welcome to art class

So here it is: Mrs. Sweeney's art classroom. I have to say that I am pretty proud of it. I never thought I would see the day where I would get paid for talking about and doing art with kids; in other words, I was unsure I would get paid for doing something I want to do. For all those who said "What do you do with an art history degree?" I say "Ha! get paid to do something inspiring and fun."


Also note that although these pictures may not seem profoundly impressive to you they are a giant leap from the before images I should have caught on camera. Let's sum it up by saying that Miss Bliss, the previous art instructor, had been there for years with a different curriculum than the new one I got. Although I am indebted to her for some cool ideas for the upcoming year, she left way too many in that room and hauled the rest of her "stuff" away in a U-Haul. Yup, we're talking a lot of stuff. What kind of stuff? Well, everything from the good ideas I want to keep for beginning drawing exercises to really junky (like hundreds of coloring book pages of clowns and boatload of broken plastic soda lids - for mixing paint?) and at times bizarro remnants (baby doll heads...I really don't know).

Once I got over feeling mean for depriving the students of what maybe beloved coloring book activities and perverse for throwing baby doll heads in a dumpster, I started to really feel like some great things are going to happen this year. I am so excited to paint Sistine murals on butcher paper taped underneath desks, make styrofoam plate prints, and cut out tissue paper to make Matisse masterpieces with these little ones. It's going to be marvelous.

Tales from the OPL - "the Sedaris type"

I love my job at the Orem Public Library. Let there be no mistake. I really love it. Part of what I love so much about it is the public part. It's funny, well maybe not funny as much as great that us library workers all refer to those we serve as "patrons". An accurate term really, they all are tax payers. It's beautiful. The library is the one place that students, elite business folk, families, illegal aliens, and those weird types that you always see walking home from a gas station on state street with cheap nachos and a 90 oz drink can all be considered patrons. There have been many times where I have found a satirical quality to this term at work. But today's tale is not one of an ironic use of the word patron, rather it is more a tale of an awkward conversation with one.

An evening not long ago, perhaps a week or two, I was working the fiction reference desk in the South wing basement. It was a slow night and I wondered if I was going to have any real public in action to pass the evening. Right when it seemed hopeless a young man approached my desk.

He appeared unlike the average Orem resident. His hair was cut to a stubble exhibiting a mosaic of tattooes covering the skin around the crown of his head which was reprised on his tan forearms in similar patterns. The shirt he wore was tight but not in the same way as a blond Provo High popped collar type. Instead, it was fitted in the way that you would see on a charming Banana Republic clerk. Around his neck hung a thick beaded necklace that fell right above the neckline of his shirt which seemed to form the utter compliment in hue and design of his overall composition. He was a 'lone artistic ranger' in the Orem community and I was refreshingly intimidated.

"Hey" he started, "I'm not sure if you're who I talked to about this. I've got a weird question."

I wondered if it was sincerely something weird like when that old Asian guy who brings his entire modem and Windows '97 computer monitor in and asks for a Chinese translating hook-up.

"Well, let's see what it is." I coaxed him.

"Have you heard of David Sedaare-is?"

Hmmm...SedAare-is I thought...Sedaaris....ah! Sedaris.

"Yes, the This American Life contributor? David Sedaris?"

"Un hun. Yeah. That's him. I just finished his Me Talk Pretty one Day and thought it was cool. Is there something else around here like that?"

That is a hard question to answer, I thought. There's a lot of stuff that makes Sedaris read like he does. Is this guy the cynic or the intellectual satire? Well, judging be his "something else around here" line, I'm going to assume cynic. Maybe, though, he is like me and just wants the self-reflective thoughtfulness of a This American Life episode. I decided to give him all of the above.

"Oh I'm sure there's something around here like that. Gosh there's Nick Hornby who has been read on the same NPR show as Sedaris. His stuff has the same kind of humanely funny tone to it."

He took a scrap of paper and a golf pencil from the desk and started to write the names down I was suggesting. I started to look up these names on the computer catalogue to see if any were checked in.

"Then there's also Sarah Vowell, she is a historian with a raw cynicism that can be really funny if you can read it rather than listen to her reading her stuff in that nasally voice of hers. Oh and you might like David Rakoff. He's a gay writer like Sedaris with that same humanistic qual-"

"Oh" He stopped me. "I'm not necessarily interested in gay writing. I mean it's not like I only read gay writers." He finished the last part with some hestitancy and his tattoos were starting to go flush.

"Right." I assured him, trying to overwhelm this awkward conversation turn we had just encountered with complete understanding. "I mean, Rakoff is great. He's got the same interesting...political...or uh...humanistic perspective as Sedaris. Just another contributor to that radio show I was talking about earlier...."

I looked from my computer search to him and he quickly shifted his dumbfounded expression to his little paper he had briefly forgotten. I tried to respond with absolute confidence to defy whatever "delicacy" the conversation now held. It was hopeless. He looked back up at me appologetically as if to try and sincerely coin the cliche "not that there's anything wrong with being gay."

"Uh thanks" he started.

"Oh no problem. I hope that gets you started with some ideas. Good luck."

I meant the last part as "good luck" with the search not with the being gay part. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being gay.

happy 24th of july!

Here's a few gems from an old lady's garage sale off of 9th East in Provo. I was glad I got to spend some of my 24th holiday on her front lawn thumbing through these.

writing about idaho

What is it about Idaho that is so poetic?... Maybe not just poetic but worth writing about. I was thinking all last summer while I was swimming in glacier lakes, running, hiking, backpacking in those magnificent Sawtooths that there was something so neglected when it came to Idaho. Everyone liked the Napoleon Dynamite version but when it came to finding a place for vacation, no one believed a place called "Stanley" could really be that great. Well I tell you what, there's more to Idaho than Rexburg and Pocatello.

But also, there is something to the Idaho that is the stereotype. Not just the Idaho of podunk towns filled with suburbia sprawl and guys with strawberry blond afros. I mean, what about the sage brush stretches near the Utah border that always seem to be windy and every exit reads "no services"? With so little to describe itself I can't help but fill it in the way poetry would dictate for a place that barren. T.S. Eliot must have seen South East Idaho in a Wasteland dream or heard tales from Ezra Pound. There are also those town names you can pass along the way like "Burley" or "Rupert". What could be more worthy of words than towns like that?

There's also this special place I've found. Somewhere between Shoshone and Twin Falls the landscape gets dark and rocky much like the surface that the Mars pathfinder would navigate. Nothing breaks that post-apocolyptic scape until you begin to site those who have tried to make a living off the surrealistically disfigured nature of that earth. Here, one man has done it with a cave he found and claimed to be of "Mammoth” proportions. From his road signs and the 2 mile dirt road commitment it takes to get to the cave, it is clear that this is a cave that would put Idaho into the Rick Steve’s archives.

I finally took the trip because for once I found time to diverge from my journey to Stanley and I had always felt fleeting curiosities about the mammoth cave. The road snaked back and forth. Occasional arrows pointed where to turn next placed at the last moment before you decided to turn around because of disorientation and the frustration of losing so much time and energy on what should be a quick road trip thrill.
The cave place emerged from the dirt like a large beast rising from sleep. And there it was, a junky pile of trash supporting the edges a wooden shack placed over the cave. The heat and the entropic desperation of the place were sublime to anyone who had been introduced to this wonder by highway 84. It was unbearably marvelous. After photographing all but would make me obnoxious and examining a stone outside resembling an ancient Olmec head I walked into the museum/cave entrance.

Inside was so dark my eyes struggled to adjust to the dark entry. It was hot and musty. I squinted to see a sweaty 20 year old boy with a lopsided goatee sitting behind a counter. It was like I was getting my cave vision. The fee was overpriced at $8.00 a person. I though maybe hanging around a bit with no one there but us would start some kind of fold or bargain between me and the sweaty goatee boy. I looked around without being able to see much until Mary started to draw attention to this 12 foot alligator in a diorama-like bed on the opposite wall. “whoa…cool” I thought for a moment as I began to approach it. I guess we don’t have to pay the fee for this.
Then I thought a minute longer…so there’s this alligator…hun…
I saw a picture on the opposite side I had walked around to with a picture of this massive animal in the back of a pick up truck struggling to break free like a Snowy River horse from a rope around its neck.
“So…” I began, directing my attention to the cave keeper. “Where did the alligator come from?”
“Florida”
“Hun…” hmmm.
“My dad had it fedexed from Florida.”
“Really.? And so” pause pause “what is it doing here?”
He didn’t seem to find any inconsistency between a stuffed alligator from Florida and an Idaho mammoth cave. “What do you mean?”
“Wull, so what’s the connection between the alligator and the cave here?”
“Oh well” he said like he understood me this time “my dad is a taxidermist.”
Ahhh…I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that answer. I think that is as far as the two of us can go with that one. At that point, the room became illuminated in full view of dead taxidermed animals hanging from walls and ceiling, others resting against wooden stands. Overhanging the entrance were African masks attached with animal hair and leather. A price tag demanded $2000 for the masks.
“And the African masks?” Mary asked.
“Oh my dad has traveled the world.”
Hun.
Just then a stout, white-haired man drove up in a truck. Perhaps the truck that had carried an alligator four months before?
I really wanted to leave then. There was too much desperation building for one day. When the cave man came into his museum with a giant watermelon and a case of a dozen donuts I ducked out quickly before his eyes could transition from the desert sun to the cave entrance. One day though, I will go back and pay that entrance fee in full.

my commencement.

It's not so much that I am surprised that BYU would allow someone like Dick Cheney to speak at commencement. I am just surprised that the stereotype that I have spent four years overcoming is actually true. Too bad I was right about this as a freshman. Now I will leave this university with the same last impression that I entered into it with. I wish I could say it is irony but I think that sounds too poetic. It's just a waste.

why "Dilbert" has become so funny lately

I'm at work right now. Well, I'm not metaphorically there because I haven't clocked in but I am using the computer because it's warm and safe feeling in here. I think I feel that way because there are cubicles that designate my space. Sometimes I kind of feel like I have one of those "offices" made of folders you used during spelling tests in grade school to assure no one cheats. In the office, there's no fear of being subject to someone's library cell phone call, seeing someone I know that is comfortable with having more than a brief conversation at louder than a library voice, or worrying that everyone around me is more studious than I am. Instead, I know that there will be soft hits, when Ed is here in the morning, and that it will be unusually warm inside the small office place filled with computers and cubicle people. I get folks like James Taylor who will always keep his voice at a moderate level. Or I can dream of "Jamaica, Bermuda...come on pretty mama..." And everyone around me is doing the same thing. 'Ignore, ignore, confirm, ignore' clicking comes from all the computers. The hum of editing. It's serene in here. I like it.

maybe it's just mormon culture

Have you ever made a decision? That's not all. Have you ever made a decision that was a really important decision. One that took a lot of thought. The kind that you only plan on making once. And people have been asking you to make the decision for longer than, well, starting before you have felt ready to decide on it. You felt good about making the decision, though. You felt good about deciding on it sometime; but, you weren't really thinking you needed to make it yet. And it almost seemed like you would want to tell people you had made your decision or that you were about to make the decision even when you weren't. And this was with people that you really don't talk with often. You don't talk to them about many if any of your decisions that you make. In fact, they only want to talk to you because they want to ask you about your decision. And when they asked you about it you want to either justify yourself in the sincerest way you can with all social formalities in harmony and order or matter-of-factly ask them how much they bench press or weigh and then see how they respond.?

Well, I just got done making one of those decisions. And it was a well-made, well-timed decision. And the moment I made it, no sooner had I announced my decision did I get the next question by these same kinds of not-so-involved-in-cate's-life-decisions-people of how the heck am I going to follow through with my decision. What is up with that?

Irony or Providence?

After my recent technological triumphs, I have encountered some obstacles. I felt unstoppable after my first post. Subject matter aside, that post made me look as technologically competant as Doogie Howser in '85. I was like a 16 year old with a drivers' license and a loaned car. There were no limits to my cyber success.

I began to realize, however, that my success would only be temporary if I didn't actively continue this pursuit. That is, I needed to make another blog entry. People were asking me. "So you posted anything new lately?" And they were right. It was time. If I can't find time to make one over Christmas break, then when will I find the ambition during the semester? And once I establish myself as an "infrequent blogger," the blog people will come and get me dismembered or something - right? Or perhaps they will write me off as one who most often has nothing to say except on rare occassion and then all the momentum and interest that I started with will turn to dust. I will become the abandonned blog, lost in the abstract infinite of cyber space. Nothing seemed more frightening.

I didn't set up my account alone, though. Tr walked me carefully through each step and with him gone, I would have to post alone. I was intimidated but I reminded myself of all that I had overcome these past few months. So I went to the blog homepage to sign on. Oh it was overwhelming though. First I couldn't figure why I kept starting the process of making a new account when I already had one until I realized that "create a new blog" does not mean making a new entry in your current blog account. Then I couldn't remember my password or maybe it was my "user name" so they kept sending me these emails to answer my questions but I didn't know what they meant and all I wanted to do was explain to the epeople that I indeed am cate or catebrooks or whatever I go by on the internet and that this was my home computer and that you can trust me because I won't tell anyone you let me on without remembering my password and I didn't understand what was meant by making a "new blogger" account with google but maybe there was something we could work out with me being the an honest person...

But that wouldn't be fair, not to me or anyone else. I am no exception to the blog laws and it is best that I learn them now so that I can acquire a real kind of technological self-respect. But I can't say that I am feeling very confident right now. In fact, I am in need of some elove and ecomfort before I am able to regain the kind of self-reliance I once felt not more than a week ago. But I just have a feeling I may come out on top.

The Beginning.

This semester is my Technological Renaissance: a checkbook, pandora.com, I occasionally run with an ipod, facebook, and now a blog. Look at me now! I learned how to make "new folders" and make them into organizational tools for my email and my usb. It is all so abstract but some how it makes everything so much easier. I will embrace this Technological Renaissance. It is a beautiful thing. Afterall, have you ever seen something more beautiful than a lit up lite-brite at Christmas?