A-maze-ing. (There was really no other title for this.)

I was browsing Wikipedia a while ago and came across a genuine registered state landmark in my backyard, so to speak. I'm all about registered state landmarks, so when Daniel and I needed a destination for our last summer adventure, I knew this would be it.



Okay, so the Hemet Maze Stone is just a rock with an interesting painting on it, but some native peoples really, truly made it. And that's worth surrounding in not one, but two chain-link fences and barbed wire, apparently.



The view was nice. It was warm, but slightly overcast. Nice day.



We were really there. I mean it.



I learned last summer at the Diamond Valley archaeology museum that sunflowers are native to the San Jacinto Valley, and we got to see some up close.



One of the things that I love most about wandering through a deserty region with a macro setting on my camera is that the tiny elements that you'd normally pass by become fascinatingly intricate and genuinely beautiful when you can stop to see them for what they are.

Not year of the dog, but definitely day of the hot dog.

Mom's second group of Chinese students this summer spent a five-day intensive here. Here's Shen, the one who stayed with us. The students are addressed last name, first name in China, and here they told us that we could just call them by their last names.



Hu, Mom, Shen, and Chen.



Mom and I drove them to LAX Wednesday and then, at the recommendation of one of the host parents, had lunch at Pink's, a hot dog place that, he said, is "where all the stars go." We didn't see any stars, but we did see a lot of other people.



The line wrapped around the back of the building and we waited in it for a good 45 minutes. But the food was tasty, and we got a little LA diversion.

Polaroid blitz.

I've been rifling through our collection of family photos all summer, and the other day I decided that I should compile all of the Polaroids floating around in our picture bin and display them. But in researching ways to display Polaroids, I discovered that they don't do well when exposed to light and air. I hung them in a darker part of our hallway, but in case they don't survive prolonged exposure, I took pictures of them (not sure what happened to our scanner...). And in case something happens to my digital copies, they are now uploaded and preserved here.



Rachel, Shannon, and Angelica exploring our tool shed back in Cleveland.



Mom asleep with the puppy Happy that we had for about three months in the summer of 1997.



The four of us in our backyard with some sort of odd creation that we were evidently proud of.



Look at that smile. Someone's happy.



I don't know what the occasion for this picture is, but you've got to love the fake tree and improvised couch slipcover.



Oh Rachel. Crazy kid.



All of us at the Washington Elementary School Father-Daughter Dance. That was the only year that we all attended the same school, if you don't count Dehesa. Polaroids make me wistful and nostalgic and wish that they had more detail.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

At the beginning, I thought I might just be getting into an Indian version of Tristram Shandy. But Saleem Sinai, the first-person narrator, was eventually born. And he was born at the stroke of midnight on the day of India’s independence, so that he and his country would be precisely the same age. The novel, in mystic departures from Western reality, recounts the unrest and political turmoil of India in the mid-20th century. Rushdie conjures an entire world of clashing and sloshing traditions, the swirling influences of Muslims and Hindus colonized by the British.

Saleem relates the events of his life in the enigmatic rhythm of an Indian spun tale, making completely understandable events into vague prophecies, telling fortunes both backwards and forwards: “There was a washing-chest and a boy who sniffed too hard. His mother undressed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. . . . And love in Bombay caused a bicycle accident; horn-temples entered forecep-hollows, and five hundred and eighty-one children entered my head. . . . There was the question of purpose, and the debated between ideas and things. There were knees and nose and nose and knees” (348). The convention lends legitimacy to the actual prophetic utterings of a turbaned lower-caste seer, making his presaging remarks seem quite plausible after the explanations.

Saleem, typing up his life story as the novel progresses, stops to try and comprehend all that has happened to him. “[N]ow, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by me. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each ‘I,’ every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world” (440-41).

I was daunted by the length but I became transfixed by the rich sensory universe of the novel. Alteratively ridiculous and tragic, Rushdie's novel in its wide-ranging scope encompasses India and what it was as it began its movement toward the rising global presence that it is today.

Mom's 47th.

Angelica and Shannon came down from the camp on their day off so that we could put together a little party for Mom's birthday. I had just come across a New York Times piece filled with 101 delicious summer salad ideas, and I relished the opportunity to try some out (we made 3, 7, 15, 18, 25, and 95).



Would you believe she's 47? I feel like she hasn't changed since I've known her.





Our attempts to get a self-timed picture.



The strawberry cake was Shannon's masterpiece work. The blueberry muffins were Rachel's. The hummus (and the chopping!) was Angelica's.



See what I mean? Still looks the same. Sans puffy hair.

Possession by A.S. Byatt

Possession is, quite distinctly, impressive. A.S. Byatt constructs an entire fictive romance between two Victorian poets of her own creation and layers it with the intrigues of literary scholars who slowly discover it. She writes the poetry, she writes the clandestine correspondence, she writes the literary criticism, and she weaves it all carefully into the storyline. The novel runs in alternating cycles of multiple plots as the Randolph Henry Ash scholar and the Christabel LaMotte scholar unearth evidence of a liaison between the poets and begin to form one themselves.

In a startling display of metafictive commentary, Byatt brings the field of literary academia to task. She makes asides on the point and thrust of literature. She creates caricatured depictions of biographers and historians and archivists, asking quite earnestly what their purposes are, where they are to find their own identities when they devote so much of their time to preserving and analyzing the lives of others. Deliciously self-conscious and delightfully complex, Possession is a surprisingly intellectual romance.

I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, but I held them in interested distance. The story garnered my attention at a steady increase as the book progressed. As a partial satire, the novel didn’t woo, but it did entice through suspense. It gained a breathlessness as it went on, an urgency pushing toward an unsure ending. The simultaneous levels on which Possession works easily merit its acclaim.

On going from Riverside to the river side.

Daniel's family invited me to join them on a weekend trip to the river.



We stayed in Laughlin and spent a couple of days on Lake Mohave. They taught me how to wakeboard. It took me a while, but I finally stood up, and was absolutely delighted at the rush. At some point I may have even got out of that pained crouching position.



We moored the boat in a cove and enjoyed lunch on the lakeshore. Daniel, his brother, and I hiked up on a ridge above our site to enjoy the view.



We also went tubing, which was almost more fun for me, since it required fewer skills.



We floated in the water quite a bit, donning life jackets and just bobbing along at times. The air at midday ranged to an astounding 120 degrees, and the water was a comparatively cool 75. We didn't need towels.



The water was also unexpectedly clear. Little fish darted among the lake weeds.





On our last day, we drove down below Needles and launched into the river proper to float down to a sandbar accessible only by boat.



I was absolutely taken by the bands of color: the middling teal of the water, the deep maroon of the igneous rock that jutted above our heads. Green reeds grew by the river edge and the bright blue sky arched overhead, so you knew by contrast that the water was neither green nor blue but a color all its own. My camera doesn't do justice.



I had an excellent time with Daniel and his family. I never would have wanted it to end, if it weren't for my entire body aching from the wakeboarding...

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard chronicles a year on a creek in Virginia Thoreau-style, discussing life, the universe, and everything (literally) and making a veiled poetic exploration of the relationship between Christianity and the world. She offers no more than brief glimpses of herself, preferring to open up channels of thought to this present circumscribed life in the woods.

Dillard writes in a cascade of complex metaphor, drawing image upon image in oscillating rhythm. At times her breathless enthusiasm is like a nine-year-old’s, spewing facts as she does in boundless joy at knowledge of the natural world (lest this sound like criticism, I gladly admit to doing the same. The nature study class I took this summer offered me endless material to work with). The book is largely observation—observation of the specific life she encounters, and observation of the general nature of life itself. Dillard describes the latent brilliance of nature when she descries a muskrat in her creek: “It changed its course, veered toward the bank, and disappeared behind an indentation in the rushy shoreline. I felt a rush of such pure energy I thought I would not need to breathe for days. . . . The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them” (192).

She makes a startling reflection on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: “Most of us are still living in the universe of Newtonian physics, and fondly imaging that real, hard scientists have no use for these misty ramblings, dealing as scientists do with the measurable and the known. . . . But in 1927 Werner Heisenberg pulled out the rug, and our whole understanding of the universe toppled and collapsed. For some reason it has not yet trickled down to the man on the street that some physicists now are a bunch of wild-eyed, raving mystics” (202). The principle states that a given particle’s velocity and position cannot be predicted.

This means that single electron’s path cannot be determined for sure; either velocity or position can be calculated, but never can both be figured out at the same time. And this means that determinism, down to the atomic level, is impossible. As Dillard writes regarding the abundance of parasitic insects, “These things are not well enough known” (229).

Dusty, crusty, rusty, and musty no more.

Dirty little secret in our house: no one ever, ever, cleans out the cupboards. Okay, it’s probably not just our house, and it’s probably not that dirty in the scheme of things, but sometimes for me it ceases to be little. I can only shuffle unsuccessfully through a drawer that’s 90% lids and 10% containers so many times.

I mean, most people, even in our house, usually have more important things to do than painstakingly match every plastic storage unit with a lid and then retain an alternate, or overextend their shoulders to reach into the dark, useless corner next to the dishwasher to grab that bottle opener that somehow fell back there (and take a picture of the vast expanse of Tupperware? I mean come on, really now). I usually have more important things to do. But sometimes a perfect storm of boredom and the need to be organized besieges me (the last time this happened was the year I had in between high school and college). I just know that no one has touched some of these items since I systematically overhauled the kitchen in 2007 (my innovative locations for the dinner plates, coffee cups, and bowls persist to this day). And, when I have the luxury of thinking so, that’s kind of icky.



This cascade of plastic and metal would be the lids that have no corresponding containers. I found more later. I started in on the silverware drawer, just for kicks. I found the cheese slicer I had been looking for last week. Then, I had to do the utensil drawer next to it, since there were so many crossover items. And since I was doing lid recon, I had to go through the glass jar shelf and then the travel mug/water bottle cupboard. The second collection of glass jars in the cup cupboard necessitated my attention as well, so I just sorted the entire thing.

As I was examining the countertops, I noticed that we had multiple sugar containers and multiple less-than-half-filled containers, so I did some sifting and restocking and created a new staple storage system. Sometimes I think that there is nothing prettier than rice in a clear glass jar. Then I realized it would make more sense, and counter space, if I could fit the waffle iron underneath, so I shuffled pie tins and rarely used appliances until I had the requisite rectangle in that cupboard. I also ran white vinegar through the coffee pot, since there's a good chance that hasn't been done since we bought it. I pulled sections of counter items out and stage by stage wiped down everything.

I had to rearrange the stationery cupboard briefly, consolidating boxes and holders to make room for the straws, chopsticks, and skewers that I sorted out of the utensils. After dinner, as I was breaking down greeting card containers to recycle, I realized I could reappropriate a couple for the junk drawer. I was only going to group a couple of random items in it, but it went so quickly that I soon had the entire drawer in neat quadrants. I swept, wiped down the dining table, took out the trash and compost and recyclables, and I was glad.

Oh, but my lead was so good: "Beautiful days aren't the only thing PLNU and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood have in common."

So freshman year I wrote a story about a 16-year-old student who thought he was the next Mister Rogers. I had asked the newsroom if anyone needed a story covered that week, and the news editor handed me the number of a music professor who had him in class and thought it would make a neat story.

Suffice it to say, I found it hard to corroborate everything this kid said, but Gay Talese had just told me that he never crafted an investigative story whose sources he couldn't talk to afterwards, so I checked what sources I could and said what I knew to be true.

I sincerely suspected he was just a little boy trying to fulfill some sort of odd fantasy, but he did have a set at KPBS and the professors and people he worked with obviously thought he was the real thing.

Well, some more important and surely less gullible people than me were sincerely fooled by him. Charging as much as $300 per ticket, this kid was organizing a supposedly celebrity-filled fundraiser gala in Escondido until some reporters finally became suspicious of him. (Check out where Voice of San Diego linked to my article!)

Scam or delusion, I don't know. But one of the most hilarious things I've ever been remotely involved in, yes. Oh yes.

Summer to-do list.

25. Frame and hang family pictures

Hey dilly, dilly.

A dill weed has spread its green bursts in our front yard. I went out one morning to peel the sprigs off the stalks and shake the seeds off the ends. The tangy scent stuck to my fingers and filled the air, like the dried dill I'm used to but with a fresher edge, almost intoxicating in its intensity. I gathered my bounty in the early light.

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

An unnamed magistrate in an unnamed remote outpost sympathizes with the native people of the land that his empire is commandeering, and he bears the consequences for his dissent. The novel illustrates the complexity involved in standing against a powerful but wrong-headed entity, the audacity of attempting to defy what everyone else sees as the natural course of history. What is remarkable about Coetzee’s protagonist is that he is not a noble, saintly martyr for a cause, but rather a man whose stance is the product of incidence. He is not always searching for the side of right or crusading for the downtrodden; he has never sought anything more than a comfortable and stable position. But he sees the injustice and dehumanization of the empire, and he cannot countenance it. He falls into the gears of the empire machine but refuses to be crushed.

Coetzee presents a strong indictment of senseless bureaucracy and merciless imperialism. He shows the terrifying results of a society ruled by baseless fear. He deftly imparts a conviction of how essentially necessary justice and humanity are in all political and social intercourse.

Give me an inch, we'll take a yard.

The first week that I was home from my trip, I instituted a compost pile. I was super impressed with the little compost bin that Steph's family kept in the kitchen, and I figured there couldn't be a better way to try and improve our backyard soil.





The finches that used to live in the aviary that my dad had built had been gone for years, so I tilted the thing on its side and started filling it with the weeds that surrounded the area.



I collected all the stones that I found in the dirt and arranged them in a spiral, for no reason, except just to do it. Our yard is just a blank of soil right now, but with the trees that Mom and I picked up this week, and with a few weeks of reappropriated kitchen refuse, we could have something nifty by the end of summer.