The paper girl

[FYI for anyone who's interested: CM and I intend to keep making videos and posting them on the weekends, but I'm not going to announce each and every one -- that would get tedious quickly. So if you scroll down the page a bit, in the right column under the heading "Nifty Places" you should see a link called "Adventures in DS Surgery." This will contain the full playlist of all my DS-related videos on YouTube. (Or just click this link if you're too lazy to scroll.)

That's all. We now return you to your irregularly-scheduled shenanigans.]

Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad
And made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.

--Will Thompson

From the time we moved to Utah until I got into college, my siblings and I had part-time jobs. (It was the only way we could get reliable pocket money to spend or save; Mom, as a newly single parent, had no extra money to provide allowance, especially for six kids.) At one time or another, every one of us had a paper route or helped a sibling deliver papers. Most of the time we walked the route, delivering copies of the Daily Herald to addresses along Apple Avenue, a steeply-inclined road in the Tree Streets neighborhood of Provo.

My sister Julie was still in grade school when she started delivering on the route. At most of the houses she would simply drop the paper on the front porch, or leave it in a designated plastic cubbyhole next to the mailbox. But at one particular house she would stop, walk through the carport and up a few steps to the kitchen door, and knock. A voice from inside would call, "Come in!" At that house, Julie hand-delivered the paper to Mrs. Muhlestein, a housebound older woman whose health problems made it difficult for her to pick up the newspaper from her porch. I think they first became acquainted when Julie realized that Mrs. Muhlestein was distantly related to our cousins, who shared the same last name. Julie would spend a few minutes each day visiting with Mrs. Muhlestein -- usually talking about the news or what was going on at school -- before she headed out to deliver more papers. It got to be a regular thing.

And then Mrs. Muhlestein died. I can't remember how Julie found out, but I do remember that she attended the funeral. Members of Mrs. Muhlestein's family were clustered near the door of the meetinghouse, greeting friends and neighbors who had come to pay their respects. Since none of them recognized Julie, they asked her who she was.

Julie said something like, "Oh, I just delivered the newspaper."

This caused a minor sensation among the Muhlestein family members. Someone said, "Everybody! Come see! It's the paper girl!" And they gathered around her and told her about how much their mother had loved her visits, how she'd looked forward to the knock at the door from the girl who delivered her the news. "You were her window on the world," they told her.

This week I've been thinking a bit about influence -- not just the way other people influence us, but sometimes the way we influence others unawares. Julie didn't set out to be a bright spot in anyone's day. She was just doing her job. But she wanted to make sure she did her job well, and that meant doing something extra for a customer who needed help. It wasn't hard, and it didn't take much of her time, but unbeknownst to her that little daily act made a huge positive difference in another person's life.

Julie's story actually makes me feel a lot less stressed about helping others. I think we often feel like we have to perform huge, heroic acts to make a difference for good, but those grand opportunities to act don't come along very often. Every day, though, it's possible to exercise patience with the brand-new supermarket checker, to show sympathy and kindness to a lonely stranger who needs to talk, to give someone you pass a smile, to drop a friendly note or a sincere compliment as you run errands. There are too many times I’ve worried so much about doing something perfectly that I haven’t done it at all. I'd forgotten that it doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be done. In the words of Oscar Wilde, "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention."

So if you're thinking about some small kindness you could do, let me encourage you to do it. Now, before it leaves your mind and the opportunity passes. Go and do something today.

Da fam!

Yay, my fam is here! Well, at least some of my fam. (Being the oldest of six kids means that as an adult, you rarely see all your sibs in one place at one time.) My sister Jenny is visiting, which isn't unusual, but what's even niftier is that she brought Tim-my-brother with her. Tim hasn't been to visit us since before his first child was born, some 18 years ago.

So are we doing the touristy Seattle stuff all week? YOU BET WE ARE.

Yes, still alive

I know, it's been a while. My excuse: my sister Jenny's been here. During the day we go out and have adventures, and at night (when I typically do my blogging) she sleeps in the room where my computer lives, so I haven't had much of a chance to write updates. In fact, I don't have much time to write this either, because the Nerd Brigade is coming today and I've got to do some cleaning up. Soooooo... later, skaters!

Skaters gonna skate skate skate skate skate.

Happy birthday! HAPpy birthday! Happy, happy birthday to Tim!

It's my brother's birthday. And what better way to celebrate than with a Disney earworm you'll be trying to claw out of your brain for weeks to come?


Love you, Timmot. Hope it's a great day!

Playing tourist with Jenny

week my sister Jenny was here visiting from Utah, and as always, any incident of visiting family is a good excuse to play tourist in one's own city. We went to Chihuly Garden and Glass, we went to Dick's in Wallingford for a burger and fries, we went to Snoqualmie Falls, we went to some local stores and Pike Place Market, and we strolled up and down the Seattle waterfront doing typical touristy stuff. I also finally got to ride the Great Wheel (took me long enough, ne?). But you won't see pictures of any of these exploits, primarily because I just wanted to spend the time with Jenny -- there wasn't a need (or much of a desire on my part) to obsessively document what we were doing.

In fact, it got a little funny on the Great Wheel. The first spin around, I just took in all the sights I could see from every direction, both soaring up into the air and gently descending. Then I had a closer look at the people below, staring up at the structure. And then I began to notice my fellow passengers; nearly every one was busy taking pictures or video of the experience on their cell phones.

Eh well. It was a delightful experience, and I'll probably go back and give it another whirl.

Alas, Jenny has now returned home. We miss her, but it was a lot of fun having her here.

Seeing my sister's art

So I have this sister named Julie who makes lots of stuff, including collages. She submitted some of her collages to the Northwest Collage Society for inclusion in a juried art show, and she got accepted! Woot!

Naturally, my friend Candice and her boy and I had to wend our way to the Washington State Convention Center today and check it out.

The gallery is on Level 2 of the WSCC. If you walk a loop around this floor, you can see all the artwork in the show.

While Candice went downstairs to give her boy a bathroom break, I struck up a conversation with a security guard. He told me he'd been enjoying walking around the building and looking at the various collages, and pointed out which ones were his favorites -- the ones that kept drawing his eye every time he walked past.

We aimed to make a full circuit of the show...

...but we had to begin at Ground Zero, the artwork that we (well, at least I) had come to see.

"Black Haired Girl: Jennifer," a collage made by one of my sisters, featuring another one of my sisters! GAZE IN WONDER UPON THIS GLORIOUS PINNACLE OF NEPOTISM.

heh.

There are several collages in the Black Haired Girls series. Aside from featuring people Julie knows who have (or are portrayed with) black hair, they all have backgrounds that symbolically represent an aspect of the subject's personality. In Jenny's case, the background is composed of postcards she sent to Julie. Jenny loves postcards, and one year she decided to send out a postcard every day to people she knew. As you might imagine, it gets difficult to know what to write after the first week or so of doing this, so many of Jenny's postcards have little stories about minor, everyday things -- very similar to status updates on social media.

It turned out very well, I think. Also, it happens to be one of the largest collages in the show, so it's visually striking even from a distance.

(By the way, Jules -- just as we were getting ready to leave, another guy who works at the WSCC came by your collage and said, "I don't know what the deal is with this one and all the postcards," so I asked, "Would you like to know more about it?" and we got to talk for a minute or two about your art. 'Twas fun!)

Are you in or near Seattle? Want to go see some super-snazzy collages? This show is running through the end of March 2016, and it's free and everything, so let me humbly suggest that you hie on over to the Rotating Art Gallery and take in some culchah! (You know you wanna.)

Respecting single people's time

(This piece has been sitting on the back burner for some time, but a comment I read today reminded me that it was long overdue.)

My sister Jenny teaches sixth grade, and she's very good at her job. Not only does she spend hours of time on her class during the school day, but she also expends many hours before and after school preparing lessons, grading papers and otherwise doing whatever she can to provide an excellent education to a hormonally-charged and squirmy group of tweens. After work, she has a place of her own with its attendant responsibilities, bills to pay, meals to cook and functions to attend. In other words, like most professional working adults, she has a full and busy schedule.

But Jenny also has to deal with a frequent social irritant. Some of her friends -- unfortunately, it seems most common among those who are married with children -- often contact her at the last minute, asking her to drop everything and do something with them. Their justification for this behavior? Well, she's single, so she must have loads of free time, right?

Uh, no.

Jenny's experience is far from unusual. A number of other friends and acquaintances -- including Linda, a graphic designer who runs marathons, participates in long-distance bike races and operates a major fansite in her spare time, and Rebecca, a professional singer who currently works two jobs to make ends meet -- have publicly expressed frustration over this same recurring social irritant. Their bosses, co-workers and friends repeatedly assume they have gobs of time to attend social functions, work extra hours and take on additional projects, simply because they're single. To put it bluntly, in Western society most married or partnered people show little respect for single people's time.

This is a social blind spot, and I suspect I know where it might originate. For many adults, the last time they were single was in high school or college, when they had relatively few responsibilities and far more free time. If they don't stop to consider, they may fall into the reflexive belief that single adults have the same kind of open schedules they once enjoyed in their student years. But this simply isn't so. Single working adults have as many responsibilities as couples do -- with the added stress of making do on one income, single-handedly running their own errands, cooking their own meals, taking care of their own finances and doing all the household chores, since they don't have the luxury of delegating these responsibilities to a partner. They are not footloose and fancy-free teenagers -- they are working people, and they are staggeringly busy. When you operate on the thoughtless assumption that they can just clear their schedules at the drop of a hat, you are strongly suggesting that you do not acknowledge their status as full-fledged grownups. That stings. And the more often you do it, the more emotional corrosion it causes to your relationship.

I'm far from free of blame in this regard. On many past occasions, I blithely assumed my sister would be free to do something without taking the time to consult her first. Now that I see what a bonehead I was, I've been making a greater effort to be as respectful of Jenny's busy schedule as she is of mine. But it isn't really that difficult to make the necessary mental adjustment, to recognize and respect the time of friends and acquaintances, whether they're singles or couples. It just requires a few minutes of your own time to stop and think about it -- and to change your behavior accordingly.

(By the way, if I've ever disrespected your time, my sincerest apologies. I know I can do better.)

That's the deal

Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

--C.S. "Jack" Lewis, from the film Shadowlands

As you're probably well aware if you've been reading this blog for a while, my father died in a car accident about a month after I turned 12. That may seem like a young age to lose a parent, and it was -- but I was the oldest of six siblings, the youngest of whom had just turned three at the time. Of all my siblings, I spent the longest time with my father and have the most and clearest memories of him, some happier than others.

I have memories of listening to Dad make up silly stories and parody songs on the fly; memories of being picked up, run down the hall and tossed onto the queen-sized bed with a huge bounce; memories of Dad hanging onto the back of my bike, running along behind me as I tried to get the hang of balancing on two wheels; memories of flying kites and foraging for crops gone wild in the field that had once been a farm across from our house; memories of Dad making a puppet show theater or drawing a Christmas scene with soap on our front window, then painting it with tempera paints; memories of Dad, after days and days of sleepless worry, having a loud and scary nervous breakdown in the middle of the night; memories of Dad quietly swimming up to Aunt Linda, basking on her raft in the middle of Lake Alpine, and evilly upending her into the icy water; memories of Dad having no faith in himself, blaming himself for his perceived imperfections almost every day; memories of Dad sleepwalking into Julie's and my bedroom at 1 a.m. and telling us to brush our teeth (an episode he didn't remember in the morning); memories of Dad asking me with tender concern if xxxxxxx had done something to hurt me, and when I said yes, the way his haunted, defeated expression hurt even more than the abuse had, so I just stopped admitting when those incidents happened; memories of Dad and my uncle taking their sons on early morning paper routes and forming a little club called the "Paper Daddies of America"; memories of Dad pushing me high on the swings until I almost kicked the moon; memories of Dad helping me water the cucumber plants growing outside his workroom; memories of Dad losing his cool over the boys listening to the Beatles' Rubber Soul album over and over, finally taking it off the record player and flinging it out the front door into the field; memories of Dad at the drawing board, working on a layout for a client; memories of Dad driving the orange VW bus across the country while Mom handed out sandwiches and soda from the Coleman cooler; memories of Dad sticking drawing pencils into his ears and nose and having Mom take a Polaroid of him; memories of Dad jumping into my grandparents' pool fully clothed, then dragging Mom in after him -- the list goes on and on.

These memories -- strong, vivid, sometimes goofy, always emotionally charged -- are why I miss my dad. He was a creative, sensitive, funny, impatient, imperfect, vibrant, real person. There were things I loved about him as well as things I really didn't like. In short, I have enough memories about him to hunger for more.

It's different for my other siblings. My brothers remember Dad quite a bit; my sisters remember very little. And my youngest sister, Michele, has no memories of Dad at all. It's bothered her for a long time. She was a "Daddy's girl" growing up, always gravitating more to Dad than to Mom, and after he died, she -- barely three, you remember -- couldn't understand what had happened to him. "Where's Daddy?" she asked, over and over again, and when we told her yet again that he had died, her plaintive response was always the same: "But I want him."

When I was younger I thought, naïvely, that my siblings were lucky not to remember Dad. Memories of the dead are keen sharp things, and the closer you hold them to your heart, the more you cut yourself. Wouldn't it be better not to have them, not to carry a source of pain around with you? I don't remember my great-grandfather or my Aunt Bonnie, both of whom died before I was born; my interest in them as people is mere curiosity, with no accompanying ache of loss. I didn't really understand why my little sister could feel such a hole in her center from a man she couldn't even remember.

You know what it took to help me finally figure it out? The death of a man I never met.

I've wanted to meet Robin Williams from the time I was eight years old. Yes, really. I watched him on Mork & Mindy and found him not just funny as an actor, but fascinating as a person. I tried (and failed) to get permission to participate in the Bay Area March of Dimes walk that year, because I knew he would be participating and just maybe I'd get a chance to walk next to him and talk to him for a minute or two. (Oh, shut up -- you expect realistic dreams from an eight-year-old kid?) For some reason as I got older, I still harbored the quiet but unshakable belief that at some point I'd get a chance to meet him in person. I didn't want to be overbearing or annoying or gushy about it -- he struck me as the kind of person who'd be deeply uncomfortable with that kind of attention. I just wanted a chance to walk up to him, shake his hand and say something goofy like, "Thank you, sir, ya done good."

Let's just say that didn't happen.

And now, I think I understand a little more what it must be like for my sister. Yes, there's a particular kind of knifelike pain that comes from having clear memories of the dead. But there's another kind of pain -- a dull crunch, like a heavy weight that comes out of the dark in slow motion to crack hard against your ribcage -- that comes from having no memories when you desperately want them. It's a different kind of pain. But that doesn't make it any less painful.

I'm so sorry, Shelly. I wish I could share what I have with you. I wish you could know your dad the way you want to. Because of what I remember, I know he'd bug you and worry about you and frequently annoy you, but he'd also be proud of you in so many ways. You're his daughter, and you carry inside you many things that are made from him. That's one way of being close to him, of getting to know him better -- to find the things in you that were also part of your dad. I think he'd appreciate that.

Smarty pants

As children and teenagers, my siblings and I all underwent multiple batteries of tests -- all the standardized tests for public schools in the states of California and Utah and the college aptitude tests for future university attendance, but also a number of specialized tests supposedly designed to measure our intelligence. We all fared well on these tests. But some of my siblings received sufficiently high scores to gain access to the schools' gifted programs, while others did not. This disparity led to a sense, particularly among those siblings who didn't make it into the gifted program, of intellectual haves and have-nots in our family -- the belief that some of us were brilliant, and others merely of average intelligence.

And I'm going to tell you that it was all poppycock.

Without going into insane depth on the subject, the standardized IQ test is supposed to measure an individual's intelligence -- his or her ability to think and reason.  It's meant to be statistically reliable -- that is, although your test scores may change by a point or two up or down, you are generally supposed to get the same score over time. But I've noticed that my own test scores vary by as much as ten points, depending on the type of test administered, my age, the time of day the test was given, and a host of other factors which are not supposed to affect final scores on IQ tests. I've therefore come to the conclusion that most IQ tests do not actually assess intelligence. What they do measure is an individual's ability to navigate a standardized test successfully.

I'm very good at taking tests. Even going into a subject "blind," I can usually suss out multiple-choice answers by process of elimination and determine answers to certain questions based on facts given in other parts of the test. I don't have particularly strong testing anxiety, I pace myself, I try to use logic and knowledge of Latin root words to figure things out, and I skip over questions if they weigh me down too long, going back to focus on them later if I have more time. In other words, if I have even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject, I can usually get at least a respectable test score. And because I'm good at taking tests, it follows that I'm also good at taking IQ tests. My average scores don't put me into the "Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius" range, but they're good enough that I could probably qualify for Mensa membership. (I don't want to, because to my mind Mensa is less about seeking after the good of humanity and more about masturbatory self-congratulation, but that's fodder for a whole different post.)

As I see it, the problems with singling out kids for special educational treatment because they test in the gifted-to-genius range are: a) doing so engenders a strong sense of resentment in family groups, b) gifted children pick up the hint that high intelligence is key to their identity, making them afraid to fail for fear of losing who they are, c) many of the enrichment activities lavished on gifted children would be enjoyed just as much by those not considered gifted, and d) by the time most people reach adulthood, it doesn't make that much of a difference. The highest achievers in my family -- the ones who are making the most difference for good in the world -- were not the children who were selected for the gifted programs. Maybe they're the high achievers precisely because that early sense of disparity between siblings made them feel they had to prove themselves -- so they did it in spades. The so-called "smart" siblings have had a tendency to rest on their laurels, complacent in the knowledge that they didn't need to prove themselves to anyone, or afraid to take big risks because they feared failing and looking "dumb" in front of others. Being labeled as intelligent has, in some ways, held them back from achieving their full potential.

This thing shouldn't determine anyone's self-worth.

True intelligence is something far more than an arbitrary number on a Scantron sheet. It is not measured by standardized tests as much as it is measured by individual wisdom and judgement, the ability to make course corrections and learn from one's mistakes. In the end, you don't really need to be super-smart; all you really need is to be smart enough. From that point, hard work and application cover the rest.

A Vain State

Yesterday I went to the opener for my sister's solo art show.

(As you might be able to tell, my brother decided to get artsy with the photos.)

The venue had a live DJ. Lots of family, lots of friends, quite a few people who just heard the music and wandered in.

By the time we had to leave, Shelly had already sold 10 prints! Not too shabby.

GO JULIE!

Proud Sister moment: Julie was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire today (Tuesday, October 26). Don't worry if you missed it, though, because the second half of her appearance will be on tomorrow. I encourage you to check your local listings, tune in and see how she did! Woot!

Sibling spotlight, Bonus Edition: not a sibling

I should be all done with the sibling spotlight feature, mostly because I've run out of siblings to spotlight. But there's someone else in my family you should know about.

That, of course, would be my fabulous mom.

Mom doesn't really like to talk about herself, but she is a very interesting person. She was the second child in a family of six, all girls. Her role in the family was peacemaker, the one who ironed over disputes and got people talking to each other again. Though she grew up in a close-knit and loving family, her parents could be quite strict, and on occasion they were controlling to the point of being abusive. To her credit, Mom found a way to keep her parents part of her life without allowing them to continue to dictate her life decisions.

Mom married a wonderful man, but when they were first wed her mother-in-law did not like her and made no bones about it. Determined to win her over, Mom has spent years responding to cruelty with love and to anger with patience, and it has paid off. She learned how to raise a family of six kids on a freelance graphic designer's salary, earning a black belt in household budgeting. She's also had to deal with the repercussions of marrying a man with clinical depression, including seeing her children through multiple mental health issues.

Her own optimistic nature has helped Mom through many rough times, including becoming a widow at age 37 with six young children to raise alone. She has retained that optimism when she had to return to work, when she was first diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, when she started having heart-related health problems, and when family tragedies occasionally reared their ugly heads. She is not in the least bit ethereal -- she is one of the most practical and well-grounded people I know -- but she has solid faith that things will work out as they should if people are courageous enough to do what is right.

Mom is good at seeing new experiences in an adventurous light. When our family moved to Utah after Dad died, she wrote to the Utah tourism office and got as many flyers and brochures as she could about all the things that were available to see and do in Utah, and shared them with us kids. She knew she would be uprooting us from just about everything we knew, but she wanted us to see the move as a great adventure, not as something to be hated or feared.

Mom also has a great love for learning. She taught school for several years before getting married, and returned to it again after Dad died. For many years she taught resource classes, where she was a particularly effective teacher because of her empathy with her students -- she was an undiagnosed dyslexic who really only learned to read in the fifth grade, and then only because her teacher that year worked one-on-one with her to make sure she could read. For many years after that, however, the sensation of being stupid, or of not being as good as the other students, lingered. These experiences prepared her to understand exactly what "her kids" (the resource students at her school) were going through, as they struggled with material their friends had mastered easily, and she was patient and loving with each child.

In addition to gathering knowledge, Mom has a special love for history. When she was in college, back when the only two career choices a woman had were teacher or nurse, she minored in history and geography. In many cases she was the only female student in her classes, and she let slide a number of obnoxiously sexist comments from her professors because of her continued enthusiasm for the subjects. All the time I was growing up there were books about history in the house: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, books on the Civil War, biographies of Lincoln. In fact, that's how we discovered little Danny could read at age 2 -- he'd opened the Lincoln biography and read how Abraham Lincoln was named after his grandfather, who was killed by Indians. This fact he announced to Mom.

Mom created the kind of home where we felt perfectly comfortable bringing friends over for dinner (sometimes unannounced), the place where college Family Home Evening groups would meet for an activity, the endpoint of a group date where everyone would flop on the couch and watch a copy of It's a Wonderful Life. Julie has invited friends to Mom's house for Christmas when they felt lonely, I've dragged friends over to talk and cook, and Mom seems to adopt pretty much everyone who wants adopting.

Mom is a true member of the Kest/Eriksson clan, in that she expresses love in many ways -- but a big way is through food. She's an excellent cook. When we were in high school, she used to make homemade donuts on Halloween night. Sometimes she'd make oliebollen for New Year's Eve. She made my friend Brad a chocolate torte for his birthday when he was in high school, and decades later he hasn't stopped talking about it. Then, too, she specializes in one-time-only creations where she looks in the fridge, the pantry and the spice rack, flings stuff into a pan and starts working her culinary alchemy on whatever she finds. "Better enjoy this," she will tell us, "because I have no idea about the proportions, so I'm never making it again."

It's funny. I know Mom is in her sixties, and I know what she looks like now. But somehow, whenever I think of her, this is what comes to mind:

I think this picture was taken when Mom was in college. It's what she looked like as a young mother. It's who she still is inside. (We've talked about dreams before, and she's said that in her dreams she always appears as she was in her twenties -- young and healthy and full of energy.) Life experiences can batter your outer form, but they don't have to change who you are inside -- and so this is as true a portrait of my Mom as any other picture I could show you.

I love you, Mutti. I hope I haven't embarrassed you by putting you on the spot.

Sibling spotlight #5: Daniel

Today I'd like to introduce you to my brother Daniel (or Dan, or Danny).

Dan is the second oldest in the family, and the oldest boy. As a little guy he was very concerned with fairness and with people being kind to each other. One day I came home from kindergarten crying because some other kids in my class had been mean to me, and little Danny -- probably all of three years old at the time -- was all ready to run down the street to the school, find the mean kids and beat them up because they'd hurt his sister's feelings.

Dan is the kind of person whose mood is infectious. As a teenager, when he came into the house upset over something, you could feel the cloud entering with him even before you saw or heard him. Likewise, Dan's sense of humor is offbeat, naughty, hilarious and spot-on. He can make people laugh so hard they cry; I suspect he'd make a successful stand-up comic.

Dan can sell a story like no other. In high school he had most of the kids believing he was Polynesian -- he even made up a fictitious island language on the spot, the better to cement his story. For years afterward there were kids in his graduating class -- even some actual Polynesian kids -- who believed Dan was from the islands.

Dan served an LDS mission to Norway in the early 1990s (this picture is from that era); he is one of three of my siblings to serve a full-time mission. There is a small town called Hell within the Norwegian mission boundaries, so Dan and one of his mission companions can honestly say they went to Hell and back together. He had a number of interesting mission experiences, including sampling his first reindeer roast, consuming his body weight in all-you-can-eat pizza with sliced-up hot dogs on it (?), and having a girl answer the door naked in an attempt to shock the missionaries. Little did she know Eldste Dan is fearless.

Many of us dabbled in music, whether it was piano, violin, drums, flute or bagpipes (yes, really), but only Dan made music his focus and his passion. He played the trombone in band and orchestra all through high school and in college, and provided the brass backup in a couple of local bands. He also loves to listen to music, and has a good singing voice -- good enough that he won a ship-wide singing competition on a cruise several years ago (and got mobbed by groupies in the elevators).

Dan is a good daddy. He and his wife have two children, a boy and a girl, and Dan loves them to pieces. In this way he is very much like his own father, who adored his kids and enjoyed spending time goofing off with them.

Yep, Dan is a pretty awesome guy and an amazing brother. I love you, Dan.

Sibling spotlight #4: Michele

It's high time I introduced you to my fabulous youngest sister, Michele.

Shelly is one smart cookie. She has two degrees -- one from UVU, one from the University of Utah -- in fine art, studio art and printmaking. She reads everything from William S. Burroughs to Japanese manga. She writes expressively and well, with her own unique and authentic voice. She's also an excellent cook, specializing in food with Asian flavors and in the best salads you've ever eaten.

If you were to visit Michele's place you would see much evidence of her love for pop-culture girl power: She-Ra Princess of Power, Sailor Moon, Jem and the Holograms, Dita Von Teese, Catwoman, and the ultimate girl power symbol, Wonder Woman. Her favorite looks are reminiscent of the mid-century glamour girls -- a little Audrey Hepburn, a little Bettie Page, with a whole lot of attitude and a rocking set of high heels. And she's got a well-tuned and hilarious sense of humor.

Michele is a talented painter and a particularly skilled printmaker, a fact which would make her dad very proud. She loves beautiful things; she has a great visual aesthetic and a gift for putting things together with style and meticulous attention to detail. She's also a hard worker (at one point she was simultaneously going to school, holding down two jobs and being a single mom) and has a very strong work ethic.

There are very few people I know who are more spiritually sensitive than Michele. She is a true and loyal friend; if you become friends with her, you are likely to have a friend for life, and she will do whatever she can to help you. She has a gentle, compassionate spirit that expresses itself most readily in a love for animals. She has a special affinity for horses and has loved them since childhood; she rides beautifully and seems most at home on horseback. This sensitivity also means that she can be easily hurt, and so she often covers this inwardly sensitive nature with an outer shell of toughness.

Finally, Michele is a trusting person. She has given us permission to be temporary guardians of her daughter, the intrepid Miss V. I know she has a difficult time living a couple of states away from V, but Shelly's willingness to share a child makes a huge difference for good in our lives every day.

Michele is a beautiful person. Some of that beauty is on the outside...

...but most of it is within. I love you, Shelly.

Sibling spotlight #3: Timothy

Either I'm about to give birth to Athena or I've got a rip-roaring head cold; most likely the latter. Since I seem to be awake whether I like it or not, perhaps it's time to compose another sibling spotlight. Up to bat this time: Timothy.

Tim is the third sibling in the family, and the younger of the two boys. I believe he has a charmed life, considering the many MANY times he has gone through incidents and accidents... to date, he has had two black eyes, has cracked a leg bone, was bit in the face by a dog, had a knuckle of his finger sliced open, and had to have emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder and spleen. I'm sure there are many more mishaps I've forgotten. In any case, he's lived through them all.

And why? Well, if you ask me, it's because Tim is meant to be on Earth at this time and place -- partly to be a husband and father, and partly to be a teacher. Tim loves knowledge. He loves to soak up and mentally collate all sorts of information, and he loves to disseminate what he's learned. His obvious love for his chosen subjects is infectious. He is a student of several world religions, though he shows no signs of leaving his own, and he is a walking repository of all Star Wars trivia known to man.

Tim is a creator. He sees potential everywhere. As a little boy, he often got in trouble for bringing rusty, discarded farm equipment home from the field across from our house; he could see beauty where everyone else saw junk. Even now, one of his favorite things is to figure out a way to create lovely, useful things from discarded items. He hates to see things go to waste and is concerned about our world and how we can take better care of it. He works with clay, and is happy to teach others how to spin graceful forms out of the mud. (Incidentally, when Tim discovered that the man I was dating -- Captain Midnight -- was also a potter, he got so excited he screamed "MARRY HIM!" into the phone. I'm glad I took his advice.)

Elder Tim served a mission to faraway, exotic Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He kicked butt and took names (but in a righteous way). Several families in Wisconsin still consider him to be their son. Tim also married an awesome woman and has four amazing, bright, talented, funny kids. Yes, I would say this even if they weren't relatives.

There is no story Tim cannot make interesting. He can have us all on the floor laughing as he recounts the three times in his life he has fainted, and the subsequent humiliations he had to suffer. He has an engaging speaking voice, and a clear, pleasant singing voice.

Tim makes adventures happen. He and his wife are costumers who love nothing better than to dress up and attend some shindig or other -- whether it's a Renaissance faire or a local showing of the 501st. Their kids also have an array of costumes, and have been dressing up since they were tiny.

Tim is astounding. He rox my sox. I'm very lucky to have him as a brother and a friend.

Love you, Timot.

Live! (or at least Undead!) from Utah

Has it really been over a month? Yes, yes it has. In that time I have been a complete social reject who has been puttering about on Etsy (and now Bookins), posting hasty scribbles on Twitter, and doing very little else. In fact it apparently takes a trip to another state to get me to write here.

So yes, I am once again in the Land of Dry Heat, although it's supposed to be very pleasant and springlike this weekend. We shall see.

But what are you doing there? I hear you cry. And why did you shutter your Etsy store? That is no fun at all! Well, true, but I can't very well sell my wares from three states away. Besides, I'll be back on Monday and cosmic fun palacial goodness shall then resume.

I am here because my youngest sister, Miss V's mom, is graduating from college. I am tremendously proud of her for sticking to it. She's had a lot of irons in the fire, what with work and school and single motherhood and so forth, and I suspect a lot of other people would have given up work on a bachelor's degree long since. She persevered. It hasn't always been easy and she's often lived hand to mouth, but she did it. Her convocation is on Friday.

Incidentally, this event will also make me the only one of my siblings who has not yet graduated from college. That's because I am a dork. Actually, the problem is that the first time around I was a dork and never went to classes and didn't bother to withdraw and wasted a lot of other people's money and so forth, and the second time around I did very well but I didn't have enough money to take a full load of classes. Going to school is possible when one obtains the rare blessed convergence of having both the time and the money; generally speaking, when I have one, I don't have the other. Maybe it's time to look into a few distance education classes again, although in the past I've found those have not ended well. (Procrastination. It's a killer.)

I had best go to bed. More later.

Sibling spotlight #2: Jennifer

Today, picking up on a theme that was started quite a few months back, I'd like to tell you why I'm proud of my sister Jennifer.

Jennifer (or Jenny) is the fifth child in a family of six. This birth order alone can be difficult to deal with, as far too often the middle children in a large family feel lost in the shuffle. To add to that, among so many squeaky-wheel siblings (myself included), Jenny rarely complains and has thus sometimes received the short end of the stick when it comes to attention.

Jenny is a woman of mystery and allure. (This sentence alone should make her snort with derision.) Her talents are so multitudinous that it is difficult to list them all, but I'll try to mention a few. First, she is a raconteuse of no little skill, and can make just about any life experience worth hearing; she tells stories with plenty of humor, aplomb and pitch-perfect comedic timing.

Jenny also has a beautiful singing voice, though she doesn't often admit to it. She knows and can sing scads of Broadway tunes, is the Queen of Karaoke Performance, and has the ability to break into a dead-on Ethel Merman impression at a moment's notice. (It's uncanny, I tell you.)

When Jenny was younger, she was simply blunt in stating her opinion. Now that she's matured, she is refreshingly frank. (Yes, they are very different things.) You never have to wonder where you stand with Jenny; she has no problem saying exactly what she thinks.

Thus far, Jenny is the only one of my sisters to have served a full-time mission for our church. She devoted a year and a half and much of her own money to go to Bordeaux, France, where she learned to speak French with near-native fluency and accent. She also learned numerous bits of exotic yet useful trivia, such as a) after a long day of going door-to-door, bidets make handy footbaths, b) in France, sometimes the Orangina flows like water, and c) there's nothing quite like hearing "How Great Thou Art" when it is sung in French by an authentic crazy person. I don't know if she's aware how tremendously proud I am of her for serving a mission.

Jenny is also really, really good with kids. She was a grade-school camp counselor for several years, and now she teaches sixth grade in an undisclosed location in Utah. She's loving, but very firm, and those kids know they cannot get away with squat in her classroom. Incidentally, she is also the only sibling who followed in my mother's footsteps by becoming a professional teacher. Jenny puts a lot of her time and effort into teaching, and it shows; parents and kids adore her. She is also the go-to girl when it comes to the latest and best titles in children's literature, and she is gracious in letting me blather on about my Harry Potter obsession ad nauseam.

Finally, Jenny is gorgeous. She has this peaches-and-cream complexion, striking eyes that shift color constantly from blue to green to grey, and a perfect smile. Even her driver's license photo looks fabulous. How does she do it?!

I'm excited that Jenny is coming to visit at the end of the month. I've missed her.

Love you, Jen.

Sibling spotlight #1: Julie

I have always had reason to be proud of each of my siblings, for different reasons. Today I'd like to tell you why I'm proud of my sister Julie.

Ever since she was small, Julie has had a keen interest in the world around her and in relating what she observes as honestly as possible. She is a strong runner, and a trophy she won when she was younger declares that she is the Goddess of Speed. I may have two speeds, but Julie has only one: FAST. She is one of the most dedicated and hard-working people I know, and she is always pushing herself -- not just physically, but mentally as she expands her life in new directions. A year ago, she gave up a job at a prestigious university to return to graduate school so she could pursue dreams of becoming a film producer.

Although Julie adores film -- especially silent film and Golden Age musicals -- it is not her only passion. She also works in collage, making elaborate and beautiful images with paper cutouts. Julie writes well and expressively, with keen observation, and has taken a writing course to improve her abilities. She is well versed in music and listens to a diverse range of styles, and often makes mix CDs for family and friends.

I have continually been amazed at the kinds of things Julie has done for her friends. She will go to great lengths in the effort to make sure they are happy and having a good time. She has invited friends home to share Christmas with our family, knowing that they will be welcomed at our house. Often she wears herself out for their sakes.

Julie does some of these things because she wants very much to be admired. Sometimes, when she is feeling depressed, she allows herself to believe that her friends only like her for the things she's done, not for who she is inside. I wanted to remind her of something, and I think Fred Rogers put it simplest and best, so I'll use his words.

It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair--
But it's you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you--
Not the things that hide you,
Not your jobs--
They're just beside you.

But it's you I like--
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
Even when you're feeling blue
That it's you I like,
It's you yourself,
It's you,
It's you I like.

I love you, Julescat.