Fun at Snowbird

Corny Collins

I'd explain, but--no explanation really makes this alright!

Cooties?

This video sums up the world I've just re-entered. You've got to love it!

Because Talmage Prefers Caillou to Sesame Street

Can anyone explain to me why a "boy who's four" who each day he "grows some more" is still bald and talks like he's two?

Tyler Howe: The Ultimate Kissing He-Man

So, a couple of comments on the below video.

I've mentioned that Talmage's favorite cartoon character is the Little Mermaid. He loves the color pink. And really, what's the harm in letting him rent Care Bears from the library (besides the fines because I can't get videos back on time for the life of me)? Girls' videos are much less violent than boys' videos (can you really learn violence from the ultimate embrace of love, the Care Bear Stare?) and while I know my boy's going to become obsessed with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers someday (a day I already look forward to with deep fear and anxiety), the kid is two years old. Can't he be my sensitive, pink-loving, Care-Bear snuggling baby for a little longer?

For Tyler, the clear answer to that question is "NO." So, behind my back, mind you, Tyler went to the library and convinced Talmage to check out He-man (and I'm told it took some serious convincing). Because really, what's more masculine than the words "he" and "man" put together? And what's more tough than a ripply muscled advertisement for the Aryan race whose lips move about as if independent from the rest of his body? And can you even imagine the intuition it took for his fabulous secret powers to be revealed to him the day he held aloft his magic sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull, I. Have. The. POWER?" I mean, how many word combinations do you think he had to try before he stumbled on that exact phrasing and the fabulous powers were revealed? Two? Ten? Ten thousand? I don't know about you, but I'm betting low.

Tyler and I have spent much of the last several weeks watching every second of the Olympics, from Michael Phelps and his abs to the women's trampoline finals. This is fitting, because I am married to the Olympics' biggest fan, A. Tyler Howe. You might think your spouse and/or significant other is a pretty big fan, and I don't doubt it. BUT, did that person hang an Olympics flag on the front of your house a full two weeks in advance in preparation? I didn't think so.

On a related note, I've decided that women's beach volleyball is really going to be my thing. Look for me and my lean muscle mass in London, 2012.

After a full week of the swimming semi-finals, Tyler and I decided that we needed to make our time more productive and began Operation Throw Out All the Papers That Laura Has Been Accumulating Since 1983. Among the things that went by the wayside (mom stop reading here)? High school love letters, my position on the BYU Fine Arts and Communications Dean's List, and the real tragedy--a picture of my family that I drew in 1986. I showed it to Tyler and he said, "Cute. Now throw it away."

Tyler had some papers to rifle through as well, and I think the real gem of the evening is this photo we found published in the church news:



This is none other than 17 year old Tyler with What's Up Girl From Taylorsville, otherwise known as Tyler's first kiss. Inspired by this fabulous photo of Tyler and the Taylorsville chick reading their scriptures, I feel it important to document Tyler's kissing education, a many year study that brought him to the position he holds today (and you're just going to have to trust me on this): The Best Kisser In the Universe. You might even call him a MASTER of the Universe.

Kissing 101: What's Up Girl From Taylorsville. Subtitled, Tyler's First Kiss--Or Was It? Cara Newbold was a girl Tyler met through one of his uncles (I think it was Curtis) who set them up. Tyler was a slow-mover (just how slow, I don't think even Tyler knew at that point) so I believe they had hung out for quite a while when Cara's friend goaded Tyler into kissing her at the doorstep. Tyler took that as a good sign--the fact that Cara's friends were trying to hit him over the head to get him to make a move--so he approached that doorstep with confidence. So much confidence that he turned Cara toward him, closed his eyes seductively, and planted a kiss squarely between her left nostril and the corner of her mouth. Tyler noted that you should probably keep your eyes open on the way in. Lesson learned. Unfortunately, Tyler couldn't work up the courage to kiss her a second time before they broke up, and he had to save that valuable knowledge for later use.

Kissing 102: Dave Taylor. No, he did not kiss his cousin Dave Taylor. But, Dave was considerably more experienced than Tyler in the kissing department, and it occurred to Tyler that if he did indeed keep his eyes open for a kiss sometime in the future, he wasn't really sure what to do when he got there. Step in more experienced Dave who kindly showed him that his hand was a whole lot like a girl's lips, and if he could tenderly work his way around the knuckle at the base of his thumb, he'd have no problem on an actual girl. Whew! Knowledge that saved him when it came to

Kissing 201: Melissa Smith. Melissa was an adorable girl who Tyler and I both knew in high school. Tyler took Melissa to senior prom and was able to smoothly twirl that girl around the dance floor due to the fact that she barely tipped the scale at 100 lbs. This of course was a problem when Tyler and I began dating, me being of a staturesque Viking heritage and not the slight young thing Tyler was used to dancing with. When a country dance came on at BYU's Preference and Tyler was unable to spin me over his head, he mused, "Funny; this always worked with Melissa." All that dancing prepped nicely for the romantic end to the date. Tyler kept his eyes open and landed directly on Melissa's lips.

The second kiss was even better when after three more months of dating seriously, Tyler was able to kiss her sometime in September.

Kissing 202: Laura Paulsen. Due to a series of complicated events, Tyler and I snuggled before his mission but never kissed. Nearly three years later when I returned home from my mission, Tyler and I picked up where we had left off (with an amazingly short transition period from Laura. I was totally normal. This is my story and I'm sticking with it). The night of my homecoming--after a bit of couch cuddling--I walked Tyler to the door and he looked at me seriously, reproached me for the itty-bitty crazy transition of Laura freaking out a teensy-weensy bit, and kissed me square on the lips.

Kissing 560: This one was all me. The next night was New Year's Eve. I grabbed Tyler and taught him the ways of the world. He was a quick study. It's a good thing I took matters into my own hands or it could have been another several months. And we were engaged six weeks later.

Talmage is He-Man

This is my last-ditch effort to save my son from Laura's Care-Bear influence.

Six Years, And I've Committed for Six More Months

The Book Thief

I should probably wait a couple of days after I finish a book before I post about it, so that I have time for the thoughts to really flesh themselves out. But I didn't for this book so here are my preliminary thoughts about a very thought-provoking book.

This is a WWII era novel about a German girl growing up in Munich. I found that refreshing for one--I've read a lot of accounts of the holocaust, both fictional and non-fictional, but it's always seemed as if the German perspective were a bit taboo. Which I can understand--no author can really get away with saying how the German populace could rationalize agreeing with Hitler's thinking without justifying Hitler's thinking. One of my favorite movies, Judgment at Nuremberg allows the judges who passed the discriminatory laws against Jews and other targeted peoples to have a voice, but that voiced is trumped in the end by the righteous American judge who tells them they were still wrong and sends them to jail. Zusak, the author of The Book Thief, examines the German people as a mixed bag with varying levels of support for Hitler's reforms--the main characters ones who hide Jews at most or who are bored with Hitler's youth programs at least.

I've read a couple of reviews that critiqued Zusak's narrator--Death. They felt that it would have been better to leave the unfolding of events to the main character, a ten year old girl. That way, the reviewers argued, you would have been aware of the innocence and naivety that was slaughtered by the horrific events. I really liked Death as a narrator. I thought he was appropriately omniscient and therefore could comment on the cruelty and kindness humans are capable of. I think it is both humanity's cruelty and their kindness that leads Death to reflect, "I am haunted by humans."

The power of words is a major theme in this book, something I thought about a lot about in graduate school studying semiotics and I think about now teaching English 150, Writing and Rhetoric. I've studied speeches that stir people to action, words that change outcomes of serious political situations. I've felt both cruel words and kind words and felt emotionally changed by them. I think of sacred words that I've uttered during ordinances and think of their constancy and power. I reflect on John 1:1 and think of Christ as The Word, who by virtue of the integrity of his words could create the universe. I don't know where these thoughts really lead me, but I will add two more ideas to these musings from Zusak--a boxing Jew who imagines himself face-to-face with Hitler in the ring, ready to punch him out, who looses because Hitler, through the power of his words, convinces the spectators to join him in beating down the Jew; and a young German girl who is so desperate for words and literature that she steals them.

Shadow Puppets

Hey apparently this is the 100th post! Ha--I should get a prize or something.

Why You Can Get Offended by the Mormons but Still Shouldn't

So, I teach gospel doctrine in my ward--a calling I really enjoy and one that actually comes fairly easy to me. I've always felt pretty confident in the calling and felt others enjoy my lessons, but now I'm not so sure:

Kind Elderly Gentleman: Lori!
Me: Yes?
Kind Elderly Gentleman: Lori, I have the greatest idea!
Me: What's that?
Kind Elderly Gentleman: Well, today I was so torn during Sunday School because both Bishop Ence and Bishop Williams were teaching and I couldn't decide which lesson to go to.
Me: They are both excellent teachers.
Kind Elderly Gentleman: Right. Well, I was thinking how we have two women teaching one week and two men teaching the next week, and I thought, why not have one woman teach the same time as one man so no one would be torn?
Me: So I'm guessing you wouldn't feel torn to go to my lesson?
Kind Elderly Gentleman: Well, you teach well, too. But they've both been bishops.
Me: True, I haven't been a bishop yet.
Kind Elderly Gentleman: That way, if you want to hear a woman teacher, you could go hear a woman, and the rest of us could go hear a man teacher.
Me: Genius.
Kind Elderly Gentleman: So, I talked to Bishop Taylor about it today, so you plan on getting a phone call this week.

Breaking Dawn (and the rest of the series I had to reread in preparation)

All right. I've endured a lot of flack for reading Breaking Dawn and the rest of the Twilight saga quickly and obsessively and for being the only person remotely close to 30 at the midnight selling. And I'm a little embarrassed about it. At our neighborhood picnic two nights before it came out, six people came up to me and said, "Oh, I heard you're obsessed with Twilight." Granted, all they wanted to do was bond because they liked the books too, but I wanted to scream, "Do you know how many books I've read since I read Twilight? Like, a lot. And I just finished a Pulitzer Prize winner this week." I think there's a line in Hamlet about she who protests too much.

I'll defend to the death Meyer's creativity and characters, characters that stick with you after you read the books. I'm sure the romance is partly why it's so addictive. I'll admit that. So I like romance. But apparently only in my head; poor Tyler has to deal with someone who teases him anytime he tries to be romantic.

My objective thoughts on this book: Meyer's creativity went into a higher gear in this story, surprising me many times with things I hadn't considered at all as a possibility for this story. That was entertaining and kept me interested for the entire book. The characters that I loved so well in the other three books seemed to suffer a bit because of it. Not that they changed illogically; in fact because of her creative "plot elements" I bought all of the changes that characters underwent, but now there were so many characters that were so vitally different than they were before that I lost track a bit of the characters that had kept me up at night before. Maybe this doesn't make any sense; I think I need to talk more specifically so here's a big SPOILER ALERT. Bella whose entire character had been built around the choice to love Edward, recognizing the sacrifices that entailed, becomes a mother. Now I have felt that love for Tyler where I would sacrifice most anything for him, and I have felt that expand and change focus when Talmage came into my life, so I understood how it affected Bella, but maybe because we weren't always focused on Bella for this story, she just became a different character for me. Edward, whose identity was so defined by being protective of Bella, doesn't need to be protective anymore when she becomes "more durable." So he lost a major part of his identity as well. Jacob who we only knew as the other man who loved Bella, imprints on another character and looses that part of his identity as well. Again, even though the changes weren't illogical, they were changes and I missed the characters I had loved before.

Interesting that Meyer talks about how much she admires Orson Scott Card, because my reaction was just the same with the Ender series. I love Ender's Game largely because I fell in love with the character who became so real to me and I continued and read everything else Card wrote about Ender, but by Xenocide, I felt there were so many characters in the story that I lost track of Ender. While Xenocide (and Breaking Dawn, too) was a more intellectually interesting and more complicated story, I loved the simplicity of the first in the stories for the personal connection to characters I developed.

All in all, I liked Breaking Dawn, but I think Eclipse will remain my favorite in the series. I felt like it built around a singular theme and brought me with the characters through their growth and epiphanies.

Last thought for why I admire Stephenie Meyer and the niche she has created in teen fiction: these books are fraught with sexuality. I think the whole vampire genre is--creatures who carnally lust for blood have to be equated with the most powerful carnal desire in humanity. So Meyer's entire series (with vampires who routinely master that desire for blood) becomes a morality tale about self-control. And I don't think there are many books touting that message, teaching a laurel lesson about waiting to gratify that urge until marriage to girls who don't receive laurel lessons. Granted, I think girls should probably be laurel age to read them rather than beehive age, but at least the conversation's out there.

Twilight Part 4

Talmage's First Car Accident (13 Years Before He Gets His License)

I guess we should just consider ourselves VERY lucky!