescriptions. I tried, for the third time, to take Mirapex, the doctor's preferred med for restless legs/"leg jerks," but it simply wasn't having any positive effect (and in fact was having very annoying side effects). However, I finally agreed, rather than go back on Lunesta and/or Temazepam, to try an alternative "leg jerk" med called Neurontin, which I understand is an anti-convulsive when taken in larger doses. I've taken it the last several nights, and it does at least have a mild sedative effect (although it isn't strong enough to put me out for the entire night), and thus far doesn't seem to have noticeably bad side effects. Thus I think I will be able to take it for a month per the doctor's instructions, and I'll just wait and see what it does.

I still don't think I have any significant problem with being roused by my own "leg jerks" at night, but the sleep doctor seems to think that if a person's inability to sleep isn't attributable to sleep apnea (and my "VPAP Adapt SV" machine seems to be treating that part of my problem well), it is, by default, due to restless legs syndrome or "leg jerks." (Sure, I tossed and turned during the sleep studies I've had done, but I defy anyone to sleep soundly when wired up like that; it seems preposterous to me to base a diagnosis of restless legs on such an unnatural and unrepresentative situation.) For that reason, I'm relatively convinced that sleep medicine isn't in a very advanced state of understanding, and that the "experts" are still really only guessing most of the time. Meanwhile, in cognitive terms I only barely function, and I find it all too easy to fall into profound fits of depression.

Chris and a friend have started their own auto repair business, J&C Auto, which is located on east Central here in Albuquerque. I've long known that Chris would need to open his own shop if he ever wanted to make really good money doing car repairs, but it's a precarious time right now to be starting any kind of business, especially one that depends on the rapid development of a loyal clientele. We're praying for them.

Kiley has now taken the ACT, and she's working on the material for her AYS audition for the '09-'10 school year, which will take place on Friday May 1. One would think that with eight graduating senior cellists, the competition won't be as stiff for next year's group, but of course Kiley doesn't view it that way and is already nervous about it.

It appears that Dorine and I probably won't have to be a "ma and pa" for the stake youth "handcart trek" in June. Our ward will have only a handful of youth going on the trek, and since there is another (younger and hardier) couple called to go, we'll probably be let off the hook. Inasmuch as Kiley will be in Australia at that time with AYS, Dorine and I might actually get to go somewhere by ourselves -- I don't suppose she'd want to go to Las Vegas.

Oh, and in case anyone reading this doesn't already know, Heidi and Devery are both pregnant and are due in late October. They seem to be doing relatively well, especially given their heinous work schedules (Heidi works nights as a labor-and-delivery nurse, and Devery commutes to Salt Lake City from Provo on a UTA bus, which results in very long days). It will be interesting to see if either of the babies is a boy, given the high percentage of girls in our family!

Mark Steyn - The Canary in the Coal Mine

I've been thinking a lot lately about how America, especially under the Obama administration and with a Democratic Congress that is seemingly willing to spend the country into oblivion, is following Europe down a toilet of its own peculiar making. (And, given that high tax rates are invariably death at the ballot box in the U.S., our country may follow an even more direct path to the sewer in light of the astronomical budget deficits we'll be running, and the inevitable inflation -- and the mounting risk associated with owning U.S. Treasury debt instruments -- that such deficits will cause.)

As usual, Mark Steyn has captured all of my unexpressed feelings perfectly in an essay he's published on his website, titled "The Europeanization of America" (http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1931/26/). As a Mormon, I believe that Thomas S. Monson is God's prophet and mouthpiece on Earth, but no one has given us a clearer vision of America's future -- by illustrating the culturally, spiritually, demographically, and economically enervated state of the Europe that the "progressives" in this country are trying so hard to emulate -- than Steyn has done. When historians write about the whimpering death of western civilization, they'll note that Steyn saw it coming and practically no one listened to him.

Update: Here's a link to the article at a different site: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2218768/posts

Utah Trip - March 2009

Dorine, Kiley, and I went to Provo, Utah last Friday, March 20, staying until yesterday, March 26. The primary reason for the trip was to see our daughter Devery and her husband Easton (D&E), but we ended up seeing lots of family and old friends. We left Albuquerque at about 6:00 pm on Friday and made pretty good time, arriving in Provo at 3:15 am on Saturday morning. We crashed that first night (i.e., morning) at D&E's apartment in south Provo, but then we spent the next five nights at the Provo Super 8 Hotel on Canyon Road at University Parkway. (That particular Super 8 is a decent hotel for the price, having all the amenities that I require, anyway -- free wireless internet, a continental breakfast with waffle machines, an exercise room with a treadmill, and an indoor pool and spa.) We have acquired the habit of listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks on long trips in the car -- for which Kiley's 30-gig iPod comes in handy -- and on this trip we finished off the seventh book (Deathly Hallows) and started over on the sixth book (Half-Blood Prince).

On Saturday, after sleeping in to recover from the long drive up, we went to eat at a Village Inn, and then we did some shopping at the mall in Orem. That evening, D&E took us out to eat at a Training Table restaurant on University Parkway, and then we went back to their apartment to watch Cold Comfort Farm, a British comedy that we fell in love with (and which I have since bought on eBay and can't wait to watch again). The next morning, we went to sacrament meeting with D&E in their BYU ward, and then we had lunch with them at their apartment. That evening, we took Devery and drove out to Pleasant Grove and had dinner with my brother Roger and his wife Lynnea at their home.

On Monday, we went shopping at the Provo Towne Center in the morning. Later we went to visit my brothers Jeff and Robin (and their wives, Marlyn and Karolyn) at their place of work in Pleasant Grove before driving on to Salt Lake City, where we picked up Devery from work and then went out to Grantsville to visit Dorine's brother Brian, his wife Dona, and their kids. On Tuesday, we spent most of the day with D&E, as Devery took the day off work and Easton had only one scheduled class. We shopped around town all day, then went and had dinner with Robin and Karolyn at their home in Pleasant Grove.

Wednesday was a "guys' day out," as I spent the day with Bob Maes, my old BYU roommate, who lives in Cedar Hills with his wife Marti and works in Salt Lake City as a postal inspector. (Dorine took Kiley up to Salt Lake City to visit with Dorine's relatives.) Bob and I had lunch at Iggy's Sports Grill in Orem with Jeff Aldous and Chuck Canfield, who also lived on the seventh floor of "T" Hall in BYU's Deseret Towers dorm complex during the 1977-78 school year. (I hadn't seen Chuck -- a physician who lives just down the street in Highland from Lenard Brunsdale, one of our old bishops when he lived here in Albuquerque -- since the end of winter semester in April 1978. I also hadn't seen Jeff, a lawyer who lives in my brother Kelly's stake in north Provo, in a number of years.) We sat at Iggy's and talked for a solid three hours, catching up on the events of the last 31 years; the attached photo, taken with my cell phone's camera, shows (L-R) Chuck, Bob, and Jeff. Bob and I talked about going backpacking this summer in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness -- I need to look into possible routes. That night, Dorine, Kiley, and I went out to eat one last time with D&E, also inviting Devery's cousin Hillery John and her husband Kevin, at a decent Chinese buffet out on State Street in, I think, Pleasant Grove. And later, D&E came back to our hotel for a swim before Devery had to go home to bed.

We came home the following day, Thursday the 26th, running into some bad weather and snow-packed roads, especially in Price Canyon as we left Utah Valley. However, we took it slow and made it through the canyon okay, and the roads were clear the rest of the way to Albuquerque. (Then it snowed last night in Albuquerque.)

Latest on Darren's Mission

Here's a recent picture of Darren (L) with his companion, Elder Rose, along with their zone leaders, Elder Avalos and Elder Merrill. Darren has been in Cerro Grande with Elder Rose now since November, which has been his longest companionship to date. Apparently, all four elders have a standing dinner appointment on Sundays with the church area authority, Elder Duarte, and his family, who live in Darren's area; this photo was taken a couple of Sundays ago by a lady named Healy who was visiting Honduras in connection with Operation Smiles and happened also to be visiting with Elder Duarte and his family that day. (She was kind enough to e-mail us this and other photos from her trip.) As I mentioned in an earlier post, Darren has been out for eighteen months now. It's practically certain that he'll be assigned to at least one more area (and to at least a couple more companions) before he comes home, but he's enjoyed being in Cerro Grande -- that is, apart from losing his camera (and his memory cards, which of course is the real loss), a tape recorder, a guitar, and other items in a burglary of their apartment.

The Passing of Matt Porter

I feel greatly saddened by the death of Matt Porter on Monday, March 9, 2009, as the result of a small-airplane crash. Matt had commuted by air for years to his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory from his home in Edgewood, New Mexico (which is located about twenty minutes east of Albuquerque along I-40), hitching a ride on a single-engine aircraft belonging to, and piloted by, his friend Randy Rupert, who was also killed in the accident. The crash appears to have been weather-related, as it was raining and snowing early Monday morning. Matt was serving as bishop of the Eubank Ward, the singles ward in our (Albuquerque East) stake, and it's obvious he will be missed there. This is the second time in roughly ten years that tragedy has struck the Porter family, as Matt and his wife Paula (see photo) lost a daughter, Sara, in an accident on I-40 in 1999 that claimed the lives of several LDS kids who were en route from early-morning seminary in Edgewood to their high school in Moriarty. I don't know how Paula and her other kids can bear such bereavement a second time, except perhaps to take comfort in the thought that Matt and Sara are together now.

I can't remember when Matt's family first moved to Albuquerque, but he and I were members of the same Aaronic priesthood quorums growing up together in the old Albuquerque 6th Ward. We were all pretty rambunctious youth, but thank goodness most of the wildness wore off over time! Matt moved with his parents back to Colorado sometime around the beginning of 1975, so we didn't graduate from high school together; however, he later moved back to New Mexico after marrying Paula, who's a native of the Albuquerque area. (A couple of my brothers used to play high school basketball with her brother Roger Switzer.) I'll always remember spending a long night in 2003 with Matt in Ft. Stanton Cave, as he and I formed part of a rescue team trying to get an injured young man out of the cave. The following morning we exited the cave a couple of hours ahead of the main rescue party, and the local news media, hungry for information about the kid's condition, pounced on us. Matt, the smart one, ducked out and left me there to be interviewed live on television; I still don't know if I had anything coherent to say.

It's hard for me not to ponder the idea of living in a semi-rural area like Edgewood and having to drive on I-40 (which tends to be clogged with heavily laden trucks) to get anywhere -- not to mention having to fly in a single-engine plane every day to get to work in Los Alamos. Clearly, living in Edgewood entails certain risks that now have twice deeply bitten the Porter family. It makes me appreciate living in town and having a fifteen-minute car commute to work that entails no freeway travel.

[Update: I found out that apparently four people commuted regularly to Los Alamos on the plane that crashed -- two of them reportedly declined to fly that day, presumably because of the weather, which puts the question of risk into sharper relief. Also, I hadn't realized that Matt and Paula's son Silas is still on his church mission; Silas decided not to come home for the funeral, instead sending a very thoughtful, mature letter that one of his father's friends read from the pulpit during the service. When I was a missionary, my worst nightmare would have been to lose a parent while I was away; thus I think Silas's ability to take the long view of things is admirable in the extreme.]

Aaron's Mission

Our nephew Aaron P______ flew up to Utah this evening in order to enter the LDS Church's Missionary Training Center (in Provo) tomorrow, March 11, 2009. He's been called to serve in the Russia Moscow West Mission, which ought to be all the adventure a young missionary could want. He'll be spending two-and-a-half months in the MTC before traveling on to Russia, which is longer than a person could reasonably be expected to bear, but he's excited about it and we're sure he'll do well. Interestingly, Aaron will enter the MTC almost exactly 18 months after his cousin, our son Darren, did so in September 2007, which means that the two will not have seen each other for a full three-and-a-half years by the time Aaron gets home in March 2011. Watching Aaron go through airport security, and then walk down the corridor toward the gate from which his flight was to depart, was scarily reminiscent of the morning we said goodbye to Darren; however, it was heartening to realize just how quickly the last 18 months have passed. The accompanying photo shows Dorine, me, and our granddaughter Kayla with Aaron just a couple of minutes before he left.

The Slow Death of Old Media

Lately I've seen a number of columns and commentaries lamenting the passing of various newspapers and news agencies. They all say something to the effect of: "The new media or blogosphere is great, but we need to preserve traditional news sources if only to have trained reporters who know how to ferret out the facts and have the resources to do the primary research on which members of the new media must rely." Frankly, I find abject irony in such statements. Of what use are a journalism degree and research skills if a reporter can't report a story with at least a modicum of objectivity -- if there is little or no difference between his "news" reporting and the editorial page? All the research in the world means nothing if the reporter can't detect an obviously fraudulent document (as in the so-called "Rathergate" incident in 2004), simply because he desperately wants it to be genuine, or else ignores great mounds of evidence, often attacking the messenger (as in the ongoing "anthropogenic climate change" controversy), because it doesn't fit a certain political narrative. Old media are dying because virtually no one likes such propagandizing, and if no source can be trusted to give an even-handed accounting of the news, the average consumer will naturally listen to those commentators who share his viewpoints.

A Weekend at The Cabin

Kiley, Dorine, and I spent two nights at the cabin this weekend with Kristy, Chris, and their kids. I had fun playing with the kids and hanging out for a few hours in Pagosa Springs. As you can see from the attached photo, there was a lot of snow up there, although all of it was old and crusty -- and, in fact, it got up above 50 degrees F. both days we were there. We've actually spent a fair bit of time at the cabin in the last year: this is probably the first time in fifteen years or longer that I've been there three times within a given twelve-month period. I still miss the old snowmobiling days, but just walking along the frozen-in-places Rio Blanco with the kids gave me a lot of pleasure on this trip. We drove our old, battered 1994 Dodge Shadow up there this time; despite its being fifteen years old, it still got 31-32 miles to the gallon out on the highway.

REI and The Compulsion to Buy

I'm a firm believer in the notion that the spice of life lies in being able to spend money frivolously, at least once in a while. For a long time, one of the primary beneficiaries of my whimsical consumerism was Recreational Equipment Incorporated, better known as REI. Over the years, I've bought all kinds of equipment, footwear, clothing, and books at REI related to hiking, caving, camping, backpacking, and climbing; however, I find myself buying less and less stuff there as time has gone on, and for multiple reasons. First, I naturally have acquired pretty much all the gear I can use, most of which is extremely durable, and my "frivolity" generally doesn't extend to replacing equipment just because the manufacturers have come out with new designs or models. Second, I liked the "old" REI store in Albuquerque, which was located down near Old Town (adjacent to the Natural History Museum), much better than the "new" store, which is located near the intersection of Montaño Road and I-25. (Years ago, I would periodically take a bit of an extended lunch on a slow work day to go look around the "old" store before stopping by the Sunset Memorial cemetery on the way back to visit my father's grave and polish up the headstone; now that REI has moved, however, I rarely visit either it or the cemetery.)

Third, I don't have as much disposable cash as I once had, so I've had to rein in my spending a little. Fourth, my interest in playing the electric guitar has expanded, and thus lately I've bought guitars and amplifiers where I once might have bought tents, backpacks, headlamps, or climbing shoes. Fifth, the rise of online outdoor-gear vendors has often caused me to shop for better prices than REI typically offers. And, sixth, I guess I've come to regard REI as something of a "snob-a-torium" whose best customers are more interested in being seen wearing/using expensive outdoor clothing and gear than in the intrinsic utility that such clothing and gear represent. (I'm not above wanting to own name-brand clothing and gear -- although I'll never pay $400 for the latest "technical" shell jacket or $600 for a backpacking tent -- but neither am I above wearing very comfortable and durable "convertible" hiking pants, as I am doing as I write this, that I got on clearance at Wal-Mart for $9.00.)

Thus, I still go to REI once in a while to look around, but mostly I leave without buying anything. I must confess, however, that at this moment I'm waiting for a new pair of Vasque hiking boots to be delivered to the REI store here that I purchased on the "REI-Outlet" website. Sometimes I still can't resist temptation!

The Demise of My Favorite Retailers

I've been thinking about how a lot of my favorite midscale department-store chains seem to be going out of business. It started when Montgomery Ward closed its retail operations in 2001, an event that still bums me out, especially since it proved catastrophic for the Winrock Mall here in Albuquerque. (Winrock, a favorite place of mine since I was a small child, and the source of countless youthful memories, essentially now consists of a Bed, Bath & Beyond, a Dillard's store, and a Big 5 sporting-goods store, all of which are generally accessed from outside the mall, which isn't even heated these days. There are plans to renovate, but I'm not sure it will ever happen.) And now Mervyns, which by default became my favorite store when Wards closed, shut down operations after the most-recent Christmas shopping season. All of which leaves me fearing for J.C. Penney and Sears, my remaining favorite department stores -- and, indeed, for the future of the entire Coronado Mall, the other "indoor" mall in the Uptown area. It's apparent that low-end pressure from stores like Target and Wal-Mart, not to mention the universality of online shopping, is making it very difficult for the midscale chains to compete; however, if it comes about that the only places I can afford to buy clothes and sundries are Target and the internet, the world will be a significantly bleaker place for me!

My Favorite '70s Music

My Favorite '00s Music

My Favorite '90s Music

Is it really February already?

It's getting harder and harder these days to think of things to write about. Barack Obama as president is pretty much living up to my expectations so far, but I don't have much else to say about him. (However, one statement he made -- that we should be less concerned about how much government costs than how well it works -- was a real eye-roller. How do you reason with someone who can't even seem to grasp the notion of weighing benefits against costs, especially a politician for whom government cannot, by definition, cost too much?)

My sleep habits have not improved dramatically. After we re-arranged our bedroom, I found I had to block the heater vent to ward off a hot-cold cycle that was keeping me awake. I also had to get the medical supply company to switch out the humidifer reservoir for my VPAP Adapt SV machine, because the old one was leaking water around the metal disk that contacts the heating element. However, I'm coming to see that the primary factor impeding my sleep at this point is the air that the machine causes me to swallow and the resulting stomach upset; I think it is what wakes me up early and keeps me from falling back asleep. I'm trying to deal with it without medicating myself, but I can't overstate how annoying it is to be bone-tired and still not be able to sleep through the night.

Darren is still with Elder Rose in the Cerro Grande sector of Tegucigalpa, and they recently baptized a young fellow named Victor (see photo). He (Darren) will hit his 17-month mark in another week, and it's looking more certain now that he'll be able to come home sometime in the latter half of August so that he can return to BYU for the fall semester. He recently consulted with an American doctor about his eye injury (which he sustained on taking a soccer ball to the face), and the doctor told him that his dilated left pupil is a permanent condition; it won't affect his vision, per se, but obviously it will look a little funny. Properly viewed, it is a "war wound" suffered while in the Lord's service!

Not much is going on in our family at present. Kiley has a band trip to Durango, CO next month, and of course she goes to Australia with the Youth Symphony in June. We still need to get her signed up to take the ACT in April. Dorine, Kiley, and I will be going to Utah next month, but I'd like to take a shorter trip somewhere before then; I've been thinking about taking my mother down to Ruidoso to see the Hubbard Museum of the American West, which has numerous items collected by the last wife of one of Mom's uncles. (I'm not sure when Mom will feel up to the trip, however, after she took a fall in the temple parking lot last week, hitting the back of her head on the sidewalk, as she was arriving there to do her usual Thursday afternoon sessions.)

I just finished reading the autobiography of Eric Clapton that came out a couple of years ago. He led a pretty tawdry existence for most of his life before finally becoming clean and sober in his forties and, later on, finding domestic bliss with a young wife and kids (and even kicking a tobacco habit along the way). I don't have much in common with him inasmuch as I have never had issues with alcohol or drugs, have never had to worry about struggling with the trappings of wealth and notoriety, and don't have a tremendous natural gift for music. However, I did identify with his talk of unresolved psychology, his unchanneled-but-undeniable spirituality, and the fact that his music was the one influence in his life that saw him through all the dark times. I found myself wishing I could write songs with him, as I'm sure he could take all the nascent ideas bubbling in my head and bring them to fruition.