Our Dirty Little Secret

I have been living in persistent anxiety the last few days that someone would “out” us, or at least suspect us, so I thought I should just get it out in the open. Air the dirty laundry, so to speak. Confession: Brady and I are over halfway through the latest Dan Brown novel.

I know, I know. You can spare us the “you should know better” lectures. We do know better. Your feelings of superiority are accurate. You are better than us. This post is in no way an attempt to justify or excuse the behavior. We have fallen from grace and readily accept the consequences. You may never trust our judgment or literary recommendations again.

But now that it’s out in the open, I finally feel free to talk about it. OH. MY. WORD. (*shudder* shake it off *shudder* again) GAHH. It has been a rough few days. I never made it beyond the first chapter of The Da Vinci Code. I couldn’t stomach the prose. I remember a couple years ago one of my students really trying to convince me that it was a good book. I agreed that it was probably entertaining, probably had an interesting premise, some suspense, maybe some interesting historical tidbits, but I held my ground that it was not good writing. To which the student responded, “Yeah, but when you read what he says, and then, like, look at the paintings, it’s, like . . . WOW.” A compelling argument in its own way, but still did not convince me of Brown’s literary merits. I was then assured that if I had taken this kid’s high school AP history class I would have better understood the real genius of the book. I personally find Heidegger’s ekphrasis of Van Gogh’s Peasant Shoes more enlightening than Brown’s contributions to art criticism, but to each his own way.

But I digress. I’d like to say this was all some kind of accident, that we stumbled into this unknowingly. But we were fully conscious and consenting. Brady downloaded an audio version of the book from audible.com because he was “just really curious.” The other night we were both exhausted and not really interested in TV, so Brady suggested that we start listening to it. My response: “Really? REALLY?! Why did you GET that? Are you kidding?” I was actually a little angry at first. Then I figured I’d just fall asleep, so might as well. Only I didn’t fall asleep. It’s not because I was pleasantly surprised at how gripping the story really was. It’s kind of like passing a car wreck and you can’t look away. I’ve been rubbernecking my way through this thing, having to constantly look back and comment at how unbelievable it all is. In fact, we have developed our own running commentary with the narration (a la Mystery Science Theater 3000) that has actually made the book quite entertaining.

Not having the text in front of me it’s difficult to remember specifics to share here, but the editor in me can barely hold still while we listen. If you do read it, you can expect lots of preachy sermons hidden in the guise of flashbacks to lectures the protagonist delivered to his college students (all conveniently remembered whilst running from the bad guys—though I usually pause to think about lectures I gave to my college students when I’m in a moment of crisis too). Also during these flights you will be treated to quite the tour of our nation’s capital, as the protagonist takes the time to notice fine architectural details and magnificent paintings and sculptures in various buildings (and explaining quite a few obscure and utterly irrelevant details about it all in the narration before we have to quickly rush away—again, a typical response in midst of crisis, or at the very least a good placeholder for all that research that makes the author look so, so smart but doesn’t fit anywhere else in the book).

You will not be allowed to forget that the Redskins are playing that night. Every security guard will be listening to or thinking about the game, several other characters will comment on it (because it’s these consistent, concrete details that make it so REAL). You could probably start some kind of interesting drinking game around words like “grope” and “elegant.” People are constantly groping: for light switches, for doorknobs, for memories, for ID cards—it’s as if the characters have lost all manual dexterity and are just flailing about for the most part. And so many things are “elegant”: city plans, devious schemes, artwork, and one character in particular is always described as “an elegant African American” (Dan Brown is so P.C.). Then there’s “noetics.” Don’t worry about what it really is, it just is, okay? Oh, and did I mention that the Redskins are playing? It seems to be awfully important that we know this.

You will know which characters are going to die and which won’t; the expendable people seem clearly marked as soon as we are introduced to them (sort of the counterparts to the guys in the red shirts on Star Trek). Expect that you won’t find out anything important until two or three chapters after the characters discover it themselves. Again, we don’t have the text, so we can’t see the chapter or section breaks coming, but any time characters can’t believe what they are looking at or a phrase like “that can’t possibly be what the message says” pops up, we know the scene will end before we get to see/hear/read what they do. Not being overly concerned with the outcome of this story, I find it more obnoxious than suspenseful in its utter predictability. What might help is some ominous organ chords pumping in duh-duh-DUHHNNNN after such statements. That or Ryan Seacrest popping in and promising “we’ll find out . . . after this” and cutting to commercial. With all the product placement and mention of name brands in the book, Brown might as well have sold advertising space (or maybe he did?). Other than all this, and all the drawn out, dispassionate discussions of metaphysical philosophy held in the midst of traumatic, horrific encounters with life-threatening situations, I’d say the book holds up okay.

I am, of course, leaving out the knit-picky discussion of Brown’s language. I wouldn’t say no one can mangle an ordinary English sentence quite like him (I worked in editing for years—I’ve read my fair share of mixed metaphors, stilted dialogue, misplaced modifiers, and intrusion of “big word” descriptors intended to make the author sound smart but actually terribly misused). But I would say that very few have quite so successfully duped readers into thinking they were masterful. Other people have written articles on that issue, so I will just add the comment that editors should be doing more than putting in or taking out commas. They should be the filters that keep such ridiculous missteps to a minimum. I had to spend some good time reading Billy Collins this weekend just to remind myself of the beautiful, charming, and cunning things the English language can accomplish (I highly recommend the poem “Bathtub Families” to cheer you up, though it is as difficult to find the prime example of Collins’s good work as it is Brown’s bad).

Sometimes while we are listening I zone out a bit and daydream parody versions. One scene in which the two main characters were poring over a painting, culling all the hidden meaning from it, reminded me of when I took my nieces to see an exhibit of Walter Wick’s I Spy series last summer. We stood in front of some of those pictures for ages pointing out all the hidden details with the same intensity, minus the suspicions of centuries-old conspiracy theories lurking behind the art. But what if there were secret encryptions in children’s picture books that pointed to little known (though easily hyped) legend? Perhaps Brown’s next work could involve a conspiracy theory behind children’s picture books, wherein the evil Scholastic has secretly brainwashed us all, but our hero will discover the long-lost heir of Waldo (of Where’s Waldo fame) and Carmen San Diego—an invisible child who can never be found—to restore the ancient order of things.

Now, before any fans gets defensive of Brown’s work and take all this critique personally, I would point out two things. One, I have no problem with this kind of writing being out there. The action/adventure, light, beach-reading/guilty pleasure sort of book has its place. If people want to read it, fine. My problem is when it purports to be something it is not; people buying $75 leather-bound copies of The Da Vinci Code and saying that book changed their life is too much for me. (I heard one commentator say that the real hoax was 40 million people getting together and saying it was the best book they ever read.) Dan Brown is not an exceptional author. In 100 years most people will likely not have heard of him or be reading his work. He is someone who wrote something and got an incredible marketing campaign for it and for some reason it took off more than the other mediocre novels out there. Getting something made into a movie doesn’t mean you’ve done good writing or good research, nor does it get you into the canon. Just gets you lots of money. The second thing I would point out for anyone personally offended by this critique is that I am reading the book too. I am right there with you. And, if I follow through and finish the book, I will have to add Dan Brown to the list of authors I have read. Dostoyevsky, Austen, Dickens, Twain, the Bronte sisters, Faulkner, Ellison, Morrison, and Shakespeare will all have to make a small space for Brown in that increasingly less prestigious club. To which I say: Well played, Mr. Brown. Well played.

SAL

After a few weeks in Knoxville, we are feeling a bit more settled (didn't quite make it to the Smoky Mountains yet, so no post for that). It has been quite an adjustment finding our way around here, though. Particularly for someone as directionally and geographically challenged as myself. We had been quite complacent back in Utah, what with its nice grid system. Everything was so tidy; it was comforting to know that (as a general rule) 100 South would be three blocks away from 400 South, and if you ever got really disoriented, the giant Rocky Mountains  were always to the east. For the most part streets run in straight lines, intersecting at neat perpendicular intersections. Generally, there is only one freeway to contend with--good old I-15 running north to south connecting the dots of towns lining the Wasatch Front. If you wanted to get fancy, you could mess around with 1-80 or the 215 up around Salt Lake, with chances to go east or west on the "belt route." but for the most part we are pretty simple in our needs and I-15 suited us fine.

Perhaps I am being overly nostalgic for my former home in the Rockies and the confidence I had finding my way around. Knoxville is a whole other story. Streets seem to have a different temperament here. The roads are quite narrow (I'm still not excited about Brady's idea for riding his bike to work) with no shoulder to speak of for the most part. There's so much foliage you can't see the next intersection sometimes. The streets curve dramatically in places and change names with a fickleness I find highly unnecessary. The mile or so we take one road to the freeway changes names three times within that mile. There are more freeways than I am probably even aware of yet, and it seems that once we enter one we have to merge to another going a different direction and then immediately exit. Now, there are some upsides to this, lest anyone in Knoxville feel the need to defend this great city's transit plans. Traffic does seem to flow rather smoothly on all these freeways; I have yet to be stuck in a crawl of traffic that sometimes plagues the solitary I-15. So I think it's a system that works, just not one I have figured out yet.

That's where SAL comes in. She is the GPS generously donated to our Knoxville adventure by our good friend Daniel (who, it should also be noted, has impeccable taste in ginger-flavored soda). We (or at least I) would be completely lost without this wonderful device. Even when we get completely turned around, somehow SAL pulls us through. She was the only way I would have gone anywhere the week Brady was in Toronto for the APA conference (considering that first "A" stands for "American," I think I'm not the only one facing geographical challenges).

But there can be downsides to using SAL. We gave her that name because of her "voice." She sounds like the female counterpart to HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Oddyssey. She has that computery, sometimes-sounds-like-she's-playing-a-bad-game-of-"MadGab"-in-her-pronunciations voice, but it always sounds a little condescending. It's quite similar to the voice of the self-check registers at grocery stores, but somehow that voice always sounds a little happier about our transactions, almost congratulatory of my self-sufficiency in checking and bagging my own groceries.

With SAL, though, sometimes I can almost hear a weary sigh when I opt to vary from her route (though to my credit, she does get a little confused about freeway ramps). And when I do get somewhere, she tells me several times--"You are approaching your destination . . . your destination is on the right"--over and over, as if to say, "Are you getting this? You've gone this route before, you know. You really should know how to do this by now . . ."

I am torn about my reliance on this technology. I need SAL, and sometimes I think she knows it. One time after dropping Brady off at work, she led me astray. I punched the "Take Me Home" button, and she decided to go a different route than we came. But I trusted her. Then, she told me to "keep to the right" when the freeway was about to split and merge onto one of the other freeways. She even had little orange arrows pointing me there. I did exactly as she said. Exactly. Then she told me to exit at number 386. There was no 386. There was on the freeway I had just departed from, the one the little orange arrows pointed me away from. But not where I was then. I felt betrayed. I wanted to yell at SAL for somehow putting me en route to North Carolina instead of my apartment. She calmly (though I think a little grudgingly) recalculated the route and I eventually found familiar territory and got home.

But I wouldn't have been surprised if she had somehow overtaken the powersteering, locked all the doors and windows and softly scolded, "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave," and drove on.

Knoxville--week one

We made it to Knoxville and are starting to get settled in (not quite there yet, though, so no pictures of the new place for now). We decided to take the time between the move-in and the start of Brady's internship to explore the town and be on vacation a bit. The verdict: Knoxville is all right. We found a lot of  great, free stuff to do around town. We decided to pick one thing each day to be our motivator to get more boxes unpacked. This week's itinerary:

Monday

Not a ton for this day, besides several trips to Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. trying to get all the odds and ends you seem to need in a new place, including groceries. It was too bad that for Monday's activity we chose to check out the local co-op. We were pretty burned out on shopping by that evening. It's small, but seems good. Brady thought it was funny to talk to "hipsters" with southern accents.

Tuesday

Still pretty busy with unpacking, so we stayed close to home. We decided to look into the park by our house. Amazing. It's right up the street from our place and absolutely gorgeous. It has a paved greenway all around the border of the park and winding through it. I will try to restrain myself with how many pictures I include below (for a couple of people who have been in the desert for so many years, we were amazed at this place).

The greenway

The pond. The part of Knoxville we live in is called Fountain City, so I think it's some kind of rule that all the parks have to have some kind of fountain in them. At least the two in this area I've noticed have.

More of the pond. It's not that big, but I liked this tree.

Some smaller, non-greenway paths run through the park as well. We found this to be a good place to spot fireflies around dusk.

OK, last park picture. Brady wanted me to take this one. We're used to mostly brown and gray birds. We've seen lots of more colorful birds--cardinals and blue jays mostly--around here. We've also sighted or heard a lot more "critters" around here. Brady wanted to record some of the sounds of the park for our non-southern readers to experience. Maybe another time. The chorus of frogs, birds, crickets, and probably some others we haven't identified is something else.

Wednesday

Knoxville has a great farmers market. They hold it for a few hours on Wednesdays and for longer on Saturdays. Everything looked so good, it was difficult to hold back. Luckily it runs well into November here, so we'll have lots of opportunity to go back.

We were missing our herb garden. We got a great deal on some fresh herbs to plant out on our balcony, though, so hopefully that will keep us going. We have already used a bit from these now that our kitchen is mostly functioning.

We also got some green beans and a cucumber that didn't make it into the picture. That red tomato is HUGE. And this is the part of the country to get good peaches at a good price. And the honey is motivating me to want to cook (we need some good biscuits now).

We also went to the art museum on Wednesday. It's not huge, but had some interesting stuff. They wouldn't let us take pictures there, so I'm posting a link to one of our favorite exhibits. It was this really cool furniture from the Cumberland Furniture Guild. It pretty incredible work.

Thursday

We found out that the city puts on free concerts every week during the summer. Apparently it's something that just started, so we picked a good time to come to Knoxville. This Thursday was a bluegrass band called The Grassabillies. They were a lot of fun. We probably won't be converted to country music entirely during our stay here, but these guys seemed not to cross the line into mainstream, commercial country music that we don't enjoy. The group that followed did cross that line, and it was getting late, so we didn't stay through their whole set. There is a fine line between country and all the genres that can feed into it (like folk or bluegrass) that Brady could probably explain better than I could. At any rate, we had fun watching these guys.



The Grassabillies with a bit of Knoxville behind them. They did a lot of covers songs: Johnny Cash, Guns 'n Roses, Dolly Parton, Janice Joplin, and the Beatles. They had some original songs too. Brady caught just a bit of one of their instrumental songs, just to give you a taste.



We didn't get any video of the yodeling, but it was impressive. Needless to say, after this, we felt initiated into Knoxville life.

Friday

Free Shakespeare play. A local theater company performs in Market Square (same place as the farmers market) in the evenings for part of the summer. We saw A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not exactly Shakespeare festival, but it was pretty good. It was kind of hard to get into at first because of the noise from some of the restaurants on the square, but overall it was a good show. We will probably go back sometime in the next couple of weeks to see them do Hamlet.

Saturday

We were worn out. We checked out a bigger park in town with a longer greenway so Brady could do a longer run (almost 8 miles!) while I walked. We swung by the farmers market again for a couple odds and ends, came home and tried to get some work done. Then we gave up and went to Harry Potter instead.

Soooo . . . who wants to come visit? We are missing some of our old haunts from back home (and I am desperately missing Utah's grid system for street names), but we are getting to like it here. Next on the agenda before work officially starts: the Smoky Mountains. We'll keep you posted.

Polenta

So the other day we came to the realization that if we found out we were having a baby girl, we could no longer refer to the baby as "Stinklebert" (mostly this was at my insistence as well as the protest of grandmothers who did not entirely approved of the placeholder name to begin with). Brady offered up the option of “Stinklebertha.” We were making polenta for dinner and agreed on that as the new placeholder name if we found out we were having a girl. Well, we are happy to announce that “Polenta” is on her way (don’t worry, we do have some real, grandmother-approved names in mind, but until we decide, she’s Polenta). The technician said he was sure. We could even tell at certain points during the ultrasound before he told us. We are very excited to meet her in November! (So far the due date is still set for the 9^th)



Here's the best profile shot. We actully didn't get any pictures printed out, but a DVD of the whole thing. So I tried to get some good screen shots to include.

We have a thumbsucker. The technician said sometimes it just looks like babies are sucking their thumbs in the pictures, but he said she was really going at it. When we watch parts of the DVD, we can actually see the sucking motion. We can also see lots of wiggles. She does not like to hold still to get her picture taken. The technician had to come back for several shots of her face because she was squirming so much.

This is my favorite one. We didn't expect anything like this at all, but right at the end the technician said he wanted to try something. He got out a different attachment for the ultrasound and took a few shots. They just looked like blobs at first, and then he started to pull away layers of the picture and we could see her little face. She was facing the placenta, so he couldn't get a shot from the front, but this was pretty great.

We are going to see if we can get any of the video clipped (don't worry, we wouldn't post 30 min. of ultrasound). So if we can, we'll put a good 20-30 sec. segment of thumb-sucking for you all.

Does this thing run?

So, for the past few weeks I've been toying with the idea of a marathon.  I wanted something to really challenge myself and I've really enjoyed running lately.  Then the New York Times's health blog took on marathon training in preparation for the New York Marathon.  Then I started hearing people talk about running marathons.  So the idea's been working on me for a while.  I started combing the internet and reading all about marathons.  It turns out there is a lot of advice out there.

Long story short, from everything I read I was persuaded that given enough time I could actually work up to a marathon.   After searching out just about every marathon that wasn't on Sunday within a 6 hour drive of Knoxville and found myself two options.  If I can be ready within about 6 months I can run the St. Jude's Marathon in Memphis on December 5, or if I need more time I can do the Nashville Country Music Marathon (yeah, I know) on April 24.

So . . . I'm gonna do it.  I'm officially declaring my marathon candidacy right here on this blog today.  I think I'll decide which marathon to run by about August.  I want to give myself plenty of time to get ready without injuring myself.

Since I decided to do a marathon I went to Barnes & Noble and thumbed through the books on running/marathoning.  I found a book called ChiRunning that has really surprised me.  The author has devised an approach to running that is based on principles of Tai Chi.  The focus is on good running form that engages core muscles while relaxing the legs and arms.  You get momentum by leaning and letting gravity pull you forward while lifting up your legs to catch you from falling and perpetuate the forward momentum.  The technique is a lot easier on your body than normal running and is quite energizing.  If you're a runner or you're thinking about taking up running I highly recommend it (send me an email and I can forward you some info if you want to try it).

My first milestone will be a race some of us are doing on the 4th of July up in Boise.  It's a 6-miler which will be a first for me.  We'll see how it goes.

Heartbeats and Miracles

These are some pictures of a quilt I started six or more years ago. It wasn’t one of those baby-hungry, jumping-the-gun kinds of things. A friend and I threw a baby shower for another friend and we had a quilt set up for people to work on at the shower. We used this fabric. I really liked it and found out that they were maybe going to discontinue this particular pattern, so I decided to just get it then and save it for whenever. Sometime that year I had a really bad cold, so I had a lot of sitting around time and made the quilt, but I never finished the edges. I put it in a box and meant to finish it soon.

Probably a year after that, we moved to a two-bedroom apartment, hoping that we would get to use that second bedroom as a nursery. I found the quilt again but promised myself I wouldn’t finish it until I was actually pregnant—I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, which is such an easy thing to do when planning a future. Occasionally, over the next several years,  I would come across this quilt, look at it and be sad for a while that we still didn’t have a baby, then fold it up and put it back in its box, still unfinished. Some of you are more aware than others of the difficulties we faced during those years. Infertility is such a sensitive issue and not one that people are generally open about. Brady and I kept this pretty quiet—for a long time probably quieter than we should have. We worked with all kinds of doctors trying to get my health more stable and trying to figure out why I wasn’t able to get pregnant. We went through various fertility medicines, tests, and procedures. The doctors couldn't explain why none of the procedures would work for us. By last summer, we were completely worn out with the whole thing. After a lot of prayer and struggle, we decided to be done with all the treatments. We felt that we would be parents someday, but how and when really wasn’t up to us.

Well, all of that is quite a bit of exposition just to say that I finally get to finish my quilt. Early in March we were caught completely off guard by a positive pregnancy test. We were so reluctant to believe our eyes at first (I dreaded even taking the test—we’d had so many disappointments).  Again, we’ve kept this pretty quiet, just so cautiously excited. This morning we got to hear the heartbeat, though, and it is becoming more and more apparent that the “someday” we felt assured of before is finally here.

This struggle with infertility has been one of the most challenging experiences of our marriage and we are grateful to be to this point. Sometimes people say they are grateful for their trials because they become stronger. I’m not sure I’m to the point where I can say I’m grateful to have struggled with this, that I’d have it the same again if I had the choice. I think if Brady and I had our choice we would have had a whole mess of kids by our eighth wedding anniversary instead of just barely expecting our first. But I can say that I am grateful to be where I am and for the things that have gotten me here. We have had a good life so far. I got to do things that I didn’t think I’d get to do until my children were older (go back to grad school, be “Professor Wiggins,” etc). Brady and I have gotten to work in the temple for over a year now, which has strengthened us tremendously. We have learned and grown a lot and have truly felt guided throughout this process, as difficult as it has been. So while I wouldn’t choose to do it again, I am grateful that we are where we are and to be a part of this miracle.

I realize this is much more of a sentimental post than we usually have on here, so I will end with practical stats now: 13 weeks, beginning second trimester, not really much in the way of morning sickness (strangely, lots of sneezing), due November 9th (ish since they seem to always change the due date anyway). So that means everyone will have to come to Knoxville to meet Baby Stinklebert (what Brady has dubbed the fetus—I’m open to other placeholder names, though).

Wendell Berry

One of the highlights of last week was that we got to meet one of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry. He came to SLC as the keynote speaker for a symposium commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wallace Stegner (Berry's mentor). It was quite a treat because, as you know if you've read much of Berry's work, he believes in mostly staying put in the place where he lives (Kentucky). The last time he was in Utah was 20 years ago when he came to southern Utah for a wake for his friend and fellow author Edward Abbey, so we jumped at the rare chance to see him.

Berry did a book signing at Ken Sander's Rare Books in SLC and that's where we got to meet him (as seen in the picture above). Berry is critical of our unthinking eagerness to jump on every new technology, so I decided that it would be bad form to bring my camera. I decided that I would just enjoy the experience of getting to meet an author whose work I like. But . . . a lady from the bookstore was getting Berry to pose along with the people whose books he was signing. It was clearly bugging him and after she took our picture he turned to her and asked, "Are you getting what you want out of this?" It was pretty funny. So I got my picture with him and didn't have to be the thoughtless annoying person to force the situation—have our cake and eat it too.

After the signing Berry did a reading at the masonic temple in Salt Lake.  He's not a mason.  It was just the place with lots of seating that they got for the event.  It was cool to see inside the place.  Berry read from an essay he is still working on about the economy.  He's written a lot on how our current economy is wasteful, glutenous, and destructive and he brought this conversation forward in light of the current economic crisis.  He thinks that we should be thrifty, self-reliant, and that we should nurture a local economy and made some great points about struggling with the question of needs vs. wants.

He also read from one of his short stories (very entertaining) and then did some Q & A.  It was great to hear his written words in his voice and I think that I can "get" his fiction that much more now that I've heard him read it.  I'm feeling a bit too lazy now to try to capture some of what he said, but let me give you some links to a few of his essays.  He's really worth checking out if you don't know his work.  BTW, make sure you realize that he has a sense of humor when you read this stuff.

Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

Feminism, the Body, and the Machine

Home Economics—Analysis of U.S. Agricultural Policy

The Pleasures of Eating