Invest in the Millenium

My mom posed, circa 1955, in front of a newly planted sequoia.

See the end of this blog for its size only 20 years later.
Today, it's diameter requires 5-6 grown people to encircle it.

Wendell Berry encouraged us to "invest in the millennium: plant a sequoia." I've liked the idea, and though I haven't yet planted a sequoia, I did tell Taylor we should try to plant a tree at each home we own. (We planted an olive tree, probably illegally, right before Taylor popped the question, though the tree didn't survive the lack of care and sun while we were off in Indiana. We did plant three trees at our Bloomington home.)

But how often do we really think about our choices in terms of where they will leave the world a millennium from now? A century from now? Most of us do care about our children, but our nation has made a lot of unwise policies that are not sustainable and thus leave a gap or lack or burden upon our children, grandchildren, and beyond.

I'm thinking about this because of a scripture from The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. In 2 Nephi 25:26, Nephi tells us that "we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."

As Mormons we quote this scripture a lot, especially in rebuttal to the ignorant claims that Mormons are not Christian. But recently what hit me was the last phrase: that our children may know.... The Book of Mormon authors are always looking forward to the future. We feel kind of lucky because we assume that they looked to our day, the "last days." But could they also be looking to the day of our great-great-great-great-grandchildren? Could we be thinking of those 2600 years from now, as Nephi was? Do we ever think ahead that far, or do we assume that we're pretty close to the grand finale and a Second Coming will get us out of any environmental or economic or spiritual quagmire we've left behind? The Book of Mormon prophets cared deeply for the future generations, and because of their dedication and time and sacrifice I have their record, my favorite book in the world. Do I dedicate and sacrifice for those who will live even just 100 years from now? When Christ visited the Book of Mormon peoples, they lived righteously for three generations thereafter. Do I make choices aware that there repercussions will be at least three generations long?

So I say, Invest in the millennium. Here is the list I need to start with:

• Plant a sequoia.
• Support public education and better health care. Taylor jokes that our nation's budget shows we hope to have an armed nation of sick idiots.
  
• Clean up our national debt.
• Write in your journal. (I'm preaching to myself now!)
• Reduce, reduce, reduce. And reuse and recycle. (In 1991, The New Era did an article on a special ecological fireside my Laurel's class put on for our ward and then stake. Although this quote was attributed to my friend Jenni Merten, she swears I said it: “I’ll carry an empty pop can around for two hours until I find a recycling bin, rather than just throw it away." It does sound like something I'd do!)
  
• Begin and maintain family traditions; they may still exist 100 years from now! Taylor and I especially need to decide on what we'll do to celebrate our children's extra "birthdays" -- adoption transfers and finalization dates.
  
• Leave a spiritual legacy worthy of a century. Our actions leave ripples at least that long.
  

Stanford has created a neat "Sustainable Choices" website. They have a card you can print out to keep in your wallet with ideas for at the store, in the home, and on the road, and at three levels of intensity/commitment. This deserves more of my attention.


What else can I be doing if, like the Book of Mormon prophets, I care about the physical and spiritual well-being of those 100, 1000, 2600 years from now?

Mom posed again in front of the sequoia with Baby Meta (1975).
Grandpa Bob went on to win the Oregon State Liar's Contest,
telling stories about how he fertilized this sequoia
with shredded politicians' speeches --
full of fecundatory crap, he claimed!

The Kite Runner

Taylor and I watched The Kite Runner on DVD. We had listened to the book on tape a few years ago; it was especially enjoyable to have it read by the author himself. I cried and cried in parts of the book, and cried while we watched the film, too. This time I was especially moved by the scene with the director of the orphanage. How can such a situation even exist?! I ached for the director's choice (that is not a choice!) and for the children. I felt, as I have at times in the past, angry at those who manipulate Islam for their own purposes, using it to kill and to harass and to incite, benefiting themselves and not society as a whole. That is a small minority, but unfortunately modern technology has given them a long arm to do evil to others. This is true of anyone today: technology is not inherently good nor evil, but it does amplify people's ability to do good -- or do evil. I hate is when it is used for evil.



The Kite Runner itself has compelling themes of friendship, betrayal, and redemption. Next year I'll again teach A Separate Peace, and there too you have two very close friends, one of whom is jealous of the other and injures him. East of Eden, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan -- so many tales wrought around the Cain and Abel story of envy and betrayal. Perhaps I could have my students discuss what Gene needs to go to, in the words of The Kite Runner, "become good again."



I have checked out Khaled Hosseini's other book, A Thousand Splendid Suns but not yet started listening to it. As soon as I finish The Thunderbolt Kid, I'll start on that one! I do love books on tape!

On My Mind: Thunderbolt Kid

While in Thailand in 1959-60, my grandmother let my mother dress
as the Thai children did: topless!

I'm listening to Bill Bryon's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir. Very funny! I have laughed my way through several of Bryson's other works: A Short History of Nearly Everything, In a Sunburned Country, and part of A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering American on the Appalachian Trail. Every once in a while he swears, which I dislike, but otherwise I find him rollicking fun!

I'm not yet far into Thunderbolt Kid, but so far am relishing his description of life in the 1950s. The Publisher's note says, "Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century — 1951 — in the middle of the United States — Des Moines, Iowa — in the middle of the largest generation in American history — the baby boomers." My mom, pictured above at age 9 in Thailand, was not the Thunderbolt Kid (though here she appears to want to be!), but she was his contemporary.

I didn't even live in that generation, but the book still makes me nostalgic. I think I feel more and more that way these days, as I look about Palo Alto and see lovely McMansions with no yard to play in, follow the Playborhood.com discussions (which also has a review of the book), and think about what childhood will be like for David. Bryson describes being pushed out the door in the morning and told not to come back till dinner, finding 600 (OK, he might exaggerate) kids on the corner waiting to play.

I grew up two decades later, but I do think Mom & Dad fostered our innate desire to be out and exploring. It didn't hurt that we lived on a safe army base with lots of other kids (maybe not quite the numbers of the Baby Boomers, but I remember every house in our Fort Ord neighborhood to be filled with other kids). Dad turned our yard into a child’s paradise: two pulley swings from “Fort Tree”, a jungle gym he’d made, and something we called "the rings”—looked like a maypole but with 4 large rings you could hold on to and swing round and round. When school wasn’t in we were outside, playing in our yard or shed-turned-playhouse, putting on musicals (as the oldest I got to be “Annie” and the other stars!), and marrying Marcus to the neighborhood girls in "Church Tree" (which doubled at "School Tree" when need be). I don't remember the inside of our house well, but the yard of 314 Arlincourt Road is my childhood. (I went back 6 years ago to see my old yard, and the place looks so dilapidated! I think the remaining base housing has been allowed to go to pot over the past 25 years. Still, in my mind it was the perfect place for a child.)

I don’t even know whether one could put up the structures my dad created for us today: would one fear being sued if a neighbor’s child got hurt? It’s not always safe to fly through the air on a zipline or “the rings”—but it sure was fun.

Siblings, Mom, if you have any of the Fort Ord photos in digital format, email them to me!

I look forward to continuing Bryson's book, a walk down his memory lane and a treat for me as a listener!

The Rat Race Begins

So we sent in an application to preschool for David. He's still at least 2 years away from starting preschool, but one friend had told us to start applying the minute he was born! Aack. I don't even remember going to preschool myself, though my mom says I did.

We sent an application to Bing Nursery School, over on the Stanford campus. I've always felt an affinity to Bing (volunteering at their Harvest Moon fundraiser, being a Pysch major at Stanford for a short time, loving my Cognitive Development class taken Sophomore year). But there are approximately 1 bzillion kids (or should I say, parents) who apply, and we don't meet criteria that give one a leg-up: being Stanford staff, faculty, or students, or already have a child in the school. And we applied when he was 7 months old, not 7 days!

Repeatedly I hear Bing referred to as "the most prestigious preschool in the nation." I am just interested in it because they focus on play, not drills, because it's close to Gunn where I teach, and because it gives me one more chance to be back on campus (yes, I do love having continuing ties to my alma mater). Also, Bing strives to have a mixture of ethnicities, and that is what David is. I do think he'd love a place like Bing.

Still, starting this process has made me more aware of the pressures (especially in Palo Alto) to have one's child at "the most prestigious" everything. I hope that, should we stay here, I can shake that pressure and make decisions based on my own values and not what the world says we should do.

"We Can't Guarantee Success, But We Can Deserve It"

A year or so ago I read David McCullough's John Adams and loved it. My respect for John Adams grew by leaps and bounds. Though I haven't been watching the PBS special on him, I was interested in this speech McCullough gave about six years ago, sent to be by Kausik Rajgopal.

McCullough makes many important points in the speech. Here is just one:

"One would hope that at least among the most important side effects of a knowledge of history or appreciation of history is a capacity for gratitude, our gratitude for all that has been done for us...."

The title of this blog is a line from a letter John Adams wrote Abigail from Philadelphia, "in what seemed one of the darkest moments of the whole [Revolutionary] story, and he knew how ... frightened she was of what he outcome of all this might be....." Adams took the line from the play Cato, one beloved by George Washington, too, who saw it six or seven times. Cato had yet another line stolen by Nathan Hale, a school teacher from Connecticut, who was captured by the British as a spy and hanged in New York. He is reported to have said as his last words, paraphrasing Cato, "My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country."

I indeed am grateful for Adams, his wife Abigail, and the other Founding Fathers and Mothers, for their courage, humanity (they accomplished what they did as humans, not as gods), and their sacrifices for "the enlargement of the human spirit and the improvement of the good society, the attainment of the good society through the life of the mind..., through learning."

Finally Finalized

Today was a day of great happiness and celebration for us. We finalized David's adoption!

Although his birth parents relinquished their rights to David when they gave him to us, we then needed to wait six months from that day to petition to finalize the adoption. During those six months we sent in medical reports attesting to David's health and had home visits from LDS-Family Services. We had to fill out more paperwork: I was proud to have handled that myself; all the other adoptive parents at the court had lawyers with them. I -- who hate making phone calls! -- called the court repeatedly to be sure to get the earliest hearing possible once the paperwork was in.

And today we went to the Superior Court of California for San Mateo County. It's a lovely new building in the hills of San Mateo. We waited about 30 minutes and then spent 10 minutes with Judge Carl Holm. He gruffly asked whether we understood the seriousness of becoming David's legal parents. Yes! Other than that gruffness, however, you could tell that he enjoyed this hearing (much better than what they do all the other days of the month: Juvenile Court!). He said he didn't want to ever see David again in his court. I hope he never does! We took photos with Judge Holm and signed papers. We felt so very happy as we walked out into the sunshine together!




We look forward with so much eagerness to having his name blessing and sealing soon. Taylor's dad will seal us over Memorial Day Weekend, and about half of Taylor's sibs will be able to be there. Meta and my parents will be there too. I can't tell you how excited we are for that day!

Since we both had taken the day off from work, we reveled in spending the day together. Taylor had suggested going to breakfast at the Palo Alto Baking Company before we drove to the court. After the hearing, we window-shopped in Burlingame's upscale downtown and ate lunch at an Italian restaurant that we'd meant to go to while we were living in Redwood Shores. We drove to Coyote Point, enjoying the smell of eucalyptus. We posed in front of the Museum, but then balked at going in when we realized it would be an additional $12 entry fee.


In the evening, Taylor and I went with other ward members to the Oakland Temple, leaving David with friends for whom we'll babysit later. Afterwards we were treated to Casper's Hot Dogs. I haven't eaten a real hot dog since my junior year in high school, when Mr. Bill Goslow read from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in our A.P. U.S. History class. I ordered a turkey dog, but I must have been looking funny as I ate, since I was asked if I had an upset stomach! I did, actually, as we drove home!

All in all, we've had a glorious day. We are so happy to finally and fully be the legal parents of sweet David!

April Fools

My mom got us all for April Fools. She sent this email:

Subject Line: Bobby )-:

I have some very serious news to share with you all. Bobby will be coming home on Thursday. I guess Settlers of Catan was NOT allowed on his mission and he knew it and disobeyed the Mission President. I feel so bad because I'm the one that sent it to him. It will be great to see him this soon, but not under these circumstances. Dad is devastated.

Love, Mom

The next email in my inbox had the subject line: One More Thing.

April Fools.

Grr! Funny, but very very mean.