alan rogers, university of utah

"All scientists are skeptics if they’re any good, but they’re not stubborn about it," he said in a statement. "In science, you have to be able to change your mind when confronted with evidence. It seems to me that learning that skill is important, not only for scientists, but for everybody. It makes us better citizens."

another one from the bus

an exchange between two men, one exiting the bus at the front, and one seated at the back:

front: what and red bull?

back: what? (pulling out earbuds)

front: red bull and what was it?

back: oh, eh, cocktail sauce.

life is such a dark, dreamy thing.

from die antwoord's tribute to leon botha.

"free"

holocene

and at once i knew, i was not magnificent.

the stories and chaos coyote.

i'm looking forward to the navajo basket exhibit that will open in the natural history museum of utah fall 2012. the stories of these baskets and the people who create them are fascinating.

the art, the craft, the time, the dedication, the taboo, the tension, the renaissance.

the above basket was woven by elsie holiday and is available at the twin rocks trading post.

i love the stories so! one i particularly like is "coyote placing the stars." from indigenouspeople.net:

Coyote is just being coyote when he sees the Creator placing the stars in the sky from a bag in a very orderly manner. Coyote asks if he can help and the Creator lets coyote place stars in the sky reminding him to be sure and put the stars up in an orderly manner. Coyote does it correctly, but, as is his nature, coyote becomes impatient and throws the whole bag of stars into the sky distributing the stars helter skelter. The Creator scolds him for his carelessness and for the mess he made. Coyote leaves with his tail between his legs. Soon, however, Coyote goes back to being a coyote, only after that he howls at night when he sees the mess he made with the stars.

i might identify with Coyote.

jonathan franzen says:

you have to love before you can be relentless.

red and white

it settled onto my wrist like an old friend, as if it knew it by memory.

wish it weren't so.

gil scott heron will be missed.

for the record.

this is the first weekend in a good while that i haven't been out of town, busy with events or some combination of the two. it's strange to be able to sit and read with zim curled up next to me. it's cold and rainy. it's quiet, as my roommates all headed out for the weekend. frankly, it's a little unsettling.

it's that unsettlement that leads me to remember the last little while.

highlights of the last two months (in chronological order?):

sitting between jord and pm at bolero with sinfonietta and chaconne by ballet west.
crocheting with the lake bonneville coral reef project
moscow mules at bar x with the best of companies
seeing press plush at garfo and meeting the talented cara
shopping for amy at the blue boutique
hiking to the highest point of antelope island, frary peak, with two darlings
amy and todd's graduation
eating with mom, dad, jason and brandy
amy's bridal shower(s)
an epic easter egg hunt at the christopher's
amy and todd's wedding (to eachother)
brunch of said wedding replete with bird nests
poetry share at the salt lake city library
finding kolaches at johnny kolache
being in vernal with jord
sage grouse lek
watching georges st. pierre beat the crud out of the other guy
burrowing owls
hanging out with dora, talking about the gsl for traveling treasures
my graduation (technically a walk, as i won't be finished until early fall)
pat's barbecue with my family
wasatch community garden plant sale
EH potluck
little fat boy being towed by jord's truck from downtown
little fat boy being fixed without another costly repair
sundancing into the darkness with beth
my juicy knee
making and eating rolled tacos with the best caitie in the world
dissecting a cockroach
experimenting with saltwatercoloring
eating pakistani food and worrying about the rapture at living traditions festival
amy and todd's reception (seeing so many friends)
eating at the wild grape with jord
hiking the in the foothills with jord and zig, balsam root and astragalus lighting the way
taking in the lilacs
drinking a boba tea with pm
dreaming with brooke about loving the west
running 7 miles up city creek
bluegrass and pizza with the spensor and the tracy
nate's birthday dinner at bayleaf
running 9 miles with two lovely gals
so much good yoga!

and so many secret highlights.
maybe i need a journal.

this rain is making me nervous.

anxious and excited about the future.

i find it comforting knowing that no one reads this blog.

to love.

grand (iose).

http://www.jimdenevan.com/

i belong as a black atom

No sólo son míos la piel venenosa del cobre
o el salitre extendido como estatua yacente y nevada,
sino la viña, el cerezo premiado por la primavera,

son míos, y yo pertenezco como átomo negro
a las áridas tierras y a la luz del otoño en las uvas,
a esta patria metálica elevada por torres de nieve.

from Cien sonetos de amor, LXIII, Pablo Neruda
full poem here

where do you want to walk to?
where do you want to walk to?
where do you want to walk to?
where do you want to walk to?

burly=

beautiful + gnarly.

thank you, yoga teacher and the urban dictionary.

this is neither the end nor the beginning of the world.

i like it, i do.

what a lady!

above and beyond.

i am so thrilled with the prospect of this:

http://www.newportfolkfest.net/

thank you jord. you are the BEST.

so happy, i'm singing la la la

oh, pokey!

most beautiful weekend, for all reasons.

western meadowlark
mallard
common raven
red-tailed hawk
american kestrel
european starling
horned lark
turkey vulture
mountain bluebird
spotted towhee
barn swallow
brown-headed cowbird
red-winged blackbird
norther harrier
norther flicker
american robin
mourning dove

all of which i am very excited about! but my mind was blown by:

white-faced ibis (large shiny flock in a farmer's field)
osprey (carrying a large fish)
burrowing owls (!!!) (my first sighting!)
sage grouse (lek with around 100 males doing their mating display. the sound echoed over the clearing, and we watched just as the sun rose. such a beautiful moment!)

among other things.

happy birthday mom!

amy is always right. always.

instructions:

watch this,
the mountain

but mute it and listen to this:
like spinning plates

dedicated to pm, who reminds me regularly that i am stardust.

being forever/in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

last night beth and i attended a poetry reading.

this was my favorite:

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, by Galway Kinnell

souvenir

i'm wearing the socks i wore at Actun Tunuchil Muknal.

i like that my best souvenir from our trip to belize is a dirty pair of socks.

the revolution will not be live-blogged.

started the day with a wedding, a family, a lovely girl in a lovely dress.

continued the day with yoga, yerba mate and a new bombilla.

ended the day with desert plans.

yes, i took this quiz.

and yes, the results are correct.


Omar Little... As one of Baltimore's most notorious stick-up artists, Omar Little brings another element to the game: the hunt. With his long duster, battle armor and the sweep of his shotgun, he adds an additional element of risk for Baltimore's dealers. Uncomfortable with profanity and careful to rob only dealers and others in the game who can have no complaint to police, Omar shows particular pride when taking off the stronger organizations.

remember this.

i am so happy.

swans

my!

beautiful (mostly bird) fotos from around the state of utah.

brother.

happy birthday jason!

we all have our pet ideas:

zim: second law of thermodynamics
dickie: string theory
andrea: occam's razor

i love working at the museum!!

we are all nerds.

a short joke from the bus

as told by a couple of fourteen-year-old boys:

q: what's worse than finding a worm in your apple?

a: finding an apple in your worm.

ponder that.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

 wealth distribution and america's weird priorities:

article here

(thanks for the heads up, jordan)

featherful

white pelican
red-winged blackbird
yellow-headed blackbird
western meadowlark
mallard
canvasback
northern shoveler
american coot
great blue heron (with babies!)
pied-billed grebe
canada goose
nothern harrier
american avocet
black-necked stilt
bufflehead
killdeer
cinnamon teal
california gull
american robin
american kestrel

a hairy woodpecker and a turkey vulture at the garden,

and a mourning dove sits outside my window cooing.

such a great morning with the birds.

the eyes

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.

Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past

sleepstate

i've been working on the old laptop the whole afternoon (hence the blog overactivity).

zim is here by my side, sleeping.

he twitches and growls in his dreams.

facebook miracles.

now i know.

and now it all makes perfect sense.

sugar and salt. salt and sugar.



enjoy!

imperfect.

i only played one april fool's prank this year.

bon hiver.

i love this kind of crap.

http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf

today in nirvana

warm homemade granola and greek yogurt.

The Tallest Man On Earth - Where Do My Bluebird Fly (Live on KEXP)

to make myself laugh at a later date.

ptarmigan'd!
i woke up in the lion's mane . . .
mom!
tacopelli
sage grouse
don't drop that egg! there's a baby in there!
joe biden.

a cold day in the garden

and you're trying to sew together the pieces of your heart.

yoga
friendship
birthday party
frog feeding
granola
zim

wishing on spring.

and i see losing love
is like a window in your heart

this week in silence.

the shrike.

vernal equinox.

i'm balancing.

one related to the one before. thanks amy.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.



Elizabeth Bishop

dickie is a yogi

at this moment he lowers himself into plank pose.

was born to

let it go


let it go--the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go--the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers--you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love



E. E. Cummings

neither here nor there.

listen.

today, i love you, but you aren't so kind to me always.

dad's birthday (it's muslim for Insha'Allah)
international womens' day (revolt)
mardi gras (i ate a donut that looked just like a simpson's donut)
the little fat boy (is a sad young thing)
a friend pulls through (if a year had a million days, i'd thank you every one)
mozzarella (and cherry tomatoes)
lake salt great (two friends remind me what i love)
snow (we don't know who to believe)

(no subject)

where'd you went to?

Mavis Staples + Jeff Tweedy - "You Are Not Alone" Acoustic

woke up with this in my head.

open up.

thanks jord.

in the great salt lake.

Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body.

John Muir

curious about delicious food.

we are in the process of revamping the curious blog into a seriously curious about food blog.

if you read spooky and peek-a-boo, and would like to contribute to the food blog, let me know.

http://curiousquestionsforum.blogspot.com/

also obsessed with this.

Two Dancers II // Wild Beasts

home.

tell your feelings.

we are in the last few days to submit comments regarding the bridge plan for utah lake.

let them hear you, asap.

click here to submit comments

so many good things this year!

so many good things this year.

the fog is heavy and quiet.

i love my family very, very much.

of course it's carl.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Recuerdo

Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

albums i liked this year.

10. Clinging to a Scheme--The Radio Dept.
9. I'm New Here--Gil Scott Heron
8. Genuine Negro Jig--The Carolina Chocolate Drops
7. Brothers--The Black Keys
6. Be Brave--The Strange Boys
5. Age of Adz--Sufjan Stevens
4. The Suburbs--Arcade Fire
3. Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows--Songs of John Prine
2. Phosphene Dream--The Black Angels
1. High Violet--The National

Here's some listen:

for the love of our lungs.

please consider riding the bus, carpooling, riding your bike, you know, whatever.

http://airnow.gov/

forgive me my naïveté.

bobbing along.

consume this!

the best things about going to costco were:

1. being with my mom
2. seeing timp's white glory in the alpenglow.

i am not the bread and the knife.

i love this so. still.

in the fake plastic earth

chris jordan's artwork

Il faut être absolument moderne.

rimbaud, 1873.


in rebellion,

nap,
a cat,
friends,
my crochet,
debussy,
a book,
soup,
tea.

lifted from npr tumblr, now i must read it.

“The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off too. But before I did, it occured to me, looking around at all your things, and all your work, and going through all the years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still the most beautiful, the most beautiful work of all.”

patti smith, just kids

crane your neck.

listened to rosalie winard talk about her fotos tonight. beautiful.





(i don't know what they want from me. it's like the more birds we come across, the more birds we see)

how do you get into the duck club? sounds prestigious.

first and foremost, one must be a duck.

tundra swan (numbering in the thousands)
common merganser
american avocet
marsh wren
northern shoveler
eared grebe
common grebe
american coot
nothern harrier
gadwall
canada goose
sandhill crane
red-winged blackbird
black-billed magpie
american kestrel
ring-necked pheasant rooster and hen

much to be learned.

futile devices by sufjan stevens

make it big.

Sufjan Stevens - Futile Devices Music Video from Freddie Paull on Vimeo.

worthy 18 minutes

Jared Diamond on why societies collapse | Video on TED.com

every full day.

the last week or so has been full of people who remind me to live every day at top enthusiasm.

effervescence.
joie de vivre.
vitality.
passion.
raison d'être.
vibrancy.
zeal.

poetry slam with Michael Dimitri and the other poets (why AREN'T we here?)
Terry Tempest Williams (her article on the BP spill)
Katie Lee (91-year-old sticks it to the man)
Sufjan Stevens (sincerity, and a song i am loving)
Subhankar Banerjee (exuberance)
Alexandra Fuller (you never know who you're waking up)

day of the dead.

i feel like i'm going through a breakup.






ps i love my dear friends.

in true halloween spirit

zim woke me today by sneezing in my face.

then he tried to bury my friend's coffee cup. the cup was sitting on the wood floor.

he then, with flashing eyes, climbed to the top of the ponderosa pine, meowed, and made his way slowly down.

and then, climbed as fast as fast to the top of the ash, meowed his triumph, and made his way down.

and now, he sits quietly in the sunlight, as if none of this ever happened.

he's a brlack cat.

things to remember.

no, you can't only love when you want to.

the strange boys

there's winter all over the floor here.

i like the snow when it is wet and sloshy and the windshield wipers swish it off without scraping. i like the gush gush gush sounds on the ground.

i've listened to the song heartbeats, performed by jose gonzalez, enough tonight, but i'll keep listening. quando m'en vo, heartbeats, repeat. weird combination.

i went to class tonight. there was no class. i locked my keys in the fat boy. a new friend called AAA.

there's an empty space between my sternum and my heart.

returning to high

i dreamt about notch peak last night, walking through the bristlecones, looking straight ahead at the cliff face, nearly falling over the edge.

not distracted.

abstracted.

go see "angels in america" performed by the salt lake acting company.

part one shows through the 31st.

in4mation

warmer longer.

colder soon.

ahora, sí, estoy enamorada

the serviceberry leaves are red.
the oaks are dropping acorns.
the bigtooth maple leaves are sugary and falling.
the male tarantulas are wandering.

today, i found a dead bumblebee clinging to a rabbitbrush stem.

everyday with the garden will be missed.

Por donde fuimos, islas o puentes o banderas,
violines del fugaz otoño acribillado,
repitió la alegría los labios de la copa,
el dolor nos detuvo con su lección de llanto.

Soneto XXVIII, Neruda.

afuera

The brushing of teeth, since he was a child, has always been for him an outdoor activity.

TEP, p. 86

to expose our follies.

i have around 500 fotos in my photobooth application. 85-90% of those fotos are of myself and zim.

success?

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.

David Orr, What is Education For?, 1991

angle of repose

genevieve, a geomorphologist, explained to me last march that the angle of repose is the degree at which rocks and debris rest after mass fail, or erosion.

this weekend, i was down on the staircase, looking at the rocks, comme d'habitude. they are beautiful because they have fallen. they're at rest, but they'll fall again. and something new will be beautiful.

was the quiet i always felt in you really repose? i wish i thought so.
wallace stegner, AofR, 12.

i myself like the porcupine.

fenomenally simple animal fotografs here.

often enough

i wake up to myself rearranging the stacks of books next to my bed.

i should put them on the shelf.

one cannot fathom such things.

if texas was populated by only women, and they had to stand two feet apart at all times, would texas secede from the union?

(8 year old boy)

what are you doing?

i'm kicking my butt.

(i asked the question. a 6-year-old girl answered it.)

if we could.

The boy steadied his breathing and told himself firmly, "You are not afraid of this. This is just a human heart, that's all. Just like in the encyclopedia. Everybody has one of these. I have one."

WUBC, p. 420