Jean

“Men are, that they might have joy.” - The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:27

Her house is filled with dream catchers I used to think were beautiful. They are emerald green with hanging eagle feathers, soft blue with ivory beads, blood red with gold ribbons and black twine, lavender with translucent green ribbon curled lightly, sunset orange that faded into yellow and pink near the top, mustard yellow with gray feathers and tendrils of bark, and they hang on her doors, walls, banisters, and tree limbs—they are even stowed away with the cutlery. Walking into her suburban home is like walking into a flea market shop.

Jean says she makes them whenever she can't sleep. With the sheer number of dream catchers present, that must be every night. Since I have been her neighbor all these years, I guess it fell to me to be the one to look after her. Take her with me to get groceries, drop her off at the salon to get her hair done, that sort of thing. That is what neighbors are for, after all.

Her husband's name was Paul, and he had loved to garden and go fishing. They used to get up early every Saturday to go fishing down at Utah Lake, but then he got sick and, well. She never did the fishing herself, anyway.

It's been fourteen months now, and those dream catchers are still showing up everywhere.

In the spring, I was pulling some weeds out from behind my roses (Lord, help me) and saw her step out of her front door, dream catcher in hand, and start spinning slow circles in the middle of her yard, looking for a spot.

This dream catcher was woven so it looked like it was a framed doily. There were no beads or feathers this time, but she had hung a mass of ribbons from it. So many, in fact, that it made me wonder if she was cleaning out her whole drawer.

When she caught me staring, she waved her free hand and called out, "Morning, Ellen! Your front swing is looking nice, did you repaint it?"

I glanced over at the swing. It was 30 years old and hadn't seen a fresh coat in 35. "You need to get your eyes checked!" I said, shaking my head at her. "That bench is the same as it's always been, except maybe for a fresh coat of dust!"

She smiled wide, walked over to her trellis, and somehow found a way to snug her creation in there along with the overgrown hollyhock plant. "I thought it looked a shade more gray!" she said, then waved again before going into her house.

"A shade more gray, my butt," I'd said to myself, but I was smiling. It was a good day. The sun was shining, the neighborhood was coming alive, and I was wearing the new sun bonnet I had bought just the Wednesday before.

I made pancakes for breakfast and thought I'd bring some over for Jean. Who knows whether that woman ever feeds herself enough. She was organizing photos when I knocked on the screen door and let myself in. They were spread all across the dining room table, some in shoe boxes, some in piles and some sitting next to frames.

"Which do you think would go better over the stairs?" she asked, holding up two photos for me to see. One was of her and Paul next to the New York City Christmas tree, and the other showed them next to the house, probably just after they bought it.

"I think pancakes," I said, putting a couple photo piles onto a chair so I would have room to set the plate down.

“Oh, I already had breakfast. Thank you, though,” she said, moving around the table to consider another photo.

“What did you eat?”

“Corn flakes.”

“No, that’s what you ate yesterday.”

“A person can eat the same cereal two days in a row, you know. It’s actually quite normal.”

I looked over at her sink and saw no dishes in it. She does this sometimes, forgets that she forgot to eat. She could make millions if she could just bottle that forgetfulness. It’s annoying as all get out.

“Jean, I made these pancakes especially for you, and if you don’t eat them, I’m throwing them on your driveway.”

“Can they wait until lunch?” she said, holding a photo at arm’s length and cocking her head to one side. After a moment, she turned it around for my approval. It was a photo of an elephant. I shook my head and she tossed it back on the table.

We negotiated for brunch, settled on a photo of the two of them in a fishing boat in Alaska, and I stayed to help her organize pictures for a minute before returning to my house to do a couple more chores then head off to my book club.

Mornings were just a matter of making sure she ate. Easy. Nights, though; not good.

Jean would go out on the front porch and play the cello. She had no sheet music to speak of, so it was all just whatever came out of her head. The tunes were okay, just sad. Hard to go to sleep when you hear dismal melodies through the night. It nearly made me want to take up dream catcher-ing.

After trying to sleep for, I don't know, an hour, I'd bundle up in a robe and head over to her house.

About a week after the photos and pancakes morning, I shuffled over there to sit on her front steps and watch the night. She kept on playing, giving me a nod, but not much more.

"Stars are pretty tonight," I said, just to open conversation.

"Yes," she said, and played for a few more minutes without saying more. Then she set her cello down on its side and came to sit by me on the step (hers were freshly painted). She didn't say a word, I didn't say a word, but I put my arm around her and she cried.

The next morning, she was knocking on my door and asking whether I wanted some tulips, because she had bought too many for the space she had allotted them in her garden. I accepted, of course, and thanked her with some bacon and eggs. Then she got busy, as she always was, and I had to spend time reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln for my book club.

Maybe I should have quit the book club and started reading books I actually enjoyed, like Dr. Seuss. But you can’t beat the company, and it's hard to take care of your best friend so much sometimes.

Her cello that night sounded like something out of "Phantom of the Opera." Maybe that's what it was, I don't know. Jean used to be in a symphony somewhere and maybe they played it once. Either way, it only took a half hour before I gave up on sleep and went to sit on her front step.

She had just finished a lingering note, something she put a slowing vibrato to, when she stopped and said, so quietly I almost didn't catch it over the crickets, "What's the point?"

I turned toward her. "Of?"

"All of it."

"To be happy."

"Ah." She let out a breath and put down her cello.

I looked at her and it was hard to read her face by the light of the street lamp, so I squeezed her hand and suggested she go to bed. With a nod, she did just that, and the next time I saw her, she was hanging up another dream catcher, a sky blue one with matching feathers and golden beads. This one was hung from the tree that hangs over our property line. I was sure she'd run out of places soon, but hey, Jean's pretty creative.

That night's music sounded a bit more Celtic. Not being a fan of that genre, I didn't even try to sleep, just went straight over to convince her to go to bed.

But she looked a mess and I just didn't have the heart. So I sat in my familiar place, braced my back against the railing, and tried to like Celtic music.

We didn’t talk except to say good night when she was through. I am not a talkative person after 10 o’clock. Decent people are in bed and sleeping at that hour, unless they have a cello-playing neighbor who is still grieving over losing her husband. Then they sit on porches and try to act civil.

I shouldn't complain, though, because one night, she didn't play her cello at all. I was lying in bed, waiting for my bedtime serenade, and it didn't come. Didn't come, didn't come, so of course I had to go check on her.

She was kneeling on her kitchen floor, using a rag to mop it. It was 11:00 o’clock at night. "Jean?" I said.

"Mmm?"

"Why are you doing chores in the middle of the night?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd be productive."

"Why don't you make another dream catcher?"

"I ran out of string today," she said, swiping at a stray hair.

I kept standing in the kitchen doorway. "Or what about your cello?"

"The bridge is broken." She jerked her head toward the counter and I saw a pile of splinters that must have been the bridge at some point.

There was a moment of silence, then, "Anything I can do?"

"No, thank you. Get some sleep."

I patted her shoulder and went home. Breaking things was a new symptom, and I wondered again about calling in a psychiatrist. Jean had adamantly refused before, though, so I knew she would refuse now. She was a grown woman and could figure herself out, I was sure.

I bought her a new bridge, but the cello-playing never recommenced. Might have been that crisper weather was moving in. The dream catchers kept coming, at least. The property line tree starting reminding me of Christmas, with all the dream catchers she was hanging from it.

Question: If the point is to be happy, and a person isn't ...?

It was morning again, and I was back on duty. Slippers on, hair still drying from my shower, I shuffled across the yard and let myself in the back door.

Jean was curled up on her couch under an old Navajo blanket. The ceiling fan was whirring that night’s almost-completed dream catcher’s cream beads against the wooden couch feet.

Jean is a morning person. I didn’t bother being quiet as I pulled out a pot and set some water to boiling on the stove for poached eggs. Somewhere in the clanging, she woke up. I expected to see her in the kitchen, but she didn’t come over. I could tell she was up, though, because the bead-ticking had ended.

I stuck my head into the living room. She was still under the blanket, the dream catcher now on the glass-topped coffee table.

“Would you like your eggs hard or soft?” I said.

“Either.”

Then, belatedly, “Thank you, Ellen.”

I nodded and returned to the stove, cracking four eggs into the pot, then covering them with a lid and turning down the heat. I waited four minutes as the eggs cooked. The house was silent except for that fan. Photos still covered every available space on the table, their haphazard piles unmoved from months ago. When I was through with waiting, I scooped up the eggs, divided them into bowls, added salt, pepper, and spoons, and then carried them into the living room.

Jean sat up slightly to take hers from me, thanking me again in a soft undertone.

“Are you doing alright?” I said as I sat down opposite her. I said a quick mental prayer to the Lord in gratitude for the meal while I waited for her response.

“I’m just so tired,” Jean said. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

I glanced at the dream catcher, and it really was an intricate one. She had somehow contrived the yellow thread into flowers, creating a bouquet in the center of her loop. Beneath it hung cream beads and the fabric petals of a lei.

Jean wasn’t eating her eggs. The bowl was resting in her lap, losing steam and becoming less delicious by the moment. I lobbed a couch pillow at her legs to get her moving.

She smiled as it landed and bounced to the floor, then cut into one of her eggs and took a bite. “It needs toast,” she said, then pulled herself upright and off the couch. She disappeared into the kitchen and I heard her press the toaster down.

Only a couple weeks after that, she lost her appetite altogether, eating only when I was there to feed her. I started seeing a therapist when she continued to refuse one.

But even more than her broken cello and lost appetite, what made me most concerned was when Jean stopped making dream catchers. Her supply drawer was full, but she didn’t have the drive, or the energy, to make another. The ones in her home and yard began to look listless.

And then—oh, I was so scared.

I was standing in my kitchen, wearing an old “kiss the cook” apron and wishing I knew where my slippers were, cutting chicken breasts into strips for fajitas. My sliding glass door opened, and Jean ghosted in, leaving it open behind her and letting in the chill fall air.

When she looked at me, there was nothing in her blue eyes. And I mean nothing—no soul looked out.

She stood there, emptiness staring at me, with no emotions on her face at all. Straight back, wearing a lavender sweater and no shoes on, though it must have been below 40 outside.

“Ready for dinner?” I said. I tried to smile.

She did not respond, just stood there. I washed the juices off my hands, came around the counter, and shut the door before leading her to the table and sitting her down with a hug. Then I walked back to the cutting board.

A moment later, Jean was standing behind me in the kitchen.

“Did you want a glass of water?”

“Ellen,” she said, so quietly she nearly whispered. “Please kill me.”

I felt silence.

“Chicken should be ready in just a few minutes, if you’ll wait,” I said. “How was your day? What did you do?”

“Please, Ellen.”

“No.”

I half-turned from the cutting board to look at her. “It will all be okay tomorrow, you’ll see.”

She laughed a laugh that wasn't. “No, it won’t.”

“But someday it will be, and maybe that day is tomorrow.”

“Use one of your knives. Here,” she said, unbuttoning her sweater and folding it over a nearby bar stool. She pulled her shirt to bare the skin above her heart, then came to stand beside me again. “Right here,” she said, picking up my hand to guide the knife toward the spot. Then, “Please. I can’t do this anymore.”

I pulled the knife back, trembling slightly, and placed it on the counter, then tried to get around her and pick up the phone. But she stopped me, her cold hands pulling on one of mine to keep me away from it. “No,” she said, sounding angry, which actually gave me a measure of hope. Anger is better than nothing.

“You can get help, Jean! Just let me get the phone,” I said.

“I don’t want help. I want to stop.”

And I—

It was only the knowledge that suicide was the wrong way to go that helped me wrench my hand away, pick up the phone, and dial 9-1-1.

She has since apologized to me, over the phone from Portland, where she was sent for help. It felt ridiculous and wrong and I nearly yelled at her for even thinking of it. You just don't apologize for that sort of thing.

She’s home again now, making dream catchers. Today’s was midnight blue with maroon beads and jet black ribbons. Small silver beads in the loop allude to stars—or rather, happiness.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Kurt Vonnegut

Now, who was I reading that made me realize I hadn't read any Kurt Vonnegut? Oh, that's right. Anna Quindlen. I still need to do an actual post about that book, don't I?

Anyway, Kurt Vonnegut is one of those literary names you hear thrown around relatively often, like Hemingway or Virginia Woolf, and I hadn't read any of his work yet. Also, I figured it was time for a small break from all the autobiographies.

I went to the library and picked up Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which I'd heard of and read was a good book of his to start with.

Leave it to me to take a break from reading autobiographies by reading what amounted to a personal historical fiction.

Vonnegut had taken a major event in his life, the bombing of Dresden, Germany, during WWII, and placed a fictional character in it. Vonnegut shows up in his own story, multiple times, and at the beginning admits that much of the story is true. So it's a historical fiction ... off a memoir.

I didn't even know people did that. Then again, I'm learning that there are many styles of autobiography. So far:

Alan Alda -- Scenes and stories from life focused on a set of themes, written out of order.
Malala Yousafzai -- Scenes and stories from life set in detailed backdrop of a culture's history
Anna Quindlen -- A reflection on a generation and how it has changed and grown
Kurt Vonnegut -- Making a fictional character go through your life instead

... But giving him adventures that are much more exciting, I'm sure, because he is kidnapped by aliens and does an awful lot of time travelling within his own lifetime. The character relives portions of his life over and over, in whatever order fate throws him into them. He has even experienced his own death a number of times.

A couple criticisms, though, need to be thrown in. First, and it's a style choice, but I wasn't fond of how often Vonnegut said "So it goes." It was his comment after every death, or mention of death (a fur coat, for instance), in the book. It got too repetitive for me and lost its profundity. That does tell you that there is a lot of death in this book, though. Also a lot of crudity. For the record.

My second criticism is that Vonnegut's first chapter reads like a forward, or an introduction, and that's what it should have been. The book actually begins in Chapter Two. Perhaps he wanted to make absolutely sure his introduction was read? Chapter One gives a background to the book itself and says that the story starts with the sentence that opens Chapter Two.

It also gives away the last line, interestingly enough. A bird gets the final say with the sound "poo-tee-weet?"

What's also interesting about that bird is that Vonnegut says after a massacre of Dresden's magnitude, no one is supposed to be alive to say anything about it, and indeed, there isn't much at all to be said. Birds say the only thing that can be said, "poo-tee-weet."

Vonnegut. I didn't imagine the curly
hair, personally, but that really doesn't matter.

It's weird because he finishes a book that is largely dedicated to discussing and talking about the Dresden bombing by saying that there's really nothing that can be said about it.

Maybe it's a reminder of that concept? Maybe he gives the bird the last word because he thinks that, after it all, that is really the best last word.

How do you choose to end an autobiography? Alda and Quindlen both wrote more than one autobiography, making it less of an issue for them. Malala is only 20 right now, so I'm betting she'll come out with a sequel at some point, too.

Is one's gravestone really the last word in their autobiography? Perhaps not, since most people don't write the text for their own gravestones, but I think there is some poetry in ending an autobiography with your name and dates. People who know and love you see your name and it encapsulates everything you are. It means you. As for the dates, those are for the strangers who stop by and wonder what was going on in your lifetime. It's a kind of marker, placing you in history. My name is Elizabeth, and my place began in 1991.

Family, work, and feminism

I recently finished reading Anna Quindlen's Lots of Candles and Plenty of Cake. It's, you guessed it, another book from the biography section. Except this book is more of a reflection on her generation, particularly its women.

Anna Quindlen is a baby boomer and a writer who was able to manage both a successful career and motherhood (she has three children, all now grown).

That said, something she put in there struck me:

All the times I've been asked on college campuses about balancing work and family, I've never been asked the question by a young man. Young women, even with their own mothers' successes, wonder how they will manage job and kids; young men still figure they'll manage it by marrying.

It's so true, isn't it? I've been thinking about it all week.

One reason I like the business I am starting, Stories from the Hearth, is that it will someday allow me to be a mother while also working at something I enjoy. It is a work-from-home job; when I need to interview people, I can foreseeably bring children with me. It will be hard, but it seems possible.

My husband has a goal of owning his own research and development company someday. He has never mentioned how he will be a father at the same time.

So I asked him about what he thought of this quote from the book, and he said he thinks it's because women think about being mothers someday, and men don't think about being fathers. While many girls are excitedly planning their weddings years in advance, the expectation for men is that they'll just show up and it will be grand. Those same girls have also been playing with dolls and playing house since they were tiny. Generally speaking, they have always been thinking about someday being mothers. Men, not so much.

A good friend of mine directed me to read this article by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter discusses work-life balance for successful women in government, particularly, and notes that men do not have the same problems with it. While women are more likely to quit their jobs to spend more time with children they think could benefit from their time, she says, men are likely to look at their jobs as a way of supporting their family, and thus think the best thing they could possibly do is work harder.

I was reminded of another book, one my in-laws read and told me about. It's called Outliers: The Story of Success, and it's by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell talks about the reasons why certain people are successful and others aren't. Apparently, one key to success is that someone else has sacrificed so you have the time or skills to succeed. Someone takes on all the necessary tasks so that the other person can chase their dreams and do amazing things.

Case in point, the woman raises the children and takes care of the home so that the man can have a rewarding career. In Slaughter's case, though, it was the other way around. Her husband held down the fort so she could work as the director of the federal government's policy planning department for two years.

I am the current breadwinner of my two-person family. My husband is still attending school and has a back injury he is trying to heal from. He was working this summer, but as time wore on he was in too much pain to continue. Now he is working from home as much as he can.

This means I wake up, go for a run (hopefully), get ready for my day, go to work, work, get home, make dinner, do laundry (not every day), massage my poor husband and work on one of my numerous side jobs: starting my business, writing this blog, teaching my sister to play the piano, writing a column for the Idaho Press-Tribune. Hopefully I get to relax sometime.

I am sincerely hoping this is not an eternal situation ... and that I'm not setting a trend for me doing all the work and my husband sitting around for life. That would not be okay. If I'm going to be doing the lion's share of the work at home, he better be out there being amazing.

For me, then, I suppose this issue is less your typical feminist problem and more of a marriage problem: How do you balance all the tasks associated with home and family? This, of course, is solved differently in each marriage.

In marriage and home, it should all be equal, with any superiority thrown out the door. That was another quote in Quindlen's book that I liked:

True friendship assumes a level playing field -- no one is up, no one is down, no one the queen bee or the drone.

Replace "friendship" with "marriage," and I think that about sums it up.

Pride: An Investigation

I recently completed a weeks-long reflection on pride. I've always considered one of my greatest flaws to be my pride, and I'm too scared to ask God to help me solve it. I mean, that's just a bad idea. The last time I said a "Please help me overcome my pride" prayer to God was in middle school, and I didn't get a part in the school play that week. When you ask God to humble you, He humbles you. It's not fun.

So instead I got smart. I'm going to ask to understand my pride, I said. If I understood it, perhaps I could conquer it myself, like I've been trying to do all along.

It turns out a prayer to understand pride is synonymous with, "Please give me a chance to examine my pride," which is synonymous with, "Hurt it, please."

After living successfully on my own, supporting first myself and then a spouse at a job that used my English degree in the Boise area of Idaho, I have moved back to Utah, the Mormon homeland, to live in my in-laws' basement. That's another post altogether, and I'll probably get to it. But to make it short for now, this circumstance hurts my pride.

Oh, and on top of that, I'm working at a job that does not use my degree (something I'd been proud of) or my natural talents (something else I'm proud of), and my in-laws are my bosses (...yep).

My pride is pretty shot right now. Thanks, God.

Pride is a pretty big topic, and unlike many people when they tackle something of that size, I didn't start by looking it up. That came somewhere in the middle. Instead, my thoughts turned to observing when my pride was hurt and why. I also thought about it while I read from the scriptures each day (a breakfast ritual).

Most of the time, when we think of pride in the negative sense, we mean someone who is full of themselves and self-centered. There is a quote I love, and it's by C.S. Lewis (a man I definitely would have invited to dinner had he lived in the neighborhood and still been alive):

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.

This feels true to me, and it implies that you do not have to sacrifice self-esteem for the sake of humility. So here's my first truth: Thinking well of myself does not mean I am prideful.

In the scriptures, pride is usually mentioned when an individual or group is unwilling to obey or turn to God for help. "Stiff-necked," they're called, a metaphor that refers to an inability to bow down before someone. But no one wakes up one morning deciding to be stiff-necked. I'll address the obedience part later, but for now, why do people refuse to turn to God for help?

Lack of faith. Lack of hope. Thinking you don't need God. Most important for my pride investigation: Putting others' opinions before God's.

I have a hard time of this. I care way too much about what others think of me. In college, I once caught myself walking down the street, taking home a pizza, and thinking that the people driving past me thought I must be a really poor person, to not afford a car.

What they were actually probably thinking: Pedestrian, stop sign, right turn signal. I am quite sure that none of them cared about me as much as I cared what they thought of me. And who cares what they thought of me, anyway?

This fear, the fear of what people think of me, leads to me to putting their opinion before God's sometimes. That means I do stupid things. For instance, in the LDS religion, a person is only supposed to take part in the sacrament (similar to communion) if one is worthy. I wasn't, but did anyway. Later, I admired those people brave enough to not take part.

Perhaps this is what the scriptures mean when they tell us to fear God? Second truth: I indulge in pride when I won't humble myself before others and I put their opinion before God's.

My thoughts, over the course of weeks, next went to honor, I believe. Honor is some mythical thing, something men used to have that caused them to be brave. What does it mean, really? Do we still have honor today? Is honor the same as pride?

I looked honor up and found a website that described honor as having two types: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal honor is when those around you respect you because you deserve respect, as a human being. Everyone has that. Vertical honor is when you deserve that respect based on special recognition you have received, such as having a high rank, a lofty award, or a blog everyone reads and loves. When it comes to honor, I find it is closer to one's right to respect than to pride, the one being from an outside source and the other coming from inside.

Do we have honor today, then? Yes, but we've obviously assigned it a new name, and people bestow it based on varying criteria. Everyone wants to be respected, and with horizontal honor in mind, honor is a basic human right. Gaining more of it is good; it goes along with being a good person and working hard so that you'll be successful and well liked.

Third truth: Honor is worth striving for. Caring about the opinion of others is not inherently bad.

Now is the time when I finally got around to looking up pride in the dictionary (a bit late, I know). Definitions:

1. A feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

2. The consciousness of one's own dignity (akin to the honor thing I mentioned earlier)

3. The quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance (synonym: conceit)

4. A feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by other people.

5. A feeling that you are more important than other people.

Etymology: Old English word for excessive self-esteem (pryde) 

I think it is #5 that I have the toughest time with. I have a pretty high sense of my own accomplishments and abilities that I constantly try to tone down.

It was soon after looking up definitions that I made my final breakthrough. Perhaps I should have looked them up at the beginning, but maybe I wasn't ready for them. I am a believer that experience teaches the best lessons, and a person only truly learns after experiencing a thing. That's part of why I'm drawing this out so much, so you can see behind the piece of wisdom I discovered and hopefully understand it all.

 I'll deliver my conclusion as it is written in my phone:

Pride has its basis in comparison. So why do we compare? We want to improve ourselves, we want what others have, we want to feel loved. Perhaps if we gave love, we would not feel such a need to compare. We see their good points, and because we feel loved in return, we see our own good points?

This bit about love didn't go many places, but I still think it's a nice thought. By loving others, we feel loved in return and learn to love ourselves.

Being proud of myself for an accomplishment is wonderful. I should feel that happiness in myself.

Someone who just got their degree should celebrate. They did it! Someone who just scaled a mountain should be in the same boat, as should someone who flew a plane for the first time, finished a hard project for work or finished reading Anna Karenina, because that book is a beast.

Good pride = happiness in myself?

That, ladies and gentlemen, was my breakthrough. I was proud when I got up my first day wakeboarding = I was happy that I managed to get up so fast. I hadn't thought I'd be able to do something like that.

This idea of pride pairs with the notion that good pride is happiness in others. I'm proud of my sister for doing so well in her piano lessons = it makes me happy to see how well she is doing.

This fourth truth is something I suspected but didn't dare hope for: Pride is not inherently bad. It is, at its root, happiness--in yourself and others.

But then, why do we look down on pride so much, and why does God strip people of pride so often? Next phone note:

God humbles people who are so happy, too happy, with what they are becoming and that something is not closer to God. He is setting them back on the right path. The other possibility is with thinking others are lesser and correcting that. The sin with the former is that they don't want to be like God. They want something else and think that is happiness.

Because if you like yourself as A, but God is like B, then that means you don't want to be like God. I do hope that makes sense.

My last two truths come from that final realization.

Fifth truth: Pride becomes an issue when we think of other people as being less than ourselves. It is good and possible to be proud of yourself/others without looking down on someone while doing it. (This plays in with the fifth definition. Coincidence, I assure you.)

Sixth truth: God wants us to be like Him. Therefore, He sets course corrections that we don't enjoy--a humbling experience.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Douglas Adams

At the same time my husband and I were in between books in a fantasy trilogy, waiting for the next one to arrive at our library, we were going on vacation. We needed a book, so I chose "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," one he hadn't read yet and one I felt it was culturally imperative that he did. That, and it's a fun book to read.

He was hesitant because he had not enjoyed the latest movie, which I also thought came across as lame. I promised him, and I promise you, that the books are much better.

We finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams, by the way) in half a week. For the record, we only read the first book, not its sequels.

The thing that makes this book a classic in science fiction is the narration, I'm sure of it. I mean, read this beginning:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has--or rather had--a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

It could be rewritten to be something like this:

There is a small, yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the galaxy, and a little, blue-green planet populated with humans orbited it at ninety-eight million miles. The planet had a problem: Most of the people living on it were unhappy. Many solutions were suggested, but most of them involved money and didn't work. Thus, many of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable.

Which says the same thing, right? It's also shorter, which is supposed to be a good thing, conventionally speaking.

But it's not nearly as interesting or fun to read. Now, each author has their own voice, and that voice can gain an accent, if you will, depending on the genre or the voice of the character, if written in first or third person limited. This is Adams's voice.

I used to have a digital sticky note on my laptop that said "Write like me, and genre will come." My writing should be better if I just sound like me, basically, and I will find stories to tell. Well, I was reading this book and realized that my sass and absurdity may work in my favor if I just let it out like Adams did.

While trying to go to sleep, I gave it some thought. What sort of story would suit a sassy, weird narrator? I wanted the main character to be a regular person, so they could look on the world with the necessary sass and so the absurd things would be even more funny (prime example, Arthur Dent, the book's main character). So in my mind, I invented a 20-something woman who works as an executive assistant (my current day job, easy to use) an a metropolitan area. The next step is to give the character desire. What do they need? Arthur Dent wants normality and for his house not to be bulldozed. Eventually, he just wants to stay alive. My character, I decided, was single and LDS and thus wanted to get married eventually (it's a cultural thing); get a different, better job; and ... here is where I stagnated.

Because those are boring things that would give me a boring, cliche story. What was it that gave The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy its original spark? The Earth gets blown up.

I couldn't think of a story that would suit a sassy narrator well that didn't involve an inciting incident (event that sparks the plot) that was so devastating it was absurd. Try to think of one and let me know if you can. I couldn't.

Without Earth blowing up, this book would just be characters getting drunk and hating on bureaucracy. Not nearly as fun.

So now we have an executive assistant who is LDS, wants to get married eventually, hates her job, and just had her city bombed during an invasion, with her and her office aquarium fish as the sole survivors. Or she just watched her boss turn into a zombie. Or she's been kidnapped by Tibetan monks and has to fight her way out to safety before the monks or cold get to her.

Then a sassy narrator could really shine.

As for the absurd part, I realized while grocery shopping that stories with absurd events in them have a wild card built into them. Examples: The Heart of Gold in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The board game in Jumanji. Book magic in Inkheart. Foo in Levan Thumps. The rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. The wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The wild card is a prop or gateway thrown in there that allows the author's imagination to run wild. Anything is now possible, thanks to that one item/place/person/thing. The Heart of Gold turns two missiles into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale. The Jumanji board game sends wild animals through the house and eats Robin Williams. Book magic in Inkheart allows characters to come to life, whichever ones happen to arrive. Thanks to Foo, a living tree is turned into a living toothpick, who then splits farther into the good and evil sides of himself. And we all know about Alice in Wonderland  and Narnia (I like the lamppost in the middle of the forest. That was a nice touch).

I haven't finished thinking about this story, but in case you also think this is a good idea, have at it. You'll need an attitude, some humor, a bizarre inciting incident and a wild card to let your imagination go wherever it pleases.

Best of luck.

Writerly Podcasts

A while back, I wrote a series of posts* about "Writing Excuses," a podcast by a group of authors that focuses on writing advice and advice for the business of writing. There are other writing podcasts out there, though, and I've been doing a little looking into them. To start my search for an excellent writing podcast (I'd love to find one, if you have a suggestion, let me know), I listened to the New Yorker's "Fiction Podcast" and a podcast put out by Grammar Girl. Here are my reviews.

Fiction Podcast

PROS: This is a quality podcast, and you can tell. Each month, an author is invited to pick a piece of short fiction published by the New Yorker (from any date) to read in the podcast and discuss/analyze it with New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman. I listened to a few of these podcasts; the discussion was always informed, on both sides, and the stories were read in full, which is fun for a person who generally prefers fiction to nonfiction.

Listening to this podcast has the potential to expand your reading horizons. So what if you normally wouldn't listen to a particular author or genre? You get to sample it now. If you don't like it, no harm done.

There are ads, but they are kept to a minimum.

CONS: These podcasts are long. Like, over an hour. That means that, if you aren't careful, you may find yourself zoning out. This kept happening to me during one particular podcast about a story that both Treisman and the author admitted were boring. They actually tried to analyze the boringness at some point, if I recall correctly. The length, the subject matter, and the understated way of reading aloud that seems to be in vogue these days all made it hard for me to pay attention to.

This way of reading aloud could be considered a con, too, if you dislike it enough. Some people love it, though, so it's undecided.

It only comes out once a month, so once you're caught up, it's not like you can continue binging. There are about a hundred back episodes, though, so don't let this deter you too much.

The other con, for me, is that this podcast is meant for readers, not writers. They do not analyze how the writer wrote the story, but the ideas, the symbolism, a bit about the author on a personal level, that sort of thing. I didn't come away with many writing tips.

... beyond this one: Every major character you write is going to be part of yourself, one evolution of you. Face that fact and harness it.

Grammar Girl

PROS: This podcast appears about once per week, so more often than the New Yorker's. It is also shorter (varying lengths, but none I saw were longer than 20 minutes), meaning you can sneak it into your schedule much easier.

The other pro I found was that these episodes are simple and easy to understand. Listeners receive a variety of interesting tips on grammar, pronunciation, punctuation, and even how to write different things (I listened to one that talked about writing a letter of recommendation).

CONS: I'm going to admit that I am not a fan of this podcast -- for me. I had to search through episodes to find something new. That simple advice I talked about is either stuff I already know or else things I can look up -- through Grammar Girl, usually -- and figure out in less than a minute. The host, Mignon Fogarty (the Grammar Girl), explains these simple things and repeats herself about them far beyond what is necessary for comprehension.

The ads in this one go in the cons list because it feels like they are long, and there are three per episode, one to start, one in the middle, and one at the end. Sometimes, they are for the same product.

Another grievance I have comes from an episode I listened to about writing in the third person: They talked about the different types of third person without giving tips or decent examples about how to write in each. Not so useful.

The last one is that different segments of each episode are written by different people, but the same person, Fogarty, reads it all, giving attribution at the end. This makes it confusing, because I assume it is her talking up until the end, when you find out it was actually some professor of something at a university. I'm sitting there, being all impressed by her experience as a professor, then find out she's been reading someone else's words. They should put the attribution at the beginning.

The writing takeaway I got: "Huh. I haven't read any Kurt Vonnegut, now that you mention him. I should get on that."

On to finding better writerly podcasts! So far the New Yorker podcast is in the lead.

*This link goes to the first in the series. Here are links to the others:
Writing Excuses: Course Complete
Writing Excuses notes, Season 1
Writing Excuses notes, Season 2
Writing Excuses notes, Season 3
Writing Excuses notes, Season 4
Writing Excuses notes, Season 5
Writing Excuses notes, Season 6
Writing Excuses notes, Season 7
Writing Excuses notes, Season 8

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Malala Yousafzai

My second autobiography! This one has been on my to-read list since it came out, and I know its surge in popularity has died down since then, but I still wanted to read it.

All I really knew before reading “I Am Malala” was that Malala had won the Nobel Peace Prize and was a young woman who had been shot by the Taliban.

I now know a whole lot more, like the fact that she is from Pakistan and is as old as my younger brother (right now, 19). Even before she was shot, Malala was a well-known activist for children's right to education, particularly for girls. One doctor working on her after the attack described her as Pakistan's Mother Teresa.

One cool tidbit that you may not know is that she didn't have a last name originally and chose “Yousafzai” because it is the name of her tribe. Her father also uses the name and also is an activist for education.

In contrast with Alan Alda's memoir, Malala gave insight into her family. I can tell you she idolizes her father, her mother has great faith and is (or was) illiterate, and she argues often with one of her brothers (I believe she has two, but they did not get much emphasis, though they were sorry to leave behind their chickens when the family first had to evacuate their home in Swat, the valley of Pakistan they live in). Grandpa was a great speaker, Mom's family lives one valley over from Dad's, and her maternal cousins all think she's some big city girl (back when they were growing up; they probably think even more so now).

I feel like I got to know Malala, but I also feel like this book had a major focus on the history and politics of the region. It was like the history of Malala was the history of Pakistan and her people's place in it.

So in that way, it also wasn't personal. Since she co-wrote the autobiography, I'm left wondering whether she told the story and the other writer, Christina Lamb, wrote it down in whatever words seemed best or if she wrote the bulk of it herself and Lamb just helped. I do know she had people help her research the history of her region, so she didn't know all that off the top of her head.

Some storytelling techniques and autobiography ideas I saw and was intrigued by:

1. Use small stories to give details to the bigger one. For example, if I was telling the story of Cinderella, to include a story that illustrated how much her dad loved her, include a story about what she first thought of her stepmother, include a story about past fairy godmother “sightings” Cinderella had heard of, include a story about the first fancy dress she'd ever worn and use it to describe the current ball gown, etc. Small stories along the way to add depth to the large one that is being told.
2. Include name origin. It's kind of fun to know where a person's name came from. I was named Elizabeth because my mother always wanted an Elizabeth, and I share that name with my great-grandmother. Malala was named for a Pakistani war hero who was female, and as I said earlier, she chose her last name to reflect her people.
3. Describe places, not just events. I don't mean this in the Lord of the Rings way, where places are exhaustively cataloged so that the reader knows about each blade of grass. I mean it in a way similar to the first technique mentioned; describe a place using anecdotes, and use that to support events. Describe a room by saying “That's the chair where, when I had the flu, my mom would sit and rock me for hours because that's the only way that I could sleep,” or “I always tried to grow ivy plants by that window, but they never quite worked out.” This gives a place character, and then when an event happens there, the background is already colorful and meaningful. It adds nostalgia and/or an added understanding of what the events mean to the narrator (“This is where we keep our computer, the only computer for miles around,” for instance).

As I said, this isn't an autobiography like the ones for my business, but I'm still learning things from it. This felt like the autobiography of a people, and there is good in that. Just because you know your culture does not mean your kids will live in the same one, after all.

Oh, and because I loved this part:

"I wrote a letter to God. 'Dear God,' I wrote, 'I know you see everything, but there are so many things that maybe, sometimes, things get missed, particularly now with the bombing in Afghanistan. But I don't think you would be happy if you saw the children on my road living on a rubbish dump. God, give me strength and courage and make me perfect because I want to make this world perfect. Malala.' The problem was I did not know how to get it to him. Somehow I thought it needed to go deep into the earth, so first I buried it in the garden. Then I thought it would get spoiled, so I put it in a plastic bag. But that didn't seem much use. We like to put sacred texts in flowing waters, so I rolled it up, tied it to a piece of wood, placed a dandelion on top, and floated it in the stream which flows into the Swat River. Surely God would find it there." (Page 89)