Back in 2001, I went to scout camp at Maple Dell, an organized Boy Scout camp. It was the first time I was at a scout camp for actual Boy Scouts and not just cub or eleven-year-old scouts.
We left early one morning to go down to the camp at Payson. I think this was in August, although it could have been July. I rode with Brother Hales, and when we got there, Brother Morley got out of his Suburban. He was wearing the Scout shorts he got for a Jamboree; I made some remark about how dumb I thought they looked. We drove up to our campsite, which was called Peteetneet. I made a silly joke about how our camp was "small and tidy"--"petite neat." Most campgrounds were named after Indian nations (like Nez Perce and Crow), but ours was named after an individual. We set up our tents.
Everyone went swimming, but I think there was a medical form that hadn't been submitted in time for me to swim with them. My mom faxed it, so I was able to go later. When I went there, the scout workers there told me I could jump in whenever I was ready; it was sort of a swimming test. It took me a while to psych myself up to jump in to swim.
There was a scout assigned to work with our troop from Rochester, New York. I remembered the place he was from because I had just been to upstate New York; I remember asking if that was where all the news stations were based from (yes), and if he had heard of Pulaski (no).
Every morning, we had to come up with a song incorporating certain words. I did my best to come up with creative parodies with the words, but the kinds of songs I knew back then weren't popular at all. For the first day, I made a parody of the Marineland jingle I had heard on TV in New York, which ended with, "Everyone loves Troop 884!" I convinced my troop to sing it with me, but I don't think they really knew it, and the responses weren't that enthusiastic. One of the days, we had to use "steak and eggs," but we also needed to include the elements we had previously used. David Oder suggested, "Steak and eggs, just eat 'em," but I tried to come up with something else, since that was not creative and didn't have all the necessary elements. Brother Clark told me there wasn't time for something more complicated. One of the other troops always had a really creative song; among other things, they parodied The Brady Bunch and sang to the Mission: Impossible theme. Even if I had been able to create good songs, they would never have competed. Matt Miller started making one to the Taco Bell commercial popular at that time, which itself was a parody of the Bonanza theme, but it never got finished. Sometimes we had to shout things as well. One morning, we saw a flock of wild turkeys.
One day, I was walking around whistling the first theme song to I Dream of Jeannie, but since it was the less famous one, I don't think people knew what it was, which was probably a good thing. Cody Opperman made some comment amount my whistling, and I asked if he wanted me to stop. He said no, but I said, "I can tell you want me to stop, so I'll stop," and he thanked me. At some point I had said I liked I Love Lucy, and Cody paraphrased a line he had heard on the show, but his paraphrasing was a bit more vulgar than the original.
All the different scout workers had pseudonyms. I don't remember the name of ours, but one of the workers for an adjoining camp was 007. There was Snoopy, Melva, and Big Mac (whom one scout called Burger King, which I thought was dumb because they're not even the same franchise). One day, I was doing my fingerprinting merit badge, when I heard another troop whittling a stick for Snoopy. They were putting a picture of Snoopy on it, and their leader suggested putting Woodstock on it as well.
The infamous Jared Smith (a generic enough name that I can talk about him) came on this trip, and I can't say some of the things he said or did on it. He was a bit domineering, and David Christensen felt abused by him. As some of the leaders were coming and going, he had said that either Jared left or he left. Brother Morley took him aside and gave him "the talk," as David Oder put it, and he was better after that. It didn't help that he was in the same tent as a lot of us.
One of our first days, we went and did a basket weaving merit badge. We did a nature merit badge where I had to sit and observe nature. While I did that, I took some pine needles and broke them and tried to rub them on my skin so I would smell like a Christmas tree. That might have been the same badge for which we had to write about an endangered animal. I decided I wanted to write about koalas, and the counselor Melva pointed out I had a koala on my shirt, and I hadn't even realized that. One of the scouts from another troop said that koalas were cliché. I think Jaydon Bean wrote about prairie dogs.
While we were working on one merit badge, some scouts from my troop found a snake. They put it in a soda bottle. Later, there was a hole dug to put it in so it wouldn't be cooped up. As it was in the hole trying to climb out, David Christensen, who had lost his voice from all the morning yelling, said the snake was doing its morning exercise, and then he quoted The Lucy Show: "I'm doing my morning exercise, Mr. Moody!"
There was a little gift shop, and I got some clearance orange glow sticks and a Boy Scouts travel toothbrush. I was amused that the sticker on it said "Toothbrush BS." I used one glow stick one night (Jaydon told me to go put it in the cooler, as it wasn't completely dark yet) and I kept another one, thinking it would be good for Halloween.
Our little group of troops had to come up with a song, a one-liner skit, and a full-on skit. We sang a song about frogs that Brother Hale had taught us. Jared Smith had to be the star of both skits. The short one had him pulling a rope: "Hey, why are you pulling that rope?" "Have you ever tried pushing a rope?" Our scout adviser later told us he had never seen that one. The full skit was Rick Bean's idea. It involved us all running from a monster (Jared Smith) who was actually nice. Another troop did the exact same one. The ultra-creative group did a skit about pickup lines inspired by the Scout Law. The following night, all of the troops gathered together for the best songs and skits throughout. One troop sang something about "My Neighbors Lie Over the Ocean" and the creative troop did their pickup line skit. Yet another troop did the same skit we had done. There was also a relay triathlon, where some scouts swam, some biked, and some ran. Everyone was quietly laughing at the scout in the really tight purple swimsuit. That same night, some British scout workers did a skit where they put rubber gloves on their heads and inflated them, saying they were some kind of endangered chicken (apparently someone had written about them for a merit badge!). They also led us in a song about different merit badges: "Hug a hug a hug a tree," "Shoot 'em shoot 'em shoot 'em up," and some others. They also sang "Little Bunny Foo Foo," which was also the name of a pet rabbit at the camp.
After that, we took a back way to get back to our campsite, which was really far away. Jared Smith led the way, and he went way too fast, and I was slow, so everyone behind me was slow. I didn't like that way because it was too fast, and some scouts had been reprimanded for going that way in the daytime. One of those scouts was David Christensen, who was wearing a rain poncho when he was going that way, and after the scout worker called him down, some scouts from another troop wanted to accost him, but their leader told them not to.
One night, a group of scouts went out to look at the stars, and the scout worker asked everyone to turn off their lights.
After we left, we stopped at a gas station, where Ryan Jones got Jones soda. I saw a school named Peteetneet, which was the name of our campsite.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Things I learned in college
This week's memory post is a little different. Usually I try to remember everything about something; this time, the structure is more something about everything.
Having graduated from college, I'm going to try to remember something I learned from every class I took. Now, to try to remember everything I learned would be just too much, so I'm just focusing on a few things.
Calculus 1, winter 2010. Math tends to be something I easily forget, and a lot of this was review from high school. But I remember learning that there are practical applications for calculus besides just doing math. For example, if a farmer had limited fencing and wanted to make the largest pen he could out of his materials, he could use calculus to do it. Of course, most farmers haven't taken calculus.
Introduction to Music, winter 2010. I learned about the different periods (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.), and I don't think I had even heard of Haydn before this class. I came to appreciate Handel's Messiah (although the version I ended up buying was not as pretty as the one I heard for class, at least for the "Rejoice greatly" aria).
Book of Mormon 1, winter 2010. I learned about the route some scholars think Lehi followed.
American History through Literature, winter 2010. I read several books I hadn't before: Johnny Tremain, Main Street, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The House of the Seven Gables. I learned about the Plessy v. Ferguson case (separate but equal), since I had to do a report on it.
Introduction to English Language, winter 2010. I learned about descriptivism, having never considered how arbitrary the rules are. I learned IPA, and I learned how interesting linguistics is.
Intermediate French 1, spring 2010. I learned a lot of French vocabulary, since this was the first French class I had had since high school. I learned acheter (to buy), se souvenir (to remember), ananas (pineapple), and soirée familiale (family home evening).
New Testament 1, spring 2010. There are questions about the origin of the story of the woman taken in adultery. I learned how important Psalm 22 was to the Jews. The woman with the issue of blood, though usually depicted as sitting on the ground, was probably not on the ground or she would have been trampled. Myrrh is a thorny plant.
Intermediate French 2, summer 2010. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is actually more about Paris. I learned about Descarte's "Je pense, donc je suis."
Dinosaurs, summer 2010. Dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. I learned about the different kinds of dinosaurs: ceratopsians, theropods, sauropods, etc. I learned how fossils are excavated, and most importantly, I learned how cool fossils were. This class led me to eventually be a geology minor.
Internet Publishing, winter 2011. This was not my favorite class, because our instructor was a grad student who wasn't very good, but I did learn some basics of HTML and CSS.
Astronomy, winter 2011. There are different kinds of solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. You can tell time by the moon, although I've forgotten how to do that (but if I thought about it I might be able to do it). Now I can spot Orion, but I've forgotten most of the other constellations. I also learned about this video:
Grammar of English, winter 2011. Our "eight parts of speech" structure is actually based on Latin; if we were to start from scratch, we would probably organize it differently.
Modern American Usage, winter 2011. The class that really converted me from being a prescriptivist to being a descriptivist. A lot of our grammar "rules" come from the 1600s and 1700s, when scholars tried to apply the rules of Latin grammar to English. The rule about prepositions not ending a sentence is based on Latin. The forbidding of split infinitives is similarly based on Latin, but people only talked about it because it was a new phenomenon and therefore they thought it was wrong. Fun was originally a noun, so some people thought you couldn't add -er or -est to it, even though it is definitely used as an adjective. The Oxford English Dictionary and the Corpus of Contemporary/Historical American English are wonderful resources.
Beginning Piano Techniques 1, winter 2011. I learned the importance of practice. I learned about different keys (as in musical keys, not piano keys), but I'd need a refresher.
History of the English Language, spring 2011. I learned about the different events that shaped English--the Roman Empire's holdings in England in the Pre-English phase; the arrival of Saxons that heralded in Old English, and the later Viking invasions; the Norman Invasion that brought about Middle English; the scholars of the Early Modern English. I used this video for a class presentation:
Masterpieces of American Literature, spring 2011. William Bradford said they had turkeys at the first Thanksgiving (take that, know-it-all historians who say they didn't!). We read A Streetcar Named Desire, and I found mention of Charles Anthon (of Joseph Smith--History fame) while doing research on Edgar Allan Poe.
Civilization to 1500, summer 2011. We read Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Dhammapada, The Rise of Christianity, and a book about the Ottoman Empire. I don't think I knew about the Ottoman Empire before this class, and Guns, Germs, and Steel was very enlightening.
Introduction to Archeology, summer 2011. The origin of cultivated corn is a major mystery to archeologists. Archeologists study arrowheads to try to figure out where Native Americans came from.
English Semantics and Pragmatics, winter 2012. I learned about the Gricean maxims, which means that you can say something indirectly but others can still understand your meaning. I learned about the grammatical structures that indicate presupposition; for example, "Where were you when you saw him?" presupposes that you saw him.
Beginning Piano Techniques 2, winter 2012. I learned how to play "Did You Think to Pray?" with both hands, but I'm out of practice now.
Basic Editing Skills, winter 2012. I learned all the editing guidelines I use for work, thanks to the Chicago Manual of Style. I learned that you use a comma between two independent clauses joined by the FANBOYS conjunctions, but you generally don't use a comma if the subject is not repeated. Thus: "I went to the store, and I went to the beach," but "I went to the store and went to the beach." I don't always care about this rule, though, because I don't think it's overly helpful. I learned to use en dashes in number ranges.
Doctrine and Covenants 1, winter 2012. Martin Harris's wife wasn't happy with his involvement with the Book of Mormon (and understandably so). Some early Saints had some crazy experiences, like one creeping on the ground, saying he was going to preach to the Lamanites, and another one jumping off a cliff but landing in a tree.
Physical Geology, winter 2012. I thought that only historical geology would be interesting, but this class taught me to love the physical aspect, perhaps even more than the historical. Most of the things I know about geology I learned in this class, although they were refined later. I learned about igneous (gabbro, diorite, granite, tuff, rhyolite, andesite, basalt, pumice, obsidian), sedimentary (chalk, rock salt, rock gypsum, sandstone, limestone, dolostone, shale, conglomerate), and metamorphic (gneiss, slate, phyllite, schist, quartzite, marble) rocks. I learned about subduction zones, silicic and basaltic volcanoes, glacial features, and climate change. This was one of the most influential classes of my college career.
Print Publishing, spring 2012. I learned a little about Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. I'm proud of the dinosaur vector I made in Illustrator. I learned a little about design principles, including typography, colors, and alignment.
Civilization from 1500, spring 2012. This was my least favorite of all my classes, but I learned about the beginning of World War I and how that war led to the Great Depression and WWII. I don't think I'd ever heard of Mao Zedong before this class, nor had I heard of fascism (shocking, right?).
Advanced French Grammar, summer 2012. I learned the difference in pronunciation between "u" and "ou." Different French verbs use different prepositions, but you just have to memorize them.
Writings of Isaiah, summer 2012. Snow in ancient Israel was seen as a purifying agent. Isaiah is hard to understand, but understanding the context helps.
Book of Mormon 2, summer 2012. The Book of Mormon does have parallels for our day. Alma's confrontation with Korihor may have been a Church disciplinary council. Some BYU professors actually believe dinosaurs lived recently.
Empirical Methods in English Linguistics, fall 2012. Although linguistics isn't a science, it follows empirical methods for observation and experimentation. There are computer programs that can analyze stylistic structures.
Varieties of English, fall 2012. Most of Canada speaks the same dialect. I'm not good at detecting dialects, but now I am more aware of differences, even if I can't always place an accent. Men and women can speak quite differently.
Substantive Editing (Scholarly Publishing), fall 2012. Headings can really help a paper's organization. Other cultures have different expectations of what goes into a paper; in eastern cultures, the papers often aren't revised, and they just have a stream-of-consciousness approach. The passive construction can aid in clarity.
Environmental Biology, fall 2012. The coiled fluorescent bulbs may do more damage than good. Glass isn't recycled in Utah, so it has to be transported; thus it might do more harm to recycle glass in Utah. Utah uses coal power, so electric cars in Utah aren't that environmentally friendly.
Geomorphology, fall 2012. Death Valley is awesome. Meandering streams form from slow-moving water, while braided streams come from varying amounts of water with lots of sediments.
Jogging, fall 2012. I learned some stretches and warmups, but I don't use them like I should. We need more carbs than we need protein.
Historical geology, winter 2013. Tufa is a kind of sharp limestone formed from springs. There are different mountain-building events called orogenies, although I didn't understand them as well as I should have. Single-celled organisms were around for billions of years before they became multi-celled. The Devonian Period was the age of fish.
Old Testament 1, winter 2013. The oath-making "put your hand on my thigh" is euphemistic. Jonathan was a good friend to David.
Geology of planets, winter 2013. Jupiter's moon Io has volcanoes. Saturn's moon Titan is a lot like earth, with lakes of liquid methane. Mars used to have rivers of water, and it has ice just under its surface. (Some of this stuff I learned in geomorphology, because I had the same professor.)
Phonetics and phonology, winter 2013. There is one Native American language with only three speakers, and they don't talk to each other. You can observe speech and make diagrams to analyze under what circumstances a certain phoneme occurs.
Early Modern English, winter 2013. Shakespeare was an amazingly talented writer, because they were taught rigorously back then. When we read old texts, the biggest problem is not in the words we don't recognize, it's in the words that we think we know but that have actually changed meaning.
Editing for publication, spring 2013. Fractions use a hyphen (as in "three-fourths"). I tend to trust authors too much. It never occurred to me that you can download vectors from the internet; I thought you had to make your own.
Structure of English, spring 2013. Knowing the structure of English can help you create jokes and clever slogans. Because of this class, I notice ambiguity and garden-path (misleading) sentences everywhere.
Field studies, fall (pre-fall) 2013. Tufa doesn't necessarily form around plants. Around 600 million years ago, the supercontinent Rodinia broke up, making Utah a beach. One of the cracks allowed the Uinta Mountains to form, which is why they run east to west instead of north to south. Before it broke up, the world was an icehouse earth, and glaciers formed the Mineral Fork Tillite. After the breakup, the beach environment formed the Tintic Quartzite, Ophir Shale, and Maxfield Limestone. During the Jurassic, Utah was covered with sand dunes, creating the Navajo Sandstone. Capitol Reef has seventeen geologic formations, while Zion National Park only has three.
Groundwater, fall 2013. Groundwater takes hundreds to thousands of years to replenish. By knowing the kind of rock, the pressure, and the amount of water, hydrogeologists can calculate how fast groundwater flows. Geologists can determine the pressure by drilling wells. I didn't learn as much in groundwater as I would have liked to.
Swimming for Non-Swimmers, fall 2013. I learned how to do the freestyle, breastroke, and backstroke. But I can't do the butterfly, even though I know what it looks like.
The Senior Course (corpus linguistics), fall 2013. I learned how to use Mark Davies's corpora, from Mark Davies himself. I use them all the time in editing. From some of my projects, I learned that discussions of chastity have decreased in general conference talks since the 1980s, except for discussions of pornography. Uses of the term "dinosaur" and "fossil" increased dramatically in the 1990s, probably because of Jurassic Park.
Old English 1, fall 2013. Old English had a lot more inflections than today's English. "Neorxnawange" is a word for "paradise" that has no known etymology. "Wyrm" could mean worm, snake, dragon, or pus.
Technical Communications, fall 2013. Some college students are surprisingly bad writers. From my own project, I learned that Chrome is slightly the best browser, but not enough for me to quit using Firefox. When you create instructions, you should split the steps up so that there's not more than seven steps per section.
Beginning Weight Training, winter 2014. When doing squats, your knees should not go in. Weight machines work out fewer muscles than free weights do.
Advanced French Part 2, winter 2014. Words ending in "ait" or "ais" make a different vowel than those ending in "ai." I learned a fair amount of vocabulary, including "carotte de glace," meaning ice core, or literally "carrot of ice."
The Publishing Industry, winter 2014. Agents help authors get their books published. The requirements for publishers vary. Don't try to sell your book to Covenant, because they try to take away all your rights. The nonfiction world is easier to get into than the fiction world (which works well for me).
Geology Seminar, winter 2014. The Yellowstone magma chamber may actually be cooling down. Our ideas about the formation of mudstones under water might not be quite true.
Academic Internship, fall 2013, winter 2014. My internships provided me with valuable experience. I learned that if often pays to do a little research on the topic you are editing.
Editing student journals, winter 2012, winter 2014. A lot of aspiring editors aren't very good and/or are overzealous. Copyfitting isn't too difficult.
I hope that I will keep learning, even though I'm out of college.
Having graduated from college, I'm going to try to remember something I learned from every class I took. Now, to try to remember everything I learned would be just too much, so I'm just focusing on a few things.
Calculus 1, winter 2010. Math tends to be something I easily forget, and a lot of this was review from high school. But I remember learning that there are practical applications for calculus besides just doing math. For example, if a farmer had limited fencing and wanted to make the largest pen he could out of his materials, he could use calculus to do it. Of course, most farmers haven't taken calculus.
Introduction to Music, winter 2010. I learned about the different periods (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.), and I don't think I had even heard of Haydn before this class. I came to appreciate Handel's Messiah (although the version I ended up buying was not as pretty as the one I heard for class, at least for the "Rejoice greatly" aria).
Book of Mormon 1, winter 2010. I learned about the route some scholars think Lehi followed.
American History through Literature, winter 2010. I read several books I hadn't before: Johnny Tremain, Main Street, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The House of the Seven Gables. I learned about the Plessy v. Ferguson case (separate but equal), since I had to do a report on it.
Introduction to English Language, winter 2010. I learned about descriptivism, having never considered how arbitrary the rules are. I learned IPA, and I learned how interesting linguistics is.
Intermediate French 1, spring 2010. I learned a lot of French vocabulary, since this was the first French class I had had since high school. I learned acheter (to buy), se souvenir (to remember), ananas (pineapple), and soirée familiale (family home evening).
New Testament 1, spring 2010. There are questions about the origin of the story of the woman taken in adultery. I learned how important Psalm 22 was to the Jews. The woman with the issue of blood, though usually depicted as sitting on the ground, was probably not on the ground or she would have been trampled. Myrrh is a thorny plant.
Intermediate French 2, summer 2010. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is actually more about Paris. I learned about Descarte's "Je pense, donc je suis."
Dinosaurs, summer 2010. Dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. I learned about the different kinds of dinosaurs: ceratopsians, theropods, sauropods, etc. I learned how fossils are excavated, and most importantly, I learned how cool fossils were. This class led me to eventually be a geology minor.
Internet Publishing, winter 2011. This was not my favorite class, because our instructor was a grad student who wasn't very good, but I did learn some basics of HTML and CSS.
Astronomy, winter 2011. There are different kinds of solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. You can tell time by the moon, although I've forgotten how to do that (but if I thought about it I might be able to do it). Now I can spot Orion, but I've forgotten most of the other constellations. I also learned about this video:
Grammar of English, winter 2011. Our "eight parts of speech" structure is actually based on Latin; if we were to start from scratch, we would probably organize it differently.
Modern American Usage, winter 2011. The class that really converted me from being a prescriptivist to being a descriptivist. A lot of our grammar "rules" come from the 1600s and 1700s, when scholars tried to apply the rules of Latin grammar to English. The rule about prepositions not ending a sentence is based on Latin. The forbidding of split infinitives is similarly based on Latin, but people only talked about it because it was a new phenomenon and therefore they thought it was wrong. Fun was originally a noun, so some people thought you couldn't add -er or -est to it, even though it is definitely used as an adjective. The Oxford English Dictionary and the Corpus of Contemporary/Historical American English are wonderful resources.
Beginning Piano Techniques 1, winter 2011. I learned the importance of practice. I learned about different keys (as in musical keys, not piano keys), but I'd need a refresher.
History of the English Language, spring 2011. I learned about the different events that shaped English--the Roman Empire's holdings in England in the Pre-English phase; the arrival of Saxons that heralded in Old English, and the later Viking invasions; the Norman Invasion that brought about Middle English; the scholars of the Early Modern English. I used this video for a class presentation:
Masterpieces of American Literature, spring 2011. William Bradford said they had turkeys at the first Thanksgiving (take that, know-it-all historians who say they didn't!). We read A Streetcar Named Desire, and I found mention of Charles Anthon (of Joseph Smith--History fame) while doing research on Edgar Allan Poe.
Civilization to 1500, summer 2011. We read Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Dhammapada, The Rise of Christianity, and a book about the Ottoman Empire. I don't think I knew about the Ottoman Empire before this class, and Guns, Germs, and Steel was very enlightening.
Introduction to Archeology, summer 2011. The origin of cultivated corn is a major mystery to archeologists. Archeologists study arrowheads to try to figure out where Native Americans came from.
English Semantics and Pragmatics, winter 2012. I learned about the Gricean maxims, which means that you can say something indirectly but others can still understand your meaning. I learned about the grammatical structures that indicate presupposition; for example, "Where were you when you saw him?" presupposes that you saw him.
Beginning Piano Techniques 2, winter 2012. I learned how to play "Did You Think to Pray?" with both hands, but I'm out of practice now.
Basic Editing Skills, winter 2012. I learned all the editing guidelines I use for work, thanks to the Chicago Manual of Style. I learned that you use a comma between two independent clauses joined by the FANBOYS conjunctions, but you generally don't use a comma if the subject is not repeated. Thus: "I went to the store, and I went to the beach," but "I went to the store and went to the beach." I don't always care about this rule, though, because I don't think it's overly helpful. I learned to use en dashes in number ranges.
Doctrine and Covenants 1, winter 2012. Martin Harris's wife wasn't happy with his involvement with the Book of Mormon (and understandably so). Some early Saints had some crazy experiences, like one creeping on the ground, saying he was going to preach to the Lamanites, and another one jumping off a cliff but landing in a tree.
Physical Geology, winter 2012. I thought that only historical geology would be interesting, but this class taught me to love the physical aspect, perhaps even more than the historical. Most of the things I know about geology I learned in this class, although they were refined later. I learned about igneous (gabbro, diorite, granite, tuff, rhyolite, andesite, basalt, pumice, obsidian), sedimentary (chalk, rock salt, rock gypsum, sandstone, limestone, dolostone, shale, conglomerate), and metamorphic (gneiss, slate, phyllite, schist, quartzite, marble) rocks. I learned about subduction zones, silicic and basaltic volcanoes, glacial features, and climate change. This was one of the most influential classes of my college career.
Print Publishing, spring 2012. I learned a little about Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. I'm proud of the dinosaur vector I made in Illustrator. I learned a little about design principles, including typography, colors, and alignment.
Civilization from 1500, spring 2012. This was my least favorite of all my classes, but I learned about the beginning of World War I and how that war led to the Great Depression and WWII. I don't think I'd ever heard of Mao Zedong before this class, nor had I heard of fascism (shocking, right?).
Advanced French Grammar, summer 2012. I learned the difference in pronunciation between "u" and "ou." Different French verbs use different prepositions, but you just have to memorize them.
Writings of Isaiah, summer 2012. Snow in ancient Israel was seen as a purifying agent. Isaiah is hard to understand, but understanding the context helps.
Book of Mormon 2, summer 2012. The Book of Mormon does have parallels for our day. Alma's confrontation with Korihor may have been a Church disciplinary council. Some BYU professors actually believe dinosaurs lived recently.
Empirical Methods in English Linguistics, fall 2012. Although linguistics isn't a science, it follows empirical methods for observation and experimentation. There are computer programs that can analyze stylistic structures.
Varieties of English, fall 2012. Most of Canada speaks the same dialect. I'm not good at detecting dialects, but now I am more aware of differences, even if I can't always place an accent. Men and women can speak quite differently.
Substantive Editing (Scholarly Publishing), fall 2012. Headings can really help a paper's organization. Other cultures have different expectations of what goes into a paper; in eastern cultures, the papers often aren't revised, and they just have a stream-of-consciousness approach. The passive construction can aid in clarity.
Environmental Biology, fall 2012. The coiled fluorescent bulbs may do more damage than good. Glass isn't recycled in Utah, so it has to be transported; thus it might do more harm to recycle glass in Utah. Utah uses coal power, so electric cars in Utah aren't that environmentally friendly.
Geomorphology, fall 2012. Death Valley is awesome. Meandering streams form from slow-moving water, while braided streams come from varying amounts of water with lots of sediments.
Jogging, fall 2012. I learned some stretches and warmups, but I don't use them like I should. We need more carbs than we need protein.
Historical geology, winter 2013. Tufa is a kind of sharp limestone formed from springs. There are different mountain-building events called orogenies, although I didn't understand them as well as I should have. Single-celled organisms were around for billions of years before they became multi-celled. The Devonian Period was the age of fish.
Old Testament 1, winter 2013. The oath-making "put your hand on my thigh" is euphemistic. Jonathan was a good friend to David.
Geology of planets, winter 2013. Jupiter's moon Io has volcanoes. Saturn's moon Titan is a lot like earth, with lakes of liquid methane. Mars used to have rivers of water, and it has ice just under its surface. (Some of this stuff I learned in geomorphology, because I had the same professor.)
Phonetics and phonology, winter 2013. There is one Native American language with only three speakers, and they don't talk to each other. You can observe speech and make diagrams to analyze under what circumstances a certain phoneme occurs.
Early Modern English, winter 2013. Shakespeare was an amazingly talented writer, because they were taught rigorously back then. When we read old texts, the biggest problem is not in the words we don't recognize, it's in the words that we think we know but that have actually changed meaning.
Editing for publication, spring 2013. Fractions use a hyphen (as in "three-fourths"). I tend to trust authors too much. It never occurred to me that you can download vectors from the internet; I thought you had to make your own.
Structure of English, spring 2013. Knowing the structure of English can help you create jokes and clever slogans. Because of this class, I notice ambiguity and garden-path (misleading) sentences everywhere.
Field studies, fall (pre-fall) 2013. Tufa doesn't necessarily form around plants. Around 600 million years ago, the supercontinent Rodinia broke up, making Utah a beach. One of the cracks allowed the Uinta Mountains to form, which is why they run east to west instead of north to south. Before it broke up, the world was an icehouse earth, and glaciers formed the Mineral Fork Tillite. After the breakup, the beach environment formed the Tintic Quartzite, Ophir Shale, and Maxfield Limestone. During the Jurassic, Utah was covered with sand dunes, creating the Navajo Sandstone. Capitol Reef has seventeen geologic formations, while Zion National Park only has three.
Groundwater, fall 2013. Groundwater takes hundreds to thousands of years to replenish. By knowing the kind of rock, the pressure, and the amount of water, hydrogeologists can calculate how fast groundwater flows. Geologists can determine the pressure by drilling wells. I didn't learn as much in groundwater as I would have liked to.
Swimming for Non-Swimmers, fall 2013. I learned how to do the freestyle, breastroke, and backstroke. But I can't do the butterfly, even though I know what it looks like.
The Senior Course (corpus linguistics), fall 2013. I learned how to use Mark Davies's corpora, from Mark Davies himself. I use them all the time in editing. From some of my projects, I learned that discussions of chastity have decreased in general conference talks since the 1980s, except for discussions of pornography. Uses of the term "dinosaur" and "fossil" increased dramatically in the 1990s, probably because of Jurassic Park.
Old English 1, fall 2013. Old English had a lot more inflections than today's English. "Neorxnawange" is a word for "paradise" that has no known etymology. "Wyrm" could mean worm, snake, dragon, or pus.
Technical Communications, fall 2013. Some college students are surprisingly bad writers. From my own project, I learned that Chrome is slightly the best browser, but not enough for me to quit using Firefox. When you create instructions, you should split the steps up so that there's not more than seven steps per section.
Beginning Weight Training, winter 2014. When doing squats, your knees should not go in. Weight machines work out fewer muscles than free weights do.
Advanced French Part 2, winter 2014. Words ending in "ait" or "ais" make a different vowel than those ending in "ai." I learned a fair amount of vocabulary, including "carotte de glace," meaning ice core, or literally "carrot of ice."
The Publishing Industry, winter 2014. Agents help authors get their books published. The requirements for publishers vary. Don't try to sell your book to Covenant, because they try to take away all your rights. The nonfiction world is easier to get into than the fiction world (which works well for me).
Geology Seminar, winter 2014. The Yellowstone magma chamber may actually be cooling down. Our ideas about the formation of mudstones under water might not be quite true.
Academic Internship, fall 2013, winter 2014. My internships provided me with valuable experience. I learned that if often pays to do a little research on the topic you are editing.
Editing student journals, winter 2012, winter 2014. A lot of aspiring editors aren't very good and/or are overzealous. Copyfitting isn't too difficult.
I hope that I will keep learning, even though I'm out of college.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
New York addendum
The last several posts related to trips to New York, but I forgot a few details that I remembered later. Here, I will try to remember the things I missed.
1997. I remember buying worms to use to go fishing. One night, we were fishing, and one fish was really smart--it kept biting the worms off the line, but it wouldn't get hooked. The one fish that bit the hook was too small to keep. We wanted to release it, but it had swallowed the hook. I think my mom might have asked Grandma King what to do. We had to rip the hook out, and with it came out some of the fish's guts. We threw it back in the water, and it did a poor job of swimming off. I felt so bad for it, but my mom tried to comfort me by saying that it would probably feed another fish.
We visited my mom's cousin Rob's house. I remember there being a discussion about him cutting down a giant Christmas tree for his house, but by the time he got it in the house, it wasn't so big anymore.
2000. Maybe this was 1997, but I remember walking by Big Sandy Pond and seeing a family with a little (about 2-years-old) girl completely naked, and I thought that was inappropriate.
One day we went to Watkins Glen, a place with 800-something steps to the top. In the parking lot, we saw some people in biker shorts, and I was surprised they weren't embarrassed to be dressed like that. My mom didn't make it to the top, but the rest of us did. There was a little gift shop at the top, and we went in and looked around. They had shirts that said "I hiked to the top" and some souvenir pennies. Then we hiked back down and went to the gift shop at the bottom. In that gift shop, they had the same "I hiked to the top" shirts, and I thought they should only sell them at the top so that only people who really did get to the top could buy them.
We also went to a Corning glass factory. We watched a demonstration of them making a glass dish. When it was done and no longer molten, they threw a piece of paper on it, which immediately caught fire. I remember hearing a teenager saying he needed to see that done again.
2001. I remember seeing the poem that my late aunt Darleen had written about my great-grandparents and their house. I thought it was really good.
After seeing fat shirtless men and overweight women in short shorts, my mom said that Salt Lake City is more modest, and that was a good thing, because the overweight people didn't realize how bad they looked dressed like that.
And I'm sure I will remember even more things, but I don't know if I will make another addendum.
1997. I remember buying worms to use to go fishing. One night, we were fishing, and one fish was really smart--it kept biting the worms off the line, but it wouldn't get hooked. The one fish that bit the hook was too small to keep. We wanted to release it, but it had swallowed the hook. I think my mom might have asked Grandma King what to do. We had to rip the hook out, and with it came out some of the fish's guts. We threw it back in the water, and it did a poor job of swimming off. I felt so bad for it, but my mom tried to comfort me by saying that it would probably feed another fish.
We visited my mom's cousin Rob's house. I remember there being a discussion about him cutting down a giant Christmas tree for his house, but by the time he got it in the house, it wasn't so big anymore.
2000. Maybe this was 1997, but I remember walking by Big Sandy Pond and seeing a family with a little (about 2-years-old) girl completely naked, and I thought that was inappropriate.
One day we went to Watkins Glen, a place with 800-something steps to the top. In the parking lot, we saw some people in biker shorts, and I was surprised they weren't embarrassed to be dressed like that. My mom didn't make it to the top, but the rest of us did. There was a little gift shop at the top, and we went in and looked around. They had shirts that said "I hiked to the top" and some souvenir pennies. Then we hiked back down and went to the gift shop at the bottom. In that gift shop, they had the same "I hiked to the top" shirts, and I thought they should only sell them at the top so that only people who really did get to the top could buy them.
We also went to a Corning glass factory. We watched a demonstration of them making a glass dish. When it was done and no longer molten, they threw a piece of paper on it, which immediately caught fire. I remember hearing a teenager saying he needed to see that done again.
2001. I remember seeing the poem that my late aunt Darleen had written about my great-grandparents and their house. I thought it was really good.
After seeing fat shirtless men and overweight women in short shorts, my mom said that Salt Lake City is more modest, and that was a good thing, because the overweight people didn't realize how bad they looked dressed like that.
And I'm sure I will remember even more things, but I don't know if I will make another addendum.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
New York, 2001
In keeping with the theme of the last few weeks, here's the last New York trip my family took.
My mom and I flew into Albany and rented a car, although I don't really remember the particulars.We would have driven up to Pulaski, where my grandparents were already at "the Pond," getting ready to sell the house after Grandma King's death. One night, my mom and I went to the local grocery store. We got cherry Twizzlers and one or two Pez dispensers. I think I got a Snoopy and a Peppermint Patty, but I don't know if I got them at the same time. The store also had cereal themed after the Atlantis Disney movie in theaters at that time.
One day, my grandparents, my mom, and I painted the metal of the dock. We had to get in the water to paint it, and so afterwards we went swimming in the pond. Suddenly my mom shrieked because something in the water had bit her.
Susanne called us; she had been in Mexico. She asked me if I still collected chess sets, because she had bought one for me. She had also gotten really sick from eating flan. After she came, I remember she said she would never eat it again, but my great-aunt Mary Lou said it was sooo good. (I don't like it.)
I had brought some Fourth of July magnets, so I asked Grandma if I could put them on the fridge. She said I could.
One day, my mom and grandparents went to the Palmyra Temple. I went to Hill Cumorah instead. I hiked it a couple of times (with a Pez dispenser in my pocket; I think I was wearing my plaid shorts that had a little world patch covering up a hole burned by an ash), including the back way. There had been a youth conference there; when I walked into the visitor's center, the missionaries thought I was part of that group. I explained I was from North Salt Lake. A sister missionary asked if I knew where Holladay was; I said no. I got a one-on-one tour in the visitor's center.
We went to church one Sunday. One of the speakers said something about "four c's: cake, candy, cookies, and ice cream." I went to the one youth Sunday School class, in which the teacher had brought her little daughter. The toddler had a red drink that she tried to give to the class; one girl took it and pretended to drink it, while a boy did a terrible job of pretending. The teacher said that the drink was made out of wheat. Then I went to Priesthood; one of the guys in that class repeated the "four c's" comment. There was a poster with the Boy Scout Law on it; they had added "hungry and aggressive" at the end. My grandparents were frequent enough visitors that the ward knew them; thus, when one girl asked me who I was visiting, I said, "the Ebberts," but I don't think she knew who that was. After church, Grandpa was talking about the family that had fourteen kids. During priesthood, they had talked about fasting and said that you don't need to fast if you are pregnant or nursing; the patriarch of that family said that his wife hadn't fasted for fourteen years. (Maybe it was longer than that.) I had noticed that the teenage boys in that family needed haircuts.
At some point, Susanne joined us. One day, we visited some historical place; I think it was about the Revolutionary War. I was wearing my red USA shirt, and the tour guide wanted me to represent a Redcoat (unless the historic site wasn't about the Revolutionary War). I got a penny whistle and a feather pen and empty inkwell from their gift shop. I think this might have been the same day we went to some Pfaltzgraff (which sounded like "false craft" to me) and Oneida stores. At one store, they sold dishes with slight defects. I saw a Halloween night light that I thought was cool. At the other store, they sold all sorts of silverware and some other odds and ends. I found a little snowglobe of bears celebrating New Year's. Elsewhere in the store, they had little teapots representing months. For November, there was both a turkey and a Pilgrim hat. I liked the hat one better; apparently, it had been replaced with the turkey. I couldn't decide between the snowglobe and the Pilgrim hat teapot, but I ended up getting the teapot.
Then, at some point, the Thompsons came. I think they had flown into New Jersey and rented a van, which had automatic doors, something we were not accustomed to. At one point, I remember Jesse saying he didn't like Baha Men, that being one of Chancey's CDs (during the era of "Who Let the Dogs Out?"). Another day, we were riding in their van for some reason, and my mom put in my mix tape from the year before. It had a lot of smooth jazz from a Peanuts CD that I did not like, so I was trying to express my disdain for it, but my mom and sister told me to stop.
On the Fourth of July, there was a family reunion. I took a dish out of the fridge, trying to find something. My great aunt Mary Lou told me I needed to hold the dish upright. Later, we went to see a river with a waterfall. I was wearing my white t-shirt with a flag design. There was a sign on a tree telling people not to cliff jump, because the writers had a friend who had done so and died. The sign was a bit of a memorial to him, and among other things it had a picture of a pack of cigarettes. I said that if he smoked, he was going to die anyway. We took a little hike down to the bottom of the waterfalls, and on our way, my aunt Sue said she had found a weeping wall, "but it's not as big as the one at Zions." The "weeping wall" she found was just a little tiny spring, hardly anything like Zion's Weeping Rock. Sue's family was going to go see some fireworks. I was a little hesitant about going with them, because of my then-uncle Wayne's habitual tendency toward orneriness. I went anyway, and as we pulled up to the fairgrounds, I saw the sign saying "Oswego County Fair" and I asked if that meant it was the county fair of Oswego or the fair of Oswego County. My cousin Jesse didn't understand what I was talking about. Once the fireworks started, I remember my cousins Jesse and Joey and I having a conversation about how unimpressive these fireworks were. There was a stationary firework on the ground that was an American flag, but that was the only cool one. Jesse said that he had seen flowers (as in the home firework--"ground blooms") do more amazing things. My aunt reproved us for our negativity. As we left, I remember a conversation about carnival workers. When we got back to "the Pond," my mom and the others there said that someone had been setting off illegal Pennsylvanian fireworks that they were able to watch. I remember then that I regretted going, because the fireworks were so unimpressive and I could have stayed at the house and watched the fireworks reflected on the water.
The next day, we were to have leftover chicken for lunch. The adults told us we could have lunch, and they would have more later. I had a very OCD/obese habit at that time where I would eat my first helping, then I would get seconds that were 2/3 the size of the first helping, then I would get thirds that were 1/3 the size of the first. Thus, I had three pieces of chicken, then two, then one. All of us boys ate a lot. Joey was eating with his mouth open, thus making annoying smacking noises, so I told him not to do that. Then I wanted to illustrate how annoying he was by doing the same thing. Then he said, "Marky's a hypocrite." I was so mad that I went and ate outside. When the adults went to eat, they were shocked that the chicken was all gone, and I felt bad for having eaten six pieces. (In my defense, they were small pieces, so only a couple of pieces was not sufficient for a meal, because I don't think they had offered us anything else.)
At one point, Joey found a non-electric lawnmower. He found it fascinating, so he began messing around with it. Sue was proud of him for mowing the lawn, so she took my mom's camcorder to record it, but my mom told her that she needed to tell him he couldn't make random lines in the lawn.
My mom's cousins and their families came up from Tennessee. Chancey was kind of flirtatious with some of the girls; Sue remarked that she noticed he had put on his best shirt, a button-up over a BYU t-shirt (the style of the day being to have a button-up shirt unbuttoned over another shirt). At one point, I took a wet fishing net and sprinkled it above my second cousin Ryan, saying I was getting payback from 1995. He said he didn't remember doing that, but someone else said he could see him doing that. My mom's cousins Rob and Sandy had recently adopted a little boy.
One night, we were all asleep when we heard a girl next door yelling quite loudly, "You're such a liar, I hope you die!" Sue said, "What's going on? Joey?"
We went to Niagara Falls one day. This might have been the morning Chancey came with us in our rental car; he was asked if he was OK with listening to Kenny Rogers and John Denver, and he said he was because his family didn't like listening to country music. I said that I had heard Conway Twitty on commercials and didn't like him. I was offered a granola bar, but I didn't want to eat it because I had brushed my teeth in the last half hour, but I might have eaten it anyway. At Niagara Falls, we went and saw the falls from the back. I remember Joey was singing "Yankee Doodle Dandee." We took a ride on the Maid of the Mist, which was pretty fun.
Another day--maybe that day--we went to the Hill Cumorah for the Palmyra Pageant. We met Grandma and Grandpa there; Grandpa had made his signature chicken and brought it for our dinner. I was kind of embarrassed to be eating it in front of all those strangers. I saw some people with programs, but we didn't have one, so I went up to a booth and said, "Is this where we get the programs?" and she kind of rudely said no. I remember watching all the different actors and identifying them; Joseph Smith was easy. There was a four-year-old girl sitting behind us, who said lots of funny things. When Joseph Smith was sitting on the ground getting the plates out, she said, "Who died?"
When we went to church, Jesse and Chancey were in our Sunday School class, and at the beginning we were supposed to say something about us. I said that Jesse and Chancey were my cousins, and the teacher said she wouldn't have known that. When we went home that day, we looked at the Sunday comics. The Thompsons thought that day's 9 Chickweed Lane was really dumb. I remember Peter saying he would like to have every comics page and every sports page from every newspaper. Other comic strips that I read on that trip referenced Gilligan's Island (before I had ever seen it) and The Beverly Hillbillies, and another had a dad telling his kids that fireworks were illegal, a concept that was foreign to me.
Quin was six, and he became friends with a five-year-old kid visiting the Van Auken family. They did lots of things together, and he even ended up in the Thompson family picture taken in front of the K on the house. Here is our own very unflattering picture, with the visiting kid's head in front.
The little "King" decoration in front was burned, along with a lot of other stuff, in a bonfire. It was said--I can't remember if it was my mom or my grandparents--that they wanted it burned so that my then-uncle Wayne wouldn't keep it and turn it into a Thompson sign.
One time, I remember remarking that the smoke of the fire was like that of Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie, and Chancey said I was obsessed.
Sue liked to look for bullfrogs to catch. She also would row the rowboat while standing up, so my mom would call her a gondolier. I loved rowing the boat, but I did it sitting down.
There was a Dunkin' Donuts in the area, and I remember Jesse saying that if he were a police officer, he would turn on his siren to get there. Wayne told him that was illegal. I remember being fascinated by all the abandoned houses in the neighborhood. One of them had holiday lights on it; I was trying to tell whether they were red or orange.
I remember our last day there. Everyone had left except for my grandparents. We grabbed all the things we wanted from the house before leaving for the last time. I wanted a little cat statue, and my mom wanted an older Siamese cat statue. I took the little fruit magnets from the fridge. I liked the ones without leaves, but I ended up taking them all. Then we went and met my grandparents at the laundromat, where I was embarrassed to see they had folded my laundry. That night, we stayed with Mary Lou, who made us a really good chicken dinner. I was wearing my Niagara Falls socks, which were white with red heels and toes. Mary Lou said she loved my socks.
Our last day on the trip, we went to a Shaker museum in Albany. But I wasn't too interested; I mostly wanted to see the gift shop, where I got a little hurricane lamp and some candy made with rosemary. We had a late flight out. On one of the flights, my mom put one of our carry-ons up and told another passenger that it was treasures from Grandma's house. I was excited to finally beat level 9-5 on B-version Tetris. During our layover, we got some cookies from a vending machine. On another flight, a man was assigned to sit by us, but there were empty seats on the plane, so he moved. They were showing Spy Kids, but I fell asleep.
And thus ended our New York vacations.
My mom and I flew into Albany and rented a car, although I don't really remember the particulars.We would have driven up to Pulaski, where my grandparents were already at "the Pond," getting ready to sell the house after Grandma King's death. One night, my mom and I went to the local grocery store. We got cherry Twizzlers and one or two Pez dispensers. I think I got a Snoopy and a Peppermint Patty, but I don't know if I got them at the same time. The store also had cereal themed after the Atlantis Disney movie in theaters at that time.
One day, my grandparents, my mom, and I painted the metal of the dock. We had to get in the water to paint it, and so afterwards we went swimming in the pond. Suddenly my mom shrieked because something in the water had bit her.
Susanne called us; she had been in Mexico. She asked me if I still collected chess sets, because she had bought one for me. She had also gotten really sick from eating flan. After she came, I remember she said she would never eat it again, but my great-aunt Mary Lou said it was sooo good. (I don't like it.)
I had brought some Fourth of July magnets, so I asked Grandma if I could put them on the fridge. She said I could.
One day, my mom and grandparents went to the Palmyra Temple. I went to Hill Cumorah instead. I hiked it a couple of times (with a Pez dispenser in my pocket; I think I was wearing my plaid shorts that had a little world patch covering up a hole burned by an ash), including the back way. There had been a youth conference there; when I walked into the visitor's center, the missionaries thought I was part of that group. I explained I was from North Salt Lake. A sister missionary asked if I knew where Holladay was; I said no. I got a one-on-one tour in the visitor's center.
We went to church one Sunday. One of the speakers said something about "four c's: cake, candy, cookies, and ice cream." I went to the one youth Sunday School class, in which the teacher had brought her little daughter. The toddler had a red drink that she tried to give to the class; one girl took it and pretended to drink it, while a boy did a terrible job of pretending. The teacher said that the drink was made out of wheat. Then I went to Priesthood; one of the guys in that class repeated the "four c's" comment. There was a poster with the Boy Scout Law on it; they had added "hungry and aggressive" at the end. My grandparents were frequent enough visitors that the ward knew them; thus, when one girl asked me who I was visiting, I said, "the Ebberts," but I don't think she knew who that was. After church, Grandpa was talking about the family that had fourteen kids. During priesthood, they had talked about fasting and said that you don't need to fast if you are pregnant or nursing; the patriarch of that family said that his wife hadn't fasted for fourteen years. (Maybe it was longer than that.) I had noticed that the teenage boys in that family needed haircuts.
At some point, Susanne joined us. One day, we visited some historical place; I think it was about the Revolutionary War. I was wearing my red USA shirt, and the tour guide wanted me to represent a Redcoat (unless the historic site wasn't about the Revolutionary War). I got a penny whistle and a feather pen and empty inkwell from their gift shop. I think this might have been the same day we went to some Pfaltzgraff (which sounded like "false craft" to me) and Oneida stores. At one store, they sold dishes with slight defects. I saw a Halloween night light that I thought was cool. At the other store, they sold all sorts of silverware and some other odds and ends. I found a little snowglobe of bears celebrating New Year's. Elsewhere in the store, they had little teapots representing months. For November, there was both a turkey and a Pilgrim hat. I liked the hat one better; apparently, it had been replaced with the turkey. I couldn't decide between the snowglobe and the Pilgrim hat teapot, but I ended up getting the teapot.
Then, at some point, the Thompsons came. I think they had flown into New Jersey and rented a van, which had automatic doors, something we were not accustomed to. At one point, I remember Jesse saying he didn't like Baha Men, that being one of Chancey's CDs (during the era of "Who Let the Dogs Out?"). Another day, we were riding in their van for some reason, and my mom put in my mix tape from the year before. It had a lot of smooth jazz from a Peanuts CD that I did not like, so I was trying to express my disdain for it, but my mom and sister told me to stop.
On the Fourth of July, there was a family reunion. I took a dish out of the fridge, trying to find something. My great aunt Mary Lou told me I needed to hold the dish upright. Later, we went to see a river with a waterfall. I was wearing my white t-shirt with a flag design. There was a sign on a tree telling people not to cliff jump, because the writers had a friend who had done so and died. The sign was a bit of a memorial to him, and among other things it had a picture of a pack of cigarettes. I said that if he smoked, he was going to die anyway. We took a little hike down to the bottom of the waterfalls, and on our way, my aunt Sue said she had found a weeping wall, "but it's not as big as the one at Zions." The "weeping wall" she found was just a little tiny spring, hardly anything like Zion's Weeping Rock. Sue's family was going to go see some fireworks. I was a little hesitant about going with them, because of my then-uncle Wayne's habitual tendency toward orneriness. I went anyway, and as we pulled up to the fairgrounds, I saw the sign saying "Oswego County Fair" and I asked if that meant it was the county fair of Oswego or the fair of Oswego County. My cousin Jesse didn't understand what I was talking about. Once the fireworks started, I remember my cousins Jesse and Joey and I having a conversation about how unimpressive these fireworks were. There was a stationary firework on the ground that was an American flag, but that was the only cool one. Jesse said that he had seen flowers (as in the home firework--"ground blooms") do more amazing things. My aunt reproved us for our negativity. As we left, I remember a conversation about carnival workers. When we got back to "the Pond," my mom and the others there said that someone had been setting off illegal Pennsylvanian fireworks that they were able to watch. I remember then that I regretted going, because the fireworks were so unimpressive and I could have stayed at the house and watched the fireworks reflected on the water.
The next day, we were to have leftover chicken for lunch. The adults told us we could have lunch, and they would have more later. I had a very OCD/obese habit at that time where I would eat my first helping, then I would get seconds that were 2/3 the size of the first helping, then I would get thirds that were 1/3 the size of the first. Thus, I had three pieces of chicken, then two, then one. All of us boys ate a lot. Joey was eating with his mouth open, thus making annoying smacking noises, so I told him not to do that. Then I wanted to illustrate how annoying he was by doing the same thing. Then he said, "Marky's a hypocrite." I was so mad that I went and ate outside. When the adults went to eat, they were shocked that the chicken was all gone, and I felt bad for having eaten six pieces. (In my defense, they were small pieces, so only a couple of pieces was not sufficient for a meal, because I don't think they had offered us anything else.)
At one point, Joey found a non-electric lawnmower. He found it fascinating, so he began messing around with it. Sue was proud of him for mowing the lawn, so she took my mom's camcorder to record it, but my mom told her that she needed to tell him he couldn't make random lines in the lawn.
My mom's cousins and their families came up from Tennessee. Chancey was kind of flirtatious with some of the girls; Sue remarked that she noticed he had put on his best shirt, a button-up over a BYU t-shirt (the style of the day being to have a button-up shirt unbuttoned over another shirt). At one point, I took a wet fishing net and sprinkled it above my second cousin Ryan, saying I was getting payback from 1995. He said he didn't remember doing that, but someone else said he could see him doing that. My mom's cousins Rob and Sandy had recently adopted a little boy.
One night, we were all asleep when we heard a girl next door yelling quite loudly, "You're such a liar, I hope you die!" Sue said, "What's going on? Joey?"
We went to Niagara Falls one day. This might have been the morning Chancey came with us in our rental car; he was asked if he was OK with listening to Kenny Rogers and John Denver, and he said he was because his family didn't like listening to country music. I said that I had heard Conway Twitty on commercials and didn't like him. I was offered a granola bar, but I didn't want to eat it because I had brushed my teeth in the last half hour, but I might have eaten it anyway. At Niagara Falls, we went and saw the falls from the back. I remember Joey was singing "Yankee Doodle Dandee." We took a ride on the Maid of the Mist, which was pretty fun.
Another day--maybe that day--we went to the Hill Cumorah for the Palmyra Pageant. We met Grandma and Grandpa there; Grandpa had made his signature chicken and brought it for our dinner. I was kind of embarrassed to be eating it in front of all those strangers. I saw some people with programs, but we didn't have one, so I went up to a booth and said, "Is this where we get the programs?" and she kind of rudely said no. I remember watching all the different actors and identifying them; Joseph Smith was easy. There was a four-year-old girl sitting behind us, who said lots of funny things. When Joseph Smith was sitting on the ground getting the plates out, she said, "Who died?"
When we went to church, Jesse and Chancey were in our Sunday School class, and at the beginning we were supposed to say something about us. I said that Jesse and Chancey were my cousins, and the teacher said she wouldn't have known that. When we went home that day, we looked at the Sunday comics. The Thompsons thought that day's 9 Chickweed Lane was really dumb. I remember Peter saying he would like to have every comics page and every sports page from every newspaper. Other comic strips that I read on that trip referenced Gilligan's Island (before I had ever seen it) and The Beverly Hillbillies, and another had a dad telling his kids that fireworks were illegal, a concept that was foreign to me.
Quin was six, and he became friends with a five-year-old kid visiting the Van Auken family. They did lots of things together, and he even ended up in the Thompson family picture taken in front of the K on the house. Here is our own very unflattering picture, with the visiting kid's head in front.
One time, I remember remarking that the smoke of the fire was like that of Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie, and Chancey said I was obsessed.
Sue liked to look for bullfrogs to catch. She also would row the rowboat while standing up, so my mom would call her a gondolier. I loved rowing the boat, but I did it sitting down.
There was a Dunkin' Donuts in the area, and I remember Jesse saying that if he were a police officer, he would turn on his siren to get there. Wayne told him that was illegal. I remember being fascinated by all the abandoned houses in the neighborhood. One of them had holiday lights on it; I was trying to tell whether they were red or orange.
I remember our last day there. Everyone had left except for my grandparents. We grabbed all the things we wanted from the house before leaving for the last time. I wanted a little cat statue, and my mom wanted an older Siamese cat statue. I took the little fruit magnets from the fridge. I liked the ones without leaves, but I ended up taking them all. Then we went and met my grandparents at the laundromat, where I was embarrassed to see they had folded my laundry. That night, we stayed with Mary Lou, who made us a really good chicken dinner. I was wearing my Niagara Falls socks, which were white with red heels and toes. Mary Lou said she loved my socks.
Our last day on the trip, we went to a Shaker museum in Albany. But I wasn't too interested; I mostly wanted to see the gift shop, where I got a little hurricane lamp and some candy made with rosemary. We had a late flight out. On one of the flights, my mom put one of our carry-ons up and told another passenger that it was treasures from Grandma's house. I was excited to finally beat level 9-5 on B-version Tetris. During our layover, we got some cookies from a vending machine. On another flight, a man was assigned to sit by us, but there were empty seats on the plane, so he moved. They were showing Spy Kids, but I fell asleep.
And thus ended our New York vacations.
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