tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346879632024-03-07T02:27:14.301-07:00mental tesseraeart ... parenting ... life ... and trying to piece it all togetherJulie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.comBlogger288125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-49249765161086677552012-06-05T08:58:00.001-07:002012-06-07T12:34:09.441-07:00Chickens - Week OneThere is nothing more cruel to a chicken-obsessed 10 year old boy than to be promised (by a convincing-looking US Postal Service tracking number) delivery of four baby chicks by 12 noon on Tuesday and having Tuesday come and go with no chicks to show for it. Gabie had been up half the night Monday evening out of pure excitement about the eminent delivery and I think Tuesday night the disappointment (“how could the Post Office do this to us! I hope the chicks are okay…they could be freezing somewhere in an airport!!) made it even harder to fall asleep. Fortunately, I got a phone call at 7:30 the next morning from the Post Office telling me they had a “box of noisemakers” for us. I picked them up, brought the chirping package home, put all four incredibly cute fluff-balls into their new home (a large box with pine-shavings, heat lamp, water and food), woke up Gabie and watched our lives take a giant leap away from normal.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc7L2pdH1RI8b0515gfJmTDZxkcSJSPDfyQPYir0EaGW_fAZNI55xNBVkn1mfAZbAgCUTmHs8JiCJ_PVX-lQZuQVg2hc0ku6GwUn2SR-bjPh0VS5u80Q6tNNp_AIXV04F-pmcThw/s1600/chicks+gabie+and+maggie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc7L2pdH1RI8b0515gfJmTDZxkcSJSPDfyQPYir0EaGW_fAZNI55xNBVkn1mfAZbAgCUTmHs8JiCJ_PVX-lQZuQVg2hc0ku6GwUn2SR-bjPh0VS5u80Q6tNNp_AIXV04F-pmcThw/s320/chicks+gabie+and+maggie.jpg" width="288" /></a><br />
The chicks are all different breeds. My favorite from day one was the Partridge Plymouth Rock. Of all the fluff balls, she was the smallest of the bunch and the most beautiful—solid brown like a little bon bon (if you rolled your bon bon in fur and also let it grow legs and a beak). She was also the most mellow and least likely to pick on the others as they started to act out some feathery Junior High sociology experiment. We can already see the pecking order taking shape. <br />
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I’ve dreamed of having chickens for a LONG time. Honestly, I’m only slightly less excited than Gabie to finally have a mini-flock of our own. All I need is the perfect straw hat and I am well on my way to becoming a genuine Chicken Lady. (Ah, Chicken Lady. I envision her rising early to check on her hens and gather eggs. This must be done while wearing aforementioned straw hat and preferably a peasant blouse, perfect-fitting jeans, and wellington boots. The eggs must go in a woven basket (never plastic) although a wire basket will do in a pinch if it is round and the paint is tastefully chipped. Chicken Lady coos to her chickens and never raises her voice to own brood of docile-but-nature-loving children. She harvests all the food in her ample garden and never lets the zucchinis grow to the size of sea otters. She has sun-kissed skin year round but no wrinkles. She walks on loamy soil but inhabits the realm of myth.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEighknfb3RAEXzALYdwe5TosSSKebdSnPNJesJ1dlcR63iG-ANtoW_lv1xGwN6f6Skl5MkLUxw4Jo_Lod4TZgsJtzKKtmIp0oJUCNCY0I39RkPrYLCplRhHLb8cPbNGKMp1ykfYGQ/s1600/chick+maggie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEighknfb3RAEXzALYdwe5TosSSKebdSnPNJesJ1dlcR63iG-ANtoW_lv1xGwN6f6Skl5MkLUxw4Jo_Lod4TZgsJtzKKtmIp0oJUCNCY0I39RkPrYLCplRhHLb8cPbNGKMp1ykfYGQ/s400/chick+maggie.jpg" width="389" /></a><br />
Finally, here I am, still without the proper hat but in possession of the chickens. And I find them to be as adorable and as helpless as newborn babies. And I find I’ve been constantly worrying about their little chickie needs all week — is the temperature exactly 95 or too hot or too cold? Has the Dominque been drinking enough lately? Should we check their little downy bums again to make sure they aren’t pasting up? How can we get the Barred Plymouth Rock to stop campaigning for student-body president by bullying her classmates? — And I’m beginning to wonder why the heck I was so eager to adopt four new infants just when I got to the point in my parenting where my kids are pretty much taking care of themselves? (certainly they can at least regulate their own temperature and wipe their own bottoms). I was especially second-guessing myself Friday night when our favorite chick (who the kids had nicknamed Partie even though we’re holding off on the naming for a while until personalities develop) started to show signs of being sick. My heart sank as I saw her getting weaker and weaker. She wasn’t drinking. Then she wasn’t walking around at all. Then she couldn’t even stand up or open her eyes. Oh, it’s a painful thing to watch, especially when you know how Gabie—who was finally in bed, catching up on a week’s worth of lost sleep—would feel if Partie didn’t improve.<br />
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There’s nothing more cruel to a chicken-obsessed 10 year old boy (and the whole family, who have quickly become attached to these critters) than to lose a baby chick. Partie died around midnight with Ethan and I trying our best to figure out what was wrong and what, if anything, we could do to help her. She hadn’t grown at all since she arrived (unlike the others who seem taller every time you look at them) so it may have been that her body was just not strong enough to make it. Or there’s the nagging sense of guilt that we should have done something differently. I’m wondering if I have the emotional fortitude to do this chicken thing. Nature can be cruel. And straw hats only offer so much protection. Baby chickens are vulnerable to all kinds of natural causes of death, even if you pamper them. So it seems a bit insane to make them part of your family circle and expose yourself and your kids to all kinds of potential pain. <br />
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And so we had cause for a few tearful exchanges with each of the kids about life and death (Nora has envisioned a heaven for Partie complete with innumerable chicken friends and all the family pets who have ever died…but she was anxious to make sure that dogs and cats never eat birds in heaven because then Partie would die again and where does one go when you die in heaven?) And then we all cheered ourselves up by heading out to the local farm store to buy two more chicks for the flock. Because once you’ve opened your hearts to a few more souls and all the potential for joy and loss that comes with the wild (and sometimes adorable, sometimes fascinating, sometimes callous) world of nature, why not get carried away?<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujqLj7G6xiUZSu9z4jkgIEswzOtED1-wqaFFuqx23NJhN3IJqVlTQlfIpZ22qVy8KoKVSgSaqwZRctf73ttmD7GPWzvoss_YZkz505rbmWp8D2XQ4Fevdpb0vApQO_II5WQPASQ/s1600/chicks+everybody.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujqLj7G6xiUZSu9z4jkgIEswzOtED1-wqaFFuqx23NJhN3IJqVlTQlfIpZ22qVy8KoKVSgSaqwZRctf73ttmD7GPWzvoss_YZkz505rbmWp8D2XQ4Fevdpb0vApQO_II5WQPASQ/s400/chicks+everybody.jpg" width="293" /></a>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-18050271049105976632011-12-02T14:56:00.000-07:002011-12-02T14:56:52.301-07:00a little dose of fashion absurdityOnce grading season ends I hope to find more time to write. I've decided there's little in my life crueler than the following combination of facts: 1) I have a million things I want to write about, 2) I just don't have the time right now, and 3) I've been spending hours and hours of my precious time lately editing / grading / suffering through poor writing. No fair.<br />
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I do have to post a new entry in my growing collection of Absurd Memento Mori Clothing Items for Children. (You can see other examples <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2011/08/shopping-cart-ethics-10.html">here</a> and <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2011/08/good-grief.html">here</a>.) This may be my favorite one yet.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXEDdDE9bEb01F4pMADVIdwdBS5v-EwpHCBlqST_H7RPeZQIBUNc7BIvoEp8JHPFgEo9T21NFRFyD40BzrN0NfLnn5OCe-UfzDLFUG6XJqhE_aIFHCBvihT15poPUD1SjIwfIHtg/s1600/panda+absurdity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXEDdDE9bEb01F4pMADVIdwdBS5v-EwpHCBlqST_H7RPeZQIBUNc7BIvoEp8JHPFgEo9T21NFRFyD40BzrN0NfLnn5OCe-UfzDLFUG6XJqhE_aIFHCBvihT15poPUD1SjIwfIHtg/s400/panda+absurdity.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><br />
It calls to mind the bit about starving pandas in the children's book <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2006/11/read-me-one-about-monkey-in-peril.html">I mentioned</a> a long time ago. I have since seen other editions of that book, by the way, and they fixed the panda page so it's more cheerful. Now we just need to work on the twisted shirt designers who thought it was cute to do the skull and crossbones treatment on our endangered little fuzzy friend here.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-28795059611929912042011-10-04T08:46:00.000-07:002011-10-04T08:46:48.980-07:00Shopping Cart Ethics 2.0<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7K9TMVj5u_IzjiGmtesGu29cwQ5UrrTbdKKXi6LLEcTzEfzV84Mvdgh9Qe6Ro0LMoJlIHX6q7JADEm-u7ySIGqy0AJOqnVIwL7doUUnQJvR612eRC_ejfWGjcG4A16eCR2FM6A/s1600/shopping+cart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7K9TMVj5u_IzjiGmtesGu29cwQ5UrrTbdKKXi6LLEcTzEfzV84Mvdgh9Qe6Ro0LMoJlIHX6q7JADEm-u7ySIGqy0AJOqnVIwL7doUUnQJvR612eRC_ejfWGjcG4A16eCR2FM6A/s200/shopping+cart.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Both these conundrums are from my trip to the grocery store this week. I honestly want to hear what you, gentle readers, think about these issues. I’m torn.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">1. When you pull a gallon of milk out of the dairy cooler, do you look for the one with the <i>latest</i> date? I do. I figure I’m the consumer, I’m paying for this milk, I get to choose whichever one I want, even if it means reaching into the back of the milk line-up to get the date furthest away. But I always feel a bit strange, even guilty, about this. I mean, it’s not like we run the risk of ever passing the expiration date, at the rate we go through milk in our house (when Ethan is around we average a gallon a day; when Ethan was gone to scout camp this summer, I only made one trip to the store for milk that week. Spooky!). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I suspect the milk all tastes the same, regardless of the date stamp. Shouldn’t I just pick a milk that has the closest date and leave the newer one for the nice old lady behind me who lives alone and is somewhat lactose intolerant but always keeps a gallon milk in her fridge to serve with cookies when the grandkids visit, which is only once in a while, so the milk tends to get old before it’s all gone, but she’s on a tight social security check budget and won’t be able to buy another one until the day after it expires and even then only if it smells bad? (And yes, this old lady haunts my grocery trips; I worry about her every time. She's probably not even nice.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">2. Grapes were on sale this week. The lady next to me picked a green grape from a bunch and popped it in her mouth. Then she sampled a purple grape. I don’t think I even noted which kind she ended up choosing, surprised as I was with her snacking. I was not audacious enough to follow her lead. I bought some of each just to be safe.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not sure how I feel about this. I really do hate it when I bring home a big bag of grapes and they are all disappointingly sour. What a waste. I suppose I could take them back to the store, but who has that kind of time? It seems only fair to be able to know what you’re paying for in advance. Then again, we don’t get to peel the oranges first, so they’re always a gamble. (Same goes for melons; all the thumping and sniffing and navel pressing in the world can’t guarantee a good one). Isn't boldly partaking of the unknown part of the produce department quest? Isn't it kind of cheating to peek?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And more to the ethical point, isn’t it dishonest to eat food you aren’t paying for? If you’re going to be eating the groceries, maybe they should weigh you on your way into the store and again on your way out and make you pay the difference? (You thought airport security was invasive!)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So. Advice anyone? (Please?) </div>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-29778885471717644412011-09-28T18:53:00.001-07:002011-12-02T15:01:04.904-07:00The Spiral Jetty, take 4The sunflowers are new. I swear they were not here the last three <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2008/07/spiral-jetty-ness.html">times</a> I made the trip. Now they’re everywhere, a small-faced variety but perky and bright yellow, as if planted along the roads to welcome visitors and compensate for the long ride and parched landscape. Everything seems different this time, especially the last 16-mile stretch of unpaved road. It should beat at you through the washboard sections and loosen your fillings. It should take an eternity to crawl and bounce through the last mile, the gauntlet of basalt boulders, extracted giants’ teeth. But Box Elder County has leveled it all, hauled out some kind of insanely tough earth-moving equipment to slice through the rocks, built up a road bed and covered it in pea-gravel. I can’t explain why I’m disappointed by this. I should be grateful. But it seems that the trek is diminished by the added degree of comfort. It’s as if someone at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela installed escalators up the steps, the ones you’re supposed to take on your knees.<br />
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The students don’t know they are missing anything. They’re likely pleased that the trip has taken 2 hours 25 minutes as opposed to the 3 hours I promised them. As our two rented vans near Rozel Point, we can see the Great Salt Lake in full sun. It sparkles like the surface of a sugar egg. This part, at least, has not changed.<br />
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The newly leveled road cuts gently across the slope of the hill and ends in a parking lot (!) (what next, a gift shop?). I have never seen this many people here at once. This explains part of my disappointment. Once you make the pilgrimage less daunting, everyone will come. Not that I begrudge them the chance to visit the jetty. But how <i>serious </i>are they, really? Do they—these pampered tourists in sedans—care about the jetty like those who were willing to eat dust and slam their heads on the roofs of high-clearance vehicles for its sake? <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcenKR8JHBk8TAG2MTM_-cI-dqUTHHdm7wEpv1oHSXrJ1MrvwWBkhwYglcauQfLD04xwHaDj1sBjQs0SQe1Juxcq4OYIpa3AA4cGC-D9wvdUcvkYa26AEtfnbC2npy4ApHmmtRGw/s1600/blog+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcenKR8JHBk8TAG2MTM_-cI-dqUTHHdm7wEpv1oHSXrJ1MrvwWBkhwYglcauQfLD04xwHaDj1sBjQs0SQe1Juxcq4OYIpa3AA4cGC-D9wvdUcvkYa26AEtfnbC2npy4ApHmmtRGw/s320/blog+5.jpg" width="303" /></a></div>My students pour out of the vans. There are eighteen in our group this time. I suggest we hike the hill first to get a good view. From the top we see the pink water and, in the distance, the baffling section where it scallops from pink to blue for no reason. From the shore, the Spiral Jetty curls in a counter-clockwise direction, slowly receding under the surface. The rocks that cut above the water hit against the small ripples of current and form jet trails. The jetty looks like it is plowing along through the lake, moving south.<br />
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We scramble down the hill (I note that there is an unmistakable trail—or more to the point, two or three trails to choose from—that were not here last time, and then I decide to stop grinding my teeth about the increased traffic. It’s not like the jetty belongs to me). The students change their shoes, a few keep on their flip flops (ya gotta love these kids) despite my previous warnings that the water level was high this year and they’d need swim trunks and good shoes to make it to the center of the spiral. I pull out my secret weapon: my husband’s fishing waders. They reach all the way up my legs and I tuck the straps into my belt. I’m prepared. I know the routine. I’ve walked the spiral before. I’ve been checking the lake levels online for weeks.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi4-92lKSygxDqXsuCbiC0ysxLxfwKJ-KDvR8O0pbVQdbERUTOaxxd5NbFD6TizeLdx23GKhCeFEl4vXEyMuUVmGgAPluXLKEP7dEz3PmuwS4uix6ebc3qv7ox3taDLCuHMxobPQ/s1600/blog+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi4-92lKSygxDqXsuCbiC0ysxLxfwKJ-KDvR8O0pbVQdbERUTOaxxd5NbFD6TizeLdx23GKhCeFEl4vXEyMuUVmGgAPluXLKEP7dEz3PmuwS4uix6ebc3qv7ox3taDLCuHMxobPQ/s400/blog+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Note to arrogant self: fishing waders prove effective as long as you keep the tops above the water. If you were to, say, slip on a rock because the path you are following is nothing but a walkway of slippery, mostly submerged rocks, and you begin to fall and make the split-second decision (and a wise one) to put all your ebbing sense of balance into holding your expensive camera above your head rather than catch yourself, it is likely that as you lie horizontal in the water with one arm perpendicular—camera aloft—like a pyrrhic victory salute, the boots will in fact fill with water, your jeans will be saturated, and when you rise, you will be forced to carry gallons of extra lake water with you as you attempt to schlump, schlump, schlump, all dignity gone, around the spiral. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVEqu0T0AiL85chZL0QPonzhrg9xSPMfxI5W4lWJxdSVR5WDn2EsxXs6zcsRQDs_IoXPEBl7kvFS4B_jM_Wg0X7oQRBhbX4vZZoKYp1bfq_kcdvB-1ZBXhPQxcHu2WbzdNrorsWA/s1600/blog+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVEqu0T0AiL85chZL0QPonzhrg9xSPMfxI5W4lWJxdSVR5WDn2EsxXs6zcsRQDs_IoXPEBl7kvFS4B_jM_Wg0X7oQRBhbX4vZZoKYp1bfq_kcdvB-1ZBXhPQxcHu2WbzdNrorsWA/s320/blog+2.jpg" width="282" /></a></div><br />
The students are good sports and despite the deep water and perilous rocks (soon they’ll have the ankle scrapes to prove it) they trudge around the coils to the center where they pose and laugh and congratulate themselves. The water is thick and rose colored. One student says it’s like wading through Kool-Aid. I could not have ordered a more glorious sky. It’s bright blue and dry-brushed with a few lines of pure white clouds. It was worth sacrificing myself for the camera to take these pictures. <br />
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We emerge from the lake, all coated in a thin layer of salt, the hair on our arms frosted with a crystalized mist. My jeans are starting to stiffen. I peel the boots off and dump them out. I tip and pour and the water just keeps coming; the moment is like something out of a cartoon. <br />
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The water level made it challenging this year, but I’m smug about the fact that of all the visitors who overlapped with our group at the jetty, we were the only ones who actually walked the spiral. This makes up for the crowd and the parking lot and the conditioned road. The others saw the jetty. We <i>did </i>the jetty. I think it’s a work of art that cannot be fully appreciated from a distance, just like it can’t be bought or sold or hung on a gallery wall in front of a velvet bench; it has to be experienced. I love that it’s never the same experience twice. And I love that it takes effort to get there and I love that to finish the trip you have to walk (or wade or schlump) your way to the center of the spiral. I think most art is a gift. But the jetty? This one you have to earn. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ5U4Lc8fWUEkpZrFPb4vAHkQKy31rZ4S4DB66V1s1oQTpMBjxAwPbRVUNbmDX-cEVW3j7Y5rBlt8CWL5OiDthVepnAX5x3ZBz40Su3BoeTeIHPPaF5JR6yfnMGCFt2JOBMaRGSw/s1600/blog+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ5U4Lc8fWUEkpZrFPb4vAHkQKy31rZ4S4DB66V1s1oQTpMBjxAwPbRVUNbmDX-cEVW3j7Y5rBlt8CWL5OiDthVepnAX5x3ZBz40Su3BoeTeIHPPaF5JR6yfnMGCFt2JOBMaRGSw/s400/blog+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-19110341312886527092011-09-21T19:55:00.000-07:002011-09-21T19:55:06.623-07:00chickensI’ve written about Gabie on this blog many times. But believe me when I say I have failed to do justice to his single most defining characteristic: his intensity. By intensity I mean an abundant mix of stubbornness, obsessiveness and pathos. When Gabie puts his mind to something, he’s a bulldog who has latched on and will not let go. He’s the one-noted cricket. He’s a cow with its cud. He’s a horsefly who…well, you get the idea. And it doesn’t sound nice when I put it in those terms, but seriously, you have no idea how far he can take things. His persistence makes you want to pull your hair out and laugh with exhaustion at the same time.<br />
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The hard part is that I never know what’s going to set him off. Will it be the bear he saw at Yellowstone that will spark a month of obsessive ramblings about bears? (No) Or will it be the wolf he <i>did not</i> see at Yellowstone that launches a holy crusade against the endangerment of wolves, heartbreaking cries all the way home from Yellowstone about how we have to go back next week to see the wolves (and if not Yellowstone, then—once he has read cover to cover the book about wolves we bought to pacify him—Alaska, Montana, and various Canadian provinces), rants against cattle ranchers, and eternal enmity for all authors who have unjustly vilified wolves for centuries (Yes, oh save us, yes). <br />
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This week, he has moved on to chickens. Monday morning, I suggested that since we had eggs for breakfast, we should visit our neighbors’ chickens for a field trip. (I’ve been homeschooling Gabie; a short fieldtrip seemed like a great writing prompt for his journal-writing time.) And I’ll confess here that I have been wanting to see our neighbors’ chickens for a long time. And also I would really like to have chickens of our own. And, okay, I’ve begged Ken to let me get chickens for years. But we got a dog instead, which is nowhere near a chicken, but that’s another story.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnaojxIz8GMzCtaNW-7G3qkGnyR3hatAapMcWgDnHdh12BINRRtBaqAkbe8guONPEVZJUYqPAH5UeZff_gPN0byHHDLO3ku-lOHAygzmf3AjI_5u6aTfxwYiZUkYxObj9JUeG6YA/s1600/barredplymouthrock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="250" width="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnaojxIz8GMzCtaNW-7G3qkGnyR3hatAapMcWgDnHdh12BINRRtBaqAkbe8guONPEVZJUYqPAH5UeZff_gPN0byHHDLO3ku-lOHAygzmf3AjI_5u6aTfxwYiZUkYxObj9JUeG6YA/s320/barredplymouthrock.jpg" /></a></div>Anyway, we saw the chickens. Two of them. Super cute, as far as chicken cuteness goes. They clucked softly. They staccatoed around. They even had two eggs waiting for us: one perfectly smooth, the shade of chocolate milk, the other speckled. But if I could go back in time, I would tell Julie of the past to, at all costs, avoid making any statements to my neighbor—in Gabie’s presence—to the effect of “We’ve talked about someday getting chickens ourselves” or “This setup doesn’t look that complicated. Maybe we can really do it.” And I would certainly tackle to the grass the Julie who, on her way home pointed out to Gabie that we have a chunk of unused space in our side yard that, with a bit of work and a new fence, would fit a chicken pen rather nicely. To any sane observer, these were the comments of a dreamer who knows that the chances of finally getting chickens are pretty remote. To Gabriel, they were promissory notes. He went from eating an egg for breakfast to guaranteed chicken ownership in under an hour. <br />
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For the next three days, every time I have turned around, Gabie has been on my computer with sixteen different tabs open to mypetchicken.com. As of this morning, he has 1) selected the chicks we will order (two Barred Plymouth Rocks and an Easter Egg Bantam), 2) surveyed every member of the household numerous times about their preferences on egg colors, 3) calculated the price of 4 chicks ($23.25) and all the equipment (heating lamps, etc) we will need to raise them (all written up on a sticky note which he affixed to my desk), 4) planned the chicken coop structure in detail, begged his father numerous times to build it and even offered to build it himself, and most importantly 5) talked of NOTHING ELSE for the past 72 hours. You may think I exaggerate, but I have witnesses. Go ahead. Ask Gabie’s siblings or father when we will be getting our chickens and you’ll see their heads explode. <br />
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To say Gabie has a one-track mind is putting it mildly. In the course of a day, while the world is spinning around him and every other person in his life has passed from one task to another and had handfuls of conversations regarding a myriad of topics, Gabie has suspended these chickens—and nothing else—on a rotating pedestal in his head. He’ll pop into any conversation with a chicken-related remark. Actual examples of dialogue:<br />
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“Gabie, find your socks. We have to go.” <br />
“Hey mom?” <br />
“What?”<br />
“What do you think we should make the fence out of?”<br />
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Also:<br />
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“Gabie, do you want jam or honey with the peanut butter?”<br />
“Hey mom?”<br />
“Yes?”<br />
“On Easter, can we give them extra food since it’s like their holiday? I heard if chickens are happy, they’ll be more likely to lay eggs.”<br />
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And when I’m working at my computer:<br />
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“Hey mom?”<br />
Heavy sigh. “Yes, Gabriel?”<br />
“We’ll need to get the red heat lamp because the baby chicks will be able to sleep better… And if you notice they are huddled in a pile, that means they are too cold and if they’re spread all over, they are too hot.”<br />
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Plus random interjections at the dinner table like: “Would October 6 be good day for us to have the chickens arrive?” <br />
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Or, when I told him that *in the distant future, when we might possibly, if we’re lucky, get around to ordering chickens* we’d only get three and he wanted to know what we’d do with the fourth chick since the minimum order at mypetchicken.com was four and I told him maybe my friend Meg could use another chicken, I got questions for the next hour like: “How good of a friend is this Meg?...Could you call her today?”<br />
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And this one today while I’m driving McKay to his clarinet lesson:<br />
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“Hey mom? One thing I’ve noticed is their combs function on the same principle as a canid’s pointy ears. They shed heat. They’ve have adapted this way.” <br />
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I could type dozens of such non sequiturs and still fall short of the Gabie effect. His is the persistence of those rivers that wear down mountains or plateaus over the course of centuries. He’s the Grand Canyon of chicken lovers. It got so bad Monday night that Ken banned him from saying the word chicken for the rest of the day. (That evening during family night, Gabie played the martyr: “Yeah, I have something to say for family council, but I’m not allowed to say the “c” word anymore, so I can’t tell you.”) The next morning he picked up again talking about nothing but kickens, which he explained started with a “k” so it didn’t count.<br />
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Now before you conclude that I lack sympathy for the poor child, I have to clarify that I would like nothing more than to make Gabie happy 24/7. He’s an amazing child and I adore him. I even want chickens. But the problem is that we don’t have the money right now to buy them or the time to build the fence to accommodate them. This is where the pathos comes in. As excited as Gabie gets about his latest obsession, he gets equally devastated when he cannot realize it immediately. Last night he was moping around tossing out phrases like, “Do you ever feel that your life is not worth living?” And, when he heard for the tenth time that we weren’t going to build a chicken coup and order chicks right this second, he says, “You know what this is like? It’s like getting news that you’ve gotten a $2,000 payment, and then an hour later, you get a message saying, “Oh, we made a miscalculation. It’s only $2. Sorry.” Or maybe it’s like you’ve been looking for a job for a long time and someone says, we like you, we’d like to hire you and then they say, we changed our minds…we like this other guy better!” <br />
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So I worry that he’s on the brink of serious damage to his poor 9-year-old psyche from the depths of his emotional swings. I worry that when he grows up he’ll hurt himself while steering his Greenpeace boat between the harpoon and the whale. I worry that someday he’ll fall in love hard and do irrational things (I once had a coworker in Pennsylvania who fell for a con-woman; nothing we could say to him about how she was obviously lying to him with her various stories of being kidnapped in New York and needing ransom money swayed his affections; by the time he woke up, he had lost his entire life savings, his home and finally his job). I worry simply that Gabie is sad more than any child should be because he takes things so personally and we (meaning I) don’t have the patience to give him all that he needs.<br />
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The paintings running through my mind as I worry about the psychology of obsession (and try not to think about chickens anymore) are the Monomaniac series by Gericault. This was the 19th century and doctors were, for the first time, exploring different types of insanity. Gericault’s friend, Dr. Georget did studies in madhouses of people with certain acute sensitivities, people who had fixated on one thing to the point of total meltdown. Gericault painted these patients with honesty, but also with an aim for showing how their psychoses were supposedly written in their features and expressions. You decide if he succeeded. <br />
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This is his Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVBVrhmxF4PFF9YhNdWh-NTG9dXq5OGIhXjkTVk8fT1LZi3E5aU196ufkk97hSQq02lO3n1hyxqX4pE-RPQWm7cd9WId-KjNg9DvsvPjLeHVvoNPBb1KeYlS3G1wXydUaWi5AsQ/s1600/Gericault+obsessive+envy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVBVrhmxF4PFF9YhNdWh-NTG9dXq5OGIhXjkTVk8fT1LZi3E5aU196ufkk97hSQq02lO3n1hyxqX4pE-RPQWm7cd9WId-KjNg9DvsvPjLeHVvoNPBb1KeYlS3G1wXydUaWi5AsQ/s400/Gericault+obsessive+envy.jpg" /></a></div>And Man with Delusions of Military Command.<br />
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It seems to me that these patients are all staring off the edge of the canvas; they never look directly at us. They’ve been frozen forever in time in the midst the exact kind of intense focus that has destroyed all their periphery vision or logic or sanity.<br />
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Not that Gabie has gone this far or needs a shrink yet. I’m just saying he has this scary personality trait. I even hope that his tenacity (from tenere, “to hold” and related to “tenet,” a thing held to be true) will serve him well someday. He’ll be the teenager who refuses to go with the flow. He’ll be the ultra-loyal husband. If he does end up as a doctor (and lately he wants to be a doctor AND work for the National Park Service as a wolf specialist AND own a bunch of chickens) he’ll be an intensely focused doctor, which sounds like a good thing. My goal is to help him see the value of balance. And help him understand that life rarely delivers instant gratification and it wouldn’t hurt to develop some patience. <br />
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And then I need to work on my own tendency to obsess about my children and hover over them and worry about their every move like a mother hen.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-27334473492069801172011-08-27T10:17:00.000-07:002011-08-27T10:17:13.001-07:00YellowstoneAnd then, after dinner, she pulled out the giant box of slides from her family's recent trip to Yellowstone and for the next two hours it was just one fuzzy bison shot after another. <br />
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"And as you can see from their delighted faces in <i>this </i>photo," she said while slowly pressing the button to advance the next slide, "the kids had a terrific time."<br />
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But seriously, our Yellowstone trip was wonderful. The scenery surreal. The kids amazingly happy campers (when they weren't really sick of having their pictures taken). Here's the summary, by the numbers...<br />
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Amount of times I thought <i>We should really do this more often</i>: at least a dozen (which is saying something, considering there was not a good-night's sleep to be found in the entire five-days.)<br />
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Number of times Nora begged us to adopt her cousin Rachel as a sister: I lost track. Cousins are the greatest thing evah.<br />
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Number of grizzly bears in this photo: one. Can you find him without a pair of binoculars and a huge traffic jam and ranger pulled over to alert you to his presence? We never would have.<br />
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We had better luck with the smaller, rodent-family wildlife. Percentage of her own lunch that Nora actually ate the day we set up our picnic in the middle of a pot gut colony: 25% <br />
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And we had the best luck in our favorite hunt of all, spotting the Prius in its natural habitat, the National Park. Total number of Prii we counted in Yellowstone and Grand Teton: 68.<br />
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Number of photos I took just like this one of colorful bacterial muck that if it had been growing in my home would have gotten the bleach treatment pronto: three dozen.<br />
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Waterfalls viewed: at least 10. (Number of times I made my kids pose with their <i>backs </i>to the waterfalls: do I have to count?)<br />
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Number of mosquitoes in Yellowstone: a gazillion. Amount of carcinogenic DEET I exposed myself and my children to over the week: toxic levels. Amount of mosquito bites I got in Yellowstone park: zero. Amount of mosquito bites I got while taking this photo in a gorgeous alpine meadow as we paused for a few minutes from our drive over the Bear Tooth Highway in Montana: five.<br />
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Number of computer games played, movies watched or episodes of Avatar consumed by my kids all week: zero.<br />
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Times I made Ethan pose against orange backdrops the day he wore his funky tie-dyed shirt: "ah Mom! Again?"<br />
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Number of teeth lost by Gabie while eating sandwiches: one. Amount of "woe is me!...look I'm still bleeding" mileage gained by said loss of tooth from said child: nearly a full day's worth.<br />
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Amount of time we spent slowed or parked in traffic in Yellowstone (usually at the mercy of bison wandering on the road, the big oafs): ...<br />
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... : less than the amount of time spent in the presence of sublime forces of nature.<br />
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Number of times where I held my breath at the surreal scenery in front of me or laughed out loud as Ethan narrated his own personal wildlife documentary plus amount of times I found it hard to believe I had ever resisted coming: enough that it might be easier for Ken to talk me into next year's camping trip.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphQ9JncGE5pK5GqKMreuaxMpNiMm19FHBGlzCOBKZPUNG-D1i0_Webv0rHS_cDd1m_1fr0Bcmf6GiQ22hvXiAiJiT-64HQ4FkqJ1eiuGTY1F08gzi8njuTSIcQLi96z-2CXlW5w/s1600/zsunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphQ9JncGE5pK5GqKMreuaxMpNiMm19FHBGlzCOBKZPUNG-D1i0_Webv0rHS_cDd1m_1fr0Bcmf6GiQ22hvXiAiJiT-64HQ4FkqJ1eiuGTY1F08gzi8njuTSIcQLi96z-2CXlW5w/s320/zsunset.jpg" width="192" /></a></div>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-35738653304141709392011-08-13T06:51:00.064-07:002011-08-19T08:00:01.077-07:00SemioticsDetails and photos from our lovely Yellowstone trip to follow in another post. But in the meantime, some semi-deep thoughts.<br />
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Thanks to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics">Semiotic</a> theory, I can no longer take for granted the relationship between the meaning of things and <i>how </i>that meaning is being conveyed. In other words, I can't just assume the vehicle of language is only about getting me where I want to go. We all have to stop and look closely at the vehicle itself. Monster truck or Porche? It makes a difference.<br />
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Just a couple of examples because, yeah, none of us have the time for a real lecture today:<br />
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I told my students in class the other day that Magritte's <i>Treason of Images</i> was the first time an artist had inserted words right into his painting. The more I've thought about it, the more I was wrong (sorry guys). Maybe Magritte's piece has been treated as revolutionary because it's the first painting to really throw down the semiotic gauntlet* and make us question our assumption about the relationship between art, language and reality (and pipes, I guess). But he was not the first to use words to convey meaning along with imagery.<br />
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*I'm wondering what a semiotic gauntlet looks like. Twisted and symbolic and really hard to understand? Definitely French.<br />
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This kind of Annunciation scene comes to mind:<br />
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I love that it's not possible to say "Hail Mary" etc. without an elaborate banner to go with it. The Angel Gabriel drives a Mercedes.<br />
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And a counter example: <br />
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I saw this sign on a pole in my neighborhood last week. Now the intended message is, I can only assume, "call me and I'll get you out from under your mortgage quickly." But the real message is another story entirely. Seriously, would you trust your home, your money, your credit rating to some strange dude who scribbled his phone number on a piece of cardstock and tied it illegally to a stop sign? (And then, I think, he drove away in a beat-up Geo Metro with a missing tail light.)<br />
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Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-80110928765546870022011-08-11T09:31:00.001-07:002011-08-11T09:36:12.639-07:00necksIt really is unfortunate that my week has been outrageously busy with school issues (my class winding down, the kids’ winding up) because I’ve been meaning to write about necks. This seemed timely when I hurt my neck on Sunday. But now here we are on Thursday with my neck finally feeling better and the topic just seems stale.<br />
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But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in years of (sporadic) blogging it’s this: if there really is a blog police, they are far too understaffed and overworked to swoop down on my little blog and say, “Hey, Miss Julie Q....if that is your <i>real </i>name...the neck business is old news. You’re not allowed to write about it.”<br />
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Thus, in defiance of the blog police, a post about necks, my own and other more famous ones through art.<br />
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When I tweaked my neck on Sunday, I was almost amused by the truly bizarre coincidence that I had just barely, earlier that morning, learned how to say “stiffnecked” in Greek. Stiffnecked in Greek, if you care to know (and I do encourage you to slip this into casual conversations), is sklerotrachelos. It sounds like a dinosaur, I know, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you break the word in half and see sklero (hard) and trachelos (neck). Sklerotrachelos occurs only once in the New Testament, in Acts chapter 7 which was part of the readings for the Gospel Doctrine lesson I had been preparing on Sunday morning. What are the odds that I would then have cause to whine about my stiffneck in bilingual fashion for the next few days?<br />
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Ken says I’m the only one he knows who is capable of seriously injuring her neck while taking a shower. He knows me well and you might also recall that I once <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2006/11/very-black-friday.html">broke my foot</a> in multiple places while making bread. So the shower/neck thing? Not a big surprise. And I don’t want you to think I slipped in dramatic fashion and fell in the shower to acquire this injury because that would be entirely too rational. I was merely lifting my arms to <i>wash my hair</i> when a spasm shot through my neck for no earthly reason whatsoever other than the fact that I am getting old and my body is betraying me one component at a time. For days after this shower, I walked around like an escaped whack-a-mole mole. It even hurt to tip my head back far enough to swallow. <br />
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Thank goodness I’m feeling better today and I can find the humor again in the strangeness of it all. I also can see two advantages to this injury.<br />
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1. I have now been able to fulfill a lifelong dream of using the words tweak and spasm in the same blog post. I like tweak and spasm because they make terrific, awkward-sounding onomatopoeias. I also think if you tweaked the word spasm and took away its only vowel, it would take a mouth-spsm to say it which would make it all the more onomatopoeia-esque.<br />
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2. I now have an only-slightly stale excuse to discuss famous necks in art. I once posted about <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2006/10/this-little-piggy-went-to-market.html">second toes</a>. Maybe this will become a running blog meme for me. Bodypart Thursdays, we can call it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9njLHvwC3m9yu1slDnfC10ZDZdKrpqlOo5c4bJRpmn60V3fnzfRX-ZMTnx705Ps3oB9VmbRICxA-QY8ntDzIS6nhAj5c-xao9JUDSF8IyViBZeOecYE2EGnssIXVCX7ogClEqw/s1600/mariemedici.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9njLHvwC3m9yu1slDnfC10ZDZdKrpqlOo5c4bJRpmn60V3fnzfRX-ZMTnx705Ps3oB9VmbRICxA-QY8ntDzIS6nhAj5c-xao9JUDSF8IyViBZeOecYE2EGnssIXVCX7ogClEqw/s400/mariemedici.jpg" width="302" /></a></div><br />
I was first introduced to the neck of Marie de’ Medici in a biology book. Marie was the queen of France and the proud owner of a very thick neck. I say proud because Marie made it fashionable to sport thick necks and all the ladies of the court wanted one. <br />
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Unfortunately, Marie was in my Biology text because it seems her neck was likely swollen by a goiter caused by the deficiency of iodine.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxHigHoEK7aa0Hgwfgc8ZEn3yr1C-96T6pLhwdeYze9fqAnrNrtJrzzwA9yJd8gYRyWCsxc7awEaeQ2hPgXWPVzGpxWPXwcARgs-YMILsZtQCy1xzRaZAG6-N29KVEEzukz-9_w/s1600/vigeelebrun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxHigHoEK7aa0Hgwfgc8ZEn3yr1C-96T6pLhwdeYze9fqAnrNrtJrzzwA9yJd8gYRyWCsxc7awEaeQ2hPgXWPVzGpxWPXwcARgs-YMILsZtQCy1xzRaZAG6-N29KVEEzukz-9_w/s320/vigeelebrun.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><br />
On to another unfortunate French queen: Marie Antoinette. This portrait of Marie and her children by Vigee Lebrun was especially unlucky. Marie wanted this painting to save her much maligned reputation by showing her as a doting mother. Sadly, one of her children, Princess Sophie, had been painted in the cradle but had to be painted out when she died. The absence of jewelry around Marie’s famously long and beautiful Austrian neck was especially important given her involvement in a certain <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace">affair of the diamond necklace</a>. The painting failed to save Marie’s public image and had to be removed from its place of prominence at that year’s Salon, the year being 1789 (queue tolling of bells).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7fwoJ9ITCW7vP7ENgljRgVlHE9JofWftw4zRpwTK_FXYuOD5kk5uturSug7ho_R0NckKhaECLmnybKoYgIpzfzKiVWZfoyKidSJOLNDst65R3bjoshK5eUrF_6pN0z_DHn633_w/s1600/marie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7fwoJ9ITCW7vP7ENgljRgVlHE9JofWftw4zRpwTK_FXYuOD5kk5uturSug7ho_R0NckKhaECLmnybKoYgIpzfzKiVWZfoyKidSJOLNDst65R3bjoshK5eUrF_6pN0z_DHn633_w/s320/marie.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br />
So of course, the story ends with Marie on her way to the guillotine not long after for the removal of head from said neck, where she was sketched by J.L. David, who in addition to being the most famous artist in France was a member of the revolutionary National Convention who had voted for the Queen’s execution.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKWk8tExFtdg6iluLHV36ayFivrbQuYRJQJn5ItCl1JKfyqaEYskdySrf6P4AgbP4M7O9YbKUKtg6nUw39qDjBYVqf3mB4aOPHnLdmrr6pCXVtLFw-Y73HhSXkHD1i_oR6ur6NyQ/s1600/parmigianino.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKWk8tExFtdg6iluLHV36ayFivrbQuYRJQJn5ItCl1JKfyqaEYskdySrf6P4AgbP4M7O9YbKUKtg6nUw39qDjBYVqf3mB4aOPHnLdmrr6pCXVtLFw-Y73HhSXkHD1i_oR6ur6NyQ/s320/parmigianino.jpg" width="271" /></a></div> No proper list of famous necks in art would be complete without Parmigianino’s <i>Madonna of the long neck</i>. The title says it all. We could wonder about what Parmigianino had in mind when he stretched Mary’s neck to extremes, but it’s more fun to compare her with other similarly necked beauties.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNnwsbGN57uR3QGtSUUfq7tZQhDukT7MqrxR9KPFGcL6htMI_uyue6K0IhoR29nSQ2a3HmqSHQB3JioXP5wfBFimrs4mugUqrf2aHZN8meEYgjiCWQ_bj8ZuBlZhEv6beOcn56w/s1600/botticelli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNnwsbGN57uR3QGtSUUfq7tZQhDukT7MqrxR9KPFGcL6htMI_uyue6K0IhoR29nSQ2a3HmqSHQB3JioXP5wfBFimrs4mugUqrf2aHZN8meEYgjiCWQ_bj8ZuBlZhEv6beOcn56w/s320/botticelli.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">Botticelli’s Venus (indeed the very neck and pose filched by Parmigianino).</div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_tExWtZhauSJFjc6k0s5d-BtO0hJEn7gXUKAVTXSM9mu1lXfKLloDuQ-8QeCdlsmkU-ytvzNzwJZMLe0fV69Iuj6G9wsZ5Z7P1xcfWg3org7_dNxu-OxOM8EtNmSeBXLvE08VwQ/s1600/elgreco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_tExWtZhauSJFjc6k0s5d-BtO0hJEn7gXUKAVTXSM9mu1lXfKLloDuQ-8QeCdlsmkU-ytvzNzwJZMLe0fV69Iuj6G9wsZ5Z7P1xcfWg3org7_dNxu-OxOM8EtNmSeBXLvE08VwQ/s320/elgreco.jpg" width="255" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">One of El Greco’s many ethereal Madonnas. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Njwr5nEotmcW06MDC4ZO_Kfim6NF62vQW563QHFBNEdihdNY4JN3250T6rOeSFVcXud99BvFsFWoZFhIgqcDFNbCOVl4DHIVBGp_-wE7m05k00G88e3rUxPj2ed9GOA5l_2LiQ/s1600/barbie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Njwr5nEotmcW06MDC4ZO_Kfim6NF62vQW563QHFBNEdihdNY4JN3250T6rOeSFVcXud99BvFsFWoZFhIgqcDFNbCOVl4DHIVBGp_-wE7m05k00G88e3rUxPj2ed9GOA5l_2LiQ/s320/barbie.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><br />
And...Barbie (how odd that her neck is out of proportion since the rest of her body has such natural anatomy)<br />
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Francis Bacon said, "There is no excellent beauty which hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Those of us with ordinary necks might wish for more strangeness. I remember the scene in the movie version of <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> where Marianne sees Willoughby’s new fiancé, Miss Grey. And even though, like Marianne, we only see Miss Grey from a distance across a crowded ballroom, I’m thinking, who cares about her £50,000 a year, what a neck! How could even Kate Winslet possibly compete? Imagine the casting call for Miss Grey’s role. “No you won’t have any lines so don’t bother reading anything. Just tilt your head back please and look imperious.” <br />
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Of course if, like me, you’re left feeling less elegant than all these swanlike beauties, you can always take comfort in the opinion of Steve Martin: “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.” <br />
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Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-6370884185245307342011-08-04T20:54:00.004-07:002011-08-04T20:58:13.574-07:00good griefI saw this shirt at Savers today and just had to share it as a follow-up to yesterday's post.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZX0PNFxgXQAkI33CtB_clVnYfARVI-ijDt9lBXmFc_YbG7qvj5V6LGLgpb-b7HAL7Sn0RI3y9I9xtMuZZAlkP53PACXLwlu_n6-ZSay_1h5Q8dkgHg2fuOq_5BG9t4Qmi5xIZyw/s1600/skull+and+bow.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 291px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZX0PNFxgXQAkI33CtB_clVnYfARVI-ijDt9lBXmFc_YbG7qvj5V6LGLgpb-b7HAL7Sn0RI3y9I9xtMuZZAlkP53PACXLwlu_n6-ZSay_1h5Q8dkgHg2fuOq_5BG9t4Qmi5xIZyw/s400/skull+and+bow.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5637215809139357922" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> Memento mori meets girly-girl fashion.<br /></div>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-51803274431815522992011-08-03T19:36:00.006-07:002011-08-03T19:54:30.208-07:00Shopping Cart Ethics 1.0For years I’ve wanted to start a regular segment on my blog called Shopping Cart Ethics where I would cover topics like this: “You’ve arrived at the grocery store and you start backing a shopping cart away from the cart line-up when you realize it has a bum wheel. You can a) exchange it for another cart, leaving the lame cart for the next shopper or b) keep the lame cart and push it through the whole store because if you don’t take it, someone else will have to and you feel strangely responsible, as if the timing of you walking into the store at the very moment this cart was available mandates that you take your turn. Discuss.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the ideas for this segment usually occur to me at inopportune moments (i.e. naturally while shopping) so I tend to mentally pocket them. Even more unfortunately, the pockets in my brain have many holes and thus any ideas poured into the tops flow out the bottoms like sand out the back of a de-icing truck. To cope, I’ve taken to storing pictures on my cell phone of shopping-related ethical issues. And yes, bewildered Shopko employee, this is why you saw me engaged in an impromptu photo shoot in the boys’ clothes department the other day. Thank you for not fetching your manager. You thought I was odd, I know. But there are odder things than me out there in the world of consumer culture. Case in point, the pajamas you were selling in your store.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmzVwpb292TkP8_nBAq39W0jh2JwhLYjQphn67DoSKD7QYrP9Oa5Lc6Y4V16rRAvlRnoo2L21I0MymHEM2g7KHjdHHoWA2LvMAapq_sagqT4tVxNOboypwXsQWythyphenhyphenItPMSxXPA/s1600/memento+mori+pajamas.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmzVwpb292TkP8_nBAq39W0jh2JwhLYjQphn67DoSKD7QYrP9Oa5Lc6Y4V16rRAvlRnoo2L21I0MymHEM2g7KHjdHHoWA2LvMAapq_sagqT4tVxNOboypwXsQWythyphenhyphenItPMSxXPA/s400/memento+mori+pajamas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636825136408267170" border="0" /></a><br />Where do we begin? I can only assume pajama manufacturers personally know children who would enjoy crawling into these pajamas before slipping between the sheets for a night of pleasant dreams. But I’m having difficulty picturing these children. Do they poison neighborhood cats before church? Or maybe these kids just have no idea what a skull and crossbones represent. Perhaps they’re thinking “pirates” and nothing more. And they’re thinking the kind of pirates who attend birthday parties with fake eye-patches and go around saying arrr! a lot, not the pirates who fly the Jolly Roger to let their victims know they take no prisoners alive.<br /><br />What I’m thinking is “why would I want to bundle my child in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori">memento mori</a> imagery before tucking them into bed?” Do I need another reminder that life is precious, my children may not outlive me and we are all, in the words of Samuel Beckett, born astride a grave?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXd-ReEm_8Zkqk9gPFTz_8In76CRqGJclpaoZKXd_7oNkOZe1NDv1uSJuoG-KPBFb8_q7f0lvtCNJhZ-_TYYcpzlYa5ixESrZM4IoZ4i1EBsOPxec5v9hIAJ7IeUsgFCVnXx-6pw/s1600/claesz+vanitas.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 291px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXd-ReEm_8Zkqk9gPFTz_8In76CRqGJclpaoZKXd_7oNkOZe1NDv1uSJuoG-KPBFb8_q7f0lvtCNJhZ-_TYYcpzlYa5ixESrZM4IoZ4i1EBsOPxec5v9hIAJ7IeUsgFCVnXx-6pw/s400/claesz+vanitas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636824986896765810" border="0" /></a> <p style="margin-top: 10.8pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: center; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pieter </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Claesz</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic;">Vanitas</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic;">Still Life</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">, 1630</span></span></p> <br />Memento mori symbols show up constantly in art, especially after the 17th century when it became positively trendy in Northern Europe to crowd paintings with skulls, hourglasses, burned out candles and cut flowers as reminders of the frailty of life and our limited allotment of time on this earth.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi289jYr03Pwq2_pH-LqirnuXQRJI5BRBvYGP6frueweML1HpxFmMI8Ie4R6JFBo8k2DltlYs7TdbwbW38mvPd1nC_VMh0eIkOR8vl6XgO0lLMBVmNEBm0wNkb7Dc1EHAHtApntYA/s1600/grateful+dead.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi289jYr03Pwq2_pH-LqirnuXQRJI5BRBvYGP6frueweML1HpxFmMI8Ie4R6JFBo8k2DltlYs7TdbwbW38mvPd1nC_VMh0eIkOR8vl6XgO0lLMBVmNEBm0wNkb7Dc1EHAHtApntYA/s400/grateful+dead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636824821400104610" border="0" /></a><br />You can see where the Grateful Dead have latched onto this image, bringing the memento mori theme into the 20th century in true 20th century fashion: by turning it into a marketable graphic design.<br /><br />Just for the record, I also wouldn’t hang a Grateful Dead poster above my child’s bed.<br /><br />So I found these pajamas to be slightly disturbing and worth discussing in a tone of consternation to launch Shopping Cart Ethics episode 1.0. If you are keeping track, I have conveniently forgotten to check my own blog archives for any <a href="http://mentaltesserae.blogspot.com/2008/12/making-christmasslightly-morbid.html">signs of hypocrisy</a>. Fortunately, in times like these, my holey mental pockets allow me to continue feeling holier than others.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-25062793188075636882011-08-02T14:38:00.005-07:002011-08-02T15:35:52.755-07:00Baaaaa........ckI miss my blog -- what’s left of it.<br /><br />It's a good thing blogs (and hopefully blog friends) don't disappear if abandoned for months at a time. I'm terribly flakey when it comes to maintaining things, even if they are things that matter to me.<br /><br />It's a good thing my husband takes care of the cars. And the garden. And the bills.<br /><br />It's also a good thing I only have houseplants that can go weeks between waterings. Of course, this is because any houseplants I've ever owned that were incapable of surviving this kind of neglect have been thinned from the herd through natural selection, but who wants needy houseplants?<br /><br />I really have no excuse for my long absence. Except maybe that writing for an audience (even if that audience has dwindled to one: hi mom!) is not easy for me. I tend to take it all <span style="font-style: italic;">way</span> too seriously. I tend to take life <span style="font-style: italic;">way</span> too seriously most of the time, which is why I need my kids. They hardly ever take me seriously. They also remind me that nothing is really as big a deal as I think it is....even posting my personal thoughts in such a way that anyone can stumble across them on their way to searching for a great recipe for cream horns (And I have to say it's odd that my cream horn post is by far the most popular thing I have written to date. It's odd because this is not a food blog and I am not a chef. I have made cream horns exactly twice in my entire life because they are such a serious pain to make. I can only assume my version of the cream horns ranks high on google because I'm the only one amateurish enough to think it's spelled "cream" rather than "crème.") And she's off on a tangent already. It's like she was never gone.<br /><br />What I really wanted to say was I have some great art worth posting today. Nora is a brilliant artist (and I don't mean brilliant for a five year old, I mean brilliant like Picasso as a five year old). As proof, I offer you her latest piece, at least seven minutes in the making, graphite on folded paper, a fusion of minimalist treatment of space and subtle rendering of natural forms. She calls it "sheep." I call it pure genius. Those ears slay me.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjepdkpxTRyyN77k_0g2eWXJv80mJFiNDm3K68kB9A0dqIwF0e1ZrCysLPlmi8rFWp0wBEufmwPcMda9drfa53QX38gVI7l9PV-gfE8bvwt5bESdGNqVadTI3BgxPgwci3-rWDFKA/s1600/Nora%2527s+sheep+small.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjepdkpxTRyyN77k_0g2eWXJv80mJFiNDm3K68kB9A0dqIwF0e1ZrCysLPlmi8rFWp0wBEufmwPcMda9drfa53QX38gVI7l9PV-gfE8bvwt5bESdGNqVadTI3BgxPgwci3-rWDFKA/s400/Nora%2527s+sheep+small.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636389695656021010" border="0" /></a>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-85123179036912242092010-10-05T08:49:00.006-07:002010-10-05T09:24:37.252-07:00natureI'm currently reading this book...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtUhmo5E42cZKBblqcdcTh7EViZpfkpPzOife4r1pfVvpUL47wjAnB3tW8HN1rchJ2GuPQMsqI_3t3R56lPapbp-23EZ33Yrth6gPr9iTJbBcrHhFvjkUGI42ToL43dX6PkirlRA/s1600/last-child-cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 252px; height: 392px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtUhmo5E42cZKBblqcdcTh7EViZpfkpPzOife4r1pfVvpUL47wjAnB3tW8HN1rchJ2GuPQMsqI_3t3R56lPapbp-23EZ33Yrth6gPr9iTJbBcrHhFvjkUGI42ToL43dX6PkirlRA/s400/last-child-cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524589809897326546" border="0" /></a><br />...which argues that kids today are suffering from nature-deprivation disorder and parents have been frightened from letting their children roam free in wild places and climb trees. <br /><br />My children, just for the record, do not suffer from this disorder. This is almost entirely thanks to their father, who takes them out camping and boating and hiking and biking and does his part to nature-surplus them all the time, even when I stay home to grade papers. <br /><br />I do feel that Nora has gotten too much screen time lately and doesn't get enough outdoor time (and, honestly, when I take her to the park, she's climbing on plastic and rubber-coated metal surrounded by bark chips, so that hardly counts). So when Ken suggested on his day off yesterday that we drive the Nebo loop with Nora, I went along and we three had a lovely time. My daughter, for the record, may be a pink princess in some (annoying, say her brothers) ways, but it's comforting to know she can also run up a trail and play in the leaves and get nice and dirty just like my boys did at her age. Plus, as you can see, her outfit blends in so nicely with the foliage that it's clear that she's a born nature gal.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CYtEEmwz7R6dTGt_9OZDRvKhShfi0UJ9LFCfUSrm1ySpcp4XzhCM4XBKn59rLF_OLL5GOqOnkn7Zk5gUlZJA6nfssGKJl37U4eA_GryXkF5wwckxGuGLYGJwsGBOWJjTk1_J6Q/s1600/Nora+in+leaves.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CYtEEmwz7R6dTGt_9OZDRvKhShfi0UJ9LFCfUSrm1ySpcp4XzhCM4XBKn59rLF_OLL5GOqOnkn7Zk5gUlZJA6nfssGKJl37U4eA_GryXkF5wwckxGuGLYGJwsGBOWJjTk1_J6Q/s400/Nora+in+leaves.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524594626756788162" /></a><br />And just in case there was any doubt about our attachment to the great outdoors, we all went back and did the Nebo drive again last night with the boys for family night and took the same hike we had discovered in the morning--up to a hidden grotto. Thanks to outrageously bad traffic (what's with Southbound I-15 lately?!) by the time we got to the cave and waterfall, it was almost totally dark. But, thankfully, Nora had her Sleeping Beauty flashlight with her to save the day. Princess Power and Mother Nature. What a great combination.<br /><br />And then this morning, Nature reared her ugly head, or more accurately, her ugly swollen, black, hourglass-tattooed belly, as I was getting into my car. This lovely lady (yes, it's a black widow and doesn't she look pregnant to you?) was hanging two feet away from my face as I opened the garage door. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ohEsuabRKoHwaBtn3VkUyfTRNEVpgk7ubOv09GQacfCg38amiDibF7xo1ww7mB5aXqw4os4OaTto7t7Xmw-ItD_3NuVonaa9wjnh5qv4P8jeceGqVRMne-0pyFVoQSsHLe1UQA/s1600/black+widow.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ohEsuabRKoHwaBtn3VkUyfTRNEVpgk7ubOv09GQacfCg38amiDibF7xo1ww7mB5aXqw4os4OaTto7t7Xmw-ItD_3NuVonaa9wjnh5qv4P8jeceGqVRMne-0pyFVoQSsHLe1UQA/s400/black+widow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524597610067247538" /></a><br />Maybe I am a little frightened about letting my kids roam free in the wild. Now I'm even frightened about letting them roam free in the garage.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-49671148127582037242010-09-17T19:19:00.002-07:002010-09-17T19:22:36.031-07:00just for the recordI finished Ramadan. I did not finish the Qur'an.<br /><br />I gained a lot of knowledge and some useful insights into Islam. I lost 5 pounds.<br /><br />It is easier to go all day with no food than it is to pray 5 times a day.<br /><br />I would make a lousy Muslim. I think I'm a better Mormon for having done this.<br /><br />Food tastes better in the light.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-82788948417411049282010-09-08T05:33:00.004-07:002010-09-08T06:30:33.892-07:00Day whateverStill here. Still observing Ramadan, although I will admit I'm glad this is the last week. They say you're supposed to be sad when Ramadan is over. Sad is not what I anticipate feeling. I must be doing it wrong.<br /><br />I've been sick with a nasty cold for days which adds a whole degree of difficulty to the process. I'm sure I've broken the letter of the law a couple of times with ibuprofen in the middle of the day or cough drops lozenged right before heading to class not to mention all the phlegm that's been sliding down my throat. But I'm trying my best to follow the rules. The spirit of the law is, I'll admit, secondary. It's easier by far to avoid the sins of commission than to not omit all the things I'm omitting. I haven't done many good deeds lately unless you count feeding my family the occasional warm meal. I've been going back to bed after my pre-dawn breakfast rather than staying up to pray and meditate in the dark. I'm also way behind in the Qur'an. I should be nearly finished but I'm about half way through. Not to complain, but it would be easier if there were a plot.<br /><br />Since fall semester started, I've been busy with preparing lectures and dealing with last minute emergencies (What? All of my books weren't ordered? No problem. My honors TA can't work for me until everybody jumps through a few more hoops? How high? I have misplaced my thumb drive with absolutely everything on it, including all my exams. Been there done that about a dozen times since I started using thumb drives, the nasty, slippery little things). <br /><br />My kids are all starting school and riding their various emotional hurricanes. At least once a day, one of them washes up next to me, all soggy and windblown and bruised from the latest blast of national disaster proportions. Each of them needs a healthy, sympathetic, focused mother with unlimited mental and emotional resources. Instead they are stuck with me, the Michael "Brownie" Brown of personal hurricane relief.<br /><br />If there were advice in the Qur'an about how to make friends in Junior High (McKay) so you could stop sitting by yourself every day for lunch, I'd be all over it. Or how to get to sleep (Gabie) when you're totally not tired even though it's 10pm because you just scratched your leg and it's bleeding and you're convinced it's pretty serious and the blood loss might make you pass out which would be a good thing because then you'd get some sleep, but you're so worried about it that you can't close your eyes just in case..... Or how to survive a schedule (Ethan) that's nearly as busy as your crazy mother's, with a bunch of hard high school classes, a college math class, marching band 3 days a week, not to mention a guilt-inducing church leadership calling that you fear you're not living up to and since you survive on air and goldfish crackers, now you've caught the cold of death that has slowly been working its way through the family and you went to bed last night with a fever and a sense of impending doom. Or how to deal with the fact (Nora) that you only need ONE friend in preschool because she's the girl who also likes to play dressup and you want to sit by Mallory every second of school and sometimes -- oh the horror! -- you are asked to sit by one of the other 15 children in the class instead.<br /><br />Sadly for my children, I am not the font of wisdom. I am not the font of anything. Except maybe Kleenex and a deep sense of genuine, if somewhat distracted, compassion.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-50469831952927175192010-08-30T04:18:00.004-07:002010-08-30T05:09:46.154-07:00prayerOne thing I regret about the way I've taught about Islam in my classes over the past several years is the superficial comparison I've made between Islamic and Mormon approaches to prayer. Typically, I point out that faithful Muslims pray 5 times a day and look! if you count up our regular prayers (morning, evening and the three meals) you also get 5. This is incredibly shallow and the number 5 is really about the only similarity between the two.<br /><br />As I've seen the phrase over and over in the Qur'an, Muslim's <span style="font-style: italic;">perform </span>their prayers. This strikes me as different from <span style="font-style: italic;">praying</span>. I asked Luda from Syria about this distinction and while her English is very good, she seemed a bit confused by my question. "We pray", she said. "Every prayer begins with a recitation of the Qur'an." (She has several suras memorized by heart). She then proceeded to show me, on the floor of Kristin's living room, how every position of every part of the body, from the fingers to the toes, matters in the prayer pose. She knelt down with the tops of her feet on the floor, facing inward, her palms down and then she touched her forehead to the ground. It's not just kneeling. It's a full-body prayer. Luda compared it to Yoga, and then apologized in case this was not appropriate, but being a recent fan of Yoga, I like the comparison. In both, the goal is to align your body and mind--both halves of the soul, according to Mormon doctrine--in pursuit of the same purpose.<br /><br />So why not pray with your whole body, humbling yourself before God physically as well as emotionally? Sure, there are times when Mormons kneel to pray, but it's not as often as maybe it should be. And we pray all the time, but maybe our prayers are not as intense as they should be. Everything about Islam, including the name, stresses submission to God. Their daily prayers are not offered at the convenience of the pray-er but at exact, prescribed moments determined by the motion of the sun (which is determined by God). The prostrations are a constant reminder of this submission. To me, this is simultaneously marvelous and frightening. LDS doctrine puts tremendous focus on personal agency, personal revelation and conscience. To relinquish so much of it multiple times daily would be a radical offering indeed.<br /><br />The other major difference I've noted is that Muslims pray for personal blessings, but only after praising God through the recitation of the Qur'an. The words of their prayers are far more focused on God than on themselves. The one repeated with every prayer is the opening sura:<br /><br />In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, The Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Master of the Day of Judgement<br />To you we worship and to you we turn to in help. Show us the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.<br /><br />These lines remind me of the opening of the Lord's prayer "Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This is nothing like the kinds of prayers I typically offer, which are less about praising God than thanking him for my personal blessings and asking for more. I've been painfully conscious this month of how many times I use the words "I" and "me" in prayer. My prayers are very ego-centric. Even when I'm asking for blessings upon my family and my friends, they are still "my" family and "my" friends. There's not nearly enough "thy will be done" language.<br /><br />So, while I don't want to relinquish my right to pray when I feel the urge to pray and face whatever direction I choose and formulate the content of my own conversations with God, I do see the value of prostration, at least in a metaphorical sense. There's room for more praise. And there's certainly room for more submission of my own will.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-43226201009470102182010-08-25T07:35:00.005-07:002010-08-25T08:07:10.157-07:00why do they call it a fast when it's going by so slowly?You know you've been fasting a while when you start having dreams about feeling guilty for eating carrots.<br /><br />I'm nearing the halfway point of Ramadan and starting to get a bit burned out. I'm sick of being hungry; that's part of it. But I'm also tired of feeling antisocial. It's no fun eating by myself. And when I get up in the dark to eat an early breakfast I feel like sneaky binger. The one welcome exception was Monday evening, when my friend Kristin (who has lived in various middle-eastern countries and speaks Arabic) invited me to iftar with her family and her Muslim friend Luda from Syria. Iftar is the traditional meal to break fast and is usually celebrated by feasting with family and friends. (Unless you're a wacky Mormon usurping the Muslim holiday and then you usually celebrate it by eating cold leftovers alone at the kitchen table.)<br /><br />Kristin had slaved all day to make some delicious Arabic dishes and Luda brought homemade Syrian food as well (sorry I didn't write down the names of the dishes; I was too busy eating). Ever the generous guest, I ran to the supermarket and bought a package of dates.<br /><br />It was a privilege to meet Luda and I took advantage of the opportunity and asked her a good portion of my list of questions about the Muslim faith. I suspect I'll write about some of our conversation later. She was a lovely woman, very Western in appearance, but obviously committed to her religion even though she is essentially isolated in Utah Valley and prays at home by herself rather than attending the small local mosque.<br /><br />One thing Luda said has me even more discouraged. When I admitted that I've been drinking water during the day (because I'm still running or walking 4 miles almost every day and I know I would suffer from serious headaches if I didn't drink any water) she said, "Oh, water is the most important part of the fast." So not only am I a total poser. I'm also a total cheater.<br /><br />Kristin also told me it's a well-known fact that people gain weight during Ramadan. This has to be a cruel joke. Please tell me it's because they are indulging for hours after sunset (which I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> doing), not because they are totally throwing their metabolisms out of whack by starving themselves all day and then eating right before bed (which I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> doing). If I gained weight after feeling this hungry all the time, that would just be too harsh.<br /><br />But I can say that I do feel, for the first time in many months, like I have some self-control when it comes to food. That's a cool thing. And I enjoy sitting in the dark of the pre-dawn mornings meditation/praying/listening to my own heartbeat. This is a rare gift. And food really does better when you have to wait for it for 15 hours. Even carrots.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-8295937971887874202010-08-20T03:09:00.002-07:002010-08-20T15:42:01.462-07:00washing hands<span style="font-style: italic;">Photo: McKay washing in the fountain outside Cordova's Mosque in Spain. </span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzU72kvuHG0lOWYWyPJiILQd-rG0rlzTl7HhJtCG4S9QizQXlrRzG-3_jQekl9hu6iHFx4RGj-5gccXJW4I1yFYPCsoY1ZIhx8b2KtMkcEiUvfInTeAP38ny-yxvi7gbUyELArQ/s1600/sp+cordova+washing+hands.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 244px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAzU72kvuHG0lOWYWyPJiILQd-rG0rlzTl7HhJtCG4S9QizQXlrRzG-3_jQekl9hu6iHFx4RGj-5gccXJW4I1yFYPCsoY1ZIhx8b2KtMkcEiUvfInTeAP38ny-yxvi7gbUyELArQ/s400/sp+cordova+washing+hands.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507434720413939634" border="0" /></a>One thing I'm NOT doing along the way in this Ramadan experience (but I respect, nonetheless) is washing before my prayers. It says in the 5th sura of the Qur'an:<br /><br />O ye who believe! when ye prepare for prayer, wash your faces, and your hands to the elbows; Rub your heads and your feet to the ankles.<br /><br />I like the idea of setting prayer apart as a sacred act by washing in preparation. It seems as if you were about to have an audience with royalty, which of course, you are. If I knew the whole Wudu ritual and could perform it without sacrilege, I'd try. But I sense it's one of the many things that belong so specifically to the Muslim religion that I'd be wrong to borrow it for my own curiosity. I do like the symbolism though of clean hands. It's all over in the Old Testament but I never thought to take it quite so literally.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-77367633011244672122010-08-16T08:40:00.004-07:002010-08-16T09:33:32.194-07:00fasting and feastingDay five and I'm surprised by the fact that fasting isn't that difficult. I mean it's not easy to go all day without eating, but I think it's easier than, say, eating ONLY ONE really good chocolate chip cookie. There's something about total abstinence that takes the pressure off.<br /><br />That said, by 8:30ish (it gets earlier each day according to the sunset) I'm ready for a big pile of food. I suspect with all I eat in the evening and the breakfast I sneak in before dawn I'm not reducing total caloric intake by much. It's not an ideal diet plan. But that's not my motive anyway. I do feel a strong sense of accomplishment that I've kept to the schedule thus far. I've had plenty of temptations, including a full weekend at the cabin with my fabulous family (my parents and 7 of my 8 siblings and their families) which typically means good food and abundant snacking. Thankfully my family was very supportive and there's nothing like 31 witnesses to keep you honest.<br /><br />I'm also surprised by what I'm finding in the Qur'an. I have the book divided into 30 equal portions, one for each day of Ramadan. I read with two pens: a black one for underlining things I like and a red one for underlining things that don't jive with my personal beliefs. I'm into the fifth sura now and of the hundreds of verses I've read, there are only a handful that I felt compelled to underline in red. Why does this surprise me? I don't know. I guess I forgot that most religions have, at their core, the same fundamental principles: obey God, avoid hypocrisy, be kind to others, and keep your promises. The Qur'an is, thus far, largely devoted to these ideas and to predicting rewards for the believers (paradisaical gardens with rivers beneath them and pure spouses) and the unbelievers (the scorchings of hell). My strongest personal objection is merely that there is such a theme of division between these two groups. Many many verses are about the seemingly clear-cut differences between the faithful and the blasphemers. I suppose my own scriptures are no different. I just wouldn't mind spending more time admitting that we are all inherently good and deeply flawed at the same time, that we all struggle with demons and wish to be angels, that some days we believe and some days we doubt.<br /><br />I sense a trend to my musings today. It's night: I can feast. It's day: I must fast. Some people are sinners and will pay dearly. Some are believers (Mormon equivalent: righteous saints) and will be rewarded. The avoidance of ambiguity makes all manner of things easier. It's moderation that's hard.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-72879009227420049942010-08-12T08:34:00.002-07:002010-08-12T09:20:15.981-07:00Dawn<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3-WdP-Yw3bPqkC3SCNwcWeuNWydpYRdFSYwWz_Y1kvPyogTLrIXWrp_io5hz77-A-3ZujneCjDyot6OE-RzyvbMCJ37cE32RzLiLiTtkhDaf5O8mhfjz0gFAd-3hCxqjY6X2oow/s1600/sp+alhambra.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3-WdP-Yw3bPqkC3SCNwcWeuNWydpYRdFSYwWz_Y1kvPyogTLrIXWrp_io5hz77-A-3ZujneCjDyot6OE-RzyvbMCJ37cE32RzLiLiTtkhDaf5O8mhfjz0gFAd-3hCxqjY6X2oow/s400/sp+alhambra.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504547876742698418" border="0" /></a>(Arabic writing from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain)<br /></div><br />Day one of Ramadan and I can already tell that the hardest part isn't going to be the fasting. It's going to be sleep deprivation. Of course, I say this before I've actually felt a single hunger pang, but I'm already tired and it's only 10 am.<br /><br />I got up at 4:30 am for Suhoor, the meal before the first prayer of the day (which begins at 4:43 in my time zone and marks the beginning of the fast). I underestimated the time it would take to make oatmeal and so I was wolfing it down while it was still too hot and I didn't get to finish it off before my time ran out. I'm already having these manic conversations with myself about the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. It seems extreme to run a spiritual exercise by the seconds on a clock, but at the same time, if I start making excuses and fudging the numbers, where do I draw the line? If I don't follow the rules, soon I'll be arguing that the fast doesn't start until the sun actually rises and then it will be when I can actually SEE the sun and before long, I'll be saying I can just close my eyes and eat whatever I want.<br /><br />It's only day one, mind you. I sense some internal battles in my future.<br /><br />One thing I can say is that it's peaceful at 4:30 in the morning. The house seems perfectly quiet when I sit down to pray and then I begin hearing, one by one, the layers of sound that float across the dark air around me: the hum of the refrigerator, the vibrations of a thin stream of cars passing on the highway a mile away, a train honking at the crossing more than two miles away, my intestines gurgling around the oatmeal. My eyes have adjusted and there's a gray glow coming in from the streetlight outside. I enjoy being the only one awake in this hazy envelope of space and time. I would enjoy it more if I weren't aware that I will pay the price later in the day when I have to function on substantially less than my required 7 hours of sleep. But in the meantime, I can enjoy the moment and think about the millions of real Muslims out there who had to get up even earlier to make it to a mosque for their first prayer. I'm just in my pajamas in my living room.<br /><br />I realize now that one of the layers of sound I hear is the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. It seems incredibly loud, in fact, and I can't believe I have tuned it out. It's not something I ever notice during the day. There's something about this early morning strangeness that makes time thicker and more precious than usual. Maybe that's part of the point to this exercise. The seconds do matter. They've always mattered but now that they mark the borders between dark and light and between food passing my lips or staying in the bowl, they have power over me instead of the other way around.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-23583029981788461752010-08-10T09:52:00.002-07:002010-08-10T10:04:33.547-07:00Ramadan, a Mormon seeker's versionI’ll begin with the fact that my kids think I’m crazy, my husband is worried about me not eating dinner with the family, and my parents (when they read this) are likely to fear I’m becoming even more radical than my normal level of radical. On my part, I’ll admit to some trepidation. If anyone were to ask me why I plan to celebrate Ramadan this year, I’d have to pause for a while to collect my thoughts before answering. That isn’t to say that I don’t have a good reason. It’s more like I have a whole pile of reasons, none of which seems logical or convincing or likely to satisfy anyone who thinks it’s inappropriate for a Mormon to participate in a pillar of the Islamic religion. I’m writing this, I suppose, to explain myself to myself and anyone else who questions my motives or my sanity.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Why I’m celebrating Ramadan</span><br /><br />For several years, I have included a short lecture about Islam in my Humanities 201 class. I do this with full disclosure of my own Western bias and my limited knowledge of the deeper aspects of the religion. I do it in an attempt to show another perspective on the Middle Ages, to balance out our reading of the Song of Roland (which portrays Muslims as polytheist pagans and heroicizes their slaughter), and to reveal to my classes of predominantly Mormon students that there more similarities than differences between the two religions. I enjoy watching their surprise at this discovery. Every time I teach my students about Ramadan, I have wondered what it’s really like to fast for a month. I’m simply curious to know how difficult it is and what kinds of rewards it brings.<br /><br />I finally bought a Qur’an (or at least an English translation of it) last Christmas. In the basement of the university library, next to the rows of computers where elderly LDS patrons squint at genealogy records, I have plundered the stacks of books on Islam (ironically located right next to the books on Judaism, a kind of peaceful coexistence only possible in the abstract world of the written word). Ramadan this year is an excuse for me to read the whole Qur’an, study my pile of books about Muhammad, and try to gain a more personal understanding of Islamic beliefs.<br /><br />According to what I have read, the blessings of Ramadan include forgiveness of sins, greater power through prayer, internal peace, and more strength to resist temptation. The phrase I've read dozens of times now is “The gates of paradise are opened, the gates of hell are closed, and the devils are in chains." I could use all of these openings, closings and chainings right now.<br /><br />One of the benefits of Ramadan is an increase in self-discipline and self-control. I don’t want to belittle the sacredness of the rite by treating it as a diet plan, but I am in need of more self-control, especially where food is concerned. I’ve heard some people dismiss Ramadan as an easy way to fast because you can eat whatever you want in the middle of the night. But how could avoiding food and drink between dawn and sunset for 30 days be anything but a genuine test of will power?<br /><br />During Ramadan, Muslims strive to better themselves and fill their hearts with charity and empathy for others. They try to be more generous, more friendly, more anxious to serve the poor and needy. In addition to gaining control over what passes into their mouths, they control over what passes out of their mouths by banning gossip, backbiting, and spreading of rumors. I struggle with these weaknesses. Blame it on my years of analyzing art and literature, but whatever part of my brain it is that makes you a good critical thinker, that part of my brain is over-exercised. As in Rambo. It is hard for me to resist criticizing others, and (not that I need a holiday to make me do better) it seems appropriate for me to set some new goals and have a noble reason to hold my tongue.<br /><br />And maybe this should have been listed first, but I’m seeking a spiritual benefit as well. Those who faithfully follow the prescriptions of Ramadan are promised taqwa, which I’ve seen translated variously as fear of God, God-consciousness or piety. No Dad, I’m not converting to Islam (could any feminist do this?) but I know that there are many paths to God. I haven’t yet exhausted the Mormon path (could I ever?) but I am interested in what truths I can find in the Qur’an and what I can discover about my relationship to God by subverting the will of the flesh and dedicating more time in my life to religious study and prayer. Couldn’t I get these things from within my own religion? Sure. Am I conflicted as to why I feel the need to borrow a piece of someone else’s religion to gain the clarity and insight I should be working harder to find in my own? Absolutely.<br /><br />As a caveat, I know there are plenty who would say God will not accept my offering, seeing as it comes from a non-Muslim usurping a Muslim religious tradition. I readily acknowledge my status as an outsider. For that matter, for various reasons I’ve mostly felt like an outsider in Mormon circles my whole life. It’s a role I’m familiar with. My only regret is that I’m doing this alone. A significant aspect of Ramadan is the sense of community created by a group of people sacrificing together and celebrating together. There will be no public feasts in my version of Ramadan. No trips to the mosque for late night prayers. I might rope a few of my family members into eating some dates and Haleem with me, and my Arabic-speaking sister has promised to teach me a few phrases, but mostly I plan to do this solo. This may be the most un-Islamic aspect of my pseudo-Islamic Ramadan. So here’s an open invitation to anyone who wants to join me in all or in part on my strange quest for enlightenment, compassion and the ability to resist the lure of baked goods during daylight hours.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-5425650224828917672010-07-31T07:44:00.010-07:002010-07-31T10:24:13.561-07:00Bathroom breakOne of the things I love most about travel and the main reason I wanted to get my kids to Spain is the way it broadens your understanding of the whole human race. If you always stay in one place, it’s easy to think that there’s only one way of doing things: the way you’ve always done them. But once you travel to a foreign country, you get to see that in other parts of the world, there are millions of people who eat totally different foods (and are accustomed to a totally different olive oil to potato ratio), they swim in a different language sea, they have different attitudes about public transportation or footwear or the amount of major appliances you can miniaturize and squeeze into a kitchen the size of an average pantry back home. In other words, there’s more than one way to flush a toilet.<br /><br />And that’s literally what we learned in Spain. I saw so many different ways to flush a toilet on our trip it became a running joke. Each time we’d stay somewhere new or have to ask a waiter for directions to “Los Servicios” I’d play "Okay friends, how do you flush <span style="font-style: italic;">this</span> toilet?’” I began taking my camera in with me to public restrooms. I can only assume this caused a fair amount of confusion to people in the stalls next to me. Can you imagine it? The flush followed by a short pause and then a sudden flash of light.<br /><br />Yes, I became somewhat of a toilet tourist, a restroom reporter, a john junkie.<br /><br />So here’s one of the recuerdos I brought home from Spain: my little collection of toilet photos. I'm just being realistic. While traveling, it seems we spent an inordinate amount of time searching for bathrooms, waiting in line for bathrooms, using bathrooms, and then talking about the odd discoveries we made in said bathrooms. It seemed appropriate to chronicle that part of the experience.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXakrXj9SJw-5BL8FD7qmu1XX5dNSFooVx89gG9wK8o8sEO0UxlrHbvnmLGq6cAo5JBBN2IJtg6I3r4XkLZapiPGBwfPNeu0ThKNJTiELeDzxARH3XHvcTNHokN_zJ0VYyDpoPQ/s1600/sp+aseo+madrid+airport.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXakrXj9SJw-5BL8FD7qmu1XX5dNSFooVx89gG9wK8o8sEO0UxlrHbvnmLGq6cAo5JBBN2IJtg6I3r4XkLZapiPGBwfPNeu0ThKNJTiELeDzxARH3XHvcTNHokN_zJ0VYyDpoPQ/s400/sp+aseo+madrid+airport.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500096857473369666" border="0" /></a>Here's a fairly standard little number from the Madrid Airport. The flusher is the large button half-way up the wall, which--when nearly every other toilet you've ever flushed in your life has a fairly innocuous little lever on the side of the tank--seemed ultra fancy and dramatic (does it summon airport security? will an alarm sound? am I launching a nuclear weapon?).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe8yjquz2T84Su_3gidh1BO0oBi1FZDTRO6TErP1IIeEXGEwUIgka-awZmZS-ENXIMJDauiuk3QpkYqfczABF3q-8_2mPEJ1IDSewbno-9AhJb-t2ep3dhbHhK9QUfcIYm9qJgQ/s1600/sp+aseo+madrid+apt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe8yjquz2T84Su_3gidh1BO0oBi1FZDTRO6TErP1IIeEXGEwUIgka-awZmZS-ENXIMJDauiuk3QpkYqfczABF3q-8_2mPEJ1IDSewbno-9AhJb-t2ep3dhbHhK9QUfcIYm9qJgQ/s400/sp+aseo+madrid+apt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500091577237823746" border="0" /></a>This one's from our apartment in Madrid. The flusher is a button you push on the top of the tank, which makes it easy to find. But take a look at a detail shot...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPzFFRGS5LS0yfU_IlipGnH7l13TB8NAyzM4SHEFUJp9ocU6ydxniPQX-CU_0sPUyit_Mg_oGfpQIgsrTwFSpt8Fi5EfGa92TT8Ecr12v3xomRuWq795iJBUdGx4qsfkhnskGPQ/s1600/sp+aseo+madrid+apt+detail.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUPzFFRGS5LS0yfU_IlipGnH7l13TB8NAyzM4SHEFUJp9ocU6ydxniPQX-CU_0sPUyit_Mg_oGfpQIgsrTwFSpt8Fi5EfGa92TT8Ecr12v3xomRuWq795iJBUdGx4qsfkhnskGPQ/s400/sp+aseo+madrid+apt+detail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500097807908350562" border="0" /></a>...the mystery being: what exactly is the difference between a "sun flush" and a "moon flush?"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrvziZoK95fqfEFJDLpfjAwHMHQi512EkSTB-XaNTlqo6vDu_AtBXHsOjKK6qFXkIlioRp-ErKx8d6XJL7i6Uf3j9wpwTqF5ihURTf7ddi0PKo5RTVQ6URBJThNfNhoD7GLQ4fQ/s1600/sp+aseo+fes.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrvziZoK95fqfEFJDLpfjAwHMHQi512EkSTB-XaNTlqo6vDu_AtBXHsOjKK6qFXkIlioRp-ErKx8d6XJL7i6Uf3j9wpwTqF5ihURTf7ddi0PKo5RTVQ6URBJThNfNhoD7GLQ4fQ/s400/sp+aseo+fes.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500091052842232210" border="0" /></a>Just when you get complacent and start thinking, "Hey, I can handle this one because I have cleverly deduced there's a button on the back of the tank" you find that the button simply will NOT be pushed. You press it multiple times and nothing happens. You're feeling like a stupid tourist, helpless in the bathroom, completely flummoxed by a plumbing fixture, wishing there were such a thing as a World-Wide Toilet Translation Phone App. You're about to call for backup when you think to pull on the knob instead of pushing it and thankfully discover that all it takes is a gentle upward tug to do the job. Sheesh. You have failed another IQ test.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE9sKLTlOFSkTHd3mu2GuukFMeD0i2e5_34sxjsscrN9I_0oNvdh8MPGk4PHAVgIxduEpGl0VIRApczYoWdRUzfvmEk0gS0uv3-8Ffw6F9iOBuj-gDJSoxylmdXsIdeWcHJXUZKQ/s1600/sp+aseo+plaza+mayor+rest.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 336px; height: 370px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE9sKLTlOFSkTHd3mu2GuukFMeD0i2e5_34sxjsscrN9I_0oNvdh8MPGk4PHAVgIxduEpGl0VIRApczYoWdRUzfvmEk0gS0uv3-8Ffw6F9iOBuj-gDJSoxylmdXsIdeWcHJXUZKQ/s400/sp+aseo+plaza+mayor+rest.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500091596152675570" border="0" /></a>This may have been the fanciest flusher I saw. Another "launcher" on the wall in a restaurant near Madrid's Plaza Mayor. But this time there are two rectangle panels and as far as my highly professional journalistic sleuthing could determine (i.e. multiple flushings) both panels seemed to accomplish the same thing. I still haven't figured this one out. Clearly I was not the only confused one because in the empty stall next to mine, one of the rectangles was permanently indented and water was swooshing down the drain, spinning furiously in some kind of eternal flush mode .<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigF2-JuUvr30HRLoBeG_ZOfvRoPh0YG6qPQNTvrfZD3ShJvxIT_xrebI5RfWvA8ZraKuX4IU4ykYx4sa6vfFL7CKFnWv0H4CLiWubCgj6YKWjdxd1B8EZ_5agmxPDLdXabrMO8UQ/s1600/sp+aseo+plaza+mayor.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 296px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigF2-JuUvr30HRLoBeG_ZOfvRoPh0YG6qPQNTvrfZD3ShJvxIT_xrebI5RfWvA8ZraKuX4IU4ykYx4sa6vfFL7CKFnWv0H4CLiWubCgj6YKWjdxd1B8EZ_5agmxPDLdXabrMO8UQ/s400/sp+aseo+plaza+mayor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500091601770855586" border="0" /></a>I encountered this no-nonsense, utilitarian job at the Reina Sophia art museum, a rather appropriate setting considering the fixture's totally post-modern exposure of the sign/signifier relationship. Here's the plumbing that takes you from flusher to things in need of flushing. No need to wrap things up in the illusion of detachment.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0b6auaPPRiEHP1BcnWuT1m7BQsHHpHJWhAGE1hW82tfcxhM5SN0kG4WQzlFk1xSIjtyclkgpiflx9dztXor6yOOSC_CQVkYCGlhviJhyV6ZWHpNKQ-ta6ZBLeYatsZLf_k3V0Q/s1600/sp+aseo+palacio.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 336px; height: 399px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr0b6auaPPRiEHP1BcnWuT1m7BQsHHpHJWhAGE1hW82tfcxhM5SN0kG4WQzlFk1xSIjtyclkgpiflx9dztXor6yOOSC_CQVkYCGlhviJhyV6ZWHpNKQ-ta6ZBLeYatsZLf_k3V0Q/s400/sp+aseo+palacio.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500102481723157746" border="0" /></a>Okay, this one is from the Palacio Real and yes, I know we've seen the missile launcher variety before, but I wonder if you're noticing a trend here... Have you seen how every bathroom comes equipped with a huge garbage can? These are not your discrete letter-boxes attached to the side of the stall wall for your occasional convenience. No m'am, they are heavy-duty, tight-lidded garbage cans large enough to swallow small children. And if you think you've guessed their purpose you're only half right because they're not just in the ladies' bathrooms.<br /><br />The large garbage can phenomenon led to no small amount of conjecture on our part, especially when we encountered signs like this one that--in addition to indicating that <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>use of the toilet is explicitly banned--seemed to strengthen our suspicions that we were not supposed to be flushing anything, including toilet paper, down the pipes.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh343hPF7h8_dOqU1DBkzn-WiRAf8ZPv4AXM2dc3Wav56Io29X2maAeGGpBzqFpbOihtNQdmhN_Xy9PPAXEcfIpmPHmnzbdsop74NbZzlL8cfjtoQziuOf8cFLrYWA5wwTCsAxqMA/s1600/sp+aseo+cordova.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh343hPF7h8_dOqU1DBkzn-WiRAf8ZPv4AXM2dc3Wav56Io29X2maAeGGpBzqFpbOihtNQdmhN_Xy9PPAXEcfIpmPHmnzbdsop74NbZzlL8cfjtoQziuOf8cFLrYWA5wwTCsAxqMA/s400/sp+aseo+cordova.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500092310951986850" border="0" /></a>Ahem. Moving on...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVuEZe5eHIkvsjWrAhuCgoSUcoyPAOO_V5QfJRzcI4goP7PQujP3O9iwBHA7P1lasv5isa_0QXhoWEF8Imu4M5j1DNyKrdlAJEvmvdlg7mCEwN1Y-HAbZ13-0ydOS6xPOMkV1ogg/s1600/sp+aseo+palacio+resaturant.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 319px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVuEZe5eHIkvsjWrAhuCgoSUcoyPAOO_V5QfJRzcI4goP7PQujP3O9iwBHA7P1lasv5isa_0QXhoWEF8Imu4M5j1DNyKrdlAJEvmvdlg7mCEwN1Y-HAbZ13-0ydOS6xPOMkV1ogg/s400/sp+aseo+palacio+resaturant.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500092315654472722" border="0" /></a>While playing "How do you flush <span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>toilet?" I encountered a few truly baffling challenges such as this one. It took me several minutes to finally decide that the only recourse was to plunge my hand into the tank and pull on random pieces of plastic until flushing resulted. Much handwashing ensued.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuhe4AqVIgITEmMWxV8ow2VjT_JUTA1BQPd2xBm13TXjJmVQU99GmSNzUFooFaHw69r8dEZbnAw1AdS82IaYXaJNKYBe7x68uTQN_rLOOgrTTJQETp_B4MqJijWNO9DAKg6_gKGA/s1600/sp+aseo+barcelona.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuhe4AqVIgITEmMWxV8ow2VjT_JUTA1BQPd2xBm13TXjJmVQU99GmSNzUFooFaHw69r8dEZbnAw1AdS82IaYXaJNKYBe7x68uTQN_rLOOgrTTJQETp_B4MqJijWNO9DAKg6_gKGA/s400/sp+aseo+barcelona.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500090518775844546" border="0" /></a>At our Pension in Barcelona, it took a full-scale search around the toilet and up and down the walls to discover the pull chain hanging from the ceiling (we had to train Gabie to step up on the toilet to reach it). Also, you know you're in Spain when the bathroom is so narrow that you have to turn sideways and inhale to squeeze your way down to the toilet, BUT naturally there's room for a bidet.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMbPzOfHCaumv3gyPrz-TNDu1H48yHPbkKkgvjw2kkm6gR-iivEVMB5YzziMtRfvisjwkxtON1Km3gKs8fE5Md76iAqQcauriKUXti0aE8hwJjxVK3kLf4xsAa_ibs1ZtfMta4og/s1600/sp+aseo+granada+monastary.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMbPzOfHCaumv3gyPrz-TNDu1H48yHPbkKkgvjw2kkm6gR-iivEVMB5YzziMtRfvisjwkxtON1Km3gKs8fE5Md76iAqQcauriKUXti0aE8hwJjxVK3kLf4xsAa_ibs1ZtfMta4og/s400/sp+aseo+granada+monastary.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500091052897331202" border="0" /></a>In Granada, outside the lovely monastery we visited, there's a bathroom where for the first time, the mystery was not how to flush the toilet. Instead, the mystery was...can you find it?...where on earth have they hidden the toilet paper? In fact, not only was there no toilet paper, there was no dispenser on which to ever hang toilet paper. To get toilet paper, you had to buy it from the tiny, scowling, wrinkled old lady whom you passed on the way into the bathroom and only fully appreciated on your way out. Thankfully, I always enter bathrooms fully prepared (just the basics: extra tissue, pen and paper for taking notes, camera equipment...) so I didn't have to pay the lady for toilet paper. But I really, really wish I had plucked up the courage to ask if I could pay her to pose for a picture. She was a true cultural gem.<br /><br />Thus ends our tour of Spanish toilets. And again, my point was that it's refreshing to see that sometimes there are a hundred different ways to accomplish a task and none of them are wrong and all of them get the job done eventually. I think my kids learned this lesson in Spain. They learned to open their minds to new ideas, learned to welcome different perspectives, learned to be a little less ethnocentric. They learned that we're all unique and not everything has to be done the American way.<br /><br />Thank goodness.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KdiqJGXM-Raw7LWcIdlzrYY1gllB_ChDfBFnEr6pP_3yh0Ug3i9eanrL4Ly7NozdBvq0wDqKWmDOJhn0Xq5KPQ-6Vi_i1XJI4pqKRXspsaxF0tXhi_2ebhLVposBDLCtlcdV3g/s1600/sp+bob+esponja.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KdiqJGXM-Raw7LWcIdlzrYY1gllB_ChDfBFnEr6pP_3yh0Ug3i9eanrL4Ly7NozdBvq0wDqKWmDOJhn0Xq5KPQ-6Vi_i1XJI4pqKRXspsaxF0tXhi_2ebhLVposBDLCtlcdV3g/s400/sp+bob+esponja.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500092312087740610" border="0" /></a>Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-54499582260222065982010-07-06T07:58:00.008-07:002010-07-06T10:00:15.716-07:00Day Five - BirthdayIf I were to create a recipe for the perfect birthday, it would have to include the following: 1) wake up in Spain (and already you'd know that it's one of <span style="font-style: italic;">those </span>recipes, the ones with totally unreasonable ingredients, like fresh fennel or grouse or Egyptian limes), 2) wander around for a few hours in a world-class art museum, 3) do at least one thing that feels completely surreal, 4) eat something delicious, and 5) spend the whole day with people you love.<br /><br />So that was my birthday this year. I can't remember a better one. And I'm getting to that stage in life where I dread getting older, so it feels good to think back on a birthday and experience happy thoughts rather than a tightening in my chest.<br /><br />We spent the morning at what is now my favorite of the three great art museums of Madrid: The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyssen-Bornemisza_Museum">Thyssen-Bornemisza</a>. Sure, Lady Prado flaunts all those masterpieces. And Queen Sophia has her Ultra-Famous Guernica. But in her four floors, their less-assuming sister Thyssen covers the whole history of art with the most beautifully eclectic collection I've ever seen. From glowing wooden triptychs to hip modern canvases, it's all there. My favorites were the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, of course. I can't get enough of Matisse and Van Gogh.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljksw7a3CZj4fzDUgL1cDzpbUYk6ECtM87l_m8QNDLpmImeTvDVl4aGNe-Jg002qn8LXCifx-plk-142rXQMZxuKYdEgeiwMe3vcg-hxJE4Sn-5o9Ou5bwVx-RN8e-It3NDD6gQ/s1600/morisot+mirror.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljksw7a3CZj4fzDUgL1cDzpbUYk6ECtM87l_m8QNDLpmImeTvDVl4aGNe-Jg002qn8LXCifx-plk-142rXQMZxuKYdEgeiwMe3vcg-hxJE4Sn-5o9Ou5bwVx-RN8e-It3NDD6gQ/s400/morisot+mirror.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490832794662224514" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Berthe Morisot's <span style="font-style: italic;">Psyche</span> (at the Thyssen)<br />Someday I'll write about this painting!!!<br /></div><br />The pleasant surprise of the visit was the temporary exhibition called "Monet and Abstraction." It was a stunning collection of Monet's paintings interwoven with abstract works by Turner, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Krasner, etc (the whole concept being to show Monet's influence on later movements). We knew it would be beautiful, but I was truly in rapture through every room. We even turned one corner and found ourselves facing two Jackson Pollocks. I had not expected that at all, but to see them mixed in with Monet made total sense. My boys were awesome through the whole museum (and Ken is totally used to my slow museum pace so he was patient and helped keep the boys within sight). McKay later listed it as one of his favorite places in Spain.<br /><br />After lunch, we visited (along with my sisters Teri and Anne and my brother Jim and their families) some old haunts. The first and second times I lived in Spain (when I was about 4 and 9 years old) we spent a lot of time at a "Residencia."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6cTKMYlBsdSWM9hUP-LGsHK9m2ZvT7f2vYINeUT4NrwARyIt4gy72z8X9okn7u4tx_3pJchBm1xUcKX_zXQQrSZSKNXrTAcZ8EublHvFVUXDrPHQN6ugM1VdYAzXlD0677njgQ/s1600/sp+residencia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6cTKMYlBsdSWM9hUP-LGsHK9m2ZvT7f2vYINeUT4NrwARyIt4gy72z8X9okn7u4tx_3pJchBm1xUcKX_zXQQrSZSKNXrTAcZ8EublHvFVUXDrPHQN6ugM1VdYAzXlD0677njgQ/s400/sp+residencia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490831579522575266" border="0" /></a><br />This was where the students in the BYU group lived and ate and studied. My family lived in apartments not far away, but we hung out at the Residencia plenty. It has changed, of course, and no longer belongs to BYU (which still makes me cringe because they should never have let this property go!) but it was a surreal feeling....stepping into the past a bit by walking on familiar but not familiar ground. The place is now subdivided into a bank and an engineering firm. They have changed just about everything except the basic structure of the building. But I could picture my brother Steve and I rolling our oranges down the marble stairs so they would be all mushy by the bottom and we could suck the juice out of them. Teri and I reminisced about walking around to the back kitchen door to ask the cooks for the feet off the chickens so we could turn them into animated claws. We remembered the little chapel tucked under the bottom of the building and the slick part of the back landing where we could slide. It's a little sad to see only traces of a building that holds such a permanent lease in my memories. And I'm worried now that the new images of the place, all fresh and repopulated, will taint the old ones. Maybe it's better just to stay away. But I couldn't resist. I've dreamed about going back to Spain for more than 20 years. And in my dreams, I often am walking down that street, looking for those columns, turning back the clock.<br /><br />Anne (and her husband and the most adorable baby on the planet) went with me and Ken and the boys to see our old apartment (where we lived on our third trip to Spain when I was 15). It's in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moratalaz">Moratalaz</a>, if that means anything to you, but when I lived there, I knew it by its metro stop. I knew everything by its Metro stop. My mental map of Madrid is entirely based on the colors of various lines and their station names. After all these years, I remembered that we lived on the Purple line (lower right hand corner of the map) and the Vinaterros stop. However, I confess that without a quick phone call to my Mom, a little google-earth research on my brother Jim's cell phone and Anne's amazing homing skills (my heck, she was only 6 years old when we lived there but she remembered better than I did which apartment was ours) we would never have found it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR2E4OufId3nODun-lbpyoti0uRj_7t24CCotGZEpZiANYPV4R99G524FvVDrl3HsqY9QjuHbKwAoIni2Hj8aZP9gdRAgY92QVZBM_xqdOl6NC8e383GjyNBz0E7vXa5i_IgWWnA/s1600/Sp+apartment.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR2E4OufId3nODun-lbpyoti0uRj_7t24CCotGZEpZiANYPV4R99G524FvVDrl3HsqY9QjuHbKwAoIni2Hj8aZP9gdRAgY92QVZBM_xqdOl6NC8e383GjyNBz0E7vXa5i_IgWWnA/s400/Sp+apartment.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490829023154247810" border="0" /></a><br />The place has gone down hill a bit (Ken's comment: "I didn't know you grew up in the hood"). There's more graffiti than I remember. The planters are a bit weedier, the buildings not as well maintained. But it was a kick to see it again. Our old doorman--Juan Carlos--is still there after all these years and he recognized us and even remembered our apartment number. I'm hoping this is because we made a good impression, not because we were a crazy, huge American family living in an otherwise ordinary Spanish neighborhood.<br /><br />We ate chocolate-covered donuts from the Tienda where we always used to buy treats. I walked around to the side of the building where my old High School was (and still is).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgsHK1lnq5We2WxAthe-_t3s7cZkQAe3yQOmecC2NUdgF0PTyGuvVpkc9ApL8qmIFk8-xcereUh9h0CkVeH_ZXly0S0LmR1Sfh068JdlAFOl6e-RMTg3_CgGS0pkjTj9eK2M4AA/s1600/sp+colegio+1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 243px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgsHK1lnq5We2WxAthe-_t3s7cZkQAe3yQOmecC2NUdgF0PTyGuvVpkc9ApL8qmIFk8-xcereUh9h0CkVeH_ZXly0S0LmR1Sfh068JdlAFOl6e-RMTg3_CgGS0pkjTj9eK2M4AA/s400/sp+colegio+1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490838706704291170" /></a><br />I won't launch into all the details here, but just imagine if you were a year ahead in math in the US and then you went to a new school where everyone was two years ahead. And, oh yeah, everything, including all the math terms, are in a foreign language that you are still struggling to master and your teacher talks a hundred miles an hour and the numbers don't even look the same because ones have a long tail like sevens and sevens are crossed and commas are decimal points and...well you get the idea. I looked up at the bars on those windows and flashed back to the times I sat inside, staring up at those bars, wishing the class were over and feeling utterly, utterly stupid. I did have some good friends in that school, though. I wish we had keep in touch. The flow of correspondence trickled down to nothing within several months of my departure.<br /><br />The last thing we did that evening was visit an old friend of the family. Fé is a Spanish grandma with infinite charm and warmth. She has hosted BYU students in her home for many years, starting with my older sisters Teri and Kathy back in 1985. And the first thing she showed us when we arrived was her book of Americans, a scrapbook filled with photos of my sisters (and their families, including me, although I had never met Fé before) and every other person from the US she has embraced in her generous life. What a delightful lady. She fed us dinner. In fact, had it waiting for hours (because we were late), spread out on a table squeezed into a corner of her typically tiny apartment. And you have never had a Spanish tortilla until you've tasted these. My gosh! Salty and slightly gooey with egg and fried potatoes. I've tried these at home a dozen times, but they don't even come close to Fé's. In fact, my boys--who have never liked my tortillas--were snarfing them down and saying "Mom, you should really try to make these some time."<br /><br />We chatted with Fé for a couple of hours (my Spanish was improving!) and then rode home on the Metro. Yes, I meant to say "home." How funny that Madrid had already started to feel like home again. Shows you how strong those memories are...how deep an impression Madrid made on my little girl heart.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-86898098399191846592010-06-22T05:30:00.012-07:002010-06-22T07:08:06.417-07:00Day Four - more bliss in MadridBack in real time (late June, Utah) I start teaching classes again today so I may not get as much detail into these travelogues as I wish. This is good news for everyone since I fear my rambling gets boring. I plan to rely more on the journal of odd notes I took on the trip. It's a bit raw and disorganized but maybe better than the over-processed stuff.<br /><br />I wake up early, way before anyone else in my family, as I do every day of the trip. When I'm home, if I wake up early, I just crave more sleep, but in Spain, every second is like the finest gelato you've ever tasted--you can't imagine wasting even a drop before it melts.<br /><br />In Madrid, we're on the top floor of a five-story apartment building and we have two balcony patios (which turn out to be very handy when we start washing laundry later). I walk out on the upper patio and watch the sky lighten. There are clay and stucco roofs all around me -- flat layers and different levels of terraces for every apartment building. The balconies have pots of geraniums and the occasional string of laundry. The swallows are crazy around here -- hundreds of them, sweeping in masses and spiraling above the roofs, eating bugs I assume. They are noisy! Like giant crickets chirping in thick swaths across the sky.<br /><br />Below on the narrow cobblestone street, a few people walk by, motorcycles and tiny cars work their way down the street. A dog is peeing on a stone berm and then, instinctually, he tries to scratch and kick his hind legs against the cobblestones as if burying his pee in the dirt that isn't there.<br /><br />I can smell baking bread and diesel fumes.<br /><br />When the kids are all up, dressed and fed, we walk to Retiro park to catch the "Madrid Vision" bus. This is an incredibly touristy thing to do and my sister (who planned the whole trip, bless her stressed-out little heart) was a genius for arranging it. Really, the tourist bus a great way to see the whole city, all its plazas, incredible architecture, crowds, traffic. It takes a while for us all to work our way up to the top of the double decker bus where we can see well, so once we finally get up there, we have to stay on the bus or lose our seats. We ride around the loop a second time, then get off near the Palacio Real.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5b6UURfhoU0mcu_7tclRqtCeQdxsRhAGa_D_HeG-p7ekfh9rnW2qp9vUqctACvY9gH7WosVbFv-et2YZe05U2kQaN9Y2MxA3bTVnCNj9jl-61b8mfBHPiIx6vHpy3n28Qa_Rhdw/s1600/Spain+McKay+on+bus.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5b6UURfhoU0mcu_7tclRqtCeQdxsRhAGa_D_HeG-p7ekfh9rnW2qp9vUqctACvY9gH7WosVbFv-et2YZe05U2kQaN9Y2MxA3bTVnCNj9jl-61b8mfBHPiIx6vHpy3n28Qa_Rhdw/s400/Spain+McKay+on+bus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485595226697777874" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">McKay on the Bus (say goodbye to that hat; it was McKay's favorite and it's the only casualty of the trip. I still can't figure out at which point it got lost)</span><br /></div><br />We eat lunch at a Turkish restaurant. If I'm not mistaken, this is the only time we eat anywhere that wouldn't qualify as "Spanish Food." We have instituted a strict ban on anything remotely American. I eat a salad that tastes amazing after days and days of bread and meat.<br /><br />We tour the Palacio Real, which by the way was the former residence of the monarchy and is one of the many places on our trip where they forbid the use of cameras, even without flash. This is irritating and manipulative (we suspect they want to boost sales of their books and postcards) but as we have already had one encounter with a snotty guard (who was ticked that our group has smuggled in deadly baby carriers and diaper bags, even though we got permission at the front gate to bring them) so I obey the rules and take no photos. I wish I had broken the rules. Now I can only say things like: Wow! Opulent! Over-the-top! and Regal. If I can track down the guidebook that I bought (see? It works) maybe I could scan in some pictures.<br /><br />The Palacio Real is simply another symbol of the overwhelming wealth the royals had during Spain's Golden Age. They had so much money, they really didn't know what to do with it other than commission rooms made entirely of Oriental porcelain. Or surround themselves with nude portraits of themselves as heroes of mythology.<br /><br />Gabie, who ever since his introduction to Percy Jackson has been infatuated with everything Greek or mythical, is in heaven. He recognizes many of the figures painted on the ceilings. Hercules seems to be a favorite of the Spanish Kings. We see him (and his various labors) many times today.<br /><br />The armory is surreal. The Spanish kings treated these suits and shields and swords like ceremonial relics--all inscribed with scenes from mythology and elaborate decoration--each a work of art. And they were for war?! It shows you how today's trillion-dollar Military Industrial Complex is just a modern version of an ancient industry: preparation for battle.<br /><br />What seems funny to me is that the ornamentation does not make the armor more effective in battle; it just makes the wearer more convinced he is powerful, worthy of victory, bestowed by God with special authority to lead and fight. It reminds me of all those lines in Homer's Iliad about Achilles' shield. He describes in detail the sculpted scenes of a city at war and a city at peace (and the peaceful one gets more attention) but in the end, it's just a weapon. These kings had to bend over backwards (or at least their craftsmen did) to justify and ceremonialize their love of war. It's almost like a huge, elaborate distraction from the truth that war is about blood and gore and loss of life. If you can make your armor pretty enough and tie your actions to Hercules and Poseidon, you won't have to worry so much about the troubling consequences of conflict.<br /><br />End of rant :)<br /><br />Outside the armory, we see a couple of peacocks resting in the ledge of a window. Appropriate symbols of royalty and not a "No Photos!" sign to be found. Finally.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNZvIQqEcBPo1RDeb9B5AXjRbNKKKszifTUQzRdJwB0Oc3UHbLuilwVRb8w60jONNMRr0fDhMM2bf0r5Yecn_aK3QuuccXP1SzbMBha0uZnntNhyphenhyphencP9pOvpn4bUlzQeTDhtRzWg/s1600/Spain+Peacocks.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNZvIQqEcBPo1RDeb9B5AXjRbNKKKszifTUQzRdJwB0Oc3UHbLuilwVRb8w60jONNMRr0fDhMM2bf0r5Yecn_aK3QuuccXP1SzbMBha0uZnntNhyphenhyphencP9pOvpn4bUlzQeTDhtRzWg/s400/Spain+Peacocks.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485595772847446658" border="0" /></a><br />Teri takes the kids to the park next door and the adults walk through the pharmacy (shelf after shelf of porcelain containers with a million odd ingredients, whale sperm being our favorite). We sit down in the park for a while and watch the kids play. They have made some Spanish friends already (who needs language skills?).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVi9tDEnSCyrdlGmamnK5mlnptkR9fnBXRxSBaOtcvZpuzsIvboBiWR46YiuK3SekP4FQVp0pbZcFpt8EpCc-QicX4GNhi1vMBx2zeHVFFa02Tpwc2PdfR9nRWbQaECkhcQCsog/s1600/Spain+Jamon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVi9tDEnSCyrdlGmamnK5mlnptkR9fnBXRxSBaOtcvZpuzsIvboBiWR46YiuK3SekP4FQVp0pbZcFpt8EpCc-QicX4GNhi1vMBx2zeHVFFa02Tpwc2PdfR9nRWbQaECkhcQCsog/s400/Spain+Jamon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485597390695660274" border="0" /></a><br />We walk to the Plaza Mayor and on our way wander through a fancy market place. The hanging legs of jamon are pretty typical. I just wish I could also convey the terrific smell of the market: eau de dangling meat, baked goods, fish and more fish.<br /><br />At the Plaza Mayor, my sister Anne buys me an early birthday present: churros y chocolate for my family. I'm having one of those moments again where I can't believe I'm here. It seems too perfect, like a movie set, the scene where the heroine sits with a whole group of relatives out in the most famous of all famous Madrid plazas and dips her crispy, sugary churro into a cup of thick chocolate.<br /><br />Then some of the kids start chasing pigeons which infuriates Gabie, protector of all creatures great and small, and the spell is broken. I do take one of my favorite photos from the trip.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRTDr1EmHeyRuP7IoFqqRbtxGm-koKgaaCwa7pJp9GHfEE0Ly9WNWQMBazyUjVkzERgHMinnEkcLioaxyDOQAgN7Q_Q3UlmyzCHJ9sxf_ufq0gYxZxu4q8-k2q5bZZQPpG6SB_kg/s1600/Spain+horses+rears.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRTDr1EmHeyRuP7IoFqqRbtxGm-koKgaaCwa7pJp9GHfEE0Ly9WNWQMBazyUjVkzERgHMinnEkcLioaxyDOQAgN7Q_Q3UlmyzCHJ9sxf_ufq0gYxZxu4q8-k2q5bZZQPpG6SB_kg/s400/Spain+horses+rears.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485596181339156850" border="0" /></a><br />Do you think they pose here behind the statue on purpose? I just love the symmetry of the three horses' rear ends.<br /><br />Some of my family head off to the airport to pick up Anne's husband Scott. Some of us head to the Plaza del Sol (where we see the zero kilometer mark that indicates the center of Spain). Then into the Corte Ingles, which when I lived in Madrid as a teenager was one of my favorite places. Corte Ingles is the largest chain of stores in Spain; they are EVERYWHERE. And the one in Sol is huge--8 stories of everything you could possibly want, from groceries to camping gear. We pick up some food: fruit, eggs, bread, magdalenas, Danup, Nocilla, Natillas, fresh milk (not easy to come by). These are the best food prices we've seen yet so we load up. The only flaw in this plan is that we then we get to carry all our bags back to the bus stop, onto the bus, and up the block to our apartment. Exhausting, but worth it for just a taste of that natillas.Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-1416415645979735882010-06-18T05:16:00.012-07:002010-06-18T06:49:44.275-07:00Day Three, in which I become a food bloggerI woke up early and ventured out with McKay to find something for breakfast in Barcelona. No luck. The Ramblas, which the previous night was flowing with thousands of people, was totally deserted. The stores were all closed and the only living souls out were either cleaning the streets or making deliveries. I asked a few people for suggestions on where I could find some food and they each gave me the same look: <span style="font-style: italic;">Dumb tourist, don't you know where you are? Spaniards are not early risers!</span><br /><br />We made do with leftover bagels (I knew we saved them for a reason) and two apples I had been hauling around in my backpack since Salt Lake. Note to self: buy breakfast food when you're out and about with the rest of the townsfolk at 10pm the night before. We caught our fourth plane in four days (enough already!) and headed to Madrid. On the plane, I made a list of foods I had to eat before we left Spain. These are mostly memory foods, things I loved as a kid.<br /><br />Magdalenas<br />Danup (very runny drinkable yogurt)<br />Bread (real Spanish Pan)<br />Good cheese (Manchego!)<br />Fanta Limón<br />Natillas!!<br />Arroz con leche<br />Paella (of course, though I never liked the seafood kind)<br />Tortillas (the Spanish kind with potatoes and eggs)<br />Pechugo de pollo (breaded chicken)<br />Churros y chocolate (the thick kind that's like pudding)<br />Sugus candy<br />Gummi candy<br />Nocilla (pronounced no-THEE-uh, a chocolate and hazelnut spread)<br />Tofe Nata<br />Horchata (almond drink)<br />Ensaladia (potato salad)<br />Real White Chocolate<br /><br />I'm happy to announce that by the end of the two weeks, we had consumed every one of these foods (plus lots of other yummy things besides). My conclusion on several of them (including paella, pechugo de pollo, arroz con leche, and ensaladia) is that my Mom--whom we ironically left behind in the U.S.--still makes the best Spanish food I've ever tasted).<br /><br />We settled into our Madrid apartments (I'll have to write about these in detail later; they were fantastic and perfectly located within walking distance of the "Gold Triangle of Spanish Art"). We met up with more of our group (My brother Jim, his wife Julia and daughter. My sister Anne and her baby. My brother Thom, his wife Robin and their 3 boys).<br /><br />These are the kids (so far; we'll gain a few more in a couple of days when my brother Steve's family arrives).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8T6kBaj3_TjiOFTq79B87fWy8-R70i71FXPNyaoVNdbhVtW2uIwn0n4v6J9sJwABDx5zWeg27Sr6HcQNWTyh7Q7YUBzRxy_kXY8XluRRtanyVCLpKVFKL07ZFEXdX4S-0DKfAQ/s1600/Spain+Madrid+kids.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8T6kBaj3_TjiOFTq79B87fWy8-R70i71FXPNyaoVNdbhVtW2uIwn0n4v6J9sJwABDx5zWeg27Sr6HcQNWTyh7Q7YUBzRxy_kXY8XluRRtanyVCLpKVFKL07ZFEXdX4S-0DKfAQ/s400/Spain+Madrid+kids.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484106910811984786" border="0" /></a><br />Then we hit the Reina Sophia, the first of the three world-class art museums in Madrid (thus the Golden "Triangle"). The most famous resident of the Reina Sophia (and essentially the reason this museum was built) is, of course, Picasso's <span style="font-style: italic;">Guernica</span>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujIWmOJmVjtmb8CkQMLLE60Q7u4eORn-ARqlW58eXUtJkf9vra-Uviuinqk_4l2mrojlFQEt-t4PapXXjdDg1Z6yArDF1wdQnA3t8uFMAlXKDvpOTMRP3rFTGzgz73E98HBhttw/s1600/Guernica.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujIWmOJmVjtmb8CkQMLLE60Q7u4eORn-ARqlW58eXUtJkf9vra-Uviuinqk_4l2mrojlFQEt-t4PapXXjdDg1Z6yArDF1wdQnA3t8uFMAlXKDvpOTMRP3rFTGzgz73E98HBhttw/s400/Guernica.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484097540821489170" border="0" /></a>Seeing <span style="font-style: italic;">Guernica </span>in person for the first time was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. No, I didn't cry. But I was in a sincere state of art-lover's ecstasy for a while. The thing is HUGE. Even bigger than I had assumed from all the pictures I've seen. Sure, I knew it was 11 feet tall and nearly 26 feet wide, but these dimensions don't sink in until you see it looming on the wall in front of you. Some of the figures, even the partially-severed ones, are far bigger than lifesized. I know this because I could compare them with the guards standing soberly on either side of the canvas. Four more guards strolled around the room reminding people to put away their cameras and step back from the painting if they were even within 3 feet of it; I've never seen security like this in ANY museum. It speaks to the volatile history of this painting and its power as a political symbol. I teach all of this in my classes but what a privilege it was to see it in person.<br /><br />We wandered through the Reina Sophia for at least another hour as a group until the kids had really had enough. Some of the adults (thank you!) took the kids to Retiro park so the rest of us could see more art. I have to confess, as much as I enjoy Dali and Miró and Picasso, once you've seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Guernica</span>, everything else in that museum is a step down.<br /><br />My second favorite painting was probably Antonio Saura's <span style="font-style: italic;">Shout</span> (1959). I have certainly had days like this, haven't you?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cl2RZj44VQsGhNH-kJ6YUviFdorBib1DMMK7X9jjpwx9m0vp8pDksKEMkla45dKqxP-WzUHgcUrOTBP4SnRtJfRMvaf3G_weoYickQ57LjwOpouOmX3UKMCs4HHdBmCtwTHLbA/s1600/Spain+Saura+shout.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 299px; height: 384px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cl2RZj44VQsGhNH-kJ6YUviFdorBib1DMMK7X9jjpwx9m0vp8pDksKEMkla45dKqxP-WzUHgcUrOTBP4SnRtJfRMvaf3G_weoYickQ57LjwOpouOmX3UKMCs4HHdBmCtwTHLbA/s400/Spain+Saura+shout.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484100392812389426" border="0" /></a><br />I especially loved the detail of the shouting person's fist dripping paint down the canvas like blood.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4otN2O-9HYK-oAUuNtdlgbP0NgHBUQKzNliBp4r-nGx6g-jXauf5Uz4eRcXtYBU1C43IYYln3YIMcGm5ArlTnfTkuxTOQ3upZLwVbIVzMQuwjzAXD7x65jBrWLWY6S9_yQ3L4Nw/s1600/Spain+saura+detail.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 261px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4otN2O-9HYK-oAUuNtdlgbP0NgHBUQKzNliBp4r-nGx6g-jXauf5Uz4eRcXtYBU1C43IYYln3YIMcGm5ArlTnfTkuxTOQ3upZLwVbIVzMQuwjzAXD7x65jBrWLWY6S9_yQ3L4Nw/s400/Spain+saura+detail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484100675635191138" border="0" /></a><br />We met up with the kids in the park just in time to see a spectacular sunset. I cursed myself for not following through with my goal to become a fantastic photographer (or at least understand how to use half the features on my fancy camera) before the trip. This is my best shot. Sorry.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl2F0-ZjVevSSCokqw9CcCNEtp2Pd6v9qfOmgRv4x_oRx2uMLVgIDz8-xP01NlpHYQ8b1khGDtRbK1qBGqqLpvift1XRFXXtbMqxa6DgUuwGF-zzaQNT85a6q-CnseO-jmvQv-kw/s1600/spain+retiro+sunset.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl2F0-ZjVevSSCokqw9CcCNEtp2Pd6v9qfOmgRv4x_oRx2uMLVgIDz8-xP01NlpHYQ8b1khGDtRbK1qBGqqLpvift1XRFXXtbMqxa6DgUuwGF-zzaQNT85a6q-CnseO-jmvQv-kw/s400/spain+retiro+sunset.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484106634917370242" border="0" /></a><br />I did snap one more picture on our walk back to the apartments, one that captures the flavor of Madrid (and all big Spanish cities) quite well, don't you think? Tiny cars, even tinier parking spaces. I mean, how's this guy ever going to get out?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rZ9IU7dM9wk1SmJdCNatIP4L6Bf62FDkUCrDXNXbwB36cZTF1YZIVyDFcnUSt9awk1nteHVY82O-TSZUIYZji9H-6DQWTTpXuIV3aL1N1KVVmzuoH4EfK3Rqp6FL1TvUjW093Q/s1600/spain+parked+car.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rZ9IU7dM9wk1SmJdCNatIP4L6Bf62FDkUCrDXNXbwB36cZTF1YZIVyDFcnUSt9awk1nteHVY82O-TSZUIYZji9H-6DQWTTpXuIV3aL1N1KVVmzuoH4EfK3Rqp6FL1TvUjW093Q/s400/spain+parked+car.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484106784519720754" border="0" /></a><br />Ken and I and the boys ate dinner on our own at a little restaurant called Los Rotos. Gabie was so infatuated with everything about this place that he saved the placemat and taped it into his journal. We ate pan (of course) croquetas (blah), patatas (meh), Gaspacho (the best we had in all of Spain), Fried chicken strips with a honey sauce (delicious!) and, since Ken was brave, a scrambled egg dish called Pistos with all kinds of mystery foods in it that was quite good. The second time we ate here on our last day in Spain I think we decided that one of the mystery foods was eggplant. I think one of the others was some kind of fish. Yeah, I make a great food blogger, don't I?<br /><br />We ate dinner, by the way, at 10pm. This is pretty standard for Spaniards and became a regular routine for us as well. It doesn't really get dark until after 9pm and who wants to eat early when there's so much to see?Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34687963.post-62802659155679502642010-06-16T06:17:00.022-07:002010-06-17T07:55:39.799-07:00Spain, Day Two –The day that never ends. . .At this rate, it may be Christmas before I catch up on our trip. But in my defense, this was by far the LONGEST day of the whole thing. You'll see why...<br /><br />We spend the night with Toni at her home on Long Island. We wake early and eat Real New York Bagels for breakfast. We spend a while hanging out with a Real New York Family (Toni’s husband and kids) then pack up our backpacks and head back into the Real New York City. The kids marvel at everything: the traffic, the buildings, the traffic, the miniature villages beside the freeway that turn out to be cemeteries, the traffic...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSQ8wB_VCZdL5fp5XCXHkPIOrljYF4VTGwGm4HPmmVSqZYAzOQlNfc9v1lHtwIhzTKsvFNAyRogWR_AcpbnB4vmPmGpb1hQqlTW-84JdjTSwXR9fpekPwodKNAJyoHC0TnAwzZfA/s1600/NYC+Rock.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSQ8wB_VCZdL5fp5XCXHkPIOrljYF4VTGwGm4HPmmVSqZYAzOQlNfc9v1lHtwIhzTKsvFNAyRogWR_AcpbnB4vmPmGpb1hQqlTW-84JdjTSwXR9fpekPwodKNAJyoHC0TnAwzZfA/s400/NYC+Rock.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483368956112873394" border="0" /></a><br />In New York, we walk around for a while like the tourists we are and visit Rockefeller Center and Times Square. We watch Toni light a candle in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a lovely ritual that marks each of my trips into Manhattan with my Catholic friend. Eventually, we make our way to Central Park where the kids eat pizza and climb the rocks and trees; they are finally in their element.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2oCZPwWO7FeCD240b7D-UOAwv1JUyS4j1kcrtG5KKmC26yHc5MxbZgg7JvoH_n8vfsutgsX_HKplj18XGKnxPck2Zit6m9RSO24B0lW9tX3HPoG1JvIYl8V0x2mzwu_F8q583Iw/s1600/NYC+Park1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2oCZPwWO7FeCD240b7D-UOAwv1JUyS4j1kcrtG5KKmC26yHc5MxbZgg7JvoH_n8vfsutgsX_HKplj18XGKnxPck2Zit6m9RSO24B0lW9tX3HPoG1JvIYl8V0x2mzwu_F8q583Iw/s400/NYC+Park1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483368543116573074" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqWuTFTyQxAruM-DrSpWKTK6tscaAWlbEx8Z8YUuC1hU9eBZUrcclb5_L8vG2WNt0utsZQnrIN5PtxomAXV5k9JfR0sa5WWsDCSYo3BgCbMNAVwJXJDcA55ANe0hK_PnzTyqzig/s1600/NYC+Park.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqWuTFTyQxAruM-DrSpWKTK6tscaAWlbEx8Z8YUuC1hU9eBZUrcclb5_L8vG2WNt0utsZQnrIN5PtxomAXV5k9JfR0sa5WWsDCSYo3BgCbMNAVwJXJDcA55ANe0hK_PnzTyqzig/s400/NYC+Park.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483368809617062626" border="0" /></a>Central Park is definitely the highlight of the city for my boys. I do love how, if you get deep enough into the center of the park and can’t see the buildings poking out above the trees, you can almost forget that you’re in the middle of a sprawling metropolis. We walk past a little-league baseball game that strikes me as funny. Can you imagine playing your regular, scheduled baseball games in CENTRAL PARK? It’s just such an ordinary thing in an extraordinary place. I think each game would be worthy of a full-scale camera crew, or at least an accompanying Simon and Garfunkle soundtrack.<br /><br />Toni drives us back to the airport where we begin the process of visiting the Dude with the Closet to pick up our luggage (whew! still there) and checking through security. We reach the first gate and meet a Real New York Nasty Airport Security Officer. She takes our passports, and one by one goes through them, saying, “<span style="font-style: italic;">This </span>passport is NOT valid…<span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>passport is NOT valid…<span style="font-style: italic;">this</span> passport is NOT valid…” My heart sinks. This is it. I knew some big catastrophe would keep us from getting to Spain!<br /><br />The she tells us in a very condescending tone that we have neglected to sign our passports (which she seems positively delighted to have been the first to discover). My heck! Does she revel in giving people heart attacks or what? We sign them right away. Then we find a line as far away from the This Passport is Not Valid lady as possible.<br /><br />We wait for three hours at the airport (because aside from neglecting to sign our passports, we are obedient travelers and we have followed instructions and arrived half a day before our actual flight leaves). We eventually run into Teri (my sister) and her son Sawyer who are taking the same flight to Barcelona. Or at least we think it’s going to Barcelona. What no one at Iberia Airlines has actually told us (and what it says NOWHERE on any of our ticket info) is that the flight will land in Madrid, we will be asked to switch planes, wait around some more, and then fly to Barcelona. By the time we get there 9 hours later, we are exhausted. None of us, including the kids, have really slept much on the flight. How can you sleep? They provide you with pillows and blankets but then interrupt constantly with various announcements, pings, movies, and 4 separate trips of the meal/beverage carts. By the time we land, the sheen has rubbed off the novelty of air travel, even for the boys.<br /><br />Okay, Barcelona in three works: impressive, expensive and exhausting.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4apWx5JcXEFwZIxAv9sfHWKLbSsv2w15hfXQFKHsldcFPqVVkE_cnwivydD1g4_iDxK9Uyj3q1RZE3i0R61_q-gHs-kEv4lyvlwCCqCFI8eX4y_Rd_js58fA2VxyrkxofYJBtw/s1600/Sp+Ramblas3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4apWx5JcXEFwZIxAv9sfHWKLbSsv2w15hfXQFKHsldcFPqVVkE_cnwivydD1g4_iDxK9Uyj3q1RZE3i0R61_q-gHs-kEv4lyvlwCCqCFI8eX4y_Rd_js58fA2VxyrkxofYJBtw/s400/Sp+Ramblas3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483369667835284674" border="0" /></a>We take a bus to the Plaza that shall not be named (because I can’t remember it), find our Hostal and check in.<br /><br />A word here about the Spanish floor numbering system. They skip the ground floor. This means if the nice lady running your Hostal says she’s just up on the 2nd floor, you can expect to drag your suitcases up THREE flights of steps. (This also means when you get to see the Mormon temple on your last day in Madrid and you run into the Temple President and his wife and they kindly invite you up to their apartment on the 7th floor of the building next door—thankfully in an elevator—you will be looking out the window from 8 stories up and you will be pretty much eye level with Angel Moroni, which is very cool).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1_YYBWOwF9XW-sxRx_nqWrH_KUcTB2WEDNYwv7lkojX85RA9zT_TpW6b9cJPb5jKLOhBFPWI8PuRe5DlW80B-2l31BoLRdJBbg6unX_FzOTiORSHg-Wx7_CYfThKpVdM2AEaGKw/s1600/Sp+Ramblas.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1_YYBWOwF9XW-sxRx_nqWrH_KUcTB2WEDNYwv7lkojX85RA9zT_TpW6b9cJPb5jKLOhBFPWI8PuRe5DlW80B-2l31BoLRdJBbg6unX_FzOTiORSHg-Wx7_CYfThKpVdM2AEaGKw/s320/Sp+Ramblas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483379105989142194" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The Hostal is cramped and old and consists of a few bedrooms with shared bathroom, but it’s clean and quaint and, oh yeah, IT’S IN SPAIN! so everyone is totally thrilled. It’s also in a great location, right off the Ramblas, which is the most famous tree-lined street in Barcelona. (This is the view from our window).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJvKQgOLyXjKocEx6ffkSdPJpmbId9_I6MF2aODflXqrBWy1mhXetk0FCCTb-A2XePTJUzBEEsI6M8iql24HkRl100QwyUHp23obC4wonqIJZx1CrMTXOeaIknSaIvgzeIizsbIg/s1600/Sp+Ramblas1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJvKQgOLyXjKocEx6ffkSdPJpmbId9_I6MF2aODflXqrBWy1mhXetk0FCCTb-A2XePTJUzBEEsI6M8iql24HkRl100QwyUHp23obC4wonqIJZx1CrMTXOeaIknSaIvgzeIizsbIg/s320/Sp+Ramblas1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483369411700671890" border="0" /></a><br />We take a stroll, check out the shops and street performers (you see them all over Spain; they paint themselves in metallic colors and sit perfectly still like statues until you drop a coin in their bucket; then they move slowly, like they’ve been wound up with a key, until they wind down again and freeze. It’s worth the coins to watch and far better than the beggars who you also see all over Spain but they don’t do anything but look pitiful).<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizanluKcdcB5yErw6r5_bb_oex5iz5ItJpUniwSM4svzRETtj8Sfc9XgP8OGxOVwdu9t1ObgSzL3pSpXNgTuCyCVteCSNznnX40HuWSZ1TcfhTl9HGYd4RdKuTK75QJDnUBXL_lw/s1600/Sp+Barcelona+Port.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizanluKcdcB5yErw6r5_bb_oex5iz5ItJpUniwSM4svzRETtj8Sfc9XgP8OGxOVwdu9t1ObgSzL3pSpXNgTuCyCVteCSNznnX40HuWSZ1TcfhTl9HGYd4RdKuTK75QJDnUBXL_lw/s320/Sp+Barcelona+Port.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483371088126675938" border="0" /></a><br />We eat our first bag of Magdalenas with Danup (because we're finally IN SPAIN! and these are tasty Spanish foods I've missed for 25 years) and make our way to the waterfront. There’s a monument to Christopher Columbus there but the kids are far more interested in the carp who are competing for crumbs with the seagulls. (This is major motif in my Spain pictures: everywhere we went, the kids made a beeline for the water).<br /><br />We take the subway (another cool first for the kids, not cheap at 2 Euros a person, but worth it because we're tired.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KrJShKAKM4jGBBBqB6-kG3vCy5dn0Fxihl2mngZHDU98Zp9dXQKL4_jxefJeZswWrWDsMVeAOH6AwDZydmei8-sMNhQ5mg_dodbRJFyCUgwXaYX6xBHLfsgtQO6G0hBo18HhDg/s1600/Sp+Sagrada+Facade.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1KrJShKAKM4jGBBBqB6-kG3vCy5dn0Fxihl2mngZHDU98Zp9dXQKL4_jxefJeZswWrWDsMVeAOH6AwDZydmei8-sMNhQ5mg_dodbRJFyCUgwXaYX6xBHLfsgtQO6G0hBo18HhDg/s320/Sp+Sagrada+Facade.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483370165645943634" border="0" /></a>We ride to the neighborhood of the Sagrada Familia cathedral (which costs over 100 Euros for us, but is worth it and the main reason we made this whole side trip to Barcelona).<br /><br />Sagrada Familia is impossible to photograph, as all good cathedrals are. It’s outrageously tall, outrageously disorganized and resembles something you’d make if you had a beach full of runny sand and a hundred years of free time. We pay extra for the audio tours and wander around the interior (under construction since 1882) and the exterior (also under construction since 1882). This building is a world wonder. The best part is our tour of the East towers (for which we also pay extra to ride up the elevator). Here’s a photo of our little group near the top.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1eJB4pDNM4J2uFRyG7R_0abuE9QB80nyWroNx2WF_uLXThZ6Mn7ofyg-3fFZqKz7-C4FjjzBKmP8wO2S0n13t2SI2VgeAXV6N-WVpAktp3OK8kEpi2sMmXWZqK_LxXUQj0lvqRQ/s1600/Sp+Sagrada+up.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1eJB4pDNM4J2uFRyG7R_0abuE9QB80nyWroNx2WF_uLXThZ6Mn7ofyg-3fFZqKz7-C4FjjzBKmP8wO2S0n13t2SI2VgeAXV6N-WVpAktp3OK8kEpi2sMmXWZqK_LxXUQj0lvqRQ/s400/Sp+Sagrada+up.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483370387061993762" border="0" /></a><br />Please note that, yes, most of us are wearing the same clothes we had on in NYC. We have now been awake for nearly 30 straight hours. We have heard that the best way to fight jet lag is just to push your way through the first day with no napping. Then your body will adjust to the new time zone. This is great advice (and I confess, actually works) but at this point we can hardly keep our eyes open. Every time we sit down on a bench we all begin to nod off and tip over onto each other’s shoulders. We form little heaps of bodies against the wall just inside the cathedral door and on the wall in front of the cathedral.<br /><br />After the cathedral we eat. We walk many, many blocks to the Casa Batlló by Antonio Gaudi.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2D7aOdNcplEHd3VXojHjFb9jHfrWCykj17ki4YuzHYP6F9zASrLXmjX_eVIn_bRQioPqJVg87KO90Q118zJUqCqs-73SAT-VtW9uRvjQMdxun1dl3CgvvykgrpNA3vv2bxHQe6Q/s1600/Sp+Casa+B.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2D7aOdNcplEHd3VXojHjFb9jHfrWCykj17ki4YuzHYP6F9zASrLXmjX_eVIn_bRQioPqJVg87KO90Q118zJUqCqs-73SAT-VtW9uRvjQMdxun1dl3CgvvykgrpNA3vv2bxHQe6Q/s400/Sp+Casa+B.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483371672321621698" border="0" /></a><br />It is stunning and crazy and another 100 Euros to enter. All my kids probably remember is the various surfaces they plopped down on to rest as we wandered through the tour like zombies with audio guides.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVNio83m66Nd41bO9x5v4DHWnqX3pz7DN2H52FcVKEF_7wNgjohKGYOw1pMStt8xeO-uPvZAo9lZuxGDKne-zBPFAkH49TCbYtqW3o_wbuB1-zh9FuaEbMtdNKCvAEZd87lHzopQ/s1600/Sp+Casa1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVNio83m66Nd41bO9x5v4DHWnqX3pz7DN2H52FcVKEF_7wNgjohKGYOw1pMStt8xeO-uPvZAo9lZuxGDKne-zBPFAkH49TCbYtqW3o_wbuB1-zh9FuaEbMtdNKCvAEZd87lHzopQ/s400/Sp+Casa1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483371886979493970" border="0" /></a><br />We ride the Metro again (cha ching) to Montjuïc to watch the famous fountains. (And if you’re noticing, by the way that these words do not seem like Spanish, it’s because they aren’t; the first language of Barcelona is Catalan. To the Catalonians, this is a source of great pride. To a sleep-deprived traveler who owns a sister who speaks fluent Spainish, this is a rude, ethnocentric, politically radical, and entirely inconsiderate tradition.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaqHS49bUIAILxLmIlJa2963vIeuHJ5-SKDB-tHSVyBe4Qg9VZTPTs8qOcYpW1zw2EqDcy1_fqxOcVowCNVVIU7SmEYoiQr4cvIoVVJNhECq5RbvkAgHm9UtOnYDlbxUTBMmzxSg/s1600/Sp+Catalonia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaqHS49bUIAILxLmIlJa2963vIeuHJ5-SKDB-tHSVyBe4Qg9VZTPTs8qOcYpW1zw2EqDcy1_fqxOcVowCNVVIU7SmEYoiQr4cvIoVVJNhECq5RbvkAgHm9UtOnYDlbxUTBMmzxSg/s400/Sp+Catalonia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483371295849383202" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The fountains are fantastic, though I must note that the music is mostly American Pop. Where’s your Catalan pride now you Barcelonians?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38Hg3AfKJNVuoqiW_CVZcR1CWfeIJzLZp3zczNCxfdcFumxWJr7ctsBR4JU65ifkrW1nHbT4vsNGuH0mjG5gIC3qpvJ0asT8vYL8L8FG9orRun2WXLjflNnPsySHiMvhhlL_sww/s1600/Sp+Barcelona+fountains.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh38Hg3AfKJNVuoqiW_CVZcR1CWfeIJzLZp3zczNCxfdcFumxWJr7ctsBR4JU65ifkrW1nHbT4vsNGuH0mjG5gIC3qpvJ0asT8vYL8L8FG9orRun2WXLjflNnPsySHiMvhhlL_sww/s400/Sp+Barcelona+fountains.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483371518119354898" border="0" /></a><br />The fountains don't even start until 9pm. Gabie doesn't make it that long. He clearly has reached his melting point.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wp8yaBDaexFgQVfTiOPPi8IF4eB-tCrory7nU8_xT2kJ7AlJwpLcxjyZWGm20FrN_Gba7YqLJHJLqG60r7VV90MAFtzbiLYTtmiFh7RBa5QGjMNPohwQ1iD0gZm-iNpv2uDATQ/s1600/Sp+Barcelona+sleepy+Gabe.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wp8yaBDaexFgQVfTiOPPi8IF4eB-tCrory7nU8_xT2kJ7AlJwpLcxjyZWGm20FrN_Gba7YqLJHJLqG60r7VV90MAFtzbiLYTtmiFh7RBa5QGjMNPohwQ1iD0gZm-iNpv2uDATQ/s400/Sp+Barcelona+sleepy+Gabe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483372076626870898" border="0" /></a><br />We don't even make it through the whole fountain show. We're just way too tired. We vow to visit the Bellagio soon to make up for it and then ride the Metro one more time back to our Hostal and fall into bed around 11pm. We have survived a marathon of 34 hours without sleep. But guess what? We’re in Spain! No wait, we’re in Catalonia. Soon we’ll be in Spain!Julie Q.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13737557893649934725noreply@blogger.com2