A recent MSNBC article on what some people call “camping” inspired me to grouse at Saturday lunch. See, when I was growing up, camping involved tents in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, with a stream for water and holes in the ground for bathrooms. We cooked our food over fires*, kept both eyes wide open for snakes, and checked ourselves for ticks at night. One year Alice Roberts and I shared a tent and I hogged her Nancy Drew book.**

So then I moved to Michigan and started camping with friends and church groups and suddenly it didn’t feel like camping. We camped at state and county parks, usually next to lots of other people. The only thing that got cooked over a fire was marshmallows. There were toilets and showers.*** It was fun, but it wasn’t what I would call camping.

So at lunch on Saturday I mentioned the kind of camping I grew up on, and one of my friends said that was the kind of camping she liked to do. One thing led to another, and we began talking about a backpacking trip to Isle Royale, one of those places I’ve  been meaning to go to ever since I found out about it.

There are many details yet to be worked out in order to make this happen. First on my list is assembling gear, since I don’t have much to speak of. I am making it a challenge to do it for as little money as possible. I have a few things that will work, but the rest will have to be either borrowed or purchased. Second is to work out a date with Dawn that will work for both of us. That’s as far as I’ve got—I’ve been too busy reading about Isle Royale and other people’s backpacking trips.

*So we carried in everything by car. It still felt like real camping to me.
** Sorry, Alice, for hogging the book. At least that was the year I was sick and miserable and it was pouring rain and I went home early.
***I wasn’t so high and mighty that I refused to use them, either.

For me, today is the first day of summer. My summer plans can be summed up thusly: Work hard. Play hard. Rest hard.

There are two main parts to working hard: day job and writing. The summer gives me a chance at the day job to wrap up the loose ends of the past academic year and to lay a solid foundation for the upcoming year.

Also, I realized a few weeks ago that it would be wise to interrupt the research phase of Seven Moons and use the summer to write a freakishly bad first draft. I have 15 weeks in which to write it. I plan to write for at least 90 of those 105 days.

Playing hard involves a return to running. I’ve been avoiding it for the last few months, but I’m still planning to run in the Borgess 5K. I’m not what one would call “race ready,” but it’s a 5K. I’ll finish. Whatever I get will be a PR. Next time I’ll be faster.

In addition, I’ve scheduled regular beach visits as well as gardening time.

Resting hard involves reading, some movie watching, and my long-neglected tatting. In fact, I’m off to bring order to my tatting supplies.

And when the flurry of action that is mid-August rolls around, I’ll be ready.

“What they’d aimed for, and struck, in the depthless glare off the overpass, was not so much the car itself as a point of no return: time in a rear view mirror now, the past rushing backward to the vanishing point. Running might take her forward, it could even take her home; but it couldn’t take her back—not ten minutes, ten hours, not ten years or days. And that was tough, as Hely would say. Tough: since back was the way she wanted to go, since the past was the only place she wanted to be.”

Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

Click image to embiggen.

Did they leave anything out? Should I plan to give them my firstborn, when I have one? Or perhaps my Facebook password?

You’ll just have to follow me the old-fashioned RSS way.

As part of my research for Seven Moons, I have developed an interest in Adventist folk art and art specifically developed for Adventist purposes .

If you’re Seventh-day Adventist, you’ve probably seen it—perhaps a sanctuary model, usually to scale, even full size. In our home we have a small brass image from Daniel 2, with each body section painted the appropriate color. Evangelistic series have a long history of sensational artwork for their flyers and presentations. Even a site like 1844 makes contributions to the field.

Here is where I ask for your help. Are you familiar with research or resources on such art? Do you know someone with an amateur or professional interest in the area? I’d love to ask them some questions. You’re welcome to send me their contact information, or, if they’d prefer, I can be reached at kelly at kellyyoungberg.com.

Muchos gracias for your kind assistance.

I recently discovered that it’s possible to listen to audio podcasts on my iPod Nano 5G at one of three different speeds: slower, normal, or faster.

To change the speed, follow these steps:

Start listening to the podcast.

Press and hold the center button until the drop-down menu appears.

Use the click wheel to select one of the following options:

• Slower
• Normal
• Faster
• Add to On-The-Go

Press the center button again.

Your speed is now set for this and all subsequent podcasts. Should you wish to change the speed again, repeat the above steps.

How much faster is Faster? I listened to today’s The Writer’s Almanac. The 5:16 podcast played in 4:13, so that’s around 1.2x. Not that you’d want to speed up Garrison Keillor.

How much slower is Slower?  The same 5:13 podcast played in 6:35, so that’s around .8x. Not that you’d want to hear Garrison Keillor any slower.

This function applies only to audio podcasts; video podcasts don’t have this option.

During my sophomore year in high school, Jonathan, a fellow sophomore, asked me out for the Saturday night movie. It was early in the week when he asked. On Friday, he backed out of our date.

The news of Jonathan’s treachery flew fast. An hour later, Kiff (!!!), a senior (!) on whom I had an outsized crush, asked me out for the very same event. What he did was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for me.

Later: Story and Metastory: Part 2.

My copy of David James Duncan’s The Brothers K is wrinkled, warped, stained, a little sandy from the beach, and signed by the author. Every time I loan it to someone I steel myself for the inevitable day when it won’t come home.

During a recent re-read, I read this passage:

All I know about Ellen G. White is that she was this super-religious 1800s lady who resembled our bulldog Gomorrah and wrote a book called The Gift of Prophecy, and the Adventists liked her book so much they hang her picture all over their churches, making it look like it’s always Halloween. All I know about Ellen G. White is she isn’t funny. Peter read her book once, and discovered she was the culprit who talked Adventists into banning meat-eating and makeup and jewelry and such. He said she also laid down the law about not going out on the town on Friday nights, but Everett argued that, judging by her face, it’d be a snowy Friday night in hell before anybody ever asked her. Everett said Sister White wasted her life as a prophetess, because she could’ve struck it rich as a bookie. But Peter told Everett no way. All Ellen G. White knew, Pete said, was how to hornswoggle religious people—who are the most hornswoggable people on earth—whereas a good bookie knows how to hornswoggle gamblers, who are nothing but a bunch of hornswogglers themselves. Find yourself a prophet with the gifts of a good bookie, Pete says, like Krishna in the Bog of Vod Geeta, and maybe you got something. Otherwise, he says, forget it.

But Papa’s still looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“I’d rather be a bookie than a prophet,” I tell him.

New eyes, perhaps; before the other day, I couldn’t have told you this passage existed. Harelip prayers, the “Hump of Energy,” junk pitches, Elder Babcock—all these I knew. Just not that he’d ever mentioned Ellen G. White.

Mine was a childhood full of beasts and visions, prophets and prophecies, the holy and the most holy, the close of probation, the unpardonable sin. I went to evangelistic series in the days before PowerPoint, the ones with three screens and choreographed slide projectors. Beasts and images, angels flying in the midst of heaven, the new Jerusalem, the visions of Ellen G. White—all these I knew. But it wasn’t until I recently re-read one of her visions that I was struck by its visual imagery in a way I’m still trying to understand and quantify. Here’s the vision:

‘The Lord has given me a view of other worlds. Wings were given me, and an angel attended me from the city to a place that was bright and glorious. The grass of the place was living green, and the birds there warbled a sweet song. The inhabitants of the place were of all sizes; they were noble, majestic, and lovely. They bore the express image of Jesus, and their countenances beamed with holy joy, expressive of the freedom and happiness of the place. I asked one of them why they were so much more lovely than those on the earth. The reply was, “We have lived in strict obedience to the commandments of God, and have not fallen by disobedience, like those on the earth.” Then I saw two trees, one looked much like the tree of life in the city. The fruit of both looked beautiful, but of one they could not eat. They had power to eat of both, but were forbidden to eat of one. Then my attending angel said to me, “None in this place have tasted of the forbidden tree; but if they should eat, they would fall.” Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons. There I saw good old Enoch, who had been translated. On his right arm he bore a glorious palm, and on each leaf was written “Victory.” Around his head was a dazzling white wreath, and leaves on the wreath, and in the middle of each leaf was written “Purity,” and around the wreath were stones of various colors, that shone brighter than the stars, and cast a reflection upon the letters and magnified them. On the back part of his head was a bow that confined the wreath, and upon the bow was written “Holiness.” Above the wreath was a lovely crown that shone brighter than the sun. I asked him if this was the place he was taken to from the earth. He said, “It is not; the city is my home, and I have come to visit this place.” He moved about the place as if perfectly at home. I begged of my attending angel to let me remain in that place. I could not bear the thought of coming back to this dark world again. Then the angel said, “You must go back, and if you are faithful, you, with the 144,000, shall have the privilege of visiting all the worlds and viewing the handiwork of God.”

What thoughts it inspired are still unfolding; more is yet to come.

Eight days in Arizona, and I’m practically a new person. A few weeks ago, I remembered a stash of frequent flier miles and quickly decided to visit my sister. So I did, and now I’m back.

Either two or three years have passed since we last saw one another (although we talk on the phone every day), and we were long overdue for a visit. The Girl (7) made a list of activities:

• Go to the park.
• Walk to school.
• Learn to ride her bicycle without training wheels.
• Watch Doctor Who.
• Go to the observatory.

Somehow we managed to add making balloon animals, juggling, roasting marshmallows, watching The Princess Bride, going swimming, and a visit to Desert Botanical Garden. The Boy (9) spent much time discussing Pokemon (“Do you know what I would do if Pokemon were real?”) and Bionicles. The Girl played hours of Webkinz (the stuffed kind, not the website). I had chai out on the patio. We talked. I wrote a few hundred words on my novel. We got lost a couple of times. We had an early mini-Thanksgiving dinner. Eight days passed in a blur. On the last night The Boy said “I wish tomorrow wouldn’t come for a thousand years.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because you’re leaving,” he said.

I’ve got a novel to write and a career to relaunch. I feel refreshed and renewed, ready to tackle these challenges.

I now have a theory that each of the Left Behind books was written in a month, like a NaNoWriMo novel (Left Behind predates NaNoWriMo) and sent directly to the publisher, who skipped over the editing part. This theory explains why the series is so badly written.