10 yrs ago

It has been 10 years since Leila and I decided to get married. I don't say engaged, because it wasn't as formal as that yet. (Also, the word "engaged" makes me think of learning to drive, as in, "Engage the clutch, shift, disengage, and let out the gas. . . One more time")

The reports about Columbine reminded me. It isn't a date that we really have celebrated as an anniversary, but I remember riding in my ride to Boise's car and talking about how I had decided to marry Leila while the news tried to make sense out of the Columbine massacre.

It really was Anna's fault. That is how it all started.

Leila and I had been friends/study partners/in the same ward/dating since I had come back to BYU. I had been dating someone else early in the year and Leila and I weren't dating seriously. We studied genetics together, met for devotionals, ate sunday dinner together sometimes, and went country western dancing on Saturdays.

Right at the of the semester, Leila and I started to admit that we liked each other. I had an internship in Florida that summer and was going to be gone and I remember asking her near the Wilk one night if she would go on a date with me when I got back. She said maybe, we'll see.

Then, just as finals ended Anna got engaged. My best friend was planning on getting married August 13th and I had warned Anna not to get married that weekend because I wanted to go to Craig's wedding. She assured me she wouldn't, then changed her mind and set everything up for August 13th.

While I was walking Leila home that night, I joked that I should bring Leila home with me and tell my family that Anna can't have that day because we were secretly engaged to be married on that date already. Leila cocked her head, thought briefly, and said, "No, the 13th won't work for me."

Suddenly, it wasn't a joke. The funny thing is that it was such an easy decision to make. I agonize over everything, but not this. I said, when should we get married, and we were up most of the night discussing it. Not if, when.

Leila came over the next morning as I was packing and told me that she had talked to her family and the 20th would be a good time.

Someone actually read my paper and used my algorithm

The Genetics of Domestication of the Azuki Bean (Vigna angularis)


Akito Kaga1, Takehisa Isemura1, Norihiko Tomooka and Duncan A. Vaughan2

National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences Genebank, Tsukuba 305-8602, Ibaraki, Japan

2 Corresponding author: National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences Genebank, 2-1-2 Kannondai, Tsukuba 305-8602, Ibaraki, Japan.
E-mail: duncan@affrc.go.jp

Genetic differences between azuki bean (Vigna angularis var. angularis) and its presumed wild ancestor (V. angularis var. nipponensis) were resolved into QTL for traits associated with adaptation to their respective distinct habits. A genetic linkage map constructed using progenies from a cross between Japanese cultivated and wild azuki beans covers 92.8% of the standard azuki bean linkage map. A reciprocal translocation between cultivated and wild azuki bean parents was identified on the basis of the linkage map having a pseudolinkage group and clustering of seed productivity-related QTL with large effect near the presumed breakpoints. In total, 162 QTL were identified for 46 domestication-related traits. Domestication of azuki bean has involved a trade-off between seed number and seed size: fewer but longer pods and fewer but larger seeds on plants with shorter stature in cultivated azuki bean being at the expense of overall seed yield. Genes found related to germination and flowering time in cultivated azuki bean may confer a selective advantage to the hybrid derivatives under some ecological conditions and may explain why azuki bean has evolved as a crop complex in Japan.

If you can't afford it, don't buy it.

Two's a herd

Little cow has learned how to jump fences or squeeze between the wires. The little pig started it by squeezing under so it could follow me and the kids around hoping for handouts. Then Little cow had to be with her friend and started getting out too. Mama cow is then very disturbed and moos frantically because she is alone. The problem is that I can't find a hole in the fence or a low spot. I have repaired and strengthened and tightened almost every part. We are going to change pastures today and see if that helps.

About the move, I have decided I must have been insane@#*&^! We are committed now on both ends. My job knows I am leaving and I have given notice. The new job knows we are coming and I have signed a stack of papers committing to it, but I just can't see how it is going to happen. We have a list a mile long of stuff to do around the house while the dishes pile up and we are behind on basic household chores.

I think part of me wants my life to be hard and difficult.

Moving to Iowa, swimming upstream

I am afraid that Leila scooped me. She has written about our new job already!

Monsanto's recruiters have talked to me since I started at Ag Alumni. I know one of them well enough that I was cc'd on his email to friends and family about the birth of his daughter last year. This year they called me about a discovery breeder position. The coolest thing about this job is it lets me try all the newest technology and be creative in how to breed corn. The downside is that we are going to have to move to Iowa.


View Larger Map

Not that Iowa is bad, but I love our place here. I love the pastures, the run down barns, the grass growing out of control, the old trees I need to cut down, the chicken coop in the corn crib, the cows in the side pasture. My grape vines. The little orchard we planted. The spot we were going to put the above ground swimming pool. The strawberry patch. Did I mention we have woodcock's that live in the pasture where the field tile drains? There are owls and hawks, raccoons, coyotes, skunks, possums,doves outside the livingroom window, rats, mink, moles, and us. It is a little wild and feels always just out of our control and most of the time I really love it. There are times when the cows are at the neighbors and the pig is rooting up the backyard that I have wanted to load the kids in the car and move to town though.

I didn't want to say anything here because this is such a public forum and we hadn't decided yet. (I really didn't want my boss coming in to my office and wanting to know why I put it on the web before telling him.) Now we have to get our house ready to sell and find somewhere to live in Iowa. Again we need to decide if we want to be city mice or country mice again. Well, OK small town Iowa mice or country mice.

In these uncertain economic times it feels strange to even think about changing jobs. The housing market is crashed here and the big employers in town are laying people off. I feel like we may be trying to swim against the tide. I hope we will be able to sell our place and get settled again. My boss chided me a little on being a bit of a wanderer and we hope to be really settled this time. (Unless there is a cool job in Oregon or Idaho or Washington).

Wish us luck

google april fools 2009

Google has a tradition of silliness at April Fools. This year they have announced an artificial intelligence computer named CADIE that has its own blog and assists with a mobile application to search your brain when needed. It also will answer your email for you.



They also have an australian rugby ball that is mated to a cell phone and GPS. I need one just because I am hard on telephones and i think a rugby ball would be able to withstand dropping it in the mud and on the rocks and the street in Argentina.

They had better watch out though. Sarah Conners is likely to come after them. She doesn't joke about AI's.

Aleah and Emily Stories

I used to tell the girls stories every night. Now they get one once and a while, but its hard to fit in with the three or four books Aleah picks, a picture book or two for Colleen, and a chapter book for Emily.

Rich asked me a long time ago to send him some of the stories that I tell them, and I have finally got around to putting some of them on paper.

Nectarade

Itsy Bitsy Emily was new to the neighborhood. She lives with frog near the mouse's hole. There are swallows in the morning chirping the morning news as they dip and dive. The beetles burrow busily. Garter snakes in the grass, rats, dogs, cats, and raccoons seem like distant threats spoken in whispers but the danger never felt, except to Mama mouse. Her husband had been out on a long explore and not return and she felt the potential for danger like a knife in her bosom.

There was a puddle beneath the downspout with a large chunk of cement where Frog and Emily lived. Flowers grew in the weeds arond the puddle. The frogs, toads, and lizards called, hissed, grumped, and lived in friendly competition around the small pond.

Everything should have been full of joy and discovery for Emily, but she was lonely and sad. No one knew quite what she was and Mama mouse wouldn't let her many children out of the hole until she was sure that Emily was not a threat. She was sure that mice would be more fun to play with and talk to than salamanders that loved to lay in the warm mud when the sun was high.

After moping about for a few days, Frog said, "enough, we need a party!" Emily nodded and Frog continued, "Yes, that is just the thing, a proper party with fried minnows, fly soup, roast grasshopper, and mosquito tea. We'll invite everyone in the neighborhood!"

Ohh, thought Emily. She wasn't picky in her own way, but Frog food always seemed to maker her feel green. She liked seeds, nuts, fruits, and nectar. She thought minnows were fine, but any soup with wings floating in it was blecch. The sparrows were proud to say that she ate more like a bird than anything else. The swallows disagreed, but hey, they liked bugs.

"Let's make seed cakes, with monkey button squares, and lemonade to drink too." Emily added. She was starting to be excited.

"Alas," said Frog,"We don't have any lemons or enough sugar for lemonade."

Argentina and Brazil take two

I wrote the text to this at home and then got distracted and forgot to actually press one of the buttons to save it. I hate it when I do stuff like that.

From Feb 2009

The Argentine Capital Building

Argentina makes me tired. Every year since I started at my job I have went to see the popcorn production fields and experiments in Argentina and Brazil. It is a fast paced 10-14 days filled with long flights, popcorn, and good food. The flight takes all night and I do sleep on the plane, but it's like sleeping on the couch with a newborn infant. Sleeping is interrupted constantly and there is a lot of shifting, uncomfortable positions, holding my eyes closed waiting to fall back asleep, and dreaming about holding my eyes closed waiting to fall back asleep. Sometimes I wake up to realize that the night is over, but I am not sure if I actually slept or just held really still with my eyes closed. I am pretty sure that I slept the whole time, it just doesn't feel like it.

When we get there we always head directly for the fields. After lunch, and bouts of driving, we walk through the fields until it is dark. Then we eat wonderful steak dinners or barbecued lamb until midnight. The next day starts early, we drive, we look at popcorn, we drive, we eat steak, we drive, eat, drive, eat some more, and then get to the hotel at midnight. I usually see nothing of Argentina but the popcorn fields and steak houses.

It is a great country for good eating. Lots of times we are in a hurry driving between fields and stop at gas stations to eat. Usually a waiter with a towel over one arm brings us the menu and we get steak, salad, rolls, and dessert. One time I got lasagna with homemade pasta, olives, proscuitto, italian sausage, and layers of cheese and fresh tomato sauce. At a gas station!

The landscape looks a lot like Illinois. There are rolling hills covered with fields of soybeans and corn. Sometimes there are farm houses surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees and manicured lawns. Other times there are unplowed fields of pampas grass and cattle.

From Feb 2009

This year, we had the weekend free in Buenos Aires. We stayed at Feir's Park hotel, which is right downtown, near Recoleta, the shopping district, and the wharf. There is a large park with huge flowering trees and street performers.

I took the subway one day until I was completely lost and came out blinking in the sun in a strange part of town. I wandered for most of the day. I felt so lost I bought a map and found out I was a mile or two from the hotel, but in the process saw the casa rosada - like the white house in Argentina, the capital building, wandered through two streets lined entirely with small jewelry shops, bought some tango music at a sheet music publishing shop, looked through used book stores, ate a steak sandwich, drew pictures in the park, and then finally came back to the hotel.

From Feb 2009

From Feb 2009

From Feb 2009 part two

From Feb 2009 part two

What happened to riverbend?

Sometime after the Iraq war started I read on the BBC website about these Iraqi bloggers that were telling their experiences during the invasion. I clicked on some of the links, and read a few of the blogs mentioned in the article. There was only one that I kept going back to as the war went on and on. It became such a part of my daily routine that it is bookmarked in the same folder as yahoomail, gmail, my blog, and a few friends/family's blogs.

It was written by a very literate Iraqi girl. I can't imagine her being older than me and probably is younger. She cited Emily Dickinson once in a while and wrote with painful clarity about the descent of Iraq after the invasion. She was very well educated.

She hasn't posted now for over a year.

Her last posts were about her family's escape to Syria. In her words:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Leaving Home...

Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.

Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.

I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.

The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.


. . . .

The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.

I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.

. . .


The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.

We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.

The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?

How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.

I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…

How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?

In her last post they are in Syria, refugees in a building with other Iraqi's. Unified by their exile.

Sometimes I click on her blog to see if anything has changed. I wonder if they are still there in Syria, if they returned to Iraq. If she died.

The internet has made the world a small place. Because with a click I can check on how my family is doing, see pictures of my nephews playing in Florida, and peek into the computers of someone a world away. But it is still an anonymous world in many ways. I don't know the girl's name that wrote as riverbend. She doesn't know me at all, but I felt like I knew her and E.

As she said, How is it that all of this lies just a mouse click away?

We have new internet

For the last two years we have had the slowest internet on the planet. It was PeoplePC and if you sign up they were willing to give me one month free, but I beg you not to. I think they called it People PC because it was run like a Soviet Cooperative with rusting equipment and none of the right parts. It could have been run by the Company from the Hearts of Darkness. Mr. Kurtz probably heads the phone bank in the depths of the jungle somewhere.

We have new internet that is more like a sports car in comparison. Leila is now online and has started her own blog. She will steal all my readers no doubt, but since she is my wife I felt like I should give her free ad space here.

Sam and Snow

From Drop Box

Saturday was like a kidney punch.

Emily and I went to the store to buy wood and parts for my eternal cabinet project, no it's still not done. While we were gone the wind picked up and the snow began to drift. We didn't get any new snow, but the old snow assaulted the roads and pushed cars into the ditches. It was easy to see the snow was winning. As we turned onto 1200 South we got stuck in a drift in the middle of the road. I got out to see how bad it was and if we could push it out. Emily jumped out too and somehow the car keys were locked inside. So there were were, now above knee deep in snow with the car running, locked. Stuck.

A guy in a truck stopped and offered to help us get out. It turns out he is a plant breeder too, what a wierd coincidence. He just moved back to town and is opening a new research center for Monsanto just miles from my house. He drove us home over the field - which was free of snow now that it was piled against my car. We drove around looking for chains and ended up at my neighbor's house, his second or third cousin (everyone from Indiana is related to all the other Hoosiers somehow, the ward pedigree is like that too). My neighbor got his bobcat and we all set out, loaded with chains, tow straps, and snow shovels to counterattack.

As we were driving over there, the bobcat got stuck. Then we were going around in the field and got stuck trying to get out on the road. A police officer in another 4 wheel drive pulled the good samaritan that was helping me. Then we dug out the bobcat, then we dug out my car. Just as we finished and I pulled my car back onto the blacktop, the snowplow came through, followed by a white truck going way too fast.

The white truck had just come from my house where he had run over my dog and killed Sam. Sam had chased something into the road and right in front of the truck. Leila watched it from the window and remembered thinking, "He is going to get killed if he runs in the road like that someday." Then the truck appeared, and Sam died pretty much on impact.

When I got home, Leila said something about Sam and I thought he had gotten into the neighbors garbage cans or something. But no, he was on the side of the road and she needed help to move him. We got him into the car and then wrapped him in a sheet in the garage.

The ground is frozen solid. We haven't been able to bury him yet so there he still is. I still can't believe it.

Then Sunday, my cows got out and I spent the whole morning at the same neighbor whose Bobcat got stuck trying to get my cows away from his cows and back in our pasture. What a weekend.

I had a dream that I was feeding the pig and Sam kept chasing it round and around the barn. I chased them, always just out of sight. When I turned around to yell at him, I realized that he wasn't there and then I was alone in the field with the snow swirling around me in the dark.

Guantanamo Bay Closing!

Will write more later, I am at work, but I have to say that this is some of the best news I have heard:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7845585.stm

Butchering

Click here to see me butchering the pig.

From January 09

In love with Pandora Radio

My brother Jon mentioned this site to me a while back but my boss showed it too me a few weeks ago and I have become obsessed with Pandora radio.

It allows you to pick songs or artists and make a "channel" based around them. Then it searches its database for similar songs.

Bands I am listening to:

Mana - a great Mexican rock band. NOT Rancheros that you hear on Mexican Radio Stations.

Ricardo Arjona - A Guatemalan ballad singer. He has two songs that I heard all the time on my mission that are classics like "Jesus Verbo no Sustantivo" (Jesus verb not noun) and "Si el norte fuera el Sur" (If the North was South).

Rasputina - A punk rock cello band. They are a little odd, especially with the goth look and strange songs, but really layered sound.


Gabriel Montero - a jazzy classical pianist.

Kate Nash - I especially like the song "Merry Happy." Kind of pop music with piano and no guitars.

Nelly Mckay - She was on A prairie home companion and I sat in the cold and listened to her sing at the gas station till I had to rescrape the windows.

Tragedy with pigs and dogs

Yesterday I got home from church and let Sam and Boss - a dog that we have been watching for a friend while they were out of town, out of the garage. We were having Suzie from work and her husband over for dinner and I was in a hurry to make Lemon Sponge Custard and clean up before they came. A few minutes after I came in Emily came inside and yelled, "Dad, I hear barking and a pig squealing!"

I ran outside, no coat, Colleen still in the backpack carrier, jumped the fence, and saw Sam and Boss gnawing on the back leg of the big pig. The pigs had gotten out of their pen. Sam and Boss were barking at it and circling it. Sometimes they nipped at its injured leg. Sometimes the pig nipped at them. I kicked Sam hard and yelled at both of them to go to the garage.

The pig's leg was mangled horribly. I could see the bones and tendons and it hung limply. The pig's ears and neck had small nicks. It was breathing heavy and could barely walk.

The other pig was hiding in the barn during all of this. I went to lock up the dogs and when I came back the injured pig had drug itself into the barn also. The little pig kept licking it and nudging it. It would not leave the injured pig's side. It pushed hay around it and lay next to it moaning as if it would die too.

I asked the vet that lives next door to come check on it and see if we could save it. She thought it was too far gone. My other neighbor thought we should wait and see. He said pigs were tough and he might make it. I just couldn't bear to see it hurt so much so I called Byron and he brought a gun.

I shot it, cleaned it, and will butcher it tonight. What a horrible situation. Now what do I do with the dog? I can't trust it. But I hate to get rid of him. I am afraid my pig farming is as hard on my heart as chicken ranching. I can live with butchering them, but it just makes me ill to have to kill them when they are hurt and suffering.

Christmas, pearls, swine, and news

This is really a conglomeration of posts pressed by time into one. Sorry about that.

Christmas

From December 2008

I thought the camera was fixed, but when I tried to use it for real it is still broken. Thus, all of my pictures of Christmas were taken with my cell phone camera, which works OK as long as everyone, including the photographer, holds very still. I was able to take passable pictures of inanimate objects if I held my breath and braced my camera hand. Anything that breathes looks like it is in fast forward.

From December 2008

The girls spend most of their free time dressing up and pretending so for christmas they both got dress up cloths. If you squint at the following picture you can see Emily is a pirate and Aleah is a witch - now we are set for Halloween too. We had a lovely day. The Cooks came over for dinner and we all played on the frozen ice in the corn field. Even falling down and getting a concussion couldn't take away from glory of the day.

From December 2008

Pearls

I got Leila pearls from Carol Simmons, our friend that lives in China. I will post pictures as soon as I fix our camera because they really look good and the blurry pictures I have don't do them justice. She loves them and tells me I need to get her invited to the Inaugural Ball.

Leila gave me books! The Abhorsen series by Garth Nix, which are fun zombie adventure stories. Yeah, I know, it sounds dark and horrorish, but they aren't and are well written with good characters and mythology that stands on their own.

She also formatted and bound the first couple years of this blog into a book by me. Which isn't a novel, but its got pictures and I know all about the characters and I like being able to hold what I have written here in my hands.

Swine

I also took Emily to the Hoover's to slaughter a pig. They sold me my pigs and were going to start slaughtering their own since they decided not to register their farm with the state. The law as I understand it is the first part in a national plan to keep a database of livestock, meat, and food so that if there were a disease issue the government could track it and take care of it. They worry that the government will take care of problems like England did with Hoof and mouth disease. That and its the sign of the beast.

Anyway, they invited us to help. I wish I had taken pictures, but my camera was broken and I felt a little uncomfortable taking pictures. They are kind of like Amish. When we got there they had this huge pig penned in a horse trailer. One of his many sons got his gun and he shot it in the head with a .22. Then another son cut the back hocks and slipped a chain around the back leg while another son lifted it all up with the front end loader on a tractor. Another son appeared with knives and we skinned the pig, saving the back fat for lard. The oldest son gutted it and then after we pulled all of the skin off cut with a handsaw down the backbone.

While the sides were cooling outside we ate dinner and I tried to learn all of the boy's names. They live very simply, but with technological compromises: telephone, but no TV; electricity, but apparantly only for lights and tools; running water, but no hot water except that heated over the large pioneer stove, hardly any books, except the bible, animal and plant identification guides, school books, and a stack of seed catalogues and Ranger Rick animal magazines for the kids, no decoration on the walls, but a chalkboard for homeschooling the kids; homemade clothes except gloves and mittens; a car and a tractor, but most work done by hand. Emily then left with the younger boys to climb around the hayloft and try to catch all 14 cats and innumerable chickens. We cut the meet into roasts, hams, bacon, meat for sausage, pork loin, and more fat for lard. Esther, the three year old girl, put diapers on her stuffed cow and chatted with us while we worked.

I am not sure that I will slaughter my own animals. I think I will register my farm and go to the butcher, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. It was an education.

And finally, news.

Some know and some do not, but Leila is expecting this June. We are a bit stunned as usual, but excited. I have forgotten who I have told and who I haven't. So there it is.

Aleah thinks we should name her "Diamond Pearl Ann Gardunia" Any thoughts?

A Brave New World

I agree with most of what this column says about our economy, except that the Democrats are alone in wanting to prop up a failed economic model by throwing money at it. The Republicans also have pushed bailing out the banking industry, the auto industry, and "stimulus" checks for the rest of us.

I would like to add Ogden Nash's ode to bankers, the success of the modern banking industry may depend on finance majors memorizing it before leaving college.

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.
I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.
But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.
Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi-
ness are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.

Chicago

This last week I went to the American Seed Trade Association meetings in Chicago and I thought it funny to see this "American Gothic" statue. I don't think it was there because of the meetings, but I certainly felt like a hick in the big city. I have been three times, but the last two times spent most of my time in the hotel because it was freezing colds with strong winds. This year the temperatures were mild, for Chicago, with no winds and so I spent quite a bit of time wandering downtown.



Unfortunately most of the meeting entertainment consists of drinking as much free and overpriced booze as possible. Since I don't drink, the last two years I went and made small talk while stirring my coke and looking at my watch. This year, I was determined to escape the conference and hotel functions and see the city.

We went to Billy Goat's - the source of the Cub's curse and inspiration for a classic SNL skit, and wined and dined customers at a swanky steak/seafood place.

I couldn't talk anyone into coming with me to Wicked though. So I went alone. It was a toss up between Wicked and the symphony orchestra, but Wicked was easier to find and something out of the ordinary. It has a huge sign and a crowd of people milling about buying tickets. I was told it had been running for a couple of years but still sold out most weekends. I got the cheapest tickets I could find - 2nd to the last row upper balcony for the Thursday night show. My seat wasn't too bad though. The theater is taller than it is long and so the balcony seats, although high above the stage weren't that far away and the view was unobstructed. After talking to the 80+ year old usher during intermission about growing up as a sharecropper in Alabama and the election of Obama, she let me move to first row balcony - the best seats in the house.



The show was good. (Way, way better than being the sober guy in a cocktail lounge) The music was very lyrical, but not as melodic as I was expecting. I hadn't heard any of it before and knew next to nothing about the plot. The white witch was hilarious as a self centered blond seeking attention. She stole the show. The costumes were amazing and the lighting and sets were as good as special effects in the movies. The wizard was disturbingly orwellian in his persecution of the talking animals as a means to maintaining his power.

I felt a little lonely when I stood in line to get my ticket and ate dinner alone, but it was well worth it. It made a great end to the trip. Next time I will have to talk someone into coming with me to some other show. Or I will go by myself. I didn't realize till after I had my ticket in hand that there were like 6 other theaters on that street. One had "The Christmas Carol", another had a Shakespeare play, some lesser known musicals, and two concerts. "Wicked" just had the biggest sign.

Alice cooper

We were driving to Lowes tonight and the world cafe music show was playing on the radio. They had some pretty hard rock songs (aka not "they might be giants") and the girls asked for to turn it off. As the car got quiet, Aleah began to sing, "Welcome to my nightmare." By Alice Cooper!

Turns out he was a guest on the muppet show dvd she had watched.

A little scary how much they absorb.

Time Machine

I have decided a time machine to see the future is not necessary. Apparently I will get there before I expected to anyway. This last year has flown by so fast.

When I was 19 I went to Nicaragua for my mission. I was there two years. When I held the papers from Church headquarters in my hands and opened them in the basement of Heritage Halls it seemed like it would last forever. When I stepped off the plane and into the heat and noise of Managua I felt like I had left time altogether.

Then I was on the plane, in my over-sized suit that I hadn't worn for two years, and in an instant I was married and graduating. We moved a few times, I went to a lot of powerpoint lectures and slept through them all while the little girl I carried on my shoulders clicked off the days until she is eight. No, now eight and a half. Do I hear 9. Crazy. Not to mention that we have had three other children. Insane.

Christmas is coming again and that means I will have had this blog for 4 years. I started it on a whim and to procrastinate working on homework. I planned to write about:

"Personal grumblings about work and school,

Questions about genetics and statistics,

Descriptions of my family life,

Itsy-Bitsy Emily Stories."

I didn't know if I would keep at this or if anyone would read it. I am grateful that I have written and that at least some people have read it.

Hello Future.