clifford.: April 2006

Seriously guys!

Right, like you people have nothing to say. I've sat at dinner with all of you. I know you're holding out.

Happy Earth Day!

Ok, I guess I'll take a stab at this whole "blogging" thing.

A few Saturdays ago was Earth Day, and what better way to celebrate than to re-plant the riparian area along the Jordan River. So that's what Tasha and I did (with our friends Timothy & Shantell and their baby Michael).

This guy is Vaughn Lovejoy. He's the head of Tree Utah and he is everything you would expect the head of Tree Utah to be. He lives at Wasatch Community Housing, grows his own food, calls rain "the business end of the hydrologic cycle," and, well, plants trees 20 to 30 hours a week. He is one of the funniest men I have ever met.

This is Timothy Kaspar. He is Swiss. He is banker. Timothy is a Swiss Banker (for reals). He has a baby. He plants trees with one hand and shades his baby with the other hand. Timothy is a hard worker.

He and his wife showed up late, so I was telling him how we were planting; about 3 feet apart with with no pattern. "Oh," says Timothy "just like planting land mines." um. . . I suppose. 'Cus like all Swiss, he was in the Swiss Army.

Tasha got right to work. But she decided to dig for treasure.

She stopped digging once she found this ominous sign.

This is the finished product. You can't really tell, but in the center of those black tarps there is a seedling. Since the beginning of spring we (well, Tree Utah and all of the volunteers) have panted 5,000 native shrubs along the Jordan River.

Next year, when the shrubs have grown up some, we will start planting actual trees. Then, in a bunch of years we will start seeing these guys (and the rest of the 100 plus species that used to migrate through Utah) resting here on their way from Canada to Ecuador.

Clockwise from top left there is a Chestnut-sided Warbler, a Rufous-crowned Warbler, a Wilson's Warbler, and a Golden-winged Warbler. All of these little guys fit in the palm of your hand.

So there's your ecology lesson for the day. Here's to trees, warblers, and bio-diversity.

i still vote this blog is lame, but..

i made this hella awesome dresser (and by 'made', clearly i mean i refinished it. don't try to be clever and say something like 'ohhh did you cut the wood and everything?' cause that's just not funny.) and i'm not gonna lie, it's the greatest piece of furniture the world has ever known. so emily took some pictures (just two, actually.) and now they're being posted on the blog.

behold, awesomeness:

so basically. what i did. was. i spray-painted the dresser a metallic brownish color. then i got a bunch of magazines, cut out pictures i liked, made about 9238742 trips to kinkos, and got some 'mod podge' (which is...just glue. *and* a sealer.). then i found some ticket stubs, photographs, um...and a few movie covers that i really liked so i made about 29384 more trips to kinkos and finally i had enough crap. i mean really, there's not much to explain. nor is it interesting. but anyway, i did somethin cool.

Turkey? More like Stupid-o! (part 2)

So a not depressing thing about watching a documentary about the Armenian Genocide, is that the occasion means you meet up with some dear old friends (missionaries). Yay! And when Mark Archuleta is added into the mix, that means F-U-N and probably dinner. So after the film and some chatting, we ran across the street (though as a train was coming which makes the train driver mad), to Stoneground for some delicious pizza.

See...seriously, Mark Archuleta has fun even when he is sitting next to an Armenian kid he doesn't know!

This is an Armenian named Karen (pronounce it like Car-en) who is brothers with Roman from the first picture. He is a total gem and he is with one of the world's best human beings, Luke. Luke winks a lot which is totally endearing.

Morgan and Palmer....two reasons why I never killed an elder. These boys are simply delightful.

Oh and Katie, this is the girl Palmer is marrying. Her name is Megan and she is from Provo and goes to BYU and she's very nice and a little bit sassy.

Jake and I weren't planning on getting married, but after we saw this engagement-esque photo we decided, why not? You will all be invited to the wedding (probably).

What's this? Oh weird, Christopher is pouting. Hmmm, that's strange, he never does that...

And apparently, there ain't no party like eating-dinner-with-a-bunch-of-old-missionaries-from-your-mission party.

Here is Tasha. She is most likely angry at a) Blaine Holdaway, b) Turkey, or c) Christopher for being pouty (actually he was really fun and didn't fall asleep during our lame-o mission talk).

This is the whole crew right before we enjoy our pizza. "Hey Roman, in America we keep our eyes open in pictures!"

Ahhh, such a nice time. I sure am glad I know all these people...but I'm even more glad that I can post pictures of them all over the internet!

Turkey? More like Stupid-o! (part 1)

As some of you may remember Tasha and I served missions in Armenia. And also as some of you may remember, no one cares about Armenia. So you can imagine our surprise when, as part of the the "Diverse Voices" Film and Discussion Series put on at the City Library, Tuesday's film was about....ARMENIA! It was specifically about the Armenian Genocide and as so, the documentary was creatively named: The Armenian Genocide (though just to prove no one cares about Armenia, I couldn't find a web site or any information on the whole internet about the film itself...roast on Armenians!).

But the KUED site summed it up like this:
The International Association of Genocide Scholars affirms that the number of Armenian deaths at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I was more than a million. Featuring extensive never-before-seen footage, this program shares one of the largely untold stories of the 20th century, detailing what happened and why. The documentary also explains why, to this day, the Turkish government denies that the Armenian genocide took place.

So yeah, it was a pretty big, huge, awful deal. The Turkish government sent all the strong bodied Armenian men to the army where they were actually killed, then they killed all the intellectuals and professional men in Constantinople, and then they marched all the woman and children through the desert and mountains until they died. Oh, and anyone who didn't die in one of the first three ways was killed some other way. And since Turkey claims it didn't happen Armenians are still pretty upset about it. And Turkey is stupid and I'd rather cut of a finger than ever go there. I know that isn't a nice thing to say, but Hello Dumbs! You can't systematically try to exterminate a whole race and then deny it! That part makes me furious. In fact, it makes me almost as furious as genocide makes me.

Afterwards there was a Q & A with Professor Keith David Watenpaugh who studies Middle Eastern culture and religion...and he's married to an Armenian, so he totally scored points with the couple old Armenian grandmas in the audience. He talked a lot about genocide in general and how it keeps happening in the world. He brought up the interesting point that the Armenian Genocide is so important to study because as genocides have happened other places (oh you know, like Darfur for example), more often the way these exterminations are actually carried out are more similar to the way the Turkish government did it than the way Hitler did it (Hitler is also stupid).

As of right now, the American government doesn't officially recognize the Armenian Genocide because they get heat from Turkey whenever it comes up, but 37 states have recognized it, though unfortunately Utah isn't one of those. I know what you're thinking- who cares if a state recognizes the Armenian Genocide of 1915? And probably most people don't, but I care about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and so does Tasha (and so does this weird-o crazy guy at the film last night, but that is another story...), so we figure some investigating and some questioning and some letter writing should fix that up and it's something that we can do to show that you know, 2 people do care about Armenia.

It was heavy stuff, but really great too. During the film I kept finding my thoughts getting caught up in thinking about genocide as it's happened in other places in the world, and about what I know and saw specifically with Armenia and Armenians, and about the heartache of the generations that follow a people who have been so deeply wounded. And that led to thinking about the Atonement and healing and such and while I don't know if I have any concise thoughts gathered yet, it's still all milling around in my head, so I hope I can make some sense outside of myself about it eventually.

And since this post has been about serious things, tomorrow I will post pictures of us going to dinner after the film because dinner pictures = yay!