Meg Stout

I awake

2011-11-08T00:04:00.002-05:00

Was it really over a year ago that I posted on this blog? Discovering my content had been deleted (by whatever force, natural or not) put a damper on my desire to express my thoughts.

That and all the IT security briefs at my job that imply hordes of folks eager to discover the essence of me via my online musings... There's nothing like tales of identity theft, burglary, kidnapping, and even murder to damp the urge to express oneself openly.

Fear notwithstanding, I sometimes want to talk about something off topic. So I'll deposit such thoughts here. And if they disappear, then at least they lived in the world for a time. That's more than I can say for the words that never get written at all.

Memo to the Universe

2010-12-06T19:32:00.003-05:00

This summer a bunch of my past blog posts disappeared, here on blogspot.

This was shortly after my brother had an encounter with the FBI and (at the suggestion of the FBI) with local law enforcement.

I don't know if the disappearance of several months worth of my blog posts is in any way related to my brother's situation, but the blog posts of other family members were also "disappeared" around that time.

Recently, members of my family saw their blog posts reappear.

So, cosmic powers of the universe, whoever you are or were, could you please make my blog posts reappear?

[Such things do make a body paranoid.]

The Staircase and Eliza

2009-11-28T23:49:00.001-05:00

Tonight I came across Eliza R. Snow's Nauvoo diary on the internet. One factoid conflicts with the mental construct I had developed:

- Eliza taught school in the upper room of the Red Brick Store from Dec 12, 1842 through Mar 17, 1843 and had perfect attendance. (I knew she was teaching the Smith children during this time, but thought it was in the homestead).

In my (fictional but plausible) construct Eliza was seduced by John C. Bennett before he is kicked out of Nauvoo. Bennett left Nauvoo in mid-May 1842, the last feasible date where he could have "persuaded" Eliza of spiritual wifery. If Eliza became pregnant in May 1842, then she was due or past due on 17 March 1843.

Her perfect attendance at school means she could not have miscarried on February 11, the date she relocated from the Smith homestead to the cabin of Jonathan and Elvira Holmes.

I've also now toured the Smith homestead and the Mansion house. Neither of these two buildings has a staircase that could serve as the fabled location where Emma pushed/dragged Eliza down the steps, causing a miscarriage.

However the Red Brick Store, where class was held, has an ample staircase.

A largely pregnant Eliza could have tripped on her way down the stairs on March 17. Emma was there, Joseph was there. Any number of people could have been present to witness a stumble down those stairs.

Later events conspire to paint Emma in a poor light, but we know Emma and Eliza remained close during their shared time in Nauvoo (Elvira Holmes' stepdaughter tells of Emma and Eliza going about in the evening ministering together circa winter 1844 while Elvira stayed home telling stories to the children who stole cookies from the black cook (Jane Manning)).

The fact of a pregnant Eliza Snow harbored in the Smith home would have spoken volumes to those "in the know" about polygamy. I find it curious that it is presumed without question that Joseph slept with many or even most of the 32 "wives" he ceremonially married in addition to Emma. However there is no DNA evidence that any child begotten to those women is genetically linked to Joseph, despite literalistic interpretations of the oral history.

I am persuaded that Eliza and Emily Patridge "enjoyed" marital privileges with Joseph, and these two were specifically given to Joseph by Emma. Emma was present at the ceremonies, though Emma evicted them from her home three months later.

The other day I realized a possible reason the extremely unhappy Emma would wait three months to evict the girls. After three months she would know whether the Partridge girls' time with Joseph had resulted in pregnancy. When they remained childless three months later, she could kick them out without evicting unborn children.

Emma clearly lied in 1879 when she claimed Joseph never had any other wives. But she may have been confident Joseph didn't engender children by any other woman. The idea that that much-married Joseph could have refrained from "knowing" his wives is a possibility that never occurs to the Mormon "cognoscienti."

The story of Eliza and the staircase isn't so much important because of what it says about Emma. Rather it is important because it is the story that most graphically confirms our certainty that Joseph was as "red blooded" as the practicing polygamists during the Nauvoo era (e.g., Brigham Young) believed him to be.

[Thought about writing up something about this, but BYU Studies requires you have a PhD in the field or be mentored by a PhD in the field. Maybe some other day.]

@polygamy, writing, Nauvoo, midrash

Over the River

2009-11-27T23:24:00.001-05:00

Spent Thanksgiving with my married daughter and her husband. It was odd, because that made only six of us in all. Possibly the smallest group I've had for Thanksgiving in forever.

One of our staples is pumpkin pie - has to be home-made. But in our Wednesday evening run to the local Walmart, there was no canned pumpkin except in a shopping cart left in the middle of the aisle. In the end we decided to refrain from raiding the apparently abandoned cart and simply cook the actual pumpkin we had. The pie was good and free of guilt.

Next year we'll strive to time the food so it all arrives at the table at a proper temperature. This time we were just pleased that we had more than enough food and almost all the traditional dishes (with only a few opportunities to clean the floor after a spill).

My son-in-law had to report to his job at Walmart at 0445. I've never participated in Black Friday, so it was fascinating to get his report of how it goes down. First, the parking lot was full when he arrived at 0430, and a driver cut him off. Since the sales didn't officially start until 0500 (with staff on hand to ensure no early runs on product) the store was filled with people just standing and waiting. At the moment shopping could officially start, it was pandemonium. Hot items were gone in under 15 minutes. By 0700 everything had calmed down to normal. They always have police on hand for the inevitable fight. This time it was between two men in the sporting goods section. (Last year it was two women fighting over the last set of pajamas.)

Good times. Good food. Another holiday spent with family. Life is as it should be.

The problem with writing about Joseph Smith

2009-11-09T00:09:00.001-05:00

Joseph Smith wasn't just a man. He was a man with thousands of people who counted him a dear friend. And these people either wrote in journals or had children.

It becomes nigh unto impossible to know enough about a milieu that includes Joseph to avoid conflicting viewpoints.

And that is just with the people who love Joseph, whether then or now.

Just imagine the millions who despise or hate Joseph. It's enough to make a writer curl up and want to clean house or pay bills or do any number of productive (or even unproductive) things rather than write.

On the other hand, I am reminded of an experience I had on my mission. I was in Quartu Sant'Elena on the island of Sardinia (Sardegna as I still call it). My companion and I took a break and ducked into the shop of a man we met in the piazza that week.

Our new friend was a jeweler, and that day he was smelting gold. Specifically, he was purifying a bit of gold for a piece.

He started out with a lump that looked perfectly fine. But when the metal liquefied in the crucible, it glowed bright red. I'd seen movies of molten iron, so I didn't realize the red was a sign of impurity until later.

Our jeweler friend the proceeded to drop a pinch of white powder into the molten gold. The liquid gold burned bright and then the jeweler was able to draw off bits of junk. "Impurities," he said in Italian when we asked.

After many repetitions of this process, I was shocked to see a gleam of pure molten gold. No red, no glowing on that small patch. Just pure liquid shimmering gold peeking out from the angry sea of red.

The gold patch grew over time until finally the entire surface was metallic liquid shimmering gold. Now the surface burned red only when the white powder was first cast into the crucible, until eventually even this became the briefest flash of red, localized to the bits of white powder.

This was pure gold.

I feel similarly with respect to the story of Joseph in Nauvoo, specifically the events regarding Joseph and the woman who were his "plural wives."

When I was first introduced to the idea that Joseph had wives other than Emma, it was as though my soul were burned in the crucible. I was angry, untrusting, shaken from my childish certainty. I was fourteen at the time.

I didn't leave the church, but there was a wedge in my heart and mind against Joseph. During those years it was God I trusted, the God who told me to stop kicking against the pricks, who spoke peace to my soul, who assured me my faith was enough.

I was in my late thirties before the gold began to shine for me. My husband was reading the book Mormon America to write a review for Dialogue. As is his habit, he read aloud to me. It was in the course of that process, hearing the words of a non-Mormon try to explain Joseph's theology, that I first understood how much of my worldview was only possible because of Joseph Smith.

But I still didn't like the polygamy thing.

When I first felt the compulsion to write about Joseph and his wife Elvira Cowles, my rationale mind balked. "I like being Mormon!" I cried in my mind. At the time I took it for granted that no good could come of such an endeavor. That was in April 2001.

It's more than eight years later. I have focused persistently, consistently and in some ways obsessively on polygamy. To my surprise, I have discovered a Joseph who desperately loved his wife, Emma. My Joseph did not go behind Emma's back.

And this Joseph, my Joseph, is fully consistent with the extant record.

That is not to say he did not covenant with dozens of woman. But my Joseph did not consummate those marriages with one exception--the two girls who Emma specifically granted to him in May of 1843. The Partridge girls, Emily and Eliza, who Emma promptly turned out of her house.

Every once in a while I learn a new tidbit and I am unsettled. But I have not come across a factoid since August 2008 that has run contrary to my Joseph. This includes the entirety of George D. Smith's book, Nauvoo Polygamy, Todd Compton's more excellent work, In Sacred Loneliness, Richard Bushman's work, Rough Stone Rolling, or even today's challenge: friends who are sure their ancestor was Joseph's love child from a 1832 fling.

All the factoids from which baser Josephs are inferred are consistent with my Joseph.

The problem with writing about Joseph Smith is the sea of facts touching his life. I will not live long enough to understand the entirety of the complex web of human relationship in which he existed. As today, I'm sure the future will bring new information.

That said, I am confident that "my Joseph" will be consistent with the entirety of the data that exists or will emerge.

I love voice recording...

2009-10-31T00:39:00.001-04:00

I adore the sound of my husband's voice. It's not just that I love him, though that is true. When I was first dating him, I would save the messages he left and play them over and over again.
"Hi, Meg. Give me a call."
The stars danced. The sun wept.
That was nearing two decades ago, and the magic has mellowed. But my husband loves to read aloud to me and the rest of the family. For example, I have never first encountered Jane Austen in print--she has always entered my soul first through the voice of my husband, reading aloud.
This past year I purchased a decent USB microphone so my husband could record things. Since then I've had fun learning the technology. Here are some of the things I've gleaned:

- Good advice on tools and techniques can be found at librivox.org. Librivox is to audio recordings what Project Gutenberg is to books.
- Librivox recommends the Samson Q1 USB microphone (~$50)
- Librivox also recommends Audacity, free software for editing (producing) your recordings.
- Reduce the "pops" caused when puffs of air impact the microphone diaphragm (when you use plosives, such as ps and bs). You can use a professional pop filter ($20-80); a homemade affair with nylons, wire, and repurposed hoop ($0-10); a pencil attached vertically to the front of the mic (aerodynamic effects divert the abrupt air flow from a plosive); or position the mic off the axis of the direct blast from your mouth.

I'm beginning to dabble in the wide world of voice recording and having a blast.

Personal Progress

2009-10-29T01:12:00.001-04:00

On Sunday Beth's Personal Progress leader came by to suggest ways in which the Young Women Personal Progress Achievement Award could be adapted for Beth, since she's autistic. In particular, this earnest leader was suggesting that Beth could maybe earn the award by doing less.

Now the Young Woman Person Progress Award is a big deal for a Mormon girl. It is like the Eagle Scout Award for a boy scout. There are a lot of girls who approach their 19th birthday and realize there aren't quite enough hours in the months or weeks remaining to do enough to complete the award.

As we talked about the "value experiences" and projects, it occurred to us that few of them were outside of Beth's abilities. The main challenge would be keeping up a steady tempo of achievement, getting the experiences done.

The leader mentioned an idea of making a cake or some other treat each month to encourage the girls.

"Beth loves to cook. She could help with that..."

So each month the Personal Progress leader and Beth will make cupcakes for the girls who have finished one of the Value Experiences.

Since Beth also loves computers, I created a blog with all the Value Experiences and Projects needed to earn the Personal Progress Award, along with links to the online scriptures and documents when there are suggested readings.

I earned my Personal Progress Award almost 30 years ago, back when the program was brand new. I'm pretty sure they didn't make me do everything, since it was a new program released when I was very close to leaving for college. Even if I had done everything, I have forgotten a thing or two in the intervening decades. So I look forward to doing these activities myself.

The blog is:

http://annandale-lds-yw.blogspot.com

Another Great Weekend I'll Forget Monday

2009-10-18T23:52:00.001-04:00

Usually on Monday, someone will ask:

"How was your weekend?"

For some reason, I rarely remember the details of those blissful days away from work. Maybe I'm too compartmentalized. Work is work, and not work is not work.

Or maybe I'm just having so much fun I fail to sleep enough during the weekend, and thus my Monday morning mind cannot comprehend the glory that was my free time.

This weekend was unusual because I knew, going in, that it was overbooked. There was Capclave, the local specfic convention. There was CropWalk, an annual charity fundraiser. It was Ward Temple Day. And we had tickets for the 2009 tour of So You Think You Can Dance in Richmond. That doesn't even count cool things that would be fun, like the fall "Market Fair" at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm or fall activities at the local garden parks and stores. It certainly didn't include any chores.

Luckily or unluckily, water eliminated two of the contenders. A water main 60 feet under the parking lot of the Washington DC temple burst, closing the temple for a week. Rain caused organizers of most outdoor events to either cancel or send letters acknowledging that sane people would be staying home.

So life was only chockablock instead of insanely overwhelming.

My husband and I had dinner with a group of friends from my writer group (Go Codex!) before spending a leisurely evening taking in readings and discussion groups at Capclave. The next day I was back, for another reading, picking up tips on doing podcasts and revisiting the writers' workshop.

Then it was home to fix food (home-made butternut squash soup and egg foo young) before driving to Richmond for the awesome, rocking, 2009 SYTYCD concert. As usual, we stayed after for autographs and were amongst the last to leave. We got to bed by 3 am, honestly...

Sunday was the usual opportunity to worship. Being LDS, our church service lasts 90 minutes, with two other classes that add up to a 3 hour block. But since I have "stuff I have to do" before meetings and choir practice is after church, I was at church for about 5 hours.

After that it was lunch with sandwiches that included home-made sprouts (we all decided we like mung bean sprouts better than alfalfa).

Off to an Eagle Scout court of honor, a church youth discussion with our autistic daughter, a nap, and baking two loaves of homemade bread from fresh-ground whole wheat.

Then at 8pm there was the weekly chatzy with my Mom and sibs, including my brother in Afghanistan (it was 4 am for him). Read a chapter from scripture out loud with my own family, prayed, and then lingered around sharing craft ideas and clips from the web or magazines or books until everyone decided 10:30 was too late to be up before a school night. An hour later my husband gave me a kiss goodnight and went upstairs.

So now it's just me, typing a blog entry, listening to the gurgling of the dishwasher and the hum of the computer, wondering if I'm going to eat yet another slice of fresh, buttered bread before calling it quits and going up to bed myself.

No to the bread, yes to bed, so here's Goodnight!

I'm just a Baby

2009-10-13T22:19:00.001-04:00

At least that's what my doctor said when I went in recently.

The context is this: I hurt myself a year and more ago. Significant pain. In fact, it took weeks before it receded enough to realize it was focused on my arm.

In the course of treatment, they prescribed relafen for the pain - kind of a kinder, gentler ibuprofen.

Since then I've had times when I forgot to take the relafen, or ran out, or left it home when going on travel. Most recently I went on travel/vacation for several weeks without meds, and I was an achy, sore, irritable person by the end.

I've been taking the relafen religiously, night and morning, ever since.

I mentioned this to my doctor, and he was shocked. Apparently he never intended for me to take relafen on a long term basis.

"You're young!" he exclaimed. "You're just a baby! Only 46!" He proceeded to explain what long-term use of relafen could do. Oh my.

So I've been avoiding pain meds ever since. The doctor did refer me to Capsaicin cream, a remedy based on red hot chili peppers that works better than placebo and won't destroy my innards.

I guess I'll just have to start actually taking care of myself.

Out of the Blue

2009-09-16T00:52:00.001-04:00

Mormons care about family.

It's not just the cuddly kids and parents stuff either (though that is very important). It's tying families together across time and space, in hopes that someday all mankind will have the choice to be linked together.

That's what temples are for.

But for my grandmother and her siblings, that was an impossible dream. Their father, Mormon apostle John Whitaker Taylor, was famously excommunicated back in 1911 (for marrying too many women). Thus he was barred from claiming his wives and children (36 of them) in the eternities.

It has caused untolled sorrow in this group of believing, faithful folks. The later wives, the ones who "caused" the schism between John W. Taylor and the church, wore shame like a brand. They never dared attend the temple together, lest the name Taylor alert suspicion. And yet they deeply loved their husband and refused to permit anything to stand between them and the possibility of eternal reunion with their husband.

Five of the wives were barred by US law from inheriting any of their husband's estate when he died in 1916. Despite the resultant poverty and their large families, each of John's widows received offers of marriage.

If they had remarried, John's children might have come to love a living stepfather. The children might have decided they preferred to be linked eternally to some man other than John.

John's wives never gave their children that possibility. Every one of these six beautiful (and they were beautiful) women went to their graves mourning their decades dead husband, poverty and loneliness notwithstanding.

As recently as 2009 descendants of John Whitaker Taylor and his brides were requesting permission to "seal" the family together, to no avail.

Then, suddenly, almost magically, a change took place. The church-owned database (available via new.familysearch.org to church members) was quietly updated just 100 years after John Whitaker Taylor disobediently married his last wife.

The record now shows John and his wives eternally and uniquely bound together (assuming, as always, that they so choose and God agrees). Not only that, but the sealing dates for two of the wives has been updated to reflect the day on which they were married in 1901, and their children are now shown as "born in the covenant."

All thirty-six are gone now, the last one gone to her grave in 2004. But those who comforted John's children and heard their cries know how much this means.

We who remain are left to contemplate this scripture, given to Joseph Smith in March of 1830, before the Church itself was even founded:
_____

Woes shall go forth, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth...

Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment... that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.

Behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name.
_______

For the descendants of John Whitaker Taylor the torment of separation is now over. All is knit back together. The family can be at peace.

Being Frugal

2009-08-22T14:30:00.001-04:00

I got a call on my cell phone from my married daughter. She knows we can talk for "free" when we use those phones.

We had a good time reconnecting and sharing stories. Then she said,

"Oh. And the reason I called was to tell you we've topped $1000 saved."

She and her husband are married college students, her husband has a job in a deli, and they've been assiduously stashing away money. So for them having a $1000 emergency fund is quite an accomplishment.

While we were talking, I was putting away food I had purchased from Angel Food Ministries. Angel Food is a Christian food ministry, but you don't have to be indigent to take advantage of their food. In fact, each box processed does two things (besides save money for the person buying the food):

1) The charity distributing the food gets $1, which usually goes towards their own food pantry or good works ministry.
2) Any excess food goes to the charity distributing the food.

As it says in their website, "There are no qualifications, minimums, income restrictions, or applications. Everyone is encouraged to participate. Some churches even encourage participants to apply the money they saved to help someone else in need."

Lastly, I checked eBay, and I did win the grain mill I was bidding on for less than 70% of the price of a new grinder. Milling grain means being able to make our own whole grain bread, etc. Good stuff. Then again, the true coup goes to my sister, who found a Whisper Mill at a yard sale for $1. That's less than 0.5% of the retail price, which beats my 70% all hollow.

Now off to reserve hotel rooms for our end-of-summer vacation at hotwire.com...

Thoughts on Marriage

2009-08-19T21:36:00.001-04:00

The other night I had the chance to attend one of three lectures about family issues, with the promise of ice cream and cookies afterwards. How could I lose?

The first two rooms I passed were discussing 1) aging parents and 2) how to discipline children. Since my parents are crazy healthy and my remaining children at home are girls, these classes were only of passing interest.

The third class was on Marital Happiness. The lecturer was a Dr. Bowen - a mental health professional.

The first set of statistics was interesting. I'd heard how 50% of marriages end in divorce. But the interesting part was the statistic that 80% of those who remain married are living parallel lives - physically in the same marriage, but not much more. Only 20% of those who remain married (10% of those who marry in the first place) are enjoying thriving relationships.

Yikes.

I left with many handouts and lots of thoughts about how to apply what I'd heard to my own marriage. One book that was mentioned particularly was "And They Were Not Ashamed: Strengthening Marriage through Sexual Fulfillment." I bought the book on Amazon, and took some time to browse the pages that Amazon lets you view. The core idea is that chastity is great (abstaining from sex outside of marriage) but in the context of marriage sex is not only nice but necessary. Far too many good people, the author contents, fundamentally hurt their marriages either through ignorance of how to sexually fulfill their partner (and receive fulfillment) or are hindered by the idea that sex is nasty and sinful and disgusting. To make matters worse, they perpetuate that ignorance or that prudish worldview in how they teach (or not) their children.

At the same time I've been trying to do research for my novel, in which one character (historical, I didn't just make this up for the fun of it) falls from grace because of his obsession with physical love. In the course of the research came across a variety of websites that I found surprising. There are even more words I will now no longer use because I know their connotation. On the other hand, folks who approach sex unburdened by hang-ups and willing to "improve" their skills in providing pleasure in the pursuit of receiving greater pleasure will reap the blessings, if you will, associated with honoring that aspect of their physical being.

One fun comment Dr. Bowen made was "Sexual intimacy is best after thirty years of marriage." The unspoken qualifier is that it's among those who learn how to become truly intimate, the 10%. And it would not apply to those who constantly seek new partners in pursuit of a hot fling.

Of course, such stuff simply reeks for those who would, themselves, be capable of intimacy, but have either remained single or lost a spouse due to factors beyond their control.

A final note is about what it takes to start of well in marriage. Dr. Bowen asked a volunteer to rank their connection with their loved one based on Physical, Emotional, Social, Intellectual, and Spiritual aspects. On a scale from 0 to 100, the volunteer ranked their relationship as 60, 70, 80, 95, and 90, stating they were 100 as far as commitment to the relationship. Dr. Bowen turned to the board on which these scores had been plotted and drew a line at 80. "If you are not yet married and have any of these areas that are not at least 80, then don't marry." That was surprising. But on reflection I thought of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," where the heroine, Lizzie, could have married Mr. Collins. It would have been a marriage, but doomed to be one of those "parallel" marriages (as Austen demonstrates when the practical Charlotte does later agree to marry Mr. Collins.

May we all become like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, rather than like Mr. Collins and the hapless Charlotte.

Buying a Used Car

2009-08-11T22:46:00.001-04:00

I just bought a new car. New to me, that is.

My husband has a philosophical issue with buying new cars. I think it is bound up with the idea that a car depreciates thousands of dollars the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot. Or maybe he's just allergic to that new car smell.

I thought the $4500 from the "Cash for Clunkers" program would overcome that objection. But it turns out our V8 Cadillac Coupe deVille actually gets 19 mpg and doesn't qualify as a Clunker.

I had resigned myself to driving the Cadillac into the ground when it failed to pass inspection. Twice.

So, how to go about finding a comprehensive listing of used cars?

I ended up going to cars.com and using their Advanced Search function. This lets you search all makes, models, and body styles within range of your zip code (say 30 miles from your zip). You can specify max price, max mileage, year range, or leave these all blank.

Hit return.

For example, today I find 32 cars priced $1000 or less within 30 miles of my zip code.

Wow.

When I'm seriously looking for a car, I'll go ahead and purchase access to carfax to find out the history for cars I'm considering based on their Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). For less than $40 you can run an unlimited number of carfax searches [see a sample report], which will tell you all the intimate details of accidents, recalls, and odometer readings when the car was registered over it's life.

Most of these have pictures of the cars that you can browse and a VIN number. If there is no VIN number, there is a phone number (for example, for listings from newspapers). You can call, chat, and get the VIN number from them.

I ended up finding a clean, single-owner minivan with less than 100,000 miles for under $3000. Wow.

--
_______________
megstout.com

--
_______________
megstout.com

Learning to Ping

2009-06-29T01:25:00.002-04:00

So I've been using ping.fm to update all my social networks.

Unfortunately, I didn't read the manual... So all the stuff I intended for twitter and Facebook also ended up on my blogs. I should go back and fix that sometime (but not tonight).

I also realized that I was losing the connection with other folks, because while I would get responses to my posts, I wasn't commenting on other people's posts. Made for rather one-sided conversations.

So in a few days I'll look like I always knew what I was doing, with all the untitled status updates removed from my blogs.

My Own Bitter and Sweet

2009-06-24T00:20:00.001-04:00

I couldn't help but be glad that Jaime Ford's Japanese Keiko and Chinese Henry fail to find married love in the 1940s.

As a half-white child of the 1960s (back when such things were illegal in many states), I recall the hatred and torment I received from my peers (though my peers never physically beat me). The pain a Chinese-Japanese child would have endured during the 1940s is mind boggling.

Even as late as 1963, my Chinese aunt was driven from her marriage, her church, and her adopted country because of inter-racial hatred (daring, as she had, marry a white man).

My aunt even attempted suicide, as Jaime Ford's characters never do.

But in real life, as in fiction, time heals much.

My aunt and her first husband are remarried Death and time have freed them from pain, bigotry, and the second marriages that followed their 1963 divorce.

They are happy now, and I am glad of it.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - review

2009-06-23T23:59:00.001-04:00

The local ladies book club had assigned Kate Atkinson's "Case Histories: A Novel." And I gamely volunteered to lead the discussion.

Alas. We are a group of Mormon ladies. And Kate Atkinson's engaging tale involved quite a bit of sordid gore and guilty sex.

So I suggested a last minute selection switch, recommending Jamie Ford's bestselling "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet."

"Hotel" is the 1942 story of star-crossed lovers who, unfortunately for them, are younger (12) than Romeo and Juliet and not merely from warring families, but warring nations (Keiko is Japanese and Henry is Chinese).

To complicate matters further, Keiko and Henry live in Seattle, a city whose citizens of Japanese origin are about to be rounded up and shipped off to internment camps.
Keiko is a child of American-born parents, making the internment that much more confusing and senseless in the eyes of the reader.

Henry's father wages his own one-man battle against the Japanese - raising money to help the Chinese fight Japan abroad and peddling away local Japanese properties at pennies to the dollar. When he discovers the perfidy of his son (loving a Japanese girl), he disowns the child.

Unlike Romeo and Juliet, no one commits suicide in this tale of forbidden love. And the love is about as innocent as forbidden love gets.

For those of us who lived prior to 1980, however, the tale is clearly fantasy. We remember when marriage between whites and asians was forbidden. The state didn't have to forbid marriage between Japanese and Chinese because the animosity ran too deep, particularly for Chinese children orphaned by Japanese aggression, as was the case for the father of our fictional Henry.

But even though I knew it was impossible for Henry and Keiko to be together, I still wanted to know how he lost Keiko and ended up with the Chinese Ethel. I was surprised how Jaime Ford kept the story and tension going long after Keiko has been taken from Seattle, and how successfully he weaves together the WW II story with the 1986 life of the widowed Henry, searching Japanese artifacts left in the basement of the Panama Hotel hoping to find something Keiko left behind.

My older book group fellows found anachronisms I overlooked (e.g., online support groups in 1986?), but I enjoyed the book.

My only irritation was when Jaime's afterward claimed he was had not imputed his own values to the tale. Alas, I knew I was in the hands of an author who decried the US actions against residents and citizens of Japanese descent and who believes all races are valuable.

So, Jaime, your biases are showing. But they are beautiful biases, so perhaps I shouldn't point them out, lest you hitch them up out of sight.

2009-06-23T23:00:00.001-04:00

Donate to Komen, help a good writer (and better man) honor a lost love - http://ping.fm/x0FkR

Facebook urls

2009-06-21T03:29:00.002-04:00

You can now get a custom facebook url by clicking on http://ping.fm/RODPn I'm now at http://ping.fm/vbErS

Back on land

2009-06-18T19:47:00.002-04:00

On land again after 10 days at sea (without internet or e-mail - horrors). I did get a lot of reading and writing done. Coincidence, surely.

2009-06-03T03:53:00.001-04:00

So I'm in this hotel in a foreign country with a spotlight over the bed that looks like a camera. Laser pointer assuaged my fears, but dude-

2009-05-27T07:04:00.001-04:00

Found a free way to convert those pesky docx files: www.zamzar.com - zamzar converts lots of stuff, like docs to mp3 format (ala kindle)...

2009-05-22T20:13:00.001-04:00

Not enough sleep this past week - my body decided I need to slow down. Good it waited until after my pitch for $2M to help improve sonar...

2009-05-14T21:14:00.001-04:00

My daughter just taught me about blackle.com - Think google, but the screen is black (to save energy, don't you know). Cool!

2009-05-11T01:09:00.002-04:00

Oops - time to go study how to make ping.fm send my blog posts to my blog and not to twitter and Facebook...

Mother's Day

2009-05-11T01:01:00.002-04:00

I know today is the official "Mother's Day," but yesterday was the real treat!

The weather was beautiful, and I ended up spending the day with my daughters (husband man was home resting after minor surgery, alas).

First we went shopping - a fun thing I don't get to do very often with the daughters (the sorrow of being the wage earner in the family).

Next we went to Alexandria to tour the USS Freedom, first of the Littoral Combat Ships. It was a nice show, and my daughters were nicely impressed. They got to sit in the XO's chair on the bridge, and I had to drag at least one of them away from the fun technology toys. They both wanted posters to show their classes.

On the way home, we saw a sign labeled "Mount Vernon." On a whim, we followed the sign and drove down to Washington's estate. To my surprise, the grounds were open. It's been over 15 years since my last visit, and Mount Vernon is more impressive than ever. The weather was lovely, and the baby lambs were gambolling in the fields, having escaped from the fenced paddocks.

2009-05-04T22:23:00.001-04:00

In other news, I went "live" with my website redesign: http://megstout.com Come by, visit, and tell me what you think.

2009-05-04T22:17:00.001-04:00

So now I can post to my "social network(s)" from Skype. Wild. And my daughter just gave family across the country a video tour of my home.

Being Earth-Wise

2009-04-30T21:45:00.001-04:00

Last month I had a chance to tour a friend's garden, and saw his very nice composting setup. He'd acquired 2-3 very nice compost tumblers over the years from neighbors.

Alas, I don't have any neighbors offering such stuff up for free. Even on eBay the least expensive compost tumbler I could find was well over $100.

A search of the internet provided inspiration. The post How to Start a Compost Bin in the City (with Little Money) sold me. My 20 gallon Rubbermaid bin cost $12, but I was able to throw in an extra lid (to catch the compost tea) for free. Five minutes with the drill, and it's done. The week's paper shreddings and vegetable bits are now happily ensconced there together.

In other news, we will be building a rain barrel later this month. Then we'll be able to combine water conservation with having 55 gallons on non-potable water in case of an emergency.

Cool Tools

2009-04-23T00:11:00.001-04:00

I recently purchased a new-to-me iBook off eBay. The primary purpose was so I could use Scrivener , a powerful novel-writing program.

My other motivation for buying the iBook was wanting something I could write on comfortably.

I had lots of computer things on which I could type before:

2 desktop computer systems

2 Asus EeePCs (7 inch screens)

3 AlphaSmart Keyboards

I love the little EeePCs, but eventually had to admit that the keyboard is simply too small for me to use comfortably.

I don't mind the desktops too much, but they are fixed in space (and a precious commodity in our home of net-savvy people).

The AlphaSmarts are ultimately portable and battery life is measured in weeks rather than hours - particularly important for really long plane flights. The keyboard is adequate, but not pleasurable.

I would never have purchased a laptop merely to have a more pleasurable portable keyboard experience. But since I couldn't have Scrivener on any platform other than a Mac with OS X 10.4 or later, I "needed" a Mac.

This particular Mac is an iBook G3 900 MHz machine with wireless, a 40 GB hard drive, and a 12.1" screen. It's delightfully intuitive. Now that I've downloaded Scrivener and the Flip4Mac WMV player, I had everything I need to import my writing and upload my audio files for transcription, as necessary.

I already have been able to import and organize bits and pieces that have languished for months (Sept 2008 and December 2008 for my "Children of Heaven" (COH) and "Pearl of Alba" (POA) novel projects, respectively).

With my POA manuscript, I experimented with dictating scenes, planning to transcribe the audio files and then organize the transcriptions into a first draft. I found myself with a backlog of audio files to transcribe at the end. Once I had transcribed the files, I had several hundred interspersed snippets of text and that's where I left POA in December 2008.

The tangled mass of snippets that seemed overwhelming without Scrivener now seems entirely manageable and I'm energized to move forward. Hooray!

Back in the Saddle

2009-04-13T23:58:00.002-04:00

In February my buddy, Luc Reid, asked for volunteers with whom he could work on some area where they wished to become more motivated.

I had three areas that came to mind:

1) Writing
2) Physical Health (e.g., diet and exercise)
3) Household Organization

I decided that the first thing I had to knock out was the household organization thing. At the time I started working with Luc, about 50% of my home was effectively unusable because of the "clutter." It has been this way for years. But now, less than a month after Luc started working with me (an hour a week over the phone), I have 90% of my home available to be used as originally designed. The remaining 10% (the erstwhile family room) at least has a clear floor even if it does contain >200 neatly stacked boxes awaiting "defragmentation."

Can I just say now that I am completely amazed that this happened so quickly. I thought it would take months.

[moment of appreciative silence]

So now I have the mental space to turn back to my writing.

I'm in the process of acquiring a Mac iBook so I can run Scrivener. I'll be a proud owner of an iBook on 17 April one way or the other. The cool thing about Scrivener is that it will allow me to work with the bits and pieces I have on my "Queen of Alba" manuscript (QoA has been too daunting to deal with up to now).

However, my first priority is to write my "Children of Heaven" book, which takes place during the last years of Joseph Smith's life, seen from the POV of three people who lived with him. I wrote a draft of this a couple of years ago, back before I knew how to write or half of the historical factoids. That original draft was important and necessary, but the book I will start writing now is as unlike that first draft as a newborn is unlike the blastula from whence it evolved.

Don't need Scrivener to write "Children of Heaven." I just need a healthy dose of "butt in chair."

Yippie Ki Yea!

Smith's "Nauvoo Polygamy"

2009-01-13T19:49:00.002-05:00

From frozen milk to something else entirely...

My husband and I sometimes make time to attend a local discussion group, where topics involving Mormonism are aired. The discussions are housed in the Potomac home of a well-to-do individual. It's more like visiting an Italian castle than anything else. And the refreshments are good.

And the company is invariably interesting.

At the end of the month the discussion group will host George D. Smith, who recently published a book titled "Nauvoo Polygamy: '...but we called it celestial marriage'." I note that he is, in fact, both author as well as the founder and current publisher of Signature Books, the imprint bringing out "Nauvoo Polygamy."

I understand George D. Smith is a fascinating person. And since I am highly interested in Nauvoo and the emergence there of polygamy, I decided to buy George Smith's book.

My family was involved in the emergence of Nauvoo polygamy. So one of the first things I did was try to find my people. The first page listed in the index gives a super-brief summary. The second page has nothing at all to do with my family member.

What?

I will be reading the book, but I've already noticed several instances where the author's choice of words or characterization is like fingernails on a chalkboard to this reader.

I expect George Smith is more personable in the flesh.

If you want a review of the book and don't want to wait for me to read it, my husband found a review here: http://is.gd/fMGE.

Freezing Costco Milk

2009-01-12T22:56:00.002-05:00

If you shop at Costco, you've noticed that the milk cartons are very unique - more rectangular than the normal jugs in the regular supermarkets.

So I got thinking there must be a good reason for that.

It would be sufficient reason if they were able to reduce the packaging for themselves. Maybe the new carton means they don't have to have those big plastic crates (the ones we used to seek out back during college - they made great furniture for the truly penny-pinching). That would be sufficient reason, but of no use to me.

On the other hand, the new carton might be good for freezing milk. But I didn't know if freezing milk is "done." Turns out it is possible, best done with skim milk, and it changes the mouth feel enough that you'll never find the dairy council recommending the practice.

But I'm just a busy mother with kids who want their milk. If having a frozen gallon or so around between shopping trips lets me buy all my milk at Costco (less than $3/gallon), that would beat the $4/gallon we are currently paying at the local grocery.

So I did the experiment. Milk expands when frozen, but the Costco cartons are thick-walled and have bunches of "grooves" in the side which allow for expansion. Plus the more columnar form of the carton means the milk can expand upwards without being forced into a bottle neck. In all, it worked pretty well.

The milk took a while to thaw. The milk ice is much more ice than milk. We started drinking milk before the ice had thawed, and that milk tasted like powdered milk. But when we let the entire gallon thaw, it tasted normal enough.

So - freezing milk is a bit of a hassle. But for our family, it is sufficiently acceptable given the $ savings.

The Freedom of Freecycling

2009-01-09T00:20:00.002-05:00

I have to admit it. I have an addictive personality.

No, not that you are addicted to my personality, rather that I find it very easy to get addi... absorbed in things.

So this freecycle thing. I suppose it could be considered my latest addiction. But it's a good addiction.

I don't need the stuff filling boxes and crevices throughout my home. It's like the material equivalent of fatty deposits over muscles or lining the walls of blood vessels. It looks gross and inhibits my ability to do everything I might wish. For those who've encountered the Flylady crowd, they refer to it as CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome).

Each day in 2009 I've found something I don't want to keep around, for whatever reason. I list it on the Freecycle page. Usually by the end of the 24 hours I have not just one person who wants my discard, but many people. I don't have to do much, just bag it, label it, and place it near the door. The stuff flies out of the house. I feel like I'm making people happy, and I'm happy because that stuff clearly had value to someone. I wasn't *crazy* to keep it around all that time. Silly, perhaps, but not crazy.

Others in the family are catching the "don't have to hoard it" fever. My married daughter tells me she started a freecycle group in her town. My younger kids help me search for freecycle fodder, or have offered up their stuff.

So today I come home and ask out loud what I should freecycle today.

"Dad says to freecycle the rollerblades."

This is my husband who still has boxes of mag tapes from the 1980s.

Oh. My. Goodness. There is hope yet.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-01T11:12:00.002-05:00

It's a new year - arbitrary as that is. Still it's a chance to make a break with the past and start new - like the cleansing baptism or communion serve in some communities. Rather than tell you the myriad things I hope to do, I'll focus on one area:

Footprint.

Here are a couple of ways I'm explicitly going to go (or stay) green.

Recycling. We are lucky to have places nearby where we can recycle paper, plastic, glass, metal, electronics, and plastic bags. This almost doesn't count as a new thing, because we're pretty well set up to do these things now.

Freecycling. Again, we're lucky. I don't know if this is an option everywhere, but in our area there is an active freecycle group. Last year I mostly remember the cool stuff we got - a futon mattress and frame, a dresser, a refrigerator. In the past month, though, I've started offering stuff up for freecycle - a loft bed, a violin, electronics. My 2009 goal is to offer up at least one thing per day (on average). I have boxes and boxes of stuff I keep telling myself I should go through. For years. But in my quest to find something else fresh and desirable, I expect to see those boxes dwindle appreciably over the coming year. It would be so nice to be able to actually use the space I own. I'll also get a better sense of what is actually desirable - I mean, if people don't even want it for free, is it worth keeping/donating?

E-gifting. In past we've received large boxes at Christmas time, but no more. This year the gifts we received were modest in size if mailed. In a couple of cases the gifts were hand delivered. Exchanging gift cards? You may say, "What's the point?" I find that knowing we have a gift card or check frees me to get a thing I really want, a thing I wouldn't get if it were just me and my own funds. I figure I'm freeing the recipient from having to exchange items. And if I give a particularly fungible giftcard, they can use it for necessities, if that is really their greatest need. Besides, I've found that's an easy way to help out folks when I become aware of a need. Someone's computer blows up with all their files, someone is in danger of being evicted. I give generously through official channels at work and church, but there are times when you just want to help a particular individual who is down and out. E-gifting lets me do that and extends the potential scope of friends I can help across the globe.

Fight the "Bigger, Better" temptation. I already live in a town home within walking distance of school and (in a stretch) church, and shopping. It's a modest commute from work, which I can do by public transit when not required to drive myself. So I'll remind myself that is good. No salivating over lovely single-family homes that would increase my commute and require that we use a car to do anything and everything. Beyond that there are the decisions about what to do with the home we have. There's a line between necessarily maintenance and "but I *want* a new floor, redesigned fixtures, the thing that will make my house look like that magazine ad." I can embrace the value of 'neat,' 'clean,' 'well-maintained' as sufficient, rather than feeling deprived because I can't gut and trash everything and start fresh. Feel free to tell me other things I should be doing, or that you're doing!

Bios and stuff

2008-12-23T00:28:00.002-05:00

I was thinking about updating my website, and thought it would be good to review a couple of sites that I admire.

I started noticing that folks had bios. For example:

Stephenie Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in English. She lives with her husband and three young sons in Phoenix, Arizona. After the publication of her first novel, Twilight, booksellers chose Stephenie Meyer as one of the "most promising new authors of 2005" (Publishers Weekly).

Ah, to be a best-selling author... There's also the biography of the lovely Joy Marchand:

Joy Marchand holds a B.A. in Classical Studies from the University of the Pacific. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where she takes photos of odd signage, churchyards and the occasional roadside shrine. Joy's poems and short stories have been featured in Bare Bone, Writers of the Future Volume XX, the Elastic Book of Numbers, Modern Magic, Time for Bedlam, Polyphony 5, Interfictions, Talebones, Apex Digest,Interzone, among others. Joy has also worked as an editor for Shimmer, a small magazine packed with quality short fiction and stunning artwork. She is currently at work on a road novel set on Route 66.

If I convolve the two, mine would read:

Meg Stout holds a B.S. in Physics from George Mason University and a M.S. in Product Development from Naval Postgraduate School. She lives with her husband and daughters in Annandale, Virginia. She is currently at work on a novel about the Saint Margaret of Scotland.

Alas, my job and formal training don't *go* with writing fiction. However, I know that the scientific method and cultural analysis I learned informs my writing method. So perhaps a better bio would be:

Meg Stout graduated from George Mason University and the Naval Postgraduate School with scientific degrees. As a novelist, she applies the scientific method to true stories, uncovering startling possibilities. She is currently at work on a novel about the Saint Margaret of Scotland.

So do I mention the novel about Elvira Cowles, plural wife of Joseph Smith? Hers is the story that compelled me to take up the craft of writing in my dotage, I mean maturity. Do I mention my husband and daughters? My home in Annandale, Virginia? My job at the Washington Navy Yard? The fact my parent's marriage was "void and prohibited" at the time of my birth in the state where I was born?

Probably not, but time will tell.

Rejoining the Connected

2008-12-10T01:36:00.002-05:00

I'm at the Narita, Tokyo airport, sitting in the Red Carpet Club. This is actually the first time I've ever flown business class, so it's a new experience. Quiet, comfortable seats, power, internet, munchies, free beverages. If I actually imbibed anything more alcoholic than orange juice, I could get beer, wine, and hard liquor for free too.

This morning I ate breakfast at a Vie de France in Yokosuka, Japan. It's amazing how well one can get on without spoken language, just a big smile, nodding and bowing at the appropriate moments. The food was heavenly, but the memorable thing was the little old lady sitting across from me.

My grandmother was a little old hunched Asian lady before her passing. And this little old woman sitting across from me picking at her pastry was so like my grandmother that I started to tear up. I could never talk to my grandmother. She spoke a dialect of Mandarin that was incomprehensible even to the Taiwanese folks she ended up living amongst after fleeing from Mao Tse-tung's communist regime. Her only window to the world was through her husband and children, who learned to speak the language.

My dad resented the way he was treated as a foreigner, so he decided to liberate his children from racial discrimination by making sure we were as American as possible. He refused to teach us Mandarin. In fact relatively few people now even realize we are 1/2 Chinese (thanks to the genes of our tall, blond, european-stock mother).

So I never, ever, had a conversation with my grandmother that extended beyond smilling and nodding and bowing (and hugging) at the appropriate times.

A few years ago my Taiwanese sister-in-law moved in next door. I was so excited. Now I could have my sister-in-law write a letter to my grandmother, and grandmother could read it and write back to me. I asked my dad for Grandma's mailing address.

"Why?" he asked.

"So I can write to her."

He looked at me funny. "But Grandma can't read."

"I know. J--- will translate my letter into Chinese."

"English, Chinese, it doesn't matter. Grandma can't read."

It was like my world turned upside down. Dad must have seen how upset I was, for he leaned in, as though to confess something.

"Meg, Grandpa was a soldier and can read, but he was dogmatic - rigid. Grandma might not be able to read, but she was the one who was creative, she was the smart one."

Dad tapped his forehead. "I, you, we take after Grandma."

So I sat there in the Vie de France, crying, thinking about Grandma, who has been dead now for almost 6 years. Then I got up and bowed and smiled and nodded and went out into the sunlit street.

Prop 8 and Hate Crimes

2008-11-07T22:23:00.001-05:00

I don't partake of news if I can help it.

But I came across the factoid that some young Polynesian men allegedly attacked some gay rights activists who were picketing the Mormon temple in Oakland, CA.

Since the Polynesian men were caught on camera ripping posters off the temple gates one would assume they are Mormon.

However, since they were screaming epithets (and allegedly swinging punches off camera), they were not acting Mormon. Whether Mormon or not.

I think of my first husband. His drill sergeant found out he was Mormon. Called him into his office.

"I'm going to break you, boy."

First husband had seen the sergeant working over a fellow Mormon, a rather scrawny young man. The sergeant had ordered the rest of the platoon perform standing push-ups until the Mormon private agreed to smoke a cigarette. The private stopped coming to church after that.

The man who would become my first husband stuck his chest out and drew himself to full height.

"Sir, I smoke, I drink, and I whore around. But I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. You can't break me, sir."

This is hearsay, of course. After all, I wasn't actually there, nor do I have this incident on tape. But it goes to illustrate the point that people from your group, whatever that group may be, can act in ways that make you absolutely squirm.

Since the Polynesian men who are alleged to have attacked the gay activists were caught on tape, they will doubtless be brought to justice. Since they were attacking gay activists rather than random hoodlums, they will be accused of having committed a hate crime.

But in the media, an entire church is being tried in the court of public opinion.

Alas, we read the Sermon on the Mount tonight. And so I've been reminded of His commandment:

"...behold I say unto you, love [all mankind, including] your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you..."

And so tonight our family's prayer was that the people in LA [and California] will all be safe and treat one another with respect.

I've got Voice Recognition working...

2008-10-26T10:39:00.001-04:00

It's not easy. I was so excited when I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the digital voice recorder. I thought I would be able to record while commuting and walking and exercising, then be able to hook up the recorder to the computer and walk away.

Hah.

Alas, background noise and other factors prevent Dragon NaturallySpeaking from transcribing directly from the digital voice recorder with acceptable accuracy. So it didn't work that smoothly, but I have found a way to make this work.

What I have discovered is that I can be playing the voice file on my speakers, and speaking the text into my headset. In a way this gives me an opportunity to revise the raw speech that I may have uttered on the fly, so the speech that gets transcribed by the computer.

It turns out that when I am commuting or walking, I'm able to talk relatively quickly. Going over the recordings from the last couple of days, I had in excess of 10,000 words. It is perhaps taking me twice as long to get the computer to transcribe the information as it would if the digital voice recorder files would get transcribed directly. But 10,000 words across two days is much faster than I would be able to do if I were merely sitting at the computer typing.

The other thing that is absolutely thrilling is to sit at the computer talking at a regular rate and see the text get transcribed as I'm talking. And that is something I would miss if I were merely plugging in the digital voice recording or walking away.

So I've got my method now. And I am happy.

Nanowrimo approaches...

2008-10-18T00:11:00.002-04:00

It's that time of year again - New writers will chomp at the bit to start writing at 12:01 am on November 1, 2008, signing up to do the literary equivalent of a marathon by writing a 50,000 word novel in a single calendar month.

As one who "won" Nanowrimo in the past, I'm invoking the Zokutou clause (http://www.zokutou.co.uk/theclause.html):

"If you have already attained the status of Winner, you do not need to start a new novel, as your main aim is now to finish one. You can now consider yourself a winner if, by midnight on the 30th of November, you have either:

1. Written 50,000 words on one or more previous works. 2. Completed your novel's first draft."

I'm in the throes of actively working on my historical fiction novel about Saint Margaret of Scotland, with an outside of Nanowrimo deadline to finish something that will be judged by *other people* on 15 December.

I'm meg.stout at http://www.nanowrimo.org - see you in November!

Technology... is

2008-10-14T02:12:00.002-04:00

After a week on the other side of the world, I've now had a long weekend to play with all my new software and techno toys.

The good news is that I can talk at the itty bitty Olympus digital voice recorder, then plug the sucker into my USB port and have Dragon Naturally Speaking (ver 10, Preferred) make sufficient sense of my noises that I can go on to edit it to a clean draft.

On the path to this achievement, I've decided I very much love Ubuntu (which unfortunately can't run Dragon) and I very much dislike Windows XP (which unfortunately is required for Dragon).

Total cash outlay:

Computer equipment - free to me
Ubuntu - free to me
Open Office - $35 for 3 year registration
Internet - already "own"
XP - $76 off eBay
Dragon - $89 off eBay
Digital Voice Recorder - $32 off eBay

So $232 all told (includes shipping) plus a lot of time I probably wouldn't have spent writing anyway.

Ah, the time outlay. Did I mention that I very much dislike Windows XP?

But there it is. I am now without excuses. I even did a lot towards outlining my historical fiction novels - the basic shell is there in both cases with 85% or more of the amazing complications that make my characters very unhappy (and me very happy).

In completely unrelated news, my girlies (10 and 12) both were video-taped for upcoming episodes of Astrocast.TV . Sometime in the future you and your star-loving friends around the globe will be able to see said girlies asking 1) the age of Jupiter and 2) when will the sun subsume the orbit of the earth, along with the answers from GMU's Dr. Harold Geller.

LDS Temple to be Built in Rome Italy

2008-10-04T12:29:00.003-04:00

President Monson just announced the location of five new LDS temples:

Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Cordoba, Argentina
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

and

Rome, Italy

So the joyful screaming you may have heard at 1215 EDT today was from Annandale, VA.
[I was an LDS missionary in the Rome, Italy, mission from 1984 to 1985.]

Meg

Creativity and technology

2008-10-03T23:59:00.007-04:00

First - I love gmail. I know I've mentioned that before, but I really, really do love it. One of the things I love is the ability to create groups, made sweeter by the fact that gmail will proactively suggest the name of contacts and groups that fit what I'm typing.

If I want to e-mail all my family members, I type "chiuf," hit return, and all the addresses I've added to my "chiufam" group show up. If I want to post to my blogs (at blogger and livejournal), "bl" is sufficient. And so forth.

Anyway, creativity. Fortunately, unfortunately, my job gives me lots of opportunities to be creative. Save the world creative. I love it.

Alas, my novels suffer. It's like I have a finite amount of creativity per day. Some days the paying job sucks down the entire allotment.

However, I am committed to writing a new novel this year, as well as writing a new from scratch draft of my 2006 Nanowrimo novel as soon as possible. I just reviewed my notes from the novel-writing workshop I took with Dave Wolverton, and I'm jazzed. Great stuff. Motivational.

[FYI, he's offering two new workshops next April - one for writing outlines and another novel-writing workshop. For more information, the link is at: http://www.runelords.com/journal/?p=68 ]

I'm all fired up to get cracking on my writing again, and I'm hoping that I can bring technology to bear. I have the little ASUS Eee laptop(s), which allow me to type in many odd moments (commuting on the metro, riding planes). A good (but insufficient) first step.

Now I'm going to see if I can increase my production using voice recognition software. Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred is looking really good, which would allow me to either talk at my computer or talk into a digital voice recorder (letting the computer parse it into editable text later). I've got most of one novel composed as a detailed outline, with a paragraph or two for each of the 75-90 scenes that I envision in the work. The hypothesis (to be tested) is that I can get my first draft in the computer by:

* Reviewing the scene description
* Telling the scene out loud to the recorder
* Having Dragon Naturally Speaking convert the audio file to text
* Editing the text
* Reviewing the next scene description, and so forth.

I know there are several best-selling authors who "write" this way. I tried doing the audiotape/transcription (e.g., true cheapskate) way of doing this, and it was sufficiently successful for a first draft. Alas, the transcription part was too labor-intensive for me to continue.

I have a few days before I'll be able to test Dragon Preferred and the recorder, since I'm unwilling to pay the money I'd have to fork over to buy these things new at a brick and mortar store. So I plan to spend the next few days while product is enroute completing the detailed outline for the first book and starting/completing the detailed outline for the second book.

I miss spam...

2008-09-27T13:57:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time there was no spam. It was back in the old days when hardly anyone had e-mail.

Over the next several years spam exploded. I think the first spam e-mail I remember was a plea from someone from another country, for my help to access a fortune, for which I would earn a hefty percentage. Then there were the sex and porn-related spam messages. This past year the amount of spam made e-mail maintenance a major chore. It was like trying to weed the Amazon basin.

Then I switched to gmail. All traffic to my multiple mail accounts come in via gmail's spam filters. Where I had been getting dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails a day, now I was only getting e-mail from people with whom I really wanted to correspond.

I was thrilled.

But now I have the habit of touching my e-mail several times a day (required in the spam days).

Usually nothing new is there.

I realize that spam gave me a mission, it was a dragon that needed slaying on a constant basis.

Now the dragon is dead. Scaly and uncouth as he was, I feel the lack.

There are other dragons I need to slay. But spam was the dragon that crouched at a critical gate to my world, the dragon I could not lock behind a door or cover with a sheet. Spam was a dragon that implied humans outside my own circle, who I could revile freely. My other dragons are either caused by me or people I like to love, so I cannot loathe with utter abandon.

There's no parting phrase that I can use, since they all signal a desire that the departed return or be blessed or go with God.

So here's to spam, gone now. To the dragon I loved to loathe.

I'm in love... with Ubuntu!

2008-09-26T23:40:00.002-04:00

I love technology that works, particularly when it is free.

I typed "Ubuntu download" into my browser, and up came the link to download the CD image. Copy that to CD, then install.

It takes some time, but everything works well. In this case, "everything" is a Dell 4550 with a 80 GB hard drive that was being thrown away.

The internet works, documents work, all the ports and drives work - I'm a happy camper.

Now to go and do something with the technology...

I like easy

2008-09-24T23:14:00.004-04:00

I do family history. Easy is not a term I usually associate with family history. But this week is different.

As background, let me explain why an organization would go to such pains to make family history/genealogy easy. The LDS Church (aka Mormon Church) has this doctrine that we have until final judgement to choose our eternal fate. Therefore they perform saving ordinances (e.g., baptism) for folks who didn't get around to accepting these ordinances during their mortal lives.

A major problem in recent years has been folks around the world repeating proxy ordinance work. The thing is it takes 17 manhours (between travel, proxies, helpers, etc.) each time ordinance work is done for a single individual. If we pretend that people's time is worth $20/hr, that's $340. So it's just plain wasteful to be repeating work.

The second major problem is Church members not doing their genealogy because it's hard. That's actually a more pressing problem than the waste.

Anyway, the Church has invested in multiple server farms, software algorithms, and complex databases to reduce duplication and make things easy. It's being rolled out at new.familysearch.org in stages, starting with outlying LDS congregations, finishing the LDS "deployment" in Utah, then eventually opening this stuff up to everyone.

New FamilySearch became available to Church members in the DC area this week. One "that was easy" experience happened with a young mother who had asked me to help her. In an hour I'd gotten her registered on the system, and we had her family tree extended out four generations, including confirming the dates she had already on hand with references now available on the internet.

The other "that was easy" experience was on Tuesday, when I went to the temple. I took the ordinance sheet I had printed at home (like how you can print an airplane boarding pass at home). The nice little lady at the counter simply put the paper under the scanner, and the printer immediately spit out the slips we use in the temple to track what ordinance work has been completed. It was the first time this lady had used the system, and she laughed out loud, it was so easy.

Easy is good.

Later High School Start Times

2008-09-06T00:53:00.002-04:00

Do letters to newspaper columns count as literature? I don't know, but here's one I'm sending to the Washington Post.

At issue is the question of whether Fairfax County, one of the largest school districts in the United States and serving one of the richest per capita constituencies, will shift high school start times to almost 9 am.

Recently one of the 15% of parents who prefer the current schedule over the proposed later schedule wrote up her view that "Early Bedtimes Work, Too, for Sleep-Deprived Teens." She cited studies claiming later high school start times lead to no statistically significant improvement in academic performance, bright computer screens that make it harder for students to fall asleep (a non sequitur in my opinion), and that a schedule change alone will not solve the problem of tired teenagers ("High school students need 2.25 more hours of sleep than they get now. The new schedule would make up about half that deficit.")

She sees the glass only getting filled halfway and declines to consider that a benefit. I disagreed. We'll see if my view gets published in the Post.

______________

I'm glad you published Patricia Velkoff's letter about the other side of later start times. But I notice she didn't mention any of the studies that show a substantial and tangible benefit to starting later.

I myself analyzed data on the impact of later start times on incidence of teenage car accidents. In the fall of 1998, Fayette County, Kentucky, changed the high school start time from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. In the year following this change, students averaged up to 50 minutes more sleep per weekday night. The additional sleep appears to correlate to fewer auto crashes involving teenagers, a >20% reduction if one controls for the trend seen in surrounding school districts that did not change high school start times. [Original research presented at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies' Annual Meeting in June 2002].

But I don't care about later start times because of a 20% reduction in teenage car accidents. I care about later start times because of the potential to help individual at-risk teenagers.

My daughter was an extreme example of the teenager who is helped by later start times. She always tested at the 99.9% level on standardized tests. Yet she was failing in her high school. We comforted ourselves that she could always take an extra year to graduate or, failing that, obtain a GED.

Happily, we were able to shift her to a school that started at 9 am. Her grades turned around, and she got a perfect score on the English SOL. This wasn't some elite school. It was Fairfax County's own Landmark Career Academy. After graduation, my daughter was able to qualify for a scholarship of more than $12,000 per year directly because of her improved grades (and her SAT scores).

I have two younger children who have yet to enter high school. Their teenage years will no doubt be tempestuous no matter what time high school starts. But I would be happier if they can be made 20% less tempestuous...

M. Stout Annandale, VA

I Love Lexi's Lounge (crossposting my blogs)

2008-09-05T02:08:00.002-04:00

I finally discovered how to crosspost to my livejournal account and my blogger account!!!

Check out:

Lexi's Lounge: Publishing your blogs to Blogger and Livejournal

Life is sweet..

Of Pain and Beauty

2008-09-05T01:06:00.005-04:00

Kosmo wrote a post on his blog, Genes and Demons, describing "a pain so bad your skin gets cold—sweat rising in a clammy sheen... Pain apocalyptic. Pain so many and so much that it is a color seen, red-black, at the edge of your vision. Pain like an organic mass inside you, a dead rabbit festering in your gut..."

It's a beautiful post, and turns out (horrifying though it is) the post was an actual journal entry.

I read the post, and it reminded me viscerally of the pain I'd first experienced two weeks after giving birth via VBAC, on a day when I had unwisely returned to work for a few hours to participate in a VTC.

I lay writhing on the floor that day, scaring my husband to death. I don't remember how long the pain lasted that first day - long enough for folks to get scared, call the ambulance, load me into the ambulance, take me to the emergency room, and get me installed in one of the ER rooms, covered with warmed blankets.

It was only then, lying in the ER room, that the pain began to ease. The doctor (a female, for what it's worth) came in and glanced at me from the doorway after checking her clipboard.

"Female. Fat. Fertile. Forty. The four Fs. It's your gallbladder."

There is a phenomenon that occurs in women after pregnancy. They tend to forget the pain their body has experienced. They remember that there was pain, but it becomes an academic recollection. My gall bladder experience fell within that blessed window of forgetfulness. I remember thinking at the time that this pain ("a dead rabbit festering in your gut") was worse than the transition contractions I had experienced only two weeks previously on an instant by instant basis. In addition, the dead rabbit pain lasted long minutes stretching into hours, where contractions only lasted a matter of seconds (90 max). Was my dead rabbit pain ever the four hour ordeal Kosmo describes? I can no longer remember.

Anyway, go read Kosmo's journal entry - it's stunning.

Holidays and a Memory of Joe Biden

2008-09-05T00:32:00.003-04:00

You may remember that there was a shift in congressional power during the spring of 2001. Thanks to google, I was able to find the following succinct explanation online:

"According to numerous press reports, Vermont Senator James Jeffords plans to leave the Republican Party on May 24[, 2001]. His switch to independent status would give the Democrats a 50-49 majority in the Senate, shifting control from the Republicans to the Democrats. This would be the first time the Democratic Party has controlled a house of Congress since 1994."

I was taking a marketing class at the Naval Postgraduate School at that time, and my group was pretending that we were trying to identify new markets for the AN/AQS-20 Mine-Hunting Sonar. As part of that exercise, we were identifying which senators and congresspeople to court. So we were paying close attention when the Jeffords party switch altered the congressional calculus. Joe Biden became head of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on that day. He immediately had a new website up - a glossy polished thing back when polished websites didn't come easily. I just remember being amazed that he was so prepared.

I don't know why I'm thinking about that May 2001 website tonight. Maybe because all this political stuff reminds me of the Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat (SWOT) analysis technique that I learned during that marketing class. Every strength, I observed, is the other side of something that was also a weakness; every opportunity involved a threat and threat involved opportunity. With the four individuals we currently have before us seeking the White House, there's a lot of Strength and Opportunity. They are all excellent individuals who would lead us firmly in particular directions.

[The cynical side of me wonders how much power the US President actually has, anyway, hemmed in as he/she is by the checks and balances the founding fathers put in place. Amongst all of us given the opportunity to cooperate (or not), I suppose the President and his/her running mate have a larger portion of governmental influence than any other single individual is granted by charter. If I consider us all as ants moving the country along, the President would be a particularly big ant.]

So this public servant is thinking about how politics overturned the congressional world back in May 2001. I'm glad that my job is insulated from the changes in the executive office. I don't have to prepare two sets of websites or viewgraphs or life plans to poise myself for the aftermath of the new President's inauguration in January 2009.

In fact, not only will I not have to be poised to jump based on the outcome of this election, I remembered that, as a public servant living near DC, I usually get an extra holiday when the new president gets inaugurated. Since January 20 (the traditional inauguration date since 1937) falls on a Tuesday in 2009, I really do get an extra holiday.

Now to turn off my TV and radio to concentrate on writing my fiction, where people's decisions about their leader had life-altering repercussions, tearing my protagonist's family apart. As I contemplate the mild political isometrics involved in our quadrennial examination of our national leadership, I remain grateful that my family will hardly notice the 2009 change in leadership in any substantial way.

Palin - Cool Speech

2008-09-04T01:39:00.002-04:00

Before too many pundits have a chance to twist my head around, I just want to say I thought Sarah Palin delivered a very nice speech tonight. She didn't pull jabs, but they didn't seem mean (perhaps since I wasn't the target). I look forward to the spectacle that will unfold as we watch the four individuals running for President/Vice President over the next several months.

Points of View and Historical Fiction

2008-09-02T12:01:00.003-04:00

How many points of view does one need in a novel?

I love the fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold. With few exceptions, she only presents one viewpoint character per novel. In her recent books dealing with couples she presents the POVs of both the man and woman, and in "A Civil Campaign" she stretched to include five different points of view. But all of Bujold's work with which I am familiar is speculative fiction (e.g., science fiction, fantasy).

So we come back to my current works in progress. Now that I've written my first draft of "Daughter of Heaven," I know the world and history of my main character, Elvira Cowles. She was one of Joseph Smith's wives. I have spent the past year researching the world and history of her husband, Jonathan Holmes. But I initially shied away from actually using Jonathan as a POV character because I didn't trust myself to achieve tension/suspense when looking into the minds of people who end up as husband and wife.

Then I thought about adding John Bennett as a POV character. This past week I finished reading "The Saintly Scoundrel," a recent biography of Bennett. Given the detailed model I have developed of the workings of 1840s Nauvoo (and the eternal marriage saga generally starting in 1832), I was fascinated. Prior to reading the biography, I wanted to have Bennett react with sorrow to news of Joseph Smith's death. I am pleased that the facts of Bennett's life make that plausible, perhaps even probable. And now that I know more about Bennett, certain other factoids really start to pop. Excellent.

Now to see if I can actually fit these three POVs into a workable novel-length treatment....

Meg's book - the wanderer returns

2008-04-19T13:46:00.002-04:00

Hi!

I didn't realize it had been over seven months since my last note (31 August) where I said I was off to finish my book.

A lot has happened since then. Perhaps the biggest was my decision to go to a novel-writing workshop taught by Dave Wolverton, (aka Dave Farland) a NYT Best-Selling author of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Wolverton's approach is to produce art that is going to yield the highest return on investment, with the idea that if your first novel is a best-seller, your art will reach a wider audience.

So even though I have a prospective agent for Elvira's story, I'm putting that aside for now to write the story of Margaret of Scotland (working title "Pearl of Alba").

For those of you interested in writing, I highly recommend the Wolverton workshop. First, it is something you can just do - the only "audition" is having enough faith in yourself to pay the tuition ($400 for a week workshop), travel to St. George, and put your novel (5-page synopsis and the first 25 pages of the novel in manuscript format) in for critique. Wolverton's perspective is that it is much more about determination and professionalism than raw "writing talent." He's taught dozens of authors who are now established novelists (besides being a best-selling novelist himself), so he's got a proven record of mentoring success. It was a particularly informative and supportive experience.

Wolverton (author of 50+ novels, many best sellers) told us about the year he won the "Writers of the Future" Grand Prize. That same year a convention held a "Writer with No Future" contest. The winner was one Kevin Anderson, a man who had accumulated more rejections by weight than any other contestant (some 750 rejection slips). The prize was a toilet seat, with "Writer with No Future" painted around the rim. Kevin mounted that toilet seat on his wall and kept writing. Anderson is now the author of over ninety published novels, 43 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists, with 20 million books in print in thirty languages.

So if any of you are facing your own "toilet seat" of discouragement, take courage. As for me, it's back to writing.

Ciao,

Meg

Freecycle and 1-800-JUNK-USA

2008-03-28T00:41:00.001-04:00

Spring has arrived, and it's time to start cleaning.

eBay is always an option for stuff we feel could fetch enough $$ to make it worth the hassle of posting (and monitoring e-mails and shipping...). And we've always had the local charities (e.g., Salvation Army).

But what's a body adverse to excessive waste to do when unloved items aren't worth the eBay hassle? Enter Freecycle. You post a note, such as "OFFER: Computer monitor." Within a few hours e-mails come in from interested parties. Voila, the excess computer monitor is slated for a new home. [I've heard Craig's List can function in this manner as well, but the one item I've posted there never moved...]

And for those items we can't even give away, there are now several options for getting rid of things. I recently checked out "College Hunks Hauling Junk" (www.1800junkusa.com). They come, haul away what you tell them to, and dispose of the 'junk' in the appropriate manner. Up to 60% of the stuff they haul away gets recycled. That's cool. If your junk fills their 11' x 8' x 5' dumpster, you could pay upwards of $600. But they provide a free estimate, and the charge could be as low as $110 (up to 1/8 the dumpster - that's as much as 50 cubic feet of junk removed from your home). I know from past experience that even if I had a truck and the time and muscle to do it myself, I'd still have to fork over a fair amount if I take it to the county dump myself.

Now to figure out how to entice the rest of the family to go along with my scheme to rid the house of the detritus that reduces our functional living area by 30%...

I heart iGoogle and Todoist

2008-03-26T23:54:00.002-04:00

It is the year of "i" -

iPhone
iPod

And now we have iGoogle. I'm in love.

The best thing for me about iGoogle is that I can have widgets for all the web functions that I previously accessed by

1) going to Google.com
2) searching for what I wanted (e.g., dictionary)
3) selecting the link I wanted from the list of search results
4) using the function.

With iGoogle, everything I use frequently is there on my start page. Instead of the cumbersome multi-step process, I can get what I want in one click. I can move things around to suit my fancy. I can minimize things I use infrequently so they don't "clutter" my world.

Since I work at a place that blocks certain sites (like gmail...), I am absolutely thrilled that there is a gmail widget that lets me preview my gmail subject lines. This way I can glance at my screen, notice any messages that are time critical, and take action when appropriate.

So in all this beauty, I decided I wanted to upgrade from the limited "sticky note" widget to a more formal "to do" list. I didn't hold out a lot of hope, because to do lists don't work for me. I have too many balls in the air and nothing had worked for my "style." I searched for "to do" in the widget finder, and selected several likely candidates, one of which was called todoist.

Upon reviewing the list candidates on my home page, todoist was a clear standout - I find it fundamentally aesthetically pleasing. With a couple of clicks I was watching the explanatory webcast. The structure is elegant and adaptable to a wide range of needs. I can do recurring tasks (type something like "ev weekday" in the "due by" field), I can create flat task lists or hierarchical task lists. I can create "chains" (append !chain to a task) to see if I've been consistent on those quotidian tasks. I can create a task for filing taxes (ev 15 apr) or scheduling my annual physical (ev 8 Feb) , knowing it will show up quietly and persistently when it needs to happen.

I can assign priorities (1-4) to tasks to affect how they present/sort on my screen (important for the widget with it's reduced display area). I can move tasks from one category to another. I can capture notes (prepending "* " in front of the note text to differentiate it from a task).

I went through the notebook I've used for notes and taken all the starred items (my manual symbol that it's an action item) and transferred all that to todoist. I had a recent shift in job responsibilities, and the todoist list for the area I'm relinquishing made turnover painless (for me - the younger man assuming my former duties is still shell shocked...).

I'm a day into it and todoist is tracking 48 action items for me - and that doesn't count the dozen or more that I've retired during that time because todoist helped me focus.

Here are what other (more coherent) people say about todoist: http://todoist.com/Help/viewBuzz

The free version is fantastic. And for just $3 per month you can upgrade to take advantage of additional features that the serious net-savvy, mobile "to do" lister could use to make this sweet little tool even more useful in cutting through life's clutter.

Where the heart is

2008-03-01T23:47:00.001-05:00

All too often of late I have either been at work or I've been on the computer.

Fortunately, I have a family. Unfortunately, they all too often feel as though I'm absent, even when I'm sitting within feet of them.

Today was family day. We cleaned together, we ate salmon and potato chip sandwiches, we played a game my youngest designed and produced. Then this evening we celebrated a child's birthday a day early by going to see a movie and eating at Chuck E. Cheese's.

It takes a while to get rid of 100 tokens, but we did it. We actually had a really great time.

I'm blessed to have a wonderful and sweet husband. I've had the other kind. Not recommended. Our girls are at a golden age right now, and we've managed to develop a family culture that is very gentle and loving. I'm a very lucky person.

Ten Year Journal

2008-03-01T03:43:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago I came across a ten+ year journal - a lovely book that allows one to keep over ten years of brief journal entries all together. I ordered one for my family and it's fabulous.

But I ordered a second (third and fourth) that started in 2007. One I gave to a woman who has a small child, so she could (if she wants to) go back and record her earliest memories of him. The second I gave to my daughter, who last year started dating the man she will marry this summer. The third book I've kept, for me to write about my writing.

From a purely practical standpoint, it is a central place to keep all the notes for when I buy writing-related stuff. But I look forward to seeing what happens over the years as I continue on this journey.

As for last night's writer's block - I climbed the wall. I don't know how good it is, but I have an appointment to sit down with Orson Scott Card for an hour on Monday. I've done this once before (with the opening chapter) and came away exhilarated but severely humbled. This time I'm bringing a 900 word synopsis as well as the prologue.

Writer's Block... or Not?

2008-02-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

There is a problem being an LDS writer. There is a concept in LDS theology that the Spirit will help you discern that a thing is wrong by giving you a stupor of thought.

So if I can't write, is it because I shouldn't write the thing I was thinking of writing? Gah!!!!

I've thought of dozens of ways to write the prologue of my historical fiction novel about Nauvoo polygamy, but I just can't... get... any... of... them... on... paper...

Crumple, crumple, toss.

Tonight I go back to the wall. I will write. It may be complete garbage, but I will write.