Doing Science-y Stuff

Boys and More Boys

A new baby born in my extended family today.

And yes, he is a boy.

Of course he is a boy. A lovely boy. Congratulations to my brother and his wife.

I was reading some family history to the boys tonight. We started with my paternal grandfather's parents and worked backwards. He was one of five boys (two daughters died before age 1). He fathered 10 children, 7 of whom were boys. Of his grandchildren, 2/3 of them are boys. It is even more slanted if you just look at his daughters. The three daughters have nine children together. Only ONE of them is a girl.

Now to my generation. My parents had an even split, two boys, two girls, but they have 10 grandsons and two granddaughters. My sister and I only have boys (Six between the ages of 3 and 11). The daughters belong to my brothers. Of all my female cousins (the 1/3 minority that we are) in that line we have only two girls and something like 16 boys. Several of us have ONLY boys. Two others had daughters that died within a month or two of birth.

I don't really think doing the math at this point is very productive, but if it seems a little bit tilted in favor of the boys you wouldn't be wrong.

The same well-meaning sister who has been telling me once a month for four years that I need a daughter spoke up again on Sunday.

I won't scream.

I won't.

But I might want to.

I don't blame anybody or anything for my pretty firm belief that there isn't a daughter waiting for me. I think in my case it might have plenty to do with genetics. I don't mean my husband's seeming x-chromosome problem. On his side of the family things are about as even as can be. Each of his siblings has at least one of each gender (provided the one on the way didn't have her ultrasound read incorrectly). It might just be a body chemistry thing. Maybe I am too logical. Maybe I don't have enough faith.

Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe. . .

Maybe I've just learned to be content with what I have.

Six Weeks

The last six weeks has been very busy. I think I finally see and end in sight, however. Next week should slow down a whole lot, culminating with Plantboy taking ALL the kids on the father-son camp out this year. This happy occurrence is the day after my birthday and I will get precisely what I want for number 36: A (partial) day of peace and quiet at home.

I have been hard at work on my goals the last weeks:

* My scripture study has picked up because of an unexpected boost. I have a friend who was baptised last October and has taken a strong interest in studying the Book of Mormon. We are giving each other reading assignments and meeting weekly to talk about them. It has been really great, and the kind of thing I haven't done for years. Having a study buddy keeps us both accountable and keeps us motivated.
* As mentioned here, I have finished a manuscript that several people are reviewing. I began working on a second full pass of it last night. My reading has been curbed back quite a lot, but the stack of books continues to grow. My blogging time has, obviously, been scaled way back.

* I've been exercising more regularly and have lost some weight, but I'm starting to think that even the half marathon isn't going to happen. My YW calling has kept me incredibly busy since Christmas and I just can't commit the time to the running that I need. I won't make a full decision for a couple of more weeks, but I feel some relief in admitting that it just might not be my year to marathon.

* I applied to graduate school (instructional technology) through an on-line program at my alma mater. After lots of pros and cons and years of consideration, this on-line option is the only one that really felt right. It will be cheaper, and I will be able to keep working while I complete it. I will finish the same time my youngest starts first grade, and instructional technology should give me more flexibility than a straight education degree.

Last year I felt like I was on the verge of everything and was filled with indecision and a large degree of depression. This year, I feel like I've taken the next step into the darkness. I'm not at all sure what will happen next, but it feels very good to have acted with a degree of faith and determination.

So here is the run down of what has kept us so busy these last several weeks.

The first order of business has been getting the garden in. And though Plantboy does most of the work, I have spent my share of sunny-ish afternoons weeding, weeding, forever weeding. The reward is that these bare plots are now filled with leafy growing things, well on their way to becoming food. Except the peas--they mildewed in so much rain and had to be re-planted this week.






The weekend of Plantboy's birthday and spring break, we decided to tile the kitchen. This is one of the bigger home improvement projects we have undertaken, and it was fairly difficult. The end result is beautiful (though I don't exactly have a proper "after" picture). and now we are trying to gear up enough desire to do the bathrooms next.










Before the grout had even dried, I thought, "What about that bathroom I've wanted to tackle for the last two years??" And I did, with a vengeance. Though still sporting the nasty old linoleum, the bathroom got a major makeover, paint-wise. Even the cabinets. Still, I had some good help so it wasn't too bad.








Spring came. I guess that wasn't a thing that kept me busy, but it was certainly a thing that has kept me going. The perennials and bulbs are lovely this year.







We finished painting the bathroom just in time to work on the Pinewood Derby. It was a night of tears, frustration and disappointment. At least at our house. Plantboy may get enlisted for some serious hours next year. Here is Jedi Knight winning the award for best "Hot Rod." The award only made him angrier because, "it isn't even a hot rod!!!"




My parents came to visit over Easter Weekend. Mom and I hosted an egg hunt/Bunny Money store for a few of the kids' friends. I had brunchy foods for the grown ups at the same time and it was actually a lot of fun.









Mom and Dad DID come to town to visit the grand kids, but they came that particular weekend because we had Wicked tickets. My sister also came. We had dinner first and then walked to the theater just a block from the restaurant (and only 10 minutes from home!). The show was fantastic. I'll spare you the review--there are many others written that are both better and more expert. It almost matched my anticipation level. I say "almost" because I'm not quite sure anything could have: I spent over a year putting the evening together. I promise I rocked that white outfit. I realize more forcefully all the time that I am NOT photogenic.


Jeff and Padawan went to an Oregon Ducks baseball game courtesy of a newspaper customer who was looking to get rid of some tickets. It was Padawan's first grown up outing on his own with dad. He said it was the best day of his life, even if game treats had to be tepid hot chocolate in a commemorative cup because it was so cold.




Here we are in Egypt. Not really. The following pictures are at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry: OMSI. It is pretty much awesome. We saw a mummy, dinosaur bones, tried to build earthquake proof buildings and ball guns. We saw an IMAX film about baby orangutans and elephants. Most of the activities were hands on. We got to go to dinner on the way home from Portland . . . it was just a really awesome day.

It's Not Easy Being Green, Though It Might Not Be Too Bad

The best subject that I ever taught was part of my first job: Advanced Placement Environmental Science, lovingly called APES by the many outstanding students I met in that assignment. As much as I loved it, I wasn't really very good at it. I was only a few years older than the students themselves, my own background in the subject wasn't that vast, and my classroom skills at that point were pretty weak. (In fact, my adjustment to that first teaching job might make an interesting post. Like the day I found the ten-inch rusted scissors in the front desk looking as dangerous as two daggers held together. The students told me the previous teacher used to threaten them with the scissors. Nobody was sure if he was joking. Then he had a nervous breakdown. But I digress.)

APES is such a fun subject because it requires teachers and students to pull from their entire knowledge base. A working knowledge of all the major sciences--ecology, biology, chemistry and physics--is essential. In addition, a student must be able to take their science knowledge and view it through a lens of both political and social systems in order to see how knowledge applies to actual reality. An empathy for, and willingness to understand, different cultures is helpful. To all this, mathematical models of varying complexity are a large part of the subject, as well as an ability to interpret and understand statistical renderings of data.

One of the chapters in our book was one the three R's. (No, not THOSE three R's, which aren't really R's anyway.) Reducing. Reusing. Recycling. Until I studied environmental science with my students in some detail I had not understood that these R's are not created equal. Instead, the order in which the are presented represents a hierarchy of desirability.


Recycling gets a lot of publicity. Perhaps because the effects of an entire community adopting a broad recycling program are easily and quickly measured. My large recycling bin is picked up every other week and I can clearly see all of the trash that has dodged the landfill to be turned into new, useful consumables. Recycling is a pro-active process that makes me feel good. From a cost-benefit analysis, the recycling of most products represents a large savings in both the short and the long-term. (Glass is a rather glaring exception--it is NOT always cheaper to recycle glass than to create new.) However, when you look at energy inputs and outputs in a system, recycling is only one step away from manufacturing new products from scratch. A rather large step, and an important one, but still not optimal.

Better than recycling is reusing items. A couple of years ago, quite by accident, I found myself looking around the local Goodwill. I found a large variety of nice items, in a clean and bright store, and the prices just couldn't be beat! Though I don't shop there often for my kids--the non-baby clothes are often too worn, and there is no shortage of hand-me-downs here at home--I have been able to satisfy (and justify!) my craving for "new" things to wear on a regular basis, and I get the satisfaction of finding some really awesome deals. My thrift shopping has also encouraged me to contribute at the other end. Our house is pretty small, and so I aggressively clean out closets, bookshelves, kitchen cupboards, etc., taking bags of various sizes for donation monthly. Besides being "green," my purchases provide jobs for adults with mental disabilities and if I designate my donations as being for the local women's shelter, then the group is given in-store credit in the equivalent amount of my donation so that battered women can purchase needed items for themselves and their children. Shopping thrift is obviously not the only way to reuse items, but it is one way.

Of course, the best of these R's, and perhaps the hardest is to "reduce." I'm not even sure that for Americans reducing is a matter of "doing without," but perhaps a re-defining of what our needs are. I'm not talking about legislation here, or curtailing our freedoms (though if America continues on its reckless spending habits, and its subsequent depletion of natural resources, this is exactly what will happen), I'm talking about being honest with ourselves about whether or not we carry attitudes of entitlement that have nothing to do with government assistance. The American lifestyle both sucks global resources while simultaneously, perversely providing jobs all over the world to satisfy our lust for cheap goods.

The further irony is that if Americans become more conservative, careful and cautious in their spending habits, our economy slows. Yet, the question must certainly be asked if the levels of economic growth achieved in the late nineties were ever sustainable. The answer, of course, is no. American economic history over the last century has been dominated by boom and bust cycles--some more dramatic than others. But cautious principles of personal spending, and an adjustment in expectations about what we "deserve" out of life would create an economy of sustainable long-term growth, even if that growth was relatively slow.

The stores are filled lately with kitschy "green" products. Everyone makes their own $1 grocery store bags now (mostly made so cheaply that they can only be called "reusable" for a handful of trips to the store), but the clothing is probably my favorite. Tee-shirts that say things like, "Love Your Mother" or "I (Heart) Boys Who Recycle." The irony is that these tee shirts are manufactured in plants that are thousands of miles away (even China is sub-contracting labor to North Korea) by workers in appalling conditions so that Old Navy or Wal-Mart of whomever can market them for $5 apiece at earth day time. They sell thousands of unneeded products, making money from volume instead of huge mark-ups, exacerbating environmental and social problems so that people can wear items saying how much they hate environmental and social problems.

Before I'm too hard on the big box type stores, however. It is also important to point out that corporations, like Wal-Mart are leading their own "green" revolution, because they have found the great cost savings that comes from conserving. Turning on half as many lights, and converting those lights to more efficient types, saves a single store tens of thousands annually. This translates to tens of millions company-wide. If there is to be any true revolution in America, companies will have to be on board. Companies will not get on board without such commitment making the bottom-line more attractive.

But I'm not pointing my finger at you or anybody else. I think today I am pointing it at me. This fantastic opinion piece by columnist Thomas Friedman appeared in our local paper today. He argues for finding somebody new to blame for the BP Oil spill: The (Wo)Man in the Mirror. If BP cut corners it is because each of us, on some level, wants to constantly find cheaper ways to maintain, or expand, our truly luxuriant lifestyle. Is "luxuriant" going to far? I don't think so--by any comparison to the rest of the world, and especially to history, our lives are filled with leisure and ease. I too often complain about my tiny house, forgetting that my house is still larger than the average house size in 1950, when people had much larger families.

In the last year or two, we have made a couple of adjustments (besides my Goodwill shopping) to the way we do things that haven't been too hard, and have helped us be a little more green and have a little more green. A couple of years ago, Plantboy bought a rather large composting bin, but as he put it in a rather unobtrusive place in our yard, I was okay with it. We keep a small can in the house that I fill with scraps, usually while I make dinner, and we take it out nightly. We layer these green scraps with a brown layer (usually leaves) every so often and each spring he opens the bottom and like MAGIC!* beautiful mounds of rich, dark, nutrient-rich earth come spilling out. Saturday night we enjoyed our first meal filled with garden goodies--baby tri-colored carrots, buttery Yukon Golds, and tender beets. While I know that plenty of people like beet greens, we are not those people, and the 40 days of rain we've had these past weeks made them rather unpalatable-looking. Anyway, I chopped up the stems and greens anyway, marveling at that large pile of organic matter for adding to the compost. Today's unwanted beet greens might be next year's green beans.



What an amazing thing.

Gardening, composting, sewing and reaping, working and observing together as a family has been a huge blessing to us. When I asked Plantboy what he wanted for Father's Day he said, "Is it weird to say that I want a 25 pound bag of organic fertilizer?" Maybe. But no weirder than wanting a $300 stick for hitting a little white ball. And much more useful.

The second change we made was this summer. When we first moved to our city, it was the first time we'd owned a home in a couple of years and we didn't have a lawn mower. A friend from Church loaned us a fixer-upper. Thanks to Plantboy's mad mechanic skills, he has managed to keep this thing running through three summers. This spring however, he confronted the reality: to keep it going now would require some pretty major fixes, starting with new spark plugs and working from there.

Or, he wheedled, we could get one of these instead:

He had mentioned the manual lawn mower before, but I was never sure that he was entirely serious. Still, the $100 price tag was very attractive and I agreed, if somewhat reluctantly.

I love this "machine." The Wall Street Journal earlier this week ran a lengthy article on the new trend in souped up lawn mowers with iPod ports, alternative fuel versions and cushy seats. These models run anywhere from $3,000-$10,000. (You'd have to use a lot of bio-fuel to justify that sucker.)

But if you have a smallish plot of turf (we have systematically been pulling out grass ever since we moved in), this might just be an answer. Saturday I mowed the entire lawn (Plantboy edged) in about 30 minutes. The manual mower seems to work best if you push it fast, so I actually got my heart rate up while mowing. I finished without a pulled rotator cuff from the pull-start, nor the smell of gasoline in my clothes and hair. It is so quiet that listening to my iPod would have been entirely possible. The way it cuts the grass doesn't damage the blades as much, so my shoes and feet weren't grass stained when I finished. The best news is that Jedi Knight and Padawan can push the thing if they work together. Like a team of baby oxen.

Now if we could just stop using disposable diapers . . . .




* Okay, not magic, it is a very natural process of biological decay. But just because a thing can be explained doesn't mean it isn't remarkable.

May the Fourth Be With You

Today is International Star Wars Day. I hope I don't feel compelled to talk with a lithp, I mean lisp, all day.

I'd like to take a moment from our regularly scheduled program to geek out on you. (If you think that IS the regularly scheduled program, then you can just keep your comments to yourself.)

When I was about five, I had a set of Underoos with R2D2 on them. No, they were not for boys. The original Star Wars movie (Episode IV: A New Hope) was released the month I turned two. One of my earliest memories is of going to the theater to see Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back). I was five. The film was scary. The movie theater had a ceiling that was old and dome-like, the supports made of wood. I remember leaning back in my seat to avoid the scary and thinking that the ceiling looked like the underside of huge spider. Not exactly the most comforting thought.


By the time Episode VI (Return of the Jedi) came out in 1983, I was in love with Luke Skywalker. That's right, NOT Han Solo. I was never big on "the rebel factor." (Ironic really, as Luke was technically a leader in the rebellion, but with all the force stuff he was mostly a straight arrow.) During the nineties, I wore my hair short and blonde a la Meg Ryan or Jenna Elfman. When it would grow out and need a cut, my older brother would assume Luke's whiny voice and say, "But Uncle Owen! I was going to go into Tashee Station to pick up some power converters!" Ah, Luke! You are my first love.



I was as shocked as the rest of the world in finding out that Luke and Leia were siblings. Particularly after his undisguised admiration in Episode IV, and that highly un-sisterly kiss she plants on him in Episode V. And why aren't Jedi allowed to marry anyway? Are they basically highly violent monks and nuns? The world may never know, though there are plenty of people who've asked the question. Yes, I've watched their YouTube videos.



When I was in college, if I was feeling a bit of insomnia, I put on Episode IV and was asleep in 20 minutes. Not that I don't love this movie, but that I have honestly seen it 100 times if I'd seen it once. But no matter how many times I see it, I always cry at the end of Episode VI when Darth Vadar decides he can't stand idly by while his son is tortured, and throws the Emperor to his death in a cloud of cackling and blue lightning.

I still remember the kid who told me, in about the third grade, that because the Star Wars movies were episodes 4, 5 and 6, that one day they would make episodes1-3. I had hoped beyond hope that he was right.

Now I think my own imagination was almost better. Like so many old-school Star Wars fans, I find myself asking, "Why did they even make these movies?" But then I only have to pause long enough to consider all of the merchandising my Jedi have talked me into (or I've talked them into?) in the last two years and the remainder of the movies, as well as The Clone Wars, starts to make a lot more sense.

These "new" Star Wars movies (which my Jedi never call them), are called

Episode I: Attack of the Horrible Child Actors

Episode II: The Worst Love Story In This Or Any Other Universe

Episode III: Revenge of the Incomprehensible Plot

The original trilogy is hokey. From special effects that look drawn on to props that look like duct-taped and spray-painted broom handles. Lucas must have maxed out his credit card at Radio Shack for some of this stuff. But it is the campiness that makes it a classic. Ridiculously implausible scenery is coupled with stilted dialogue common to the genre. (It must be noted that the mediocre screenplays of the first are Academy Award worthy compared to the second trilogy.) However, the beauty of the first films is the genuine and believable interaction of the tree main characters. Harry, Hermione and Ron owe a lot to Luke, Leia and Han. What smart and tough girl doesn't want to find herself in such a triumvirate? Only with a different hair-do.



In his more recent efforts, Lucas substitutes flashy graphics and technology for genuine human interaction. Of course it was obvious that the banthas were just dressed up elephants! But they were real, and it made the whole thing feel more real. I just don't think you will ever elicit any kind of positive response about Jar Jar Binks from anyone older than, say, seven.




After the fiasco of the first three episodes, start to finish, animation was the only thing left to Lucas. Still, I'm quite a big fan of The Clone Wars. When I'm less distracted by the animation married to reality (because it is ALL animation), and long, meandering plot lines are replaced by 23 minute stories, and the actors only have to be as good as their voices, it works pretty well.

It is embarrassing to say for just how long I could go on this vein.

Just after Episode I premiered, there was a Trivial Pursuit Star Wars game issued. My mom bought it, but my brothers and I found it no fun after just a game or two. (My sister looked at us like we were all nuts; the Star Wars love is but one in a very long list of Ways We Are Not Alike.) Why? It was too easy. There was hardly a question we couldn't answer, and an individual's turn might drag on for 10-15 minutes.

As I survey the many pop culture references that still abound regarding these films, I think that for better or worse they are here to stay. It might be possible that these movies, particularly the originals, are the most influential cultural phenomenon of my generation. And they are, hands down, the best thing to come out of the 70's.

There is a prize in this post today. To enter, you must put a Star Wars quote into your comment. For even more fun, leave the quotes uncredited and we can all guess who said what.

The Force will be with you. Always.