Kirtland

In an effort to make my brother jealous I present the results of my trip to Kirtland last Saturday:

'Twas beautiful weather in Kirtland, headquarters of the LDS Church from 1831–1838.


Had I lived then, I would've set my rocking chair here, on the porch of the Newel K. Whitney Store, and played Parcheesi all day.



The temple and the historical houses are pretty great, don't get me wrong. But the best part about Kirtland is this: a real working sawmill. It blows my mind that all you need to build this wood factory is a blacksmith and some guts. You just jimmy up some great big gears and some levers and BAM, you're cutting day and night. I gotta build me one of these.

Isn't it beautiful? Oh that I were a pioneer!


See, the waterwheel turns the gears,


and the saw blade goes up and down,


and the logs move back and forth and get cut into beautifully straight planks.


Ramming Speed!


Yeah, so who's jealous now? Who cares about pyramids and canyons o' the crescent moon and domes o' the rock? Who cares about the pillars of Hercules and deepest darkest Africa.

Shut up. You stink.

Last Year, IMAX

photo by Moo

Slight Modifications

Since moving in we've made a few slight modifications to the old Boo House. Allow me to show you:

click to see it nice and big

This is the Gravity Room.¹ I put up a dark blue butcher-paper racing stripe to give the walls some color, and then I made some orange denim curtains to really snazz up the place. Dave kindly provided the lamps, the rug, the futon, and an endless assortment of books. Joel brought the six-foot-wide bean bag that's back in the corner. He also brought his projector, which you can see hooked up to a DVD player and some nintendos in front of the boarded-up fire place. It shines on an actual projector screen (like from a classroom) rather than an old sheet; we bolted it into the wall next to where this shot was taken. There's also a surround-sound system hiding out in various nooks. Joel also provided the nice painting above the mantel, which actually matches the room quite well, even though we didn't plan it that way.

I acquired that gorgeous green Barcalounger at a Salvation Army in Lancaster, OH. I went in there and looked around, the way you do when you're sizing up a thrift store, and in about a minute I had figured out that the only thing worth a dime in the whole place was this beautiful green chair. It was clean and comfortable and was without tears or stain or even many signs of wear, and it was just sitting there alone against the usual jumble of indecipherable furniture parts and blue-jean concoctions.

And it was the only thing in the whole store without a price tag.

I went up to the front to ask about it, just knowing that it would be like $80 since it was clearly such a find. The lady at the front didn't even know what I was talking about. "The what?" she asked.

"The green chair back there in the furniture. I was wondering how much it is."

"I'll have to go take a look, honey. Just a sec."

She seemed stunned to see it there when we reached the back of the store, like it wasn't supposed to be part of the inventory, like it was the office chair and some worker had thrown it out on the floor as a joke. I cringed for the moment she would name it out of my price range, out of my future (I had an Explorer full of Target dorm-room furniture outside and a wallet that was feeling the strain despite the considerable back-to-school discounts.)

"Twenty bucks," she said.

Sold.





¹ I once had this dream where me and a bunch of friends (I think it was the gang from Scooby-Doo) were being given a tour of a brand new, as-yet-unopened skyscraper. The guide was taking us from room to room showing us all the incredible things that had been built into the building. Finally we reached the top of the tower and stood outside the central, pinnacle room, and the guide explained to us that all we had seen was nothing compared to what we would now see: the Gravity Room. The whole building had been built for this room to exist. It was new and incredible, and we were to be given the honor of seeing it in person before the whole world. I was dying to see what the Gravity Room held—an antigravity device? furniture on the ceiling? controls for the gravity of the whole city? a huge meteorite glowing with energy being fed into some fantastic machine? This was it, the moment I had waited for, the unveiling of the Gravity Room. Like, wow, Scoob. The guide went to the doors, reached for the handle,

And I woke up. I've spent my entire life trying to figure out what it is. I usually name a room in my house the Gravity Room in hopes that it'll inspire me to finish the dream, but who knows if I'll ever know?

Welcome to Boo House

After our landlord, Ms. Knight, married her high school sweetheart, Mr. Right, and informed us she would be selling the house and moving to North Carolina, Dave and I began the search for a new place. Friends were skeptical that we would be able to find anything comparable: 159 Grosvenor St. was a palace. It was a Sears Craftsman home, probably built in the 20s, reportedly for a local physician and his family. In 2008 it still had its original wood floors—though they were mostly covered by highly practical but thankfully new berber—and the crown molding capping the walls, the decorative columns framing the living room entry, and the woodwork around the windows, doors, and fireplace was still beautiful. The rooms were spacious and the ceilings high, and a second bathroom had been added some years before.

That's not what made it a palace, though. The thing that sealed the deal, that made us grimace at the news of changing ownership, was that Mrs. Knight-Right had been content to rent it out at a mere $1000 a month to four grad students—one tenant more than the legal limit of three unrelated occupants per house. And even though four of us split the rent, it only ever felt like two of us were living there.

See, the other two tenants were practically ghosts. Tom, a first-year masters student in the theatre department, spent pretty much all his time at school and on the stage. Even when he was home he pretty much kept to himself in the attic bedroom. I never saw him watch TV, never saw him do homework in the living room, and never saw him sit down and eat a meal—he would just microwave a Lean Pocket and stand over the kitchen counter before slipping back upstairs and out of sight. It wasn't odd for me to go a week without seeing him, or if I did it would just be for the second it took him to hit the bottom of the stairs and lock the bathroom door behind him (why he ever agreed to live on the third floor and use the first floor bathroom I'll never know).

Tony was even more absent. He actually lived an hour and a half away, with his wife, and only came into town for days he had class or taught. He would usually show up Monday morning pretty early and leave Thursday afternoon, but even when he was in town I'd see him more at the office than at home. The only thing I ever, ever saw him eat was popcorn.

I can count the times all four of us were in the same room on one hand. I can count the conversations I had with Tom and Tony on the same hand. Which means that Dave and I had the run of a beautiful three-story home with porch, swing, parking, basement, laundry, and more for a mere $255 a month each.

Finding a comparable deal elsewhere seemed, uh, unlikely.

But, as it turns out, I'm the second-luckiest guy in the world, and Dave is maybe a close third. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Boo House.¹


It may not look like much on the outside, but this house is a real catch. Turns out it almost exactly the same as our old house but smaller. The floor plan is eerily familiar, but everything is five or six steps closer and there's no attic room. Instead, there's a nice walk-in shower, a laundry room on the first floor, a coat closet with a full-length mirror on the door, and a deck out back.

There's also a dishwasher—an insane luxury and a big selling point—but it is missing an important part, so it doesn't work yet.

Dave found the house a few weeks after Mrs. Knight-Righter gave us the news, and upon seeing it we knew we had found the house for us. There was only one problem: there was now only two of us since our ghost-roommates wouldn't be moving with us, and the house needed three to make the rent feasible. But where could we find a third warm body that wouldn't cramp our style of using the whole refrigerator and all the cupboards and all the furniture as if no one else were around? Should we sign the lease and then find a sucker or should we risk someone else leasing the house while we made inquiries?

Dave was a little worried, but I told him not to sweat it, that if God had thrown us a house with a dishwasher He'd certainly toss a roommate in on the bargain.

I went to church that very Sunday and noticed a guy about my age sitting near the back in street clothes. After the service I found out he was a soon-to-be BYU grad in Athens for just a few days to find housing for the next year when he'd be beginning a masters in history. "Looking for a house, eh?" said I.

And the rest is history. Joel, as it turns out, is a real champ. He's even better than a ghost-roommate, which is good, cause I don't want to live in a haunted house in a town that has five graveyards and a haunted insane asylum.


¹ Haven't you always wanted to live in a house with a name? "See you this evening for whist at Pemberly, what?"

Recommendation

I mostly decline to give book recommendations. (I explained why here.)

But just in case you are looking for something to read, something new and perhaps unlike what you've read before, something that isn't just another novel or memoir, something that doesn't require a big commitment, something contemporary yet tested—

Just in case you actually would like a book recommendation, here's mine:

 
And here's why:

1. Each of these books is chock full of contemporary literature, but neither forces you to run the normal risk associated with new writing. You know what I'm talking about: you're browsing at the bookstore and you find yourself enchanted by the very very clever graphic art covering the latest by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Safran Foer or whatever, but besides the congratulatory blurbs on the back of the book you have no independent confirmation that this book isn't going to be a huge let down. You stroke the cover a bit and look around and find yourself drawn in deeper, towards the depths of the store, to the [Proven] Literature section, where old classics like Jane Eyre and Moby Dick are sporting similarly clever graphic updates on their old covers along with a century or so of success to justify their purchase. You're torn. You want to be hip, to be aware of the newest books on the block, but you don't want to wind up buying garbage.

With the Best American Series you need not worry. Every entry in this yearly anthology is triple-checked for awesomeness—once by its original publisher, again by the series editor, and again again by the guest editor for any given year. And it came out today—you can't get any more modern than that.

2. Even if, despite the fine taste of three editors, something in one of these books doesn't appeal to you, that doesn't mean the whole book was a waste. With essays, all you have to do is wait for half a dozen pages—or skip half a dozen pages—and you've got a new essay with a new author.

3. You probably haven't read many essays since high school and college ruined them for you by imposing deadlines and minimum page requirements. So if you've been steadily reading novels or memoirs and want a change, here's twenty or more short changes in one book.

4. I haven't actually read either book yet, so I won't be offended if you don't like it after all. (Somehow, recommending something I haven't read seems right. I recently sent E-style two CDs for her birthday that I had never even heard before.) I've never yet been disappointed with a Best American Travel Writing. On the one hand, every essay in it is loaded with heaps of fantastic knowledge about the world: it's the best kind of education. I've learned about eating whale meat in Iceland, the disappearing Aral Sea, the Pope's favorite ski lodges, and even Wilmington, Delaware, the credit card capital of the world. But even if I don't happen to be particularly interested in the place or topic of a particular essay, there's still the other hand: every essay is the account of someone's crazy adventure someplace. You can't lose.

The Best American Essays isn't as foolproof (since essay is a term widely interpretable) but it has the added advantage of being wide open for length and topic and style. I'm not out of the roman numeral pages yet, but I'm excited by the introductory remarks of this year's guest editor, Adam Gopnik. He seems to share my opinions of what an essay is.

6. They are self-perpetuating. Meaning (1) they come out every October, (2) if you like a particular piece you can look up the magazine or journal that originally printed it and perhaps find a whole treasure trove of reading you never knew you were looking for, and (3) they each contain a list of "notables" that were considered but not selected for the book, which you can look up on your own time if you still haven't gotten enough.

5. They're beautiful outside and in. Just look at that blue. And for those of you with an eye for typography, they have nice fonts, kerning, leading, gutters, and all that. Quite nice on the eyes. They have a nice heft too. My only concern is that they seem to be using a noticeably cheaper paper this year, thinner and grayer but by no means lousy.

So there it is. And in case you were interested, they also publish the Best American Comics, Short Stories, Mystery Stories, Nonrequired Reading, Science and Nature Writing, Spiritual Writing, and Sports Writing.

Read or die.

Sailing

So on Saturday I went sailing for the first time in my life. It. Was. Awesome.

It all came about when I told JSK that I was planning on sailing to Antarctica as soon as I could save up the money. She basically said, "That's nice. My dad sails," to which I responded, "Can he take me sailing?"

See, the problem with saving all my money to sail to Antarctica is that it is a big commitment for something I know nothing about. I might not even like sailing. I might have irreconcilable seasickness. I might be opposed to so much cussing. Before last Saturday all I knew for sure is that I loved the idea of sailing, as evidenced by the list of books to the left here (at least 13 of which star the sea, not to mention all the ones currently next to my bed).

But now I'm sure. JSK, her husband Tim, and I drove up to Columbus to meet her dad at Hoover Reservoir where we saddled up his dinghy and hit the water. Mr. Schomberg manned the tiller while Tim and I acted as ballast. We sailed up the lake for an hour or so, zigzagging against the wind; Tim manned the jib on the port tack and I got it on the starboard one. It felt like flying a kite. The weather man had predicted rain but it was clear and sunny and windy: just perfect weather for sailing.

Click to see larger photos; see more at my facebook profile.

   
   


Huge thanks to JSK for making this salty sea dog's dream come true. Next stop: penguins.

The Triumphant Return

I think this picture pretty much sums up the sort of entrance I'd like to make as I power my way back into the blogosphere:

"The Last Unicorn" ^©1981
purchased for $1 from Goodwill by David Grover, also ^©1981