Franklin Chronicle

Five books I'm grateful for

2015-04-16T23:39:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking about the way a book can change a life--in a spiritual sense, sure, but just as often in down-to-earth sense, an everyday "oh, yes THIS is what it is like to be human" sort of way. The kind of book that moves me the way natural and man-made worlds sometimes do--in small, unexpectedly beautiful ways; a view-from-Tokyo-Tower kind of book; a shore-thrashing-winter-gale kind of book; a Uinta-Valley-spring-meadow kind of book; a belly-laughing-five-year-old kind of book. Here are a few on my list, with micro summaries.

1. Leaping by Brian Doyle

Micro-summary: Love God, and wrestle with your kids. Or is it love your kids, and wrestle with God?

Here's a selection.

2. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Micro-summary: Justice is the most important, and least attainable virtue in the world. Oh, and you're not a real cowboy unless you can break sixteen wild horses in four days while all the local villagers watch.

Here's a selection.

3. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Micro-summary: A beautifully lyric answer to one of many questions we don't ask nearly enough in this country--what does it mean to be a Latina woman from a poor immigrant family living in the urban United States?

Here's a selection.

4. Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Micro-Summary: Poems that give voice to the families who fled from New Orleans, who stayed behind, who braved and were buried by the waters of Katrina, and to the dogs tied up by those families escaping the storm, and, in the opening poems, a voice to the Hurricane itself. Dazzling.

Here's a selection:

5. Notes from no Man's land by Eula Biss

Micro-Summary: Essays on race in America, and the shockingly slow progress we are making towards equality, written in a sometimes lyric, sometimes analytic voice shot through with wit, clarity, and a bewildering ability to juxtapose seemingly unrelated ideas that reveal some old truths in important new ways.

here's a selection (click on the "play audio sample button).

These are five of min. What are five of yours?

5 THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR TODAY

2015-04-12T22:31:00.001-06:00

1. Air travel. I left Minneapolis this morning at 7:30 and arrived back in Springville, UT in time for 1pm church.

2. My boys. They were all very happy to see me come home (okay, so they knew I had some small gifts and a little candy for each of them, but still..)

3. Melissa. It just takes a few days on the road to appreciate her friendship and company. I went to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and kept wanting to ask Melissa's opinion about the art. I have a good idea of what she'll like and what she won't, but I like to here her explanations of why (she took me to an art museum on our third date as a test of sorts to see if I could last an entire exhibit.). The Walker was fantastic, but not as good without Melissa.

4. Sunday School. We read Alma 7:11-14 today and talked about the broad scope of the atonement--not just Jesus's power to conquer sin, but the mystery of His ability to soak up sickness and sorrow, pulverize pain, eradicate infirmities, and mollify every malady. Class members talked about the challenges faced by loved ones - everything from mental illness to drug abuse, and to hear their stories was humbling.

5. home.

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” ― William Faulkner

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ― Maya Angelou,

On Portland cityscapes, Texas cotton fields, and Wasatch mountains.

2015-04-09T00:21:00.000-06:00

I sat next to a man today on the airplane who runs cost estimates for highway projects. He was born in Utah, has lived in Utah all his life, and he told me he will probably die in Utah.

Part of me wondered if it wasn't a shame for a person to stay in one place for their entire life.

Another part of me wondered why I have occasionally felt a lack of grounding...like a man without a country.

Another part of me wonders if that is just my nostalgia for Portland talking.

If you ever lived in Portland for any amount of time, and then moved away--you know what I'm talking about.

It is, I imagine, what nostalgia for "the old country," feels like. Portland is my "old country," and I have irrational, sentimental fits of longing for moss and douglas fir trees and rain-wet streets that stay wet hours after the storm passes.

The other day I saw a photograph of Portland and just the image of it made me pine for P-Town as one might for an old lover. Sometimes that longing is visceral. Like a shadow limb. A ghost of an embrace that has imprinted itself on my skin.

When I lived in Lubbock, it was worse. The million acres of cotton fields--they were the culprits, those billowy harbingers of discontent. It was a two hour drive to the nearest wilderness--and that was dusty canyon land. Portland then felt like some forsaken Eden.

Now I live in Utah, in a valley that sits below Mountains that I once thought were brown. The day we drove back into Utah County after living in Texas for a few years--an August afternoon in 2012, I remember thinking, ""the mountains look so green." This is not a word I would have used to describe them 13 years ago when I moved to Utah. This is not a word anyone associates with the Wasatch Front.

But this is home. For now. Forever? Who knows. The sun breaks over those mountains every morning on my way to work, and in the evening, that same light makes the mountains glow a gentle pink. The predominant natural image of my childhood was the everygreen tree--or trees, really. Thousands of them, a legion of green pines and cedars and firs; always the threat that they might take over. For my boys it will be these mountains--and the way they watch over us like giants, asleep on the valley's edge.

Mountains or trees? Cotton or Cottonwood? Oak or Douglas fir? Endless horizon or endless mountain range? Does it make a difference? has it already?

Night at the theater for Night at the Museum

2015-04-07T21:47:00.001-06:00

It's spring break here in Springville and that means lots of family fun for the Franklin Fam. This morning Melissa took the tikes and their nickles to the nickle arcade, then to the BYU Museum of Art where I met them for a half-hour of musing over the Museum's many masterpieces--mostly magnificent miniature Origami originals by avid artists from around the world. I went back to work to get a bit more work done and they stayed at the museum to fold some of their own origami originals (this is not one of them pictured here, but rather the work of a right swell paper folder named Richard Sweeney). Then about dinner time I came home for dinner and Nolan and I played a little baseball and we all ate a lickety split meal of split pea soup and ham before climbing in the car and (Dodge) caravaning over to Provo to watch Ben Stiller Ham it up in the third installment of the Night at the Museum franchise which, frankly, was not as funny as the first, but better than the last, and will, quite possibly, be the last of the NATM franchise. Which is too bad, because Ben knows how to bring the funny, if you know what I mean.

And when the movie ended we hurried home to end the day with a sweet snack (at least for the boys, who ate left over chocolate cheese cake from Easter Dinner), and then got themselves to bed.

okay, enough of that....

On the way home from the theater tonight, Melissa and I mused about the fact that ten years from now we will only have Ian at home-that Nolan will be 18 and Callan 21, and that ten years ago we were just getting started on this family ride. It's all a blur really, so I'm glad we took some time today to slow down and do more than get things done. Love the wife. Love the kids. Love Springville.

Cheers!

2015-04-06T22:15:00.002-06:00

God was displeased with those who built the tower of babel, but this tower of general conference was a big hit. Every six months we have a marathon TV event and watch ten hours of conference sessions where we hear from a variety of church leaders from around the world, including the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It's a feast of good council, and the boys have learned to play quietly and listen (more or less). Blocks are a popular activity during the conference.

Some great lines from this April's Conference, courtesy of the internet meme factory.

The boys are also taking part in a memory study that analyzes there brain activity before and after physical activity. This meant a 7 am trip to BYU on Saturday morning and some time laying very still inside an MRI machine.

Here's Nolan's brain and 3-d image of his head, sans hair.

And Here's Callan. They both earned a little money and we got to see proof that they have brains. Ha ha ha.

Nolan had a pack meeting this month and they did a funny skit that involved pantomiming fishing.

Grandma came down to visit on Wednesday this past week to see Callan's school program (above). Afterward she and Nolan played around a bit together on the piano and violin. So fun to have family close.

For St. Patrick's Day we got together with Melissa's side of the family. We had corned beef, potatoes, Salad and lots of green.

Franklin Family Photo shoot 2014

2015-02-08T21:32:00.002-07:00

One cold morning in lat December...

we convinced the boys to put on some coordinating outfits and head out into the snow for a family photo shoot...

They all had great attitudes, but the photos don't lie...it was COLD!!!!

You can Photoshop red cheeks...

bunt you can't Photoshop clenched fists and chattering teeth...

We all took turns getting our photos taken by the big tree in the front of the house while everyone else waited inside.

And Callan had his first practice as family photographer. He did pretty good.

And no family photo shoot would be complete without a few goofy shots. Notice Nolan doing the "Steve Walk" from Minecraft.

He might actually be doing an impression of Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf doing the big foot walk...

Or maybe an impression of his older brother who did a similar pose about a month earlier at Nolan's baptism.

And just to prove they were tough, the boys decided they wanted to take this shot out in the snow. Ever since, they've been walking around the house and without warning they strike a muscle man pose and say, "Check out the gun show!" (I think we can blame that one on Uncle Chad... :-) )

Our Busy Fall - 2014

2015-01-25T00:57:00.002-07:00

Here are the boys on an indian summer walk in late September. They spent most of the month saying, "I can't believe how nice the weather is." We've spent most of the past few months saying, "I can't believe how big you are all getting." The boys started school, got back into their music, and I started classes at the Y. Melissa is serving on the PTA, running the book club at the library, and serving in the Relief Society at church.

We dressed as cowboys for Halloween and went door to door holding up neighbors for candy. We usually dress up as a family for Halloween in some way (see below), and sometimes that can be pretty time consuming and expensive. This year, we really didn't want to spend a lot of money, so we came up with this idea...we ended up buying two or three shirts at the thrift store--the neckerchiefs the boys took home from a work party, and the vests are made of felt and hot-glued together, and we borrowed hats (it helps to have a cowboy for a grandfather).

One year in Lubbock the boys were sharks. The sweaters are still around the house, and every once in a while a shark is spotted swimming through the house.

Our busiest year in Lubbock we opted for simple...black bat hats. I can't believe how little Ian is!

I think this was my favorite year...And Nolan as the clock toting crock! You just can't beat that.

Not our best year in terms of theme. But again, Nolan as a duck? This is why Halloween exists. For duck costumes on babies. Oh, and for chocolate.

The Franklin gang...they specialize in stage coaches, west-bound trains, and snack size candybars.

Completely unrelated to Halloween, but a fun photo. We stopped in at a military surplus store in Orem and they wanted to try everything on.

And Fall photo dumps have to have pies. Right? Cranberry pie. I was totally unoconvinced that this would be any good. Mostly I was grumpy that we weren't going to make a chocolate pie. But this...this was good pie.

We ate up in Salt Lake City with Melissa's family. Their apartment has a great social room with a kitchen and fun dining area.

After dinner we took a walk through memory grove, which is just a few blocks from their apartment.

A few weeks later we had Nolan's baptism. A bunch of family came over to the house afterward for brunch.

Okay this jumps us forward to Christmas eve. Our ward to a "truck stop Christmas" service project inwhich we baked 480 cookies and bagged them up along with a small Christmas note and then delivered them to semi-truck drivers parked at truck stops near our neighborhood.

About 15 people came and helped assembled bags and then on Christmas Eve night about eight o'clock we delivered the bags with the help of Melissa's parents and two families from the ward. We met a few truckers, but most were tucked into their cabs or out of their trucks, so we hung the bags from their mirrors. We delivered 96 bags.

Also that night...we all put towels on our heads and pretended to be Israelite shepherds watching flocks by night...

And Ian put out cookies and carrots for Santa

And Nana and Papa stayed the night on Christmas Eve. We actually had to wake little boys up on Christmas morning. We could't believe it.

Ian's favorite present was his new guitar. He's been asking for one for years.

That two-fist celebration is Callan, excited about his six-week community rec fencing class.

The boys spent a lot of time in the heavy snow that fell on Christmas.

And we made Christmas Cake for Christmas Dinner dessert. This is a popular Christmas dessert in Japan and we try to make one every year.

Saturday after Christmas we had a white elephant party with a lot of Melissa's family.

And that same day I took Nolan, Callan, and Cousin JT to the BYU game vs. Gonzaga.

This december we also got around to bottling some rootbeer with a homemade root beer kit that we got for Christmas last year. It was the best root beer we'd ever had.

We did some sledding at Rock Canyon Park and two of our sleds didn't make it home.

and Callan got to go skiing for the first time.

That was our busy Fall.. What I didn't mention above is that over the thanksgiving Holiday we spent almost every day from Friday to Friday with somebody sick at the house.--really sick. First Ian, then me, then Nolan, then Mom, then Callan. We had a brief break long enough to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner, but we spent the entire time feeling pretty awful. So our bar for Christmas break was pretty low--if no one got sick then that would be a success. And we did it. No one got sick. We did some meaningful service, made some great food, and saw a lot of family with no major drama anywhere.

Fall is upon us...

2014-11-11T23:24:00.003-07:00

Fall at our house almost always means forts of some size. This one the boys slept in a few weeks ago.

And it means more bread baking, which means that the KitchenAid sits on the floor. It's missing a rubber knob on the bottom and if we left it on the counter for an eight-minute kneading cycle it would vibrate itself onto the floor.

Fall also means first-day-of-school shots. Ginny really wanted to go with the boys.

And of course a lot of Soccer. It's Ian's first year and he does a lot of running around. He''s just happy to be on the field, regardless of which direction his team is going.

And the post-game nap has become an essential ingredient in our soccer days.

Labor day weekend we booked a last-minute campsite up Diamond Fork campground in Spanish Fork. We had foil dinners and s'mores and stayed up late to watch the stars. We don't spend enough time (and I really mean "any time") looking up at the night sky, which is one of the reasons we like to go camping. And I know its a bit of a cliche that we should go to the woods

We took a hike in Red Ledges picnic area. Mom made it half way up the hill and she and the dog waited for the boys and me to go all the way to the top.

a fun little summit...I had to carry little Ian the last bit up and the first bit down--it was just too steep.

Here's our portion of the Franklin family at Uncle Richard's funeral. It was a beautiful service and a sad day to say goodbye to a good man.

Here's Melissa at about 2 a.m. on the weekend of Callan's Birthday. While he was at Nana and Papa's house we redid his room--painted, built a new bed, sewed new curtains and hung art on the wall.

Here's Callan earning his arrow of light. We had one month (October) where we didn't have to go to pack meeting. Callan is now doing 11-year-old scouts and Nolan starts cub scouts in November.

I grew up playing soccer in the rain, but here in Utah it almost never happens, so when it started to poor at one of Nolan's last games, I knew it was going to be a memorable event. The boys all loved it and everyone got soaked.

Here's a picture of the bed I built for Callan's birthday. I bought a scrap of plywood from the Habitat for Humanity store, as well as some trim, and the rest is from pine boards left by the previous owners of our house. Inspiration courtesy of Pinterest.

This is a fun photo. I took it at a retirement get together for Bruce Jorgensen. In this photo sit five generations of creative writing instructors at BYU. Doug Thayer is at the head of the table. he started teaching at BYU in 1954. To his left is Bruce Young, who took classes from Doug. In the left foreground of the photo is John Bennion who took classes from Bruce. To the left of John is Pat Madden who was a student of John Bennion. And the hand in the left foreground, that's my hand, and I took classes from Pat and Doug. That's sixty years of Creative Writing at BYU. So glad to be a part of it.

Ian and I watched a lot of soccer together.

And Callan and I watched a lot of soccer together too...including this very rainy day.

More England

2014-07-25T00:10:00.000-06:00

I met a couple through some internet research who live in Stockend and bought their house thirty years ago from some Cook cousins. They invited us over on Sunday afternoon and gave us a walking tour of the area. We walked the narrow lanes ad climbed over fences and shimmied down hills, walking on ground that was my family's home for several generations. Its hard to imagine leaving such a place for the relative desolation of Sugar City, Idaho, but that's what Martha and Arthur did, and George too. Great grandpa George first actually in December of 1905 he left with some missionaries and other emigrating saints, and then the rest of the family the following April, 1906. Why Sugar City? I don't know, except that there was a missionary from Rockland, Idaho serving in Stroud, (Elder Robert Kelly) and Rockland was the destination point that George Franklin put on the passenger manifest when he traveled to the US. on the same boat with Robert Kelly and dozens of other returning missionaries and emigrating saints, so reason would suggest that George (then just 15) was traveling with Robert, and likely staying with the Kelly family at least briefly until he got his footing in his new country.

Here's a shot of the country lane that leads o Randall's farm.

The LDS Church has a long history in this part of the world, and not always a pleasant one. For many years, the city of Stroud, I am told, would not allow Mormons to build a chapel in town, so they had to find places to hold meetings, including this community hall, and members homes. Martha and Arthur would have brought their family here, among other places, and they were baptized just down the road at a public bath house.

This is the Methodist Church in Stroud where some of the family attended church.

About fifteen minutes south east of Stroud is Kemble. And this is Kemble Station, where, in 1855, GGGG grandpa Jeremiah Franklin was struck by a train and killed. His widowed wife, along with their young children ended up moving in with oldest son John William Franklin (my GGG grandfather). John had been married a few years earlier and had children of his own, and was now responsible for both families. Here's the newspaper article about Jeremiah's death:

This is Lower Street in Ruscombe near Stroud where in 1860 much of the Franklin clan lived in a row of cottages. We walked up and down the street to get a feel for what it would have been like to live along side so much family (something like two dozen Franklin brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles all lived right near each other.

In Liverpool, our subterranean Pod hotel.

A fun street in Liverpool.

We took a tour of old Liverpool docks that are now mostly burried beneath streets and a shopping mall. It was in Liverpool at the new version of these docks where Martha and Arthur and their children emigrated to the United States on the SS Cymric, a White Start Line boat that shipped both people and livestock.

This fantastic looking building is the old headquarters of the White Start shipping company. That's the same company that owned the Titanic.

Liverpool skyline.

Between the research and the conference in London, we spent a day in North Whales on a whistle stop bus tour.

We were in England for ten days and we only had one day of real rain. The rest of the time we had just the right amount of cloud cover.

Conwy castle from the bus window. It cost omething like 45 million pounds in today's money, and King Richard I only spent a few weekends here, or so they say.

This castle is one of the major reasons we did the bus tour of North whales. I don't know what it is about medieval castles...maybe its just Hollywood, but I feel like a castle offers such sense of history, of a glimpse into the past that is hard to get anywhere else....also a simultaneous sense of man's ability to accomplish big things, and also the ultimate transitory nature of those big things. We can make really big sand castles, but the ocean always wins--even if it takes, as in the case of Conwy, more than a 1000 years.

These narrow streets in North Whales were much more fun to walk around then the narrow streets in Stroud were to drive around.

And just like that, we are out of the village, and into a national park. Still farm land here though. Sheep. Lots of sheep.

A view of the street in front of our hotel near Earl's Court station.

This is a view from the window of the theater where we saw War Horse. All the chimney's made me think of Marry Poppins. And War Horse, by the way, was really amazing--hit all the notes that a good piece of war lit should (i.e. it showed how war brings out the best and worst of humanity).

We had one full day in London together before my conference started, so we hit all the major sites. Buckingham Palace was surprisingly uninspiring. I think its something about the neoclassical architecture--it brings to mind banks and schools more than palaces and monarchies.

The Book of Mormon is playing in London and is, apparently, very popular. I haven't seen the show, but I hope I'm one of those Mormons who can laugh at himself. Still, its too bad such an oversimplification of missionary work is garnering so much attention. However, since those of us on the "inside" of the missionary story have yet to tell a compelling version of the story for a national audience, its no wonder the guys behind South Park own the stage. Hmmm...

So many old books. So little time (and money).

As I understand it, this little alley of shops was the inspiration for Daigon Alley in the Harry Potter series. No Goblin's bank though.

One day to see most of London was a little overwhelming. Here's the dizzing scene in front of the house of parliament.

One of our last stops was the tower bridge. A great view of the Thames.

We couldn't leave this part of London without walking through Bloomsbury--one-time home to Virginia Woolf, among others.

We ended our long day in London with a 45 minute boat ride down the Thames back to our end of town. It wasn't a tour boat, but a river bus and it only cost us a few pounds each. We got a great view of London and a nice bit of time to rest our feet. By the end of the day I had begun to question the value of the "go here and look at this famous place" approach to tourism. I did enjoy all the places we saw (take Buckingham palace, for instance. We walked past the main gate and dozens of people were being escorted through, all of them wearing their finest clothes--men in police and military uniforms, suits and ties, and women in smart dresses and fantastic hats. Someone told us they were being presented to the queen in honor of public service, or something like that), but I think at a certain point one reaches saturation with such looking.

I remember going to the grand canyon and having the same experience. The shuttles took us from one overlook to the next and we oohed and ahhed appropriately, but at a certain point in the day I'd had my fill of looking. I wanted to get down in the canyon. To engage my body in the memory, and not just my mind.

And maybe that's what it comes down to--wanting to experience and remember a place bodily. That's why I always remember the food I eat when I travel--because I've used food to bind myself to that place.

I'd seen enough churches and museums and statues. What I hadn't had enough of was people. A person, a life to connect to the places I was visiting. Otherwise England might as well remain a postcard.

On the first day of my conference, Melissa spent the day and Kew Gardens on the grounds of Kew Palace where crazy King George III spent the end of his life.

Here is crazy King George's bathtub.

After Kew Gardens Melissa went to the Opera house, but before she hit the show, she had lunch at an Okonomiyaki restaurant. We've posted about Okonomiyaki before--one of our favorite japanese meals.

On Sunday after my conference ended we headed to the Southbank for a show at the Globe. We stopped in at St. Peter's and caught the tale end of Mass, crossed Millenium bridge, saw the gum art, and then made it to the Globe for what we thought was a 7:30 showing of Antonie and Cleopatra.

The short version of this long story on the South Bank is this: The show started at 6:30, not 7:30 like we'd supposed, and our pre-purchased tickets were accidently purchased for a July 29th show, not the June 29th show, like we'd thought. So we were either an hour late, or a month early, depending on which angle of the story you want to focus on. We ended up buying groundling tickets and leaning against the stage for the last two acts of the show that we hadn't missed. Not ideal, but it worked out in the end.

And that brings us to the end of the trip. Some fine research. A fantastic international creative writing contest, and a few days of tourism to ice the cake!

England Part 1

2014-07-14T00:30:00.002-06:00

The last ten days in June, Melissa and I took a little trip to England for research, a conference, and a few days of sightseeing. The kids stayed with a dedicated army of friends and relatives who kept them fed and clothed and happy while we were gone, and to all of you, we are very grateful. Below is a photo dump of our trip, with a few highlights.

The trip started out with a seven hour layover in Philadelphia. What do you do when you have a half a day in one of the best cities for art in the World? You catch train into town fro the airport and you make a mad dash around the city to see as much as possible before you have to be back to the airport.

Our plan was to to hit the Rodin museum and then whatever else we had time for.

This is "The Thinker," as if you didn't know...but what you may not know is that it takes its inspiration from Dante. In the Early 1880s Rodin was working on a massive sculpture called "The Gates of Hell," meant to depict scenes from Dante's Inferno. In the image below you can see Dante near the top of the doors near the center pondering his trip through hell.

It's hard to appreciate just how massive and overwhelming this sculpture is. At the bottom of the post here I'e included a shot with us in it to give you an idea. What is really fantastic about coming to this museum is that if I have my facts straight, they have the first ever completed "Gates of Hell." Rodin only ever did casts for it (cost being one of the major factors that kept it from being completed). But the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia had the money to do it, and here it is. They did two, actually, and gave the second to the original Musee de Rodin in France. That's more than you wanted to know probably, but for me its a big deal. I wrote an essay two years ago called "The Lifespan of a Kiss," that was, among other things, about the History of Rodin's famous sculpture "The Kiss," and this museum contained all (or nearly all) the artwork that I studied for and referenced in that essay. I'd only ever seen any of them in books, and here I got to see them in person.

an image of damned souls clinging to one another as they spiral through hell. You gotta give those Catholics credit...their images of hell are a lot more intense than the Mormon ones I grew up with (and I never really liked that one (in the link)...it looks like Christ is shunning people, and I don't think Christ is capable of shunning anyone. Rather, we choose to turn our backs on him, but that's another story).

Here's a close up of Dante. As I understand it, Rodin was a big Dante fan, and (as you will see below) Rodin used Dante's Inferno and "The Gates of Hell" as inspiration for decades to come.

"The Kiss" was originally supposed to one of the tormented couples on "The Gates" but they were eventually removed because the image was too pure and exalted for the anguished theme of the gates. There is this couple in the lower right corner, but they don't look nearly as at peace as the figures in "The Kiss."

It is hard to do this bust justice in a photo. This is Rose Buret, Rodin's first love and first model.

The "story" behind "The Kiss," is from Dante's Inferno, who writes of meeting two lovers bound together in hell, unable to consummate their passion. There names were Francesca and Paolo and they were brother- and sister-in-law and well, you can see what got them in trouble.

This was the piece I was most excited about seeing, and I had no idea it was there. This is the sculptor's equivalent of a sketch or study--an early terracotta mock-up of "The Gates" that shows the earliest known vesion of "The Kiss," when it was still part of "The Gates." So cool! Apparently it is on loan from the Musee de Rodin in France as a thank-you to the Philadelphia museum for paying to complete "The Gates."

I think to appreciate Rodin's work, you have to appreciate the significance of sexual energy in human life, an energy that is too often demonized by Victorian ideas about passion, or trivialized by 21st century free-love mentality (both oversimplifications). These two sculptures capture in my mind the paradox of Rodin's work and of sexuality in general---It's freeing, liberating, empowering force, as well as its potential to enslave. This is not a conversation that we have nearly enough today, I don't think.

See? Massive? Astonishing. Fantastic! Plus the woman at the front desk found out we only had a few hours in Philadelphia and gave us some free tickets to the Philadelphia art museum (below). Rocky fans will recognize it. And it is so large I don't even know where to begin. We only had about an hour, so we hit the highlights and then took the bus to Love Park a few blocks away.

Robert Indiana created this iconic image in the 1960s...it started out as the cover of Christmas cards he sent out (and then failed to copyright). An essay on this sculpture is somewhere in my mind, biding it's time, though I haven't attempted it yet.

Okay, flash forwards twelve hours or so and we've flown to London, rented a car (pictured here), and driven two hours to Stroud, in Gloucestershire (pronounced "Gloss-tuh-sure"). This is part one of the research portion of the trip. Stroud is in the Cotswalds, a remote, scenic, and very hilly part of the country, with roads built for horses and pedestrians and not for cars of any sensible size.

In Stroud we retraced the steps of my Franklin ancestors who were born, married, and buried in this region for centuries before emigrating to the US in 1905-6. For a detailed look at all the places we went, and why we went there, see this map. In short, The family had a history of rough-edged individuality that involved hard living and hard drinking, and it turns out, the valley that many of them came from (Stock End) had a reputation for lawlessness, and according to local history, the constables didn't like coming down to that area because of said lawlessness.

In fact, one source suggests that the reason churches like the one above (where several generations of Franklin's were married and buried) were built was to bring some civilization and morality to rural, lawless places like Stroud.

We met with the warden of the church on Sunday afternoon and he gave us a tour. He even turned on the recently refurbished organ and let Melissa play.

Here's a shot of the interior, standing just about where ( I presume) great great grandma Martha Cooke Steele Franklin and Edward George Franklin would have stood in 1887 when they were married. Ed would die of the flu 4 years later and set the stage the family's conversion to the Church. Martha remarried a man named Aurthur Steele and they met missionaries in 1901, were baptized in 1902, and then emigrated to the US a few years later with a larger group of LDS converts coming to the intermountain west of the United States.

Also on Sunday we visited with Percy Brownjohn (93) whose sister married one of my distant cousins years and years ago. He's the closest thing to a living relative I could find (though I'm sure there are others). He was a sweet old man who was happy to have visitors to his little cottage that he built himself from the ground up more than 60 years ago.

Sunday evening we ended the day by visiting Stock End and the area surrounding Randall's Farm, where Martha and Edward lived and where my great grandfather was born in 1891. I'd heard that this area was populated by family, and had always assumed it was Franklins, but we visited an old man who grew up in the area and told us that all the families in the area were Cooks--Martha's family. This image below is "Grandpa Cook," the Patriarch of the family in the early twentieth century. I don't know how he fits in to the family tree, but the man we spoke with knew him and worked on his farm and knew many of my cousins. "I grew up surrounded by two families," he told me. "Cooks and Franklins."

The man had a lot of old photographs of the area, and this painting of Randall's farm that someone painted in 1995. This is the house that the Franklins lived in in the early 1890s--the house where my great great grandfather George was born.

Again, it is really hard to do this justice. The green went on forever.

More later. This is just the first three days!

Mother's Day surprises are hard to pull off if you're married to Melissa.

2014-05-25T21:03:00.000-06:00

For Mother's Day this year I watched the boys (including cousin Kimble) so that Melissa and her sister Amy could go out for the day--do some shopping, get lunch, see a movie, etc.

Of course, my real motivation for getting Melissa out of the house was so I could paint our bathroom, which while it is really lovely for lots of reasons, had a serious case of beige-itis.

(If you've never heard of beige-itis, that's a disease in which a room in your home is so overwhelmingly washed out and boring that you find yourself inexplicably wanting to sit on the couch all day watching reruns of the home shopping network while painting hotel art and subsisting on a diet of wonderbread and mayonnaise sandwiches...Our house currently suffers from beige-itis in most every room).

So I asked Amy to keep Melissa out of the house for at least three and a half hours and as soon as they walked out the door I got to work. The paint color is "Atmosphere" from Behr, and in addition to the paint, I got some white towels at Wal-Mart on clearance, and I cut a faux frame out of 1x3 stain-grade pine and glued it onto the mirror. As pictured below, the frame has one coat of gel stain on it, but that is all I had time for (I'll get the few coats on soon). Eventually we'll swap out the light fixture, and maybe find some art to put up, but for now, this was change enough. It's my favorite room in the house now.

The best part is, I got it all finished about thirty minutes before Melissa and Amy came home, and even after they arrived, it took Melissa nearly two hours to make her way back into our bedroom to see what I'd done (Amy kept trying to come up with ways to get her to go back into her room -- "Don't you want to change?" She'd say...).

Of course Melissa knew I was up to something (she told Amy in the car, "I think Joey is building me something"), but she didn't catch on that I was painting the bathroom (which is a feat, considering three days earlier I'd had a subtle conversation with her about paint color as we sat at the computer looking at bathrooms on Pinterest. I almost painted it green, which I would have loved, but she would have hated).

Easter Ties and Easter Eggs

2014-05-25T00:47:00.001-06:00

Melissa bought us all Easter ties again this year, and the boys (I think for the first time ever, they were all really happy to get them, though Nolan and Ian have already broken their clip ons).

On Easter Sunday we had dinner with my sister Krysti and her husband Ross and a bunch of their kids (they have 13 + some in-laws). The events included a brief devotional in which a few cousins took turns giving part of the message about the meaning of Easter and then we watched brief video (#becauseofhim) and then an Easter Egg hunt for all the kids from Ian (4) to my twin nieces who are both 16. There were 180 eggs, if I remember correctly--enough for twenty each.

Nolan was the first one finished! It wasn't a race, but, of course, it was (you know how it is).

Capitol Reef

2014-05-18T22:16:00.003-06:00

“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”

--Edward Abbey

So your wife has a broken collar bone, you students are all about to turn in their finals, and you just got word that Grandma might not make it through the weekend? What do you do? Well, if you are me and the boys and our exchange student, Naoto, you head to Capitol Reef for the weekend. I don't think we would have gone if Naoto wasn't scheduled to go back to Japan the following week, but he was and we had a friend's cabin scheduled and the boys had been looking forward to the trip for weeks, so Melissa's sisters came to our house in Springville and stayed with her and the little cousins while we spent Thursday night - Saturday afternoon in red rock country.

Climbing on rocks. This is what we did the whole weekend. Even when we were on a trail the boys stopped at every big rock or outcropping to climb up. Only occasionally did they strike a pose.

We packed lunches each day and brought water and snacks and the boys carried their own gear and didn't complain a bit. (okay, maybe a tiny bit on the last hike when i wouldn't let the stop every two minutes to throw rocks, or climb higher up the hill off the trail after we'd already gone way off it and had to get back to the car, but really 959 of the trip was fuss free and we had a really great time).


“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break” --Edward Abbey

We had pancakes and sausage for breakfast on Friday morning and we let the boys stay up crazy late both nights watching movies and eating junk (isn't that what vacation is for?).

On Friday we did a two two-mile hikes and on Saturday we did another two-mile hike. We hiked slot canyons and red rock ridges and saw petraglyphs and pioneer registers (and some rock graffiti, including one lady who carved her first and last name into the stone, along with the date--isn't that kind of like tagging your name on the side of a building? Sure makes it easy for the authorities to track you down).

You can't see Nolan very well in this picture, but those are his legs up in the pocket of the rock.

There is a certain something about red rock country that is hard to get anywhere else--a certain awareness of the age of things...of the way time builds upon itself one thin layer at a time...of the way water and wind heat and cold can whip through a valley and crumble an entire mountain.

In red rock country, as in the rest of the world, all things are working themselves to dust, but the difference is, in red rock country there's no putting on airs. The world is crumbling around itself, and that is okay. The sage brush withers, an arch falls under its own weight, the canyon walls slip slowly into rubble, and a pair of brothers step down a trail together, taking the lead from their dad, kicking rocks as they go, wearing down their own channel, slowly, in the earth.

2014-04-23T22:35:00.001-06:00

A snapshot of the past two weeks:

The short version...

Wednesday April 9 - Melissa breaks her collar bone playing fetch with the dog.
Monday April 14th - My front left wheel breaks off my car while I'm driving on campus.
Thursday April 17th - We get word that Melissa's grandmother is on her deathbed.
Thursday April 17th - I hit two deer at once time while driving in Southern Utah
Friday April 18th - Melissa's grandmother dies.
Monday April 21st - Today - Nolan and Ian get the stomach flu and spend all day Tuesday and most of early morning Wednesday throwing up.

It has been a rough few weeks, but really it could have been so much worse.

The long version...

Wednesday April 9 - While playing fetch with the dog on a 50 ft leash at the park, Melissa gets pulled over by the overzealous puppy chasing her ball, and she twists on her heals and falls shoulder first onto the concrete, snapping her clavicle in half like a #2 pencil. We spend the afternoon and early evening first at the Urgent Care, and then at the hospital getting x-rays and waiting for the Orthopedist to give us a diagnosis. Melissa gets her first shot of morphine and tells me she'd rather give birth than break her clavicle. If you know anything about Melissa's pregnancies, THAT is saying something.

We are told to come back Monday for consultation. Melissa is sent home in a sling and torso wrap that is miserable to wear.

Plus side? Melissa could have hit her head and suffered a concussion. She could have been alone at the park (her sister was with her), I could have been out of town, She could have fallen, not onto the concrete, but into a boiling pool of great white sharks.

Monday April 14th - at approximately 10:45 am, fifteen minutes before the last day of my advanced creative writing class where we have planned to eat pie (a potluck for which I have baked from scratch a crumble-top apple pie) and share our work, I am driving my Honda up and out of the JFSB parking garage on BYU campus, when I turn a corner and the left front wheel falls off my car. I grind to a stop, get out, survey the damage, and call campus police, who tell me I need to call campus parking, who tell me I need to call campus autoshop, who tell me they can't help without, yes, permission from campus police. Guess who I call next?

When the police arrive, I ask them to watch out for the car while we wait for the tow truck and I rush my pie over to my class of waiting students. I ask them to carry on without me, as my car is currently broken and blocking traffic in the aforementioned parking garage, give them the pie as a consolation prize, and head back to the parking garage where a tow truck meets me courtesy of AAA, and hauls the car to my favorite little autoshop where they fix the problem for a scant $700.

Oh yeah, and while all this is happening, I'm supposed to be taking Melissa to the Dr. for our consultation with the Orthopedist, so instead of me picking her up, she gets dressed and drives herself one-handed to Provo and picks me up.

At the Doctor's office, we decide to give the sling and torso wrap three weeks, and if things haven't started fusing back together, we'll do surgery.

Plus side? My wheel could have fallen off on the freeway, which could have caused the car to roll, and perhaps killed me.

Thursday April 17th - Faced with the question of how Melissa will survive on a long-planned trip to Capitol Reef National Park for the weekend, we decide that Melissa and her mom and sisters will stay here in Provo while our exchange student, the older boys, grandpa, and I go to Capitol Reef.

However, one hour before we are scheduled to leave, we get word that Melissa's grandmother is unresponsive in her room in an Oregon assisted living center, and Grandma and Grandpa Fitzgerald change plans, buy tickets, and fly out to Portland that afternoon.

Upside: Grandma and Grandpa Fitzgerald arrived in Portland in time to see Grandma one more time before she passed away. And Naoto, Callan, Nolan, and I still made the drive to Capitol Reef. Melissa and her sister's spent the weekend together, which helped them handle the news of grandma's passing.

Thursday April 17th - That night, after three hours in the car, and with only a few more miles to go before we arrived at our lodging near Capitol Reef NP, I came around a corner on Highway 12 outside Torrey, Utah and hit two deer at once who were standing in the middle of the road. Nolan, who had been talking and talking as he is wont to do near the end of any road trip, said, I realize now, "Dad, don't hit those deer," but he said it so softly and as such a matter of course that it didn't register as a warning until after I'd already slammed on the brakes and watched the two started animals hit my grill and roll onto the pavement in front of me. Both animals jumped up and stumbled off into the darkness, and we rolled on to our cabin.

Both boys said several times, "That was really scary," but I didn't realize how effected they were by the event until almost a half an hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table in the cabin and right in the middle of a conversation about hot dogs or something, Nolan melted into tears. I scooped him up and let him cry a bit and then he said, "Its okay though, because the deer got up and walked away." I'm thinking its okay to let him believe the deer will be okay, and who knows, maybe they will be.

Upside: the car is only cosmetically damaged, and we still had a great time at the park.

Monday April 21st - Both Nolan and Ian start complaining of stomach pains and then spend the whole evening and following day throwing up. It is now Wednesday and Nolan is doing fine but Ian is running a fever and has only had Pedialite to drink since yesterday.

Upside: at least it isn't all three kids throwing up!

I've got to say, I'm grateful to have a flexible job that has allowed me to work from home so I can take care of Melissa and the kids, and I'm grateful to neighbors and family who have helped with meals and who have watched boys and given rides. We are pretty exhausted and alternate between laughing and crying because, really, what else is there to do? Still, amid all this we were able to have a large group of exchange students over for dinner as a last hurrah for Naoto, our exchange student from Japan; and we had a potluck with graduate students one night; and we got to spend a wonderful Easter afternoon with my sister Krysti and her husband Ross and their kids this past Sunday. So it's been crazy and we are ready for a breather, but it has also been lovely, and in the end, it really all could have been so much worse.

Photo Dump-o-rama

2014-03-25T00:33:00.001-06:00

My goal now for a long time has been to make a weekly post to the family blog, and for a long time now I’ve been failing miserably. But we HAVE been living these past few months, and we’ve taken some pictures to prove it.

In early March, I took Callan and two other cub scouts to a belt loop camp. Callan earned the Volleyball, marbles, and astronomy belt loops. here he is bumping a volleyball. He did really well and had a lot of fun. He'd never played marbles before but won just about every game he played. Then a week later, at home we were playing marbles and he wasn't doing as well and he said, "I don't know what happened, I gotta get my shot back," and he practiced out in the living room for hours.

Last Fall we took a hike from the Squaw Peak parking lot along the ridge. We had lunch and hiked about an hour and even helped Ian take his first #2 in the woods. That wasn't as fun as it sounds.

In October we went with the Fitzgerald extended fam to a pumpkin patch for a hay ride and some cool pumpkin picking.

Nolan is the blurry, curly kid at the top middle of the screen. He and Callan both played on basketball teams for the first time this year. They both played in the old Springville gym where two games go simultaneously and the noise reverberating in that room is enough to make you crazy. But the architecture is pretty cool, and the kids are cute.

We all went as super heroes for Halloween. It was our first big neighborhood activity and it was crazy. We gave out a ton of candy and covered about six square blocks in an hour of trick-or-treating.

The funniest part about Halloween was how quickly the boys tired out. I remember running from house to house with my brother Jason trying to get as much candy as we could, knocking on doors as late as 8:30pm, pushing the limits of people's patience--Jason even tried going out in two different costumes once in order to hit a house twice that was giving out full-sized candy bars.

Incidentally, Halloween was also the night that Nolan learned the truth about Santa Claus. You see, Melissa had this idea about how to get the boys to give up some of their candy (to keep them from eating too much sugar, not so we could eat it). She told the boys that if they left out their bag of candy at night the "great pumpkin" would exchange their bags of candy for a new cool toy. Nolan thought this was a great idea, but when he asked if he could put his bag of candy out that night, I told him no, and when he asked why, I said, "Because the great pumpkin hasn't gone to the store yet to get the toys." I didn't know it then, but later Nolan told me that it was this conversation that helped him figure out that Mom and Dad must be in on the whole Santa Claus thing.

Nolan has also been playing the Violin a lot.. nd Callan's been playing the piano. They practice most mornings before school and sometimes they even do it without complaining. Actually, Nolan almost never complains about practicing the violin. Callan, on the other hand,, likes to remind us on a regular basis that piano is not on his short list of favorite things to do. Still, though, when he doesn't think we're paying attention, we do get to witness him actually having fun playing piano.

Here's a shot of the boys reading together on the couch. Ian likes to hold up books and flip the pages and "read" to himself the stories he has memorized.

A few more shots of Nolan's basketball games. Gotta get a better camera. He is a diligent little ball of hustle though. Lots of energy and lots of fun to watch.

Ginny is all grown up now. This shot is a few months old. We've got her fixed and groomed and she is starting to feel like a regular part of the family. She lives to play fetch though and sometimes that gets a little old. She is very good at bringing a slobbery ball to me while I sit on the couch or at the table and placing the ball on my leg and holding it there until I take it from her and throw it. We often toss it over the railing down the stairs to make her chase it downstairs and back up--the theory being, of course, that such exercise will tire her out, but I think we have yet to win that battle.

We had a February birthday celebration for a variety of folks and the festivities included this carrot cake that ended up upside down in its stand in the back of the car. Next time we'll wait to frost it until we get to Salt lake.

The boys love Nana.

Ian's favorite birthday present this year was his scooter. He's been asking for one for a really long time and now he can tear around the neighborhood with his brothers.

On the first Monday of the Olympics we had a family olympics activity for Family Home Evening. Here in this picture you can see our homemade ski ball game. And that's Naoto, our Japanese exchange student. he was very good. He and his wife, Nozomi came just before Christmas. Nozomi went home in the end of January because she is pregnant and getting ready to have her baby, but Naoto will be here until the end of April. We drive to school together every morning and he hangs out with the family a lot. We've really enjoyed having him here. He is kind to the boys and very helpful around the house and a lot of fun to have around. Its been good for the boys to get to know him, and his English has gotten much better in the past few months.

We met Naoto years ago in Japan while we were teaching English. He was a teenager then and his family was in our church congregations there. Flash forward seven years and he's a return missionary getting with a wife and baby on the way and he is getting ready to apply to BYU Hawaii. He was coming to Provo to study English for a semester, and his mother mentioned on facebook that they were looking for a place to stay, and so we offered to let them come here. What a great decision!

We all got "gold" medal chocolate coins for "winning" the family olympics. Way to go Melissa for planning such a great FHE.

I went to Seattle in the beginning of March for a conference and to see my older sister Sherri. It was

And that brings us full circle to Callan's marble shooting at the cub scout activity. It's been a busy few months and this only scratches the surface, but what do you do, right?

Batman taking a break for scripture study.

2014-03-19T08:56:00.001-06:00

The first thing that Ian put on this morning was his Batman mask.

Springville Soccer 2013

2013-10-22T22:06:00.004-06:00

When soccer started back in August, we were all shorts and bottled water and desperate for shade. The boys sweat through their uniforms and stunk the car up in only the way a pair of sweaty soccer-playing kids can. And then fall came and week after week the weather got a bit cooler and the nights darker sooner and by this game in early October, we were all in long sleeves and blankets and knit caps and the sun went down so early we had to end a game early on account of the boys losing sight of the ball.

We didn't bring a camera to any of the early games, or any of the midseason games, or really any of the late season games, but we did, on the last day of the season, finally remember to take a few photographs. A look at Nolan here will tell you how cold it was.

Nolan loves to play defense. I helped coach a few games near the end of the season and while most kids begged to play offense, I had to convince Nolan to spend some time on that side of the ball. Here are a few shots of him clearing the ball.

Some fun things about six-year-old soccer: They play in that liminal space between kick-and-chase and real soccer, which means they're learning positions like offense and defense, but if you tell them that defense plays down at the edge of the goalie box, they'll go stand on that line, but then they won't move from it to save their life, until the offense is practically upon them. It means that when they play goalie, they're likely to forget that they CAN use their hands, and when they're not playing goalie, they'll likely forget they CAN'T. And finally, it means they can't wait to go in when they're waiting their turn on the sidelines, but if they have to wait too long, they're likely to end up in a wrestling match behind the row of parents-in-chairs, or sitting on mom's lap under a blanket, or playing with one of the puppies tied to one of the parent-in-chairs.

It was grand fun to watch Nolan. Soccer is a no pressure sport in Springville (unlike Lubbock) and all the kids had a great time. Nolan had teammates from his school and from our ward and like every outdoor activity in Utah County, we had the big sky and the shrugging mountains as our backdrop.

Callan played third-forth grade soccer, which has transitioned completely into real soccer, and it was fun to watch him and his teammates pass and cross and attack like a real soccer team. They play on a big field and get pretty tired by the end of the game, but they have a lot of fun.

Funny that there's not much to say in terms of cute little kid antics for a third-fourth grade soccer team. Except for the soccer-ball to the face that turns into an unintentional header or the over-excited coach/dad/mom who gets too into the game and starts hollering at their child/the coaches/the ref/ and has to go somewhere else to cool down, there really isn't much to chuckle at. Plenty to smile at, and plenty of opportunity to feel proud of these kids who are playing their guts out and learning to cooperate and sweat through 50 minutes of soccer. And also a little to feel sad, or at least introspective about--that the lack of antics means they're growing up, a bit, that they're starting to figuring the world out, and they're one season closer to not needing us on the sidelines all the time.

Not too close though. He is only ten.

Some more photos from our summer trip

2013-10-21T06:51:00.001-06:00

This is the prison where my grandfather ed franklin spent seven months for embezzlement.

We stopped at multomah falls on our way to oregon.

At the oregon coast.
The boys first time at the ocean.

safeco field for a mariners game.

the chihuly museum with aunt sherri.

and back home with our new puppy. who buys a puppy on a road trip?

Camping in Hobble Creek

2013-10-05T11:32:00.001-06:00

Photos from a quick summer overnighter to Hobble Creek Canyon. Camping, 15 minutes from our front door!

This beetle was hanging out by our picnic table. He climbed up to the top of the branch and then just stayed there.

Roasting marshmallows for breakfast.

This was a good practice run for our two nights at Yellowstone.

Hobble Creek Hike

2013-10-05T11:28:00.002-06:00

Here is a photo dump from our hike up hobble creek canyon.

We love living so close to the green canyons of the Wasatch front. I jut wish we made it out there more often.

Road Trip 2013: Mid-point Update

2013-08-06T12:04:00.000-06:00

We're on day 11 of a seventeen-day road trip through Idaho, Oregon, and Washington and I wanted to do a partial update on the people we've met and the things we've seen. The trip is part family vacation and part research trip for the book I'm working on and it has brought us through national parks, small town archives, several cemeteries and one state penitentiary, and we've still got a week left. So, here are some photos and notes on where we've been so far...

Day One - Lava Hot springs

Lava Hot Springs is home to several family graves, including Rozilla and Lamoni Tolman, my maternal great grandparents. He was a big time family man, an amature tinker (he built an elevator on the back of his house for his wheelchair-bound grandson-in-law back in the early 40s)

Oel (the Saint in my book project) and Venna had plots in Pocatello, but for some reason they chose to be buried in Lava Hot Springs. He died falling of the roof of a church building during a routine maintenance check, and she died in a car accident in a snow storm while serving as a missionary in Missouri).

The hills around Lava Hot Springs remind me a bit of scenes out of The Sound of Music.

We stopped in for dinner with our cousins Patti and Nolyn Johnson (oldest son of the my aunt Joleen and her husband Laverl, the wheelchair-bound grandson-in-law of Lamoni I mentioned earlier). We had chicken enchiladas and got a tour of their farm, and I interviewed Nolyn about his memories of our Grandpa Oel.

This home a few minutes south of Lava Hot Springs was built by Lamoni Tolman sometime in the late 1890s or early 1900s.

This is the clothesline / swing set at the Johnson's home. Patti gave them quite a ride, and the boys had a blast, until our Nolan got stung by a bee.

Day Two - Sugar City, St. Anthony, Yellowstone

We stopped briefly in Sugar City, ID on the way to Yellowstone to see the grave of great great grandma Martha Steele Franklin. She was from England and born in 1867, and after her Franklin husband died in 1890, she remarried in 1894, joined the LDS church in 1902, and eventually emigrated to Sugar City Idaho.

Day Three - Yellowstone

We spent two full days in Yellowstone.

The boys loved old faithful, and the hike afterward, but Ian and I had to head back earlier than everyone else for a potty break.

After Ian's potty break, I said, "Let's go," and he looked around and said, "So long, suckers!" Not sure where he got that (older brothers, perhaps?)

Nolan and Callan spent there first night in their own tent. We were all a little worried about bears.

Day Four - Yellowstone

Eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns are good, but so much better in the woods.

Our last evening in the park we took a tour of Old Fort Yellowstone, saw some elk eating grass around the old barracks, and the the boys got to help retire the flag.

On the way back to our campsite, right at Grizzly Lake, appropriately, we saw a mama grizzly and three cubs making their way up the hill.

This is how all of us felt by the end of the night.

Our last adventure at Yellowstone was a short hike up to Harlequin Lake...more fear of bears, but the only thing we saw was a rabbit hiding under a log.

Day Five - Pocatello

We visited the old Pocatello 8th ward chapel building where my mom went to church as a child. Grandpa Oel was a sheet metal fabricator and he did all the copper work on the spire in the background.

Grandma Franklin suggested we stop and play on the Lava Rocks at Ross Park in Pocatello--a place she used to place at as a child. We also caught a few minutes of a concert going on. The conductor of the orchestra turned out to be one of Oel Hess's scouts nearly sixty years ago.

day Six - Crater's of the Moon

On our way to craters of the moon, we stopped at this old power plant that is now a museum. Oel Hess did sheet metal work here as well.

I don't think I've ever had reason to take pictures of duct work before, but as Grandpa Hess would have been intimately familiar with every angle of that ductwork, it seemed appropriate to snap a photo.

It really looks like the surface of the moon!

We explored three caves and hiked a few miles and drank lots of water and we appreciated the 85 degree weather and the constant breeze.

Day Seven - Burley

We stopped for dinner at Joleen Johnson's house (Oel's oldest daughter). These photos are of Joleen's daughter Norel giving the boys tractor rides.

Day Eight and Nine - Boise

In Boise, our primary stop was the old Idaho State Penitentiary, where my grandfather Franklin spent six months on an embezzlement charge in 1960.

This is Ed Franklin's cell block.

They wouldn't let us go up to the second level to take pictures of his cell, so I put Callan on my shoulders to get these shots, and it didn't work so well.

Then we spent an hour canoeing on Quinns Pond in Boise. The boys' first time in a boat.

Day Ten - Drive to Portland

This is how we all felt after so much time in the car.

The Columbia River gorge is beautiful. We stopped at Multnomah Falls for a break, and then made it to Misha's by 5pm.

Day Eleven - Portland

In Oregon, we visited Melissa's grandparents, and then Maggie Joyce and family (recently discovered half-sister of my father...a child from one of Ed Franklin's failed marriages).

We loved meeting the new family, and got some great stories to share.

On Saturday night with Misha and Chad we bbq'd and roasted marshmallows! So much fun. Then we all slipped into sugar comas for the rest of the night!

And that brings us to today, Sunday. The boys were all up by 6:30 AM, which means for the past hour and a half we've been playing the "how do you keep three boys quiet in an unfamiliar home" game. It's nearly 8 AM and Callan is reading a book by the window, Nolan is playing with a puzzle on the table, Ian is watching a video online, and Melissa is trying to stay asleep on the air matress. I am hearing the foot falls of morning upstairs, which means the whole house is finally awake, and we're planning a fun breakfast. In the next week we will visit an Aunt and Uncle in Lincoln City and a sister in Seattle, catch a Mariners game, and spend a whole lot more time in the car. And then we'll be back home and school will be starting in a matter of weeks.

(I wrote this on Sunday, but you know how it goes....more to come for sure. We're just leaving Lincoln City where we spent the night at David and Joi's on the coast (David is Oel's third child, and the he and Joi are the aunt and uncle I have know best) Now we're off to Seattle to see Sherri and then we'll be turning our headlights southeast towards Utah by the weekend!)

-Joey

T-Ball: "The Best Free Entertainment In Town"

2013-07-21T23:50:00.001-06:00

The former president of Little League in Lubbock, Texas once told me that t-ball was the "Best Free entertainment in town." He was speaking to me as a parent then, and he was right, but what he didn't tell me was that coaching is where the real fun happens.

Back in May, Melissa and I found out that Nolan's t-ball team didn't have a coach, so we signed up for the job. I attended the parents meeting where I was informed that Provo plays what I call "Kumbaya ball," where everyone bats each inning, there's never a third out, and everyone wins. Callan played this kind of t-ball in Ohio and it was great fun. At the meeting I got a mesh bag from the city with three t-balls, two helmets, a bat, and a T.

We had ten little five- and six-year-olds and we practiced once a week on Tuesdays and games every Saturday and we did our best to live up to our one imperative from the city--make sure everybody has fun. Callan helped coach and we did the normal throwing and hitting practice, but my two favorite activities were when we played "catch coach" in which Callan and I ran all over the field and the kids tried to tag us with their gloves, and another game that didn't have a name but involved all the kids lining up facing the backstop about twenty feet away and then throwing balls at the fence, where I stood waiting to catch their tosses and roll them back out to them. The goal was for them to get more balls at the fence then I got out in the field. In theory this was a great game that would get them throwing the ball a lot, but in practice (no pun intended) it meant ten kids throwing baseballs at me. Luckily none of them had strong enough arms to hit me and they thought it was great fun watching their coach scramble around like a moving target.

At the games Melissa ran the dug out, getting kids ready to bat and keeping folks happy and I helped batters get to the plate, observe correct batting stance, and run the right direction when they hit the ball. We had one boy who had such a difficult time running in a straight line to first base (he usually ended up veering toward the pitchers mound or stopping to stir the dust in front of home plate') that I resorted to chasing him down the baseline telling him in a mock-monster voice I was going to "get him" (once when he was the last batter of the inning and was going to have to run around all the bases without stopping, I ended up chasing him all around the bases like this....it was great fun).

Nolan really came into his own out on the field. About three weeks before t-ball started he said, "I don't want to play," which is the kind of thing he says two or three weeks before starting something new, but by the time practices rolled around, he was suiting up in full hand-me-down uniforms and wearing his glove around all afternoon. We made sure that every kid got to play every position, but it was always really fun to see Nolan and some of the other more coordinated kids playing infield and actually making some plays.

We had our fair share of tears from kids for all the usual reasons--getting tagged out, not getting to bat first, getting hit by the ball, getting tagged out, dropping their snack on the ground, getting tagged out---but it wouldn't be t-ball without some tears. By the end of the season all the kids were hitting pitches from me during games rather than using the tee, and every single kid had a lot of fun. Mission accomplished.

The problem with zoo photos (and vacation photos in general)

2013-07-07T09:53:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago we met our good friends The Grovers at the Hogle Zoo for a morning of viewing the animals and catching up (We've known the Grovers since they became THE Grovers, and I've known Grover himself since we took a British Lit class together at BYU in 2004). They were in SLC for a wedding and they had just enough time to squeeze us in to their busy trip schedule--and we were glad they could do it.

We met at the zoo parking lot about 9:30 AM and bought our tickets. The heat was not yet what I would call "oppressive" when we entered the zoo, but it was on its way, so we were interested in seeing as much of the zoo as possible before it became unbearable (particularly for Emily Grover, who is about to have a baby).

How to chronicle a day at the zoo with two of your favorite people during the first major heatwave of the summer? There are plenty of built in photo opportunities at the zoo. Large animal statues to pose with, large real animals to use as backdrops, large groups of strangers to enlist to help take your picture.

The bird show was my favorite part of the day (even with its choreographed fly-bys and over-wrought script and shameless plugs for donations--they have a bird trained to take dollar bills and put them in a donation box), but none of the photos I took came out. None of the in-your-face shots of owls and eagles and cockatoos brushing our heads with their wings; none of the diving falcons, none of the graceful flocks of doves.

(This photo doesn't do justice to the sensation created by the doves as they swept by us as a group--how do they train them to do that?--and it doesn't do justice to the overall quality of the bird show, which really was something to behold, and it doesn't even do justice to the back of this guys head, whoever he is).

All I want to do, all most of us want to do, I think, when I pull out my camera on vacation, or at a piano recital or a baseball game, or at the zoo, is to capture a bit of the moment. The concentrated energy and playfulness in the step of a three year old as he marches up the path, not yet old enough to know he should complain about the heat; the anticipation of a child who waits in line to stick his head through the wooden cut-out of a gorilla; the pleasure of sharing with good friends the novelty of an elephant doing a head stand while her trainer dangles a handful of fruit in front of her trunk (this feat actually occurred while we were watching the elephant show, but I missed seeing it and recording it because, that's right, I was fiddling with my camera).

I think there is something more to it than memories though. Sure we want other people to know (else why all the instant sharing options on my camera phone, why else twitter and instagram and facebook, and this blog), but all that I think is secondary to the bigger issue: we want ourselves to know. We want reassurances that we are really living, that we are taking the time to go and do and see, to visit old friends and give our children memories worth taking with them into adulthood. And so we prop up the camera and set the timer and we squeeze everyone in and tell people to smile because we want to remember that on this day we got out of the house, we put down the work on our desks, we reached out to people important to us and we tried to live in ways that would make the philosophers and the prophets and our grandparents proud (even if we can't manage to keep our fingers out of the photo when we're trying to set the timer).

Thanks Emily and David for a fun morning.

Summer Bucket List

2013-06-03T11:17:00.002-06:00

Flash back to summer fun when we lived in Lubbock!

Today is our first official day of Summer and after a long month of May we are ready to have FUN! The kids and I came up with this list, in no particular order. We plan to write it out on a big piece of butcher paper hung on the wall in the kitchen. Ready, set, play!!!

Go to the Springville splash pad

Library every week/Springville Summer Reading

New park every week

Spanish Fork splash pad

Hike up to the gypsum deposit

Hike the Y

Go camping

Springville Art Museum

Go to the farmers market

Play Wii

Host a BBQ

Host a Waffle Off

Make cup cakes

Go to the arcade

Art projects

Science projects

Read a book out loud

Play board games/have a game night

Go to Timpanogos Caves

Go to a National Park

Write a family story

Write a letter to an author, the President, Pres. Monson(birthday), missionary, relatives

Learn how to knit a scarf

Relace shoes a fun way

Learn to sew a pillowcase

Do service project

Doorbell Ditch

Slip n Slide

Make popsicles

Rent a canoe

Play with Sponge Balls/Water Balloons

Run a 5K

Go to Seven Peaks

Go to Alpine Slides when we fill the jar!

Go fishing on free fishing day!

Homemade root beer

Movie in the Park

Camp in the backyard

Family bike ride

Go to a parade

Sell lemonade

Memorize a scripture/Article of Faith

Earn more Cub Scout belt loops (Callan)

Make a youtube video

Make an obstacle course

Learn 10 Utah birds

Puddle jumping

Take popsicles to construction workers

Art City Days

Play hide and seek

Send Mom to Girls Camp!

Get a puppy!

Teach Ian ABC’s

Make Geo Safari cards to learn new things

Hike Stewart Falls

Hike in Hobble Creek Canyon

Go to a rodeo

Ride Papa’s horse

Have Lunch with Nana

Go to a concert

Cub Scout Day Camp

International Folk Fest

Play Dates

Swimming Lessons

Tie Dye Shirts

Cousin Camp Out

Bee’s Game

Owl’s Game

Real Salt Lake Game

Peteetneet Academy Museum

Play disc golf

This is the Place Heritage Park

Swimming at Nana and Papa’s

Provo gallery stroll

Weekly Lego Challenge

Road Trip to Oregon

New way to diet?

2013-05-29T18:52:00.001-06:00

I've been following Cassey Ho on Blogilates for a while. Some months have been better than others when it comes to working out. But she sent an email about something I've never heard of: http://www.dietbet.com/

The way it works is people sign up on DietBet to be in her group for the month of June. Everyone puts a $25 deposit down and sends in clear photos and their current weight (more rules on their website). Then everyone tries to loose 4% of their body weight before the end of the month. If you do, you get your $25 back, PLUS any extra left from anyone who didn't loose enough, split between everyone.

Has anyone ever done this? I'm thinking seriously about it. I've just started to change how I eat because of some health issues I've had and I think this might be a great fit. Eeek! I'm nervous, but maybe this is the kind of motivation I've been looking for!

As of right now there are 1,898 players and $47,450 in the pot. Ready, set, loose!