I'm in love with an old married sports commentator.

I have hated sports my whole life. I was born into a wimpy, brainiac family and I will likely raise myself a bunch of wimpy, brainiac children who will spend their lives, as I have mine, shaking their heads condescendingly at the sports-obsessed masses. Part of it's just sour grapes, no doubt. I'm not naturally gifted in that way and don't want to invest the effort it would take to improve, so from age six I start convincing myself that I don't care that I'm always chosen last for dodge ball (couldn't throw, couldn't dodge -- absent when I should be present and present when I should be absent).

Another factor is that I was a dancer. Tap dancing for six years, ballet for ten, three en pointe. Mine was a higher physicality, you see: culture, refinement, elegance, grace. Not base competition -- rather, motion for motion's sake; the human body as artwork, not as cog in a pinball machine. Except....the further you get into dance (ballet especially) the more that "you're only competing against yourself" mantra disintegrates. There may be no scoreboard, but there is very much a competition heating up, and its dark side is starvation and obsession. Sports have got steroids and obsession. Boils down to pretty much the same thing.

Another reason I've hated sports is that it always stole the limelight away from academics, which I'm good at. I watched athletes in high school get ridiculous amounts of attention while barely passing their classes, and it annoyed me. I went to college and was rankled to find that the center of campus was the stadium. So I avoided football games on principle --I would not sully myself by entering that pagan temple. (Except when Grandpa was in town and forced me to bow before the pigskin gods. Grandpas trump principles.)

And of course, a lot of sports I simply find boring. This is no doubt partly because I have never bothered to learn the rules or play the game myself, so it just looks like a bunch of thick-necked chumps running around aimlessly. Just like ballet can be boring if you've never experienced the painful price paid for that smooth, effortless penchée.

But it's kind of lonely in this sports-free zone. Not that I need or want one more thing to fill my time, but you feel a bit defective when the whole world is electrified by something and you don't even feel a spark. I don't want to catch fire, but I would like to at least feel the heat now and then. Understand a little bit what all the hubbub is about.

So along comes my new hero, sports commentator Frank DeFord. Apparently he's been around for decades and even writes for Sports Illustrated, but I just recently started catching his "Sweetness and Light" bits on NPR as I drive to work on Wednesdays. He is smart and witty and he loves sports; he is not ashamed to celebrate them and he is not afraid to ridicule their absurdities. He is, simply, the man who might finally drag me down from my snobbish heights with minimal kicking and screaming. Here's a funny bit I found in the Washington Post about his sportswriting career:

As a writer, the worst two things that ever happened to me were, number one: I had a happy childhood. Number two: I belong to the absolute and utter majority, bland across the board. I have no personal injustices to rail about. An agent of mine once said to me, "Frank, you are the last of the tall, white, male, WASP, Ivy League, heterosexual writers." Oh, we were Huguenots on my father's side, but the last time any of us was burned at the stake was 300-odd years ago, so it's hard to work up any angst or compassion for me on that account.

Perhaps this is why I ended up writing about sports. I didn't set out to be a sportswriter, but once I got into it I found that I rather liked having a cross to bear. If you've never been discriminated against, it's refreshing -- finally -- to be a brunt of prejudice. You see, generally, people -- especially those of the literary persuasion -- look down on sportswriters as sort of genial dunces. It is instructive to note, as I have pointed out often before, that it is actually impossible for sportswriting to be any good. This is because, if a sportswriter somehow manages to write a piece that seems the least bit competent, he will be complimented thusly: That was so good you can't really call it sportswriting!

And he's right -- I am one of those very snobs. I guess that's because sports seem so unimportant -- so unrelated to anything Real. But I love to read Roger Ebert's thumbs-down reviews just for the quality smackdowns, so what's the difference between unreal sports and unreal movies? With Frank at the helm, I'm prepared to believe that there's Something to the world of sports. Maybe only a little Something, but Something. And Something is infinitely more than Nothing.

Or maybe I'm just in love with him. (Check out that hair!)

This one's for you, Hsin.

Apparently that last posting was a bit heavier than I'd intended, so here's a cute little pudgelett to take the edge off: my niece. Yeah, I know -- you think your baby is the cutest baby in the world, but unfortunately you'd be wrong, as I'm sure you'll have to admit now that you've seen mine. In this shot she was singing an aria to milk, glorious milk. She has a five-octave range, especially at night.

My sister has a four-syllable name (Elizabeth) and gave her baby a four-syllable name (Alexana, last two syllables rhyming with "sauna"). I love my sister, but not enough to spend four syllables of my time on her -- she is "Liz." I love my niece, but the same applies. As I'm not the biggest fan of "Alex," I've settled on "Zana." If you can think of a good one-syllable alternative, I'm all for conserving my Precious Time. That's why I blog, after all ;)

Zana's still little, and I only see her on weekends, so I don't have a lot of great anecdotes yet. I was present for her birth, which was amazing. I only got in on a technicality -- someone had to hold the video camera, apparently (!!!), but it was an honor nonetheless. And a good case for epidurals. And a bad case for Intelligent Design.

When October rolled around and Sharon and I were planning our Halloween party, the question arose of the all-important First Halloween Costume. Liz, who has a sense of humor, reasoned that the baby played a cute little bug every day of the year, so for Halloween she of course needed to come as the complete opposite of pink, cooing babyness. What would that be, you ask? A psychotic Jack Nicholson, of course! I sewed her a little straitjacket costume and she came to our party with spiked hair, in the custody of her mother (a rather smiley Nurse Ratched). My mother has not forgiven me for aiding and abetting in the uglification of her first and only grandbaby. But as lobotomy patients go, she was quite adorable. And she loved the party, even though it was past her bedtime -- she didn't cry when the giant Twinkie walked in with the priest, nor when confronted with a gruesome electrocution victim, nor even in the face of Death himself.

Zana is going to be completely insane. She will fit right in.

At the risk of sounding like a bitter ol' hag...

I have a friend, raconteur extraordinaire, who has made a name for herself with scalpel-point observations -- cutting unlikely bits out of the fabric of the universe, then placing them before you and explaining why they are Relevant. One never leaves her presence without a handful of pithy morals, a recent humiliating episode from her life that makes you feel much better about your own, a naughty joke or two, and at least one Key Life Lesson. And somehow she conjures all this from that same world we all inhabit. Every few weeks she attends church in my congregation and the most useful of our conversations are those in which she reframes the people and situations I encounter every day, capturing innuendos and subtexts that had whizzed right by me.

We are both on the elderly end of the LDS single female population, so the conversation always features some banging of our heads on the cement wall called The Male Mind. Tonight we were talking yet again about What Men Want, and she offered as an illustration something that I could have seen, but had missed. Last week she visited my ward and noticed a guy in Sunday School who was sandwiched between two girls. On one side was a skinny blonde hottie, and he had his arm around her possessively. On the other side was a plump, intelligent brunette. The whole hour of the lesson he had his arm around the blonde and never said a word to her, while talking continually to the brunette.

"That is what men want."

And to be academically honest, she backed up her anecdote with data: a survey of males revealed that the vast majority of them, if forced to choose, would rather be married to a brainless, gorgeous sex toy and fill their intellectual/conversational needs with an platonic woman friend than marry the woman they most enjoy interacting with and forgo the Angelina lips.

Oh no. I feel my inner b**** switchin' on, and nothing says "lifetime of loneliness" like a spiderwoman who wears her venom on her sleeve. Quick! Somebody find me a Harvard researcher who can debunk this stupid poll!

I guess I should be grateful to know that a good number of men at least desire some interaction with a woman of brains. But I don't want to be someone's mental mistress! I want to be someone's witty wife and seduce him with Andrew Marvell and raise him a brood of sassy back-talkin' babies!

Good thing Saturday's almost here -- I can tell it's time for some good old fashioned Jane Eyre therapy (Eyre-apy?) Time for a nice long dose of Gothic sap. Time to regress back to early puberty, when the universe could be counted on to make me the perfect cosmic match -- smart and fiery and smitten with my magnificent brainy plainness.

Why didn't anyone tell me that Edward Fairfax Rochester was so very FICTIONAL??? (Interpretation: someone please tell me that he's not so very fictional!)

Too late to blush.

Okay, here's the deal. I studied Arabic for three years. The language nearly destroyed my will to live and I am currently on hiatus for sanity purposes. However, people are constantly asking me how my studies are going and I am constantly having to explain my failure to master the language in spite of years of study (and good grades, I might add). By way of justifying this failure of mine, I routinely quote someone who was quoted to me by my first Arabic teacher. This quote was intended to comfort us neophytes as we simultaneously memorized long lists of non-standard plural nouns and beat back suicidal thoughts -- she told us the quote was from a recent BYU student who was fluent in 15 languages, including Arabic, and was under consideration by the Guinness Book for the title of "most languages spoken." As this useful quote goes, Language Guy was asked what was the most difficult language he had learned and he responded that it was a close race between Mandarin and Arabic, but if he were forced to choose, he'd go with Arabic.

You can see why this is one of my favorite quotes. Family and close friends have heard me parrot it more than once.

So, a couple weeks ago I was thinking of that oh-so-useful quote and decided that as a self respecting writer-slash-amateur-historian I really ought to track down the original quote and be sure I've been quoting it correctly all this time. I googled it, found it easily, AND.....

....up popped the picture of someone I knew. He had been in my church congregation until recently. He had eaten dinner at my house. "Whoa," I thought.

It was just kinda cool until I started replaying our dinner conversation in my head. It was a few months ago and the memory is very vague. But I do know that we were having one of those standard getting-to-know-you chats -- you know -- where do you work, what are you studying in school, blah blah. I remember him mentioning that he loved learning languages, but he didn't come out and say that he was this freakishly gifted linguist.

And I can't be sure, but I THINK I QUOTED HIM TO HIMSELF. It's just the sort of conversation where I would be likely to insert that quote. Oh man. That would be really ridiculous, you know, to essentially be saying, "you people can't possibly fathom how hard Arabic is, but I shall attempt to educate you anyway," and then proceed to illustrate my point by quoting one of the very people I'm trying to "educate." Excuse me while I remove my red plastic nose and sweep up the shards of my dignity.

If I did quote him to himself, he did a great job of not laughing. Or maybe not. If I was in the midst of a me-me aria, I might not have heard a stifled snicker.

Oh well. As the Arabs say, if you can't change it, blog it.

They also say

Better a handful of dry dates and contentment therewith than to own the Gate of Peacocks and be kicked in the eye by a broody camel.

Ha! Gotta love those transcendent observations on the human condition. But I digress.

Back to the twin topics of foreigners and blushing: it seemed to me that the characters in Anna Karenina did an inordinate amount of blushing. I can't tell if this is because they lived in a more innocent time and therefore more topics were blushworthy. Or maybe it's some genetic quirk in Russians specifically. Or maybe Tolstoy thought bashful blushiness was an admirable quality, and likely to help keep one from the throes of an adulterous affair. At any rate, if Konstantin Levin weren't a fictional character, he would be blushing enough for the both of us.

But for now, I blush alone.

But I'm NOT a serpent -- I'm a little girl.

Today I tried my new contacts for the first time. I've been sporting a pair of semi-pretentious horn rimmed hipster specs for the last couple years while my left eye healed from an ulcer caused by years of irresponsible contact wear.

My correction is very strong (nearsighted), so my glasses are a dramatic concave and make the whole world look smaller to me, including myself, when I look in the mirror. I knew that everything was going to look bigger with the contacts in, but I was unprepared for just how much bigger.

I gained ten pounds in ten seconds. My head, which has always been big, now rivals that of the Great and Terrible Oz. I went shoe shopping and spotted a pair that I liked. I estimated it was a couple sizes too big for me. Nope -- a size too small.

On the plus side,* every can of food at the grocery store was 50% bigger. However, with my new economy-sized butt, the last thing I need is bonus food.

I'm not sure if I want to enter this reality on a permanent basis. At first I told myself in a reasonable tone, "You look just the same to everyone else as you did yesterday. Everyone who loved you before will still love you, even with that MASSIVE NOGGIN." But now it's evening and I've taken out the contacts and re-donned the glasses. The fearsome tiger has become a housecat again and my construction worker hands look all dainty again and...illusion is bliss.

A couple of days ago the history group I belong to had a presentation by a bookstore owner here in Salt Lake who was intimately involved in the buildup to the Mark Hofmann forgery murders. He spoke of the excruciating process of forcing himself to accept that his close friend and business associate was a forger and murderer. The discussion made me think of a quote from Mark Hofmann I'd once read. He said that he didn't see why his forgeries were such a big deal. If something looked identical to what it claimed to be -- if it fooled everyone -- then for all intents and purposes it was real and arguing otherwise was splitting hairs.

While I hate to side with a coldblooded killer, I think I'm going to continue to spend a good deal of time in my rose-colored glasses. In them my reflection looks almost exactly like the real me, tweaked just enough to make me feel a little bit better about myself. That little bit better means that the real me -- the one with the Bozo-sized feet -- has a lot more confidence and fearlessly struts her chubby stuff. When she's confident, reality matters less and good things happen in spite of the pesky factonistas. The illusion of one world softens the edges of the other. Glasses are a lot cheaper than liposuction.

And I can only imagine how expensive head-reduction surgery must be.



* I just noticed a Freudian slip in this posting, and while I feel compelled to fix it, the historian (and the comedian) in me feel compelled to give it a footnote. Instead of "On the plus side," I had typed "On the plus size." Ha! Rather telling of my state of mind, no?

Who says big sisters are pushy?

More like "pully."

Enough about me -- let's talk about me.

It was lonely before I had siblings. Just me and the snowbunnies.

Testing, testing.

I wanted to try out video on my blog, so here's a home video clip taken a little while before I was born (hence large-tummied Mommy in mumu). I'm glad I was fetal at the time and didn't have to witness the weedy back yard of the newly purchased house, nor the hideous "Washington Crossing the Delaware" on the back of my dad's cowboy shirt. Hooray for Dad for buying the video camera and insisting on its use over the years. Hooray for my sister and me for getting the old reel-to-reels transferred to DVD. Hooray for little brother for transferring bite-sized clips to the family blog. And the biggest hooray for Mom for keeping us all alive long enough to master this newfangled technology!

"I believe in women -- especially thinking women."

I'm excited about Nancy Pelosi's swearing in as House Speaker today. Not because women necessarily do things better than men, but because women are half of the human race and so need to participate in running the world on all levels. And while I'm not well educated on Hilary Clinton's platform, the idea of a woman President is pretty exciting as well. I wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman, but I definitely will give her campaign my extra careful consideration just because she's a woman.

The current fervor surrounding these new milestones in women's lib brings me back to one of my favorite historical figures, Emmeline B. Wells. She lived in my neighborhood a hundred years ago and now lies buried a few blocks away from my apartment, in the Salt Lake City cemetery, under a tiny low-lying gravestone overshadowed by the massive pillar that honors her third husband, Daniel H. Wells (another of my favorite historical figures, but irrelevant to the present topic :) Daniel was prominent in Utah politics and Mormon church leadership and his name is well known locally to this day. Emmeline, despite what her insignificant gravestone would suggest, was far more widely known than was her husband: in addition to serving as president of the LDS Women's Relief Society, she was a local and national women's suffrage leader and close friend and advisor of Susan B. Anthony. Her efforts to expand women's rights and her organization of a wheat storage program that saved thousands of lives in post-WWI Europe brought her wide renown in her time, including an invitation from Queen Victoria and a house call from President Woodrow Wilson. But curiously she is largely unknown to modern day Utahns. I was excited to learn from Natalie, my fellow Utah history buff, that a full-length biography has finally been devoted to Emmeline. And for those who aren't interested in tackling a whole book, there is also a DVD recording of a recent stage play about Emmeline's remarkable journey from abandoned child bride to literary, political, and religious leader and one of the most important players in making Utah the second state* to give women the vote. She was also the longtime editor of the early LDS women's journal, The Women's Exponent. In it she wrote

Millions of intelligent women are deprived of the vote simply because nature qualified them to become mothers and not fathers of men. They may own property, pay taxes, assist in supporting the government, rend their heart-strings in giving for its aid the children of their affections, but they are denied all right to say who shall disburse those taxes, how that government shall be conducted, or who shall decide on a question of peace or war which may involve the lives of their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands.

Despite her difficult marriage situation as an emotionally unsatisfied plural wife, she remained a staunch defender of Mormons' rights to practice polygamy, and on more than one occasion had to be rescued publicly by Susan B. Anthony for holding this unpopular conviction, which many thought was incompatible with thinking, educated, independent women. She had experienced firsthand the ways that polygamy allowed women both the essential Victorian social standing of wife and mother and the freedom to focus on developing their strengths in the broader world by outsourcing some of their housekeeping and childcare tasks to "sister wives" when necessary. Ironically, she discovered, polygamy was creating a culture of remarkably progressive women who were no longer enslaved to every whim of their husbands and as a result could focus more on participating in the workings of the outside world. A funny quote from her on this topic:

All honor and reverence to good men; but they and their attentions are not the only source of happiness on the earth and need not fill up every thought of woman. And when men see that women can exist without their being constantly at hand... it will perhaps take a little of the conceit out of some of them.

As an obscure teenage convert to the LDS church she received a blessing that said she would live to do a work that had not been done by any woman since the beginning of the world. Her story is really that remarkable.

In the modern age I can vote and be treated equally in the work place and get a superior education and travel wherever I want without a chaperone. I don't need to be attached to a husband to be taken seriously. And today the Speaker of the House is a woman.

What next, Emmeline?




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* 4/6/11 CORRECTION: This mistake has been bugging me for awhile, so I'm fixing it. Emmeline Wells was a key player in making Utah the third state to give women the vote. The Utah Territory had been the second state-like entity (after Wyoming Territory) in giving women voting rights in 1870, but those rights were repealed by the federal government as part of its anti-polygamy legislation. Wells was not involved in the initial 1870 Utah Territory suffrage debate, but was part of the push to reinstate women's voting rights as part of Utah's constitution in 1896. By that point, Wyoming and Colorado had given women the vote.

Mary and Mary, quite contrary.

Okay, last go on the Christmas topic.

Ninny gave me her 2006 calendar, printed in Florence, which had lovely images of the Madonna. She told me I had to do something "creative" with them, so the challenge was displaying some of them in a way that would look nice without turning my abode into a Shrine to the Cult of the Virgin.

The first challenge was the baby Jesuses. It seems that most of the baby Jesuses in medieval and Renaissance paintings are sort of creepy looking. I don't know why this is. Maybe artists didn't get much naked baby sketching time in art school and so were clueless when confronted with a difficult, squirming little bug in the studio. Maybe they were hesitant to give the Son of God a regular drooly baby face and intentionally made him look like a sage 30-year-old trapped in an infant's body. Or maybe it's simply that cuteness standards have changed over the centuries. Whatever the case, I couldn't bring myself to look day after day at any of the baby Jesuses in the calendar. The Botticelli one wasn't too bad, and neither was Raphael's. There was a certain charm to a couple of them: in one the baby gripped Mary's thumb and in another he's playing with her hair. But even the better ones were a bit too eerie and adult looking -- I was afraid if I put them up on my wall I'd start having Chucky nightmares.

So I ruled out the paintings that had babies. I started arranging the Madonna-only paintings on the floor in different combinations and realized that Mary was almost always in a red dress with a blue mantle or head scarf. There must be some symbolism there (any Catholics out there wanna enlighten me?) I decided to go with four painting details that showed just the bust of Mary. I chose these particular ones because there were two pairs that sort of echoed each other. All four show Mary looking down and to the right. Two of them show her with brown hair, in near profile with her head bowed at the same angle, and two show her with blonde hair, in three-quarter profile with torso straight forward. I thought those similarities gave the grouping a nice balance and I offset the two columns to play up their meek downward glances. I really like how it turned out -- thanks to Ninny for this lovely addition to my home decor. The one on the upper right looks like a young teenager (and Mary probably was a young teenager at the time). The one on the upper left looks much older -- closer to my age. My favorite is the lower left -- Raphael. A blonde Jewess. Hmmm. Here's to artistic license.

And none of them look like Miranda Richardson. Maybe it's their relative lack of disappointment. Maybe it's because their slightly unsettling infants have been cut out of the shot, leaving them less anxious all around. I imagine baring your breast to the Creator of the Universe, though he is tiny and benevolent, might conceivably cause a little unease. Like the Siamese cat we used to have -- I hated to have her in the room when I changed clothes, because she looked like she knew what was going on, even though I knew that that was a ridiculous notion. Oh, wow. This is getting sort of blasphemous so I'm going to return to...

...the topic of religious art. It seems like there's less and less of it that isn't complete schlock. Even the new art in the most recent LDS international art competition, which had high standards overall, was peppered with a good amount of cutrate Norman Rockwell Mormonia. Or maybe I'm overly critical of my age -- maybe it was equally bad in the Renaissance and the trash was sifted out by the passing centuries, leaving us the lovelies that show up in Florentine wall calendars. At any rate, with enough snarky commentary, even kitsch is enjoyable. When shopping online after-Christmas sales for tree ornaments, I came across a blog with a sidebar dedicated to tacky religious art of the modern age. They have a page called Cavalcade of Bad Nativities dedicated to such horrors as nativities made up of nothing but snowmen, or cats, or owls. Eek and double eek.

And in a final tribute to bad devotional art, here is a picture of a really tacky Last Supper wall clock I acquired at a Christmas white elephant gift exchange several years back. I kept it until just a few months ago because it was just so gloriously awful that I couldn't bear to part with it. I even created a mini "Tackiness Shrine" in my walk-in closet with this clock as the centerpiece. I mean, LOOK at it. They mounted the clock hands in Jesus's chest, so at noon they obliterated his face. At the bottom of the holy scene was the word TAIWAN in large gold letters. Encased around it was a baroque arrangement of white and red silk flowers, and on the hour it chimed the Hallelujah chorus. It was truly masterful in its badness. Some days (especially when I recall Monty Python's hilarious skit about Michelangelo's tacky Next-to-Last Supper painting) I wish I hadn't thrown the Last Supper clock away. Who knows -- two milennia from now it might have been considered great art....

In denial.

Tonight is the last night that Temple Square is lit for Christmas, so I'm posting some photos that I took there a few nights ago when I had a few unanticipated hours to kill by myself. I've lived in Utah my whole life and have seen the Temple Square Christmas display many times. There were many years that we never bothered to come downtown to see the lights because we were a bit bored with it. But living a couple blocks from Temple Square and getting used to the lights as part of my backyard has made them magical again.

In the past few years they've started putting up nativities from various countries. This year there was a flat wooden painted set that reminded me of Polish nativities that I've seen. It had a charming man bearing a basket of what looked like bread. Bartholomew the Bethlehem Bread Man with buns for the baby?

There was also a nativity with roly-poly figures that looked like Weebles -- I think it was Korean. A "flight to Egypt" display that looked Mexican showed Mary and Jesus riding in a donkey-drawn cart under a colorful parasol, Joseph walking by the side with sombrero in hand. And there was a colorful nativity made from fabric and metal that looked like it was from Africa. It had the best wise men I've ever seen -- carrying brightly wrapped presents and wearing funky hats. One of them had a tall stripey Cat-in-the-Hat hat.

And then there was the "traditional" white nativity next to the reflection pond. I stood in the snow for over ten minutes waiting for people to move out of the way so I could get a good shot of the nativity with the whole sparkly scene around it. But people just kept stopping to look at Jesus, and they usually looked for a long time. After awhile of impatient waiting I was struck with the irony of trying to clear humanity away from Jesus so you can get a good exclusive cover shot of him. If there had been paparazzi in Jesus's day, they probably would have looked something like me, tapping their toes from a distance, waiting for the photo op. I laughed at myself and moved on.

Another fairly recent addition to the Temple Square display is rows and rows of luminarias with words in different languages pin-pricked in the sides. They look like they're made of paper, but can't be, as they survive the winter wet. The Arabic ones were especially beautiful, but done in calligraphy that overlapped on itself so that I couldn't pick out any words that I knew. This one says "Love, Hope, Joy."

And of course the temple was lovely as ever, looking like a jeweled crown set down in the middle of a glittery pile of pirates' loot. I was particularly pleased with the shot of its reflection in the pool full of floating candles. At the bottom you can see the coins people have tossed into the pool.

Yes, I'm in denial that the Christmas season is over. My tree is still up, crispy, and only vaguely green. But it still looks lovely lit up at night. And the curbside tree collection for my neighborhood isn't for another week, so that's my official excuse. If you walk by the lit tree in my window and my blatant disregard for the new year bugs you, go ahead and call the Christmas police. I dare you.

The neatest thing I've seen all year.

Thanks to a sidebar link on Belladonna's blog, I have found the greatest thing. Probably many of you have already heard about it, but for those of you who haven't...

It's a microcredit website called Kiva.org. I first learned about microcredit almost ten years ago when Mohammed Yunus came to my college campus and several departments went hogwild trying to help further awareness of his movement and measure its effects on poverty. My mother discovered a local woman who runs a small microcredit business, and I have periodically given donations to her to help provide loans to women entrepreneurs in Third World countries who want to purchase pigs and goats to further their home meat and dairy businesses. It's a great feeling to give to something like that, but it seems to me that there are a few things that make Kiva new and exciting in the world of microcredit: 1) lenders are allowed to read about those who are requesting loans, see photos of their farms and businesses, and based on that information choose which specific applicants they would like to help fund; 2) there is no "middle man" whom you have to trust to not misuse your money -- 100% of your money goes to the entrepreneur and as soon as the whole loan is repaid, every lender who contributed to the loan is repaid in full (though lenders earn no interest); 3) periodic updates are given while the loan is still in repayment, providing the excitement of seeing exactly how your financial aid is improving the life of a specific person; 4) the loan repayment rate is currently 100% (the average percentage for other microcredit programs is 97%).

In past years there have been other programs such as "Adopt a Child" that have tried to personalize giving in order to make it more meaningful for the giver, but according to the Kiva website, such programs were expensive to operate and so the money donated was not efficiently used to help those in need. Kiva's overhead costs are currently paid by optional lender donations and by Silicon Valley business, so every penny of your loan goes directly to the person in need. I was also interested to read about how their local loan administrators are chosen and how the responsiblity of potential loan recipients is determined.

According to their website, stories about Kiva have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and on NPR, the BBC, PBS, and CNN. I think it's a remarkable movement because it both works with human nature (the desire to not only do good, but see the results of that good) and is incredibly efficient. And it's open to anyone with a PayPal account. In fact, Kiva.org is the first business for which PayPal has waived their processing fees. It's a great cause, and you can give in increments as small as $25. So if you have a Christmas bonus coming this week, I recommend at least visiting the site. It's really exciting!!! <--- (not one of those exclamation marks is gratuitous)

Today is my dancing day.

Tonight my family and I went to the caroling service at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake. The Cathedral is just four blocks from my apartment (the bells woke me this morning with a glorious racket!), and so I attend musical services there whenever I can. Truth be told, I had already attended the caroling service last week with some friends, but I'm a bit of a Christmas music junkie and I begged the family to come with me today so that I could get another fix. This year the program included a couple of my favorites that are somewhat unusual: the Middle English lullaby "Myn Lyking" and "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" which I've slooowly been trying to adapt for a quartet of women. I also fell in love with a couple that were new to me: "Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending" (Regent Square) and "Of the Father's Heart Begotten" (arr. Willcocks). Today the service started at 4:00, so the sun was setting through the nave windows. The nativity window was opposite us -- a blood red robe foiling the pearly white baby Jesus. It was the perfect place to be on Christmas Eve. Sometimes the Mormon Christmas experience cries out for an injection of Catholic pageantry.

Another of my favorite unusual carols is "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day," in which the voice is Christ as the Bridegroom. The unusual thing is that the first verse he apparently sings the night before he is born:

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day:
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance:
Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love;
This have I done for my true love.

Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance;
Thus was I knit to man's nature,
To call my true love to my dance:
Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love;
This have I done for my true love.

Then in a manger laid and wrapped I was,
So very poor this was my chance,
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass,
To call my true love to my dance:
Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love;
This have I done for my true love.

Then afterwards baptized I was;
The Holy Ghost on me did glance,
My Father's voice heard from above,
To call my true love to my dance:
Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love;
This have I done for my true love.

Maybe I'm taking the word "tomorrow" too literally, but the reason I like to think of it that way is that it recalls a passage in the Book of Mormon in which a prophet on the American continent hears the voice of Christ on the night before the Nativity, reassuring him that the prophecies have not been false. I'm probably wrong, but I like to think that this carol is about a similar moment.

I hope you'll post any of your favorite carols that are less well known. "Silent Night" is beautiful, and that's precisely why we shouldn't sing it to death.

To drive the dark winter away.

Greetings from the bottom of the year. The longest night. It's a shame we Mormons don't believe that Christ was born this time of year, because it's lovely symbolism – coming to a shrouded Earth, slowly pulling the light down with him.

I should start being hopeful right about now. Start ordering my tomato seeds and all that. I am trying, and it is getting better. But it's hard to face the cold three-month trudge to the spring Equinox, especially when you have to put Christmas away at the darkest moment and endure the chill without eggnog or sparklies. I've always been one of those stubborn people who leaves the Christmas lights up until the third week of January – I think as long as we're celebrating Jesus's Unbirthday, we should move it to late February so we can have the pretty little lights to help us through more of the long, cold winter nights. Not as meaningful as having Christmas at the Solstice, perhaps, but way more humane, and Jesus was nothing if not humane, so I figure that he would approve. Maybe I'll start a petition to have it moved – I'm sure the retailers would get behind me: think what they could do with a Halloween-to-Presidents' Day Christmas season! I know the cat would like to keep her beloved Christmas tree hideout for a few more weeks. She's been lurking under there trying to unwrap the presents, the brimstone beast.

I am grateful for the seasons, however. I don't know if I'll feel that way when I'm 80 and the cold makes my knees ache and no Boy Scouts magically appear to shovel my walk, but at this point I can honestly say I'm glad I've always lived in a place with dramatic seasons. I might grumble about it during July's cruel cookers and while scraping my car windows in the piercing chill of late January, but in my core I am glad for it. I sometimes wonder why God created the Earth in such a way that there are large segments of the world that see very little seasonal change – the seasons are such a physical way of preparing for death and building faith in the resurrection, it seems that our mango-munching brethren have been robbed in that department. I'm hard pressed to not cry each year when I find my first crocus in the snow. There's always a little part of my winter self that fears the miracle won't happen this year, and then it does. And when it comes it hollers in purples and reds and hot pinks. Blissful, singing spring. Each winter I'm getting a little better at remembering that that riotous April morning couldn't exist without this dark, cold Solstice night, and somewhere in me I'm grateful for it. Sometimes only a tiny bit grateful, but it's progress.

Everyone loves the image of a baby who is the embodiment of love, believers and nonbelievers alike. We love that we get to sing of and think of this helpless, lovable little creature at the time of year when we are most in need of cheer and warmth. He demands nothing of us but that we love babies. Then Christmas is over and before we know it, we've arrived at Easter. Christ has made good on his promise – everything is coming back to life – and yet we don't celebrate the same way that we do at Christmas. Most of us don't love Easter like we do Christmas. I sure don't. This is a Christ who has raised the stakes. He offers more than the baby did -- he offers Everything. But in return, he asks for more from me -- he asks for everything. Easter is a bigger miracle and requires greater faith -- and faith, for me, anyway, is work. Like I said before, there's believing and then there's Believing, and when you're wrapped in the snuggly blanket of youth and health and have had less time to stockpile regrets, it's easy to let Easter slip by with nothing more than a respectful nod. That brings me to a quote that hovers over my head every Christmas season, from A Prayer for Owen Meany. I hope it doesn't come across as Scroogeish, but it pops into my mind many times each Christmas season, in moments when I have let Jesus's story get too front-heavy in my imagination:

Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the Resurrection – if you don’t believe in Easter – don’t kid yourself. Don’t call yourself a Christian.

So I will shiver here on the longest night of the year and remind myself that Christ is not a bandaid on death – he did not come to help me cope with the winter. He is not sparkly lights on the snow. He is the sun that melts the snow. He is winter's cure. I believe that, and as more and more years cycle, I expect that I will Believe it more and more.

And tonight I will dream of yodeling yellow tulips!

Feed the #&$%! birds, tuppence a bag.

I'm no pet worshipper. I could go on for hours about how the book of Revelation clearly foretells that in the days when otherwise intelligent adults start dressing up their dogs and taking them trick-or-treating, the End is near at hand. In all seriousness, it gives me the willies.

That is why I'm a bit sheepish about my recent escapades. I live in a small apartment on the third floor and my cat is home alone all day while I'm at work. For most cats, no big deal -- two hours preening, six hours napping, and my, my -- wherever did the time go? My cat, however, gets very bored, and by the time I get home all she wants is to be chased. I feel sorry for her, having her psycho spirit broken by the long hours of nothingness. During the summer I crack the window open so she can see and hear the birds in the trees outside, and that keeps her fairly happy. But in the winter the windows are closed and the birds make themselves scarce. All is stillness and kitty anguish. So I decided I was going to find a way to lure birds to the naked tree outside my bedroom window.

Problem #1: Window three stories up, how to get birdseed up that high? Research telescoping poles -- think could use to raise birdfeeder to high branch. Dead end. Telescoping poles cost-prohibitive. Alternate plan: fling rope over desired branch, tie bird feeder to rope, hoist up, anchoring ends of rope to base of tree. Purchase clothesline, attach keys to one end, throw keys over and over and over and over in sissy-girl fashion until they clear desired branch, pulling clothesline with them. Highly entertaining show for neighbors.

Problem #2: What sort of feed to use? Birdfeeder with loose seed awkward to raise through branches. Would have to be refilled often -- undesireable, given convoluted rope system. Decide on suet cake: "high in nutrients," lasts longer, won't spill on way up. Attach suet cake to rope and hoist up. Watch for birds.

Problem #3: Two weeks later, no birds. Suet cake still pristine, cat still bored. I am miffed. Plot to trick birds into eating their birdy vegetables with some birdy candy: birdseed peanut-buttered onto pinecones. Return to store. Purchase loose birdseed. Take walk, collect pinecones. Assemble ooey-gooey pinecone treats for ungrateful birds. Untie clothesline, lower suet cake, attach tempting pinecones to suet. Hoist ridiculous-looking rig back up in tree. Hope no one watching, wondering if am inept terrorist planting bomb. Watch for birds.

Problem #4: Birds briefly condescend to nibble at pinecones, but ultimately too clever. Realize suet nastier than Brussels sprouts, will not touch. Pinecones now pecked clean = no more birds. Kitty is sad again. Marie is miffed again. Marie fantasizes about shooting herself fat little warbler, bringing it inside half dead, letting cat finish it off. Marie wants to punish all of Bird-dom for mocking her toil from their high perches. Marie is at the end of her rope (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk).

So if any of you have an in with the birds or an instinct when it comes to luring woodland critters to your windowsill (say, if your singing voice resembles that of Snow White), please let me in on the secret. Kitty and I would be ever so grateful.

Sweet and low.

I'm simmering in Christmas music. With the tree lit and most of the house lights out, I might as well be in heaven. A dim, warm, pine-scented corner of heaven.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, I want to plug one of my favorite Christmas CDs. It's by a band called Low that I discovered three years back. Their slow, quiet sound and beautiful harmonies were a conscious reaction to the grunge movement, and while they're not for everyone (especially if your blood pressure runs dangerously low), they have recorded a lovely, deeply felt Christmas album. I love my big Christmas choral extravaganzas and my Messiah recordings and my angelic boy sopranos and even the occasional funkadelic "Rudolph," but this one has its own niche. Low is technically a pop group, but they choose mostly religious music for Christmas and even write three new Christ-themed songs, the prettiest one being "Long Way Around the Sea," about the magi making their way home after visiting Jesus. Their version of "Little Drummer Boy" was featured in a Gap ad a few Christmases ago, but that track's not the best this little beauty has to offer. It's got everything -- presents, trees, snow, but most of all, non-kitschy Christian pop music. Talk about a Christmas miracle!

You can buy it on Amazon or for $10 (including postage) at their website. And if you don't think you can afford it, think of it as giving to charity. The band is using some of their Christmas proceeds to build a school in Kenya.

A disappointed Madonna.

I was browsing at Barnes and Noble and found some beautiful Madonna and Child cards. Those are my favorites, usually. Whether or not you're Christian, who can argue with the beauty of a mother and child?

Then my mind wandered to the movie Enchanted April in which one of the characters, played by Miranda Richardson, is told repeatedly that she looks just like a "disappointed Madonna." It's a funny idea, but it made me wonder if Mary was somewhat disappointed. We know from Luke that she observed the unusual occurrences around the birth and pondered them in her heart, and I have no doubt that she believed what Gabriel had told her, but there's believing and then there's Believing. In many ways I'm sure the experience of bearing and caring for the small Jesus was very similar to that of mothering any other child, and fully as exhausting. That's why I love the Spanish Christmas carol "Los peces en el río" in which the miraculousness of the event exists side by side with the dirty and hand-roughening task of washing Jesus's diapers. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh don't arrive for quite some time and in the meantime, there are just shepherds and cows and probably poverty. I'm sure it was at times hard to believe, as she raised this child, that he would really become what Gabriel and Anna and Simeon had said. Together with the scorn she must have endured as an unwed mother, who knows whether the overall experience of giving birth to Jesus might have been somewhat anticlimactic? Maybe not, but maybe so. Maybe some post-partum depression? Who knows? It's interesting to think about. If I were to learn that that were true, it wouldn't subtract from her strength and beauty in my eyes -- many miracles are couched in the mundane and even the painful moments of life, and can be hard to see or fully comprehend when you're mired in the moment. I would imagine full belief in the miraculousness of her situation only came over years of pondering bits and pieces of divinity, keeping them in her heart, and then finally witnessing the glorious ministry and resurrection.

Incidentally, Miranda Richardson is one of only two actresses whom I've ever been told I look like, and by multiple people on multiple occasions, so it must be true. :) And then I guess it logically follows that I resemble a disappointed Madonna? I'll have to prop my baby niece up on my lap and ask my family if they think so...

Kitty glamour shots, take two.

Sophie (the blogger) and her cat Lucie have challenged me and The Cat Formerly Known as Sophie to a cute cat picture contest. So I offer this shot as my next entry. This is what a wet, hyper cat with a shaved belly looks like when you taunt her with an irresistable feather toy. We only got the bottom half of her because it's really hard to photograph airbourne felines.

I'm not claiming it's cute in a traditional Shirley Temple sorta way -- more in a Mork from Ork sorta way.

Love burns.

Sharon was telling me with a laugh about the music-consumption rule imposed on her little brother by his mission president: all music composed over 100 years ago was fair game. She said that her other brother quipped, "So, does that include the musical setting of 'Nine Inch Will Please a Lady' by Robert Burns?" I was shocked (and a bit amused, I confess). I had been unacquainted with this bit of old-timey musical smut penned by our most venerated Scottish poet. I will not even provide a link to the verse, as it is not in keeping with the tone I wish this blog to have.

Sharon, on the other hand, had not been aware of Burns's genuinely sweet side. For this same Mr. Burns also wrote one of my favorite poems about married love, which must be recited in a lilting Scottish brogue:

John Anderson, my Jo

John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo!

John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.

GLOSS: "jo" = sweetheart, "acquent" = acquainted, "brent" = smooth, "beld" = bald, "pow" = head, "clamb" = climbed, "thegither" = together, "monie" = many, "canty" = cheerful, "ane anither" = one another, "maun" = must


Why the love poetry out of the blue? In December, all is good and right and full of love and sparkly things. I'm feelin' it. February 14, on the other hand, is a good one-and-a-half soul-chilling months outside of the true Season of Love and I predict I will be in no mood to quote my favorite love poems as I sit home on Valentine's Day and watch the five hour Jane Eyre DVD with a spoon in one hand and a carton of Haagen Dazs in the other.

So Valentine's has come early this year, kids. If you've got love poems or sweet nothings, fling 'em in my direction. If you are not of a literary bent, truffles will also be accepted.

Will you be mine?

Of Christmas trees and charities.

I'm going to buy a Christmas tree today! Real, of course. I love the smell of nature so much that I am compelled to kill some of it and bring it in my apartment. I don't know how Christmas could be Christmas without the scent of pine wafting through the house.

I've got the tree stand all ready and a place chosen by the window and I've had a stern talk with the cat about the agonies inflicted in Kitty Hell upon felines that attempt to climb their owners' Christmas trees or remove glass ball ornaments for entertainment purposes. I think she understands. And if she doesn't, there may be a future blog entry featuring a photo of a strangled cat lying near a toppled Tannenbaum.

Last weekend I made my annual pilgrimage to our local Ten Thousand Villages and got these beautiful handmade ornaments in anticipation of the tree slaying. If you're not familiar with Ten Thousand Villages, it's a chain of shops founded by the Mennonite Church that provides fair trade opportunities to third world artisans who would otherwise be paid too little for their goods. Most of the stuff there is strictly decorative, but it is all beautiful, and so it's the perfect Christmas destination -- you get to pretty up your holidays (and the holidays of those on your gift list) and contribute to a worthy cause at the same time. For many of the products you can request an information card that tells more about the artisans who made the item you are buying and what the earned money helps them accomplish in their communities and families. If you're interested, here's their website, where you can shop or find store locations.