Get Me to the Dirt on Time

"I can’t tell you how many times people have come up and said 'I know you are not used to this redneck stuff' and I would calmly reply 'this is my family; of course I am used to it and I love it!'” This quote is from Lisa Lopez-Fund, my first cousin, and metropolitan denizen, having lived in NYC, LA, Hawaii and now, for the second time, Atlanta, a burgeoning southern metropolis unlike Phoenix only in terms of humidity.

The occasion of the remarks were my niece Trina’s white-linen, twinkly light, elegant wedding. The red neck part? The wedding was at the site of the annual megalopolis of sorts formed by the campers accompanying the elk hunters lucky enough to get drawn for the forest area outside of Williams, Arizona.

The “camp” is formed around an enormous fire pit, stoked by mountain-sized piles of wood gathered from the environs by those who choose to go up a couple of weekends in advance to prepare. Seventy or eighty people then pull in, dragging or driving RV’s and campers of every sort. Smaller four wheel vehicles ranging from Polaris open-air “sedans” to miniature ATV’s for the three-year-old set get parked in a tented garage erected to accommodate the need. Tents form dining halls and storage areas. “Furniture” is chain sawed from giant logs for reclining in between treks after the big game. At night the camp rivals any city; it is fully lit and can probably be seen from the space station. All of this magic is powered by portable generators. If there is ever a nuclear holocaust, these are the people you want to be hanging with.

Trina, the bride, is known for being one of the few success stories in terms of bagging the prey on these steroidal hunting trips. No doubt her secret to success is that she looks so damn good in the lavender camouflage she so casually pulls over her perfectly coiffed and manicured self each morning as she rises in the dark to make the pre-breakfast trek. I can envision her sitting out on a bluff watching the sun rise and planning her dream wedding like any beautiful young woman. Fortunately, she met the groom on one of these very trips; their Dads being hunting buddies; one from Prescott and the other from Yuma.

Well, Trina’s dreams came to life last weekend when she pulled off a major coups by staging an elegant (“not hick” she so stoically submitted each time the subject came up) wedding at that very spot. And I must say, it was one of the most entertaining weddings I have ever been to and that is saying a lot coming from me. Lucky for her she has her grandmother Jacquie’s genes and is a highly organized and capable individual. Not unlike Clint Eastwood, she not only directed the entire operation, she (and Brandon, the groom, who is no slouch himself when it comes to organization, skill and capability) was the star of the show.

Nearly 300 people attended, most in RV’s, but some stayed in the town 6 miles south at more traditional accommodations. Everything went off smoothly from the rehearsal and dinner right through to 24 hours later when the real event took place. And every detail was nailed down tight, so to speak.

There were separate tents for the food, the 13 cakes (with baby pictures of the happy couple sprinkled throughout), the beverages including the beer kegs, margarita machines and lemonade/coffee/tea service, the gifts and guest book (which was a glossy hard back filled with photos of the couple to be signed by the guests with gel pens), and the all important porta-johns.

The dance floor was assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle beneath strings of globe lights. The crowning glory was the wood and glass chandelier lovingly handmade by family friend Denton Cooper (another type A in the group) using mason jars for the light globes. This was to be the wedding gift but when Denton found out that mason jars would serve as the vases for the gorgeous hand assembled silk flower centerpiece bouquets for each table, he realized he could incorporate his gift into the evening’s ambiance.

The ceremony took place against the fence separating the forest from the meadow. The arbor was crafted from aspen logs and decorated with pine boughs sporting the red, yellow and purple flowers that formed the color scheme. The unity candle was on a table just beneath the arbor that was covered in red and yellow rose petals on the day of the wedding. Although the breeze threatened to blow them away, we were able to hang on to most of them as the weather cooperated most exquisitely, warming into the low 70’s in the afternoon, with a few wisps of clouds for color over the green tree line and a slight breezy gust from time to time, just enough to keep us on our toes and our underarms dry.

The procession was led by the grandparents who emerged from behind the curtain that formed the eastern edge of the party area. Followed by the parents who were escorted by the best man-Brandon’s best friend Justin from Yuma, and the “man of honor” Trina’s brother and best friend, Travis. (Yes, she did this before the Patrick Dempsey movie was ever marketed).

Then came the flower-chuckers; five little boys under the age of 4, in white shirts and black pants. One was pulling and another was pushing the other three in a farm wagon draped with red and white netting and red flowers. The riders tossed rose petals along the aisle to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama.” About that time the maroon Model A that Shorty, the bride’s father loving built along side his great Uncle Joe could be spotted making its way in from the direction of town. As the traditional wedding march piped out the car pulled up and Shorty emerged to escort the bride up the aisle.

The ceremony was moving, particularly for me as officiant and aunt of the bride. I am known for tearing up over radio commercials and my voice was a bumpy as the rutted dirt road Trina just rode in on, but eventually I hit my stride and it was all good. Brandon’s stepfather joined the ceremony with a poem written for the couple complete with reading parts for the two of them. Other than the wind playing havoc with the candles, it all went like clockwork. Janna sang “The Rose” as the rose petals on the table floated in the breeze and they sky grew ever bluer as dusk was approaching. Melanie’s perky reading on friendship restored light to the mood.

After the happy couple and their extended families weathered the grueling photo session, complete with signing the license on the hood of the car, the couple made their way across the lawn to officially start the festivities and gaze upon the bare appetizer trays that had been so coveted by the waiting crowd. After the first dance and wonderful toasts from the two bridal party members the hungry hoards headed for the food tent. While standing in line they were treated to a slide show of the last two and one half years of Trini and Brandon’s lives together. This lucky pair appears to be on perpetual vacation from the looks of the photos.

The meal was stunning. Brandon’s Dad Mitch has spent the better part of the day roasting 95 pounds of tri-tip on his homemade grill. This thing is so big it gets pulled along on its own wheels and probably should have an MVD trailer plate. An ingenious set-up it has a pulley system that raises and lowers the grill rack to get just the right heat. After rolling the roasts in a seasoning mixture they were coddled over a fire of indigenous wood until they were just short of done. With his pig tail tool the roasts were lovingly transferred to foil-lined ice chests and sealed inside, capturing the heat and bringing the meat to the perfect serving temperature by dinner time. The same process was used on 98 pounds of marinated chicken.

The food tent was manned by the McCarty’s. This family’s DNA is intertwined with the
Weedon’s from generations of hunting together. We all remember stories from Grandpa Frank about old McCarty. His spawn have kept hunting-story-making tradition alive to this day as an integral part of the lore that has arisen from this very spot and plenty of others in all the previous hunting trips these groups have done together. These people are also overactive and so they were the perfect group to handle the food service. Fresh handmade tortillas, corn, green beans, rolls, salad and the best pinto beans you ever had were served as if at a top notch resort buffet.

Travis’ ex-girlfriend and current love of the entire rest of the family, Chelsea Gould, a darling if there ever was one, caught the bouquet. Alas Travis missed the garter. But after a night of “everclear” and nonstop dancing in the mountain air, Travis and Chelsea were seen walking off together. Although we heard no bells and saw no lightening, it was nice to see them at least talking again.

The madness continued into the deepest part of the night, eventually migrating to the huge fire pit. The diehards and the urban cowboys stuck it out to the bitter end. We left the 37 degree party ourselves at about midnight as the dancing was winding down and without the movement it was a bit on the nippy side. Up until then even the dogs were dancing.

The only down side to the entire adventure was the dirt. It was inescapable. And sticky. Trina had a gorgeous hairdo that was blond on top with brown curls emerging from beneath it and streaming down her back. By the halfway mark her gorgeous white dress that cascaded to the ground was blond on top with brown curls emerging at the bottom. At least it matched her hair!

But one happy, happy time. The attention to detail paid off and it was a most memorable event for us all. Thanks Trina and Brandon and here is hoping that rest of your marriage is as successful and fun as the wedding!

Go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/Doogiekim.cox.net/TrinaAndBrandonSWedding for more pictures.

Where Wright Went Wrong

I guess all the whooptey-doo over Reverend Wright is not going away so I might as well weigh in.
Woe is he who plays with politics. Obama made one giant tactical miscalculation if he thought Reverend Wright gave a hoot about what anyone thinks but himself. You have to give him credit for eschewing the apparently overwhelming lure of all things politic; this has to take a very strong person. Strong people are obviously the types attracted to political office--deluding themselves that it is not the meek who shall inherit the earth. Many good and strong people have been unable to resist the lure of political office and its offer of power, most often at their own peril. Wright, though, has made the Sharpton's and Jesse Jackson's of the world look like fools for their inability to resist that temptation as those Reverends tried the political route and met a huge roadblock.
What Wright knows better than them is that in politics you are absolutely unable to ever tell the truth--at least the truth as you may personally interpret it. Wright is wedded to his version of the truth and is totally and completely unapologetic about it. Obama, on the other hand, is caught having to rewrite the truth in order to try and remain in the game. Wright's truth seems to be winning out. Although people are concerned about the economy and costs and the war they are all talking about Wright.
Watching the analysts try and rationalize Wright's views into a message that can in any logical way be dealt with in front of the national body politic is like watching Bill Clinton try and explain how he did not have sex with that woman. It is strained at best and pretty much internally illogical.
In the end Obama's downfall will likely be attributed to Wright. Which brings me to where Wright went wrong. Rather than make any progress on the issues with which Wright has such fortitude to stand up and fight for with all his might, he is actually setting up more roadblocks. I suspect at his age it is not a job security thing to cause him to be greedily seeking to maintain the status quo. The real problem is he is so embedded in his own vitriol he has failed to put it into the context of the bigger picture. His own blindered perspective therefore prohibits him from making the progress he so desperately laments is being withheld.
As human beings we must be able to understand and sympathize with the position of another in order to allow our own attitude to be adjusted enough to be able to live together in harmony with those who are not exactly like us. It works both directions. That ain't gonna happen in Wright's world.
Ironically, he may be keeping it from happening in Obama's as well. But if truth be told....

What Is This World Coming To With These Kids Coming Up

NPR has been doing a climate change series on its Morning Edition. They recently featured two young women. The first is a future policy wonk college student. She goes at the whole climate change strictly from a socio-economic standpoint. The other is a 16 year old whiz kid who has set the scientific community on fire with her pedantic fine tooth combing of all the global warming research that is out there. Apparently her scientific method is impeccable.

On the one hand it was tremendously encouraging to see the drive and ambition and natural curiousity of these young people. Nice to know there are motivated people out there. On the other hand, the contrasts between the arguments these two make are discouraging in the sense that they are metaphorical as to how the public debate takes place regarding important public issues. The contrast also demonstrates that there are a lot of reasons why we have such a huge number of crappy public policies.

Go to the first link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89567328&sc=emafA Climate Policy Wonk in the Making.
Notice how the subject arrives a substantive conclusions, ie because the percentage of CO2 released from animals is higher than that of cars we should become vegetarians but keep driving.

Then go to:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89619306&sc=emaf
Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists.
Notice that even with the accurate scientific approach there are still scientists who disagree.

The peer reviewed science is not unquestionable, yet we will take a nebulous statistic and lobby against meat, despite the fact that I can think of about ten reasons why that makes no sense right off the top of my head (the foremost being that this position is tantamount to "Lets kill all the animals"--wait until PETA gets a hold of her-but that is another matter).

Maybe we just try to do too much with too little data. Ya think?

The River Ran Past Me

Here I am with my prize catch. All credit goes to my guideDave Foster, who practically talked the fish into jumping on the boat.

It is Hell to be a Consumer

Today's headline reads consumer confidence is down! Way down!

No kidding? I wonder why?

Could it be that for years the consumer was merely the toy of the commercial world's affections? Yes, they drool all over us with promises of flash and delight in advertisements whose budgets rival those of most indy films. They lure us in, trade our piles of cash for their latest gleaming object and nanoseconds later, when the wonder gadget goes kerput the seller is far too busy moving on to the next great design and finding places to stuff their mounds of money to give you the time of day, unless of course you paid for the magic maintenance agreement!

I waited and waited for my dream kitchen. Just 5 years ago I went for and did the major remodel. I spared no expense, figuring this is a once in a lifetime thing, and went for top of the line stuff. Plus I was so jealous (yes, I admit to this sin) of the many, many museum kitchens I had encountered over the years: state of the art in the home of a person who never cooks. This irony was nearly too much to bear.

Almost immediately things started going wrong. The glass in the microwave/convection oven shattered; the $4,000 refrigerator went on the blink; the water chiller reservoir failed to fill. These were all annoyances during the warranty period that you chalk up to chance. Then the pop up mixer shelf sprung. Then the steamer blew a fuse. (Oh my god, that is a Kafka novel in itself-it is a Gagennau appliance--and it has been 9 months and I am still waiting.) Now the garbage disposal is on its last legs and the microwave has a new problem.

In 2002 I bought a pocket PC. Great machine; works fine. Then I upgraded my desktop computer only to learn that it is no longer compatible with the pocket PC and good lord 5 years have passed so why in the world would the company support the software on the thing any longer--it has reached antique status! This, despite the fact that it worked perfectly. Well, no bother, I had to get a new phone anyway in order to get my work email on the run and now the features of the pocket PC are all in one machine. But there is nothing wrong with my old phone either. In fact I still have it and can still use it.

And now the airlines. Have you ever seen a bigger group of dopes just begging to be regulated? They have effectively stripped all the customer service out of the entire flying adventure, including checking to see if the plane can even fly!!!!

Why have we devolved into a bunch of spend happy replacement consumers of low quality high priced crap? The answer is volume. Sheer volume.

Now that we have reached an economic bump in the road suddenly everyone is edgy and not buying. Well, personally, I see this as an opportunity. Consumers need to take back the night as it were. We need to stop replacing things because it is easy and force the manufacturers to stand behind their products without making us pay extra for it. They should jump when we complain but more importantly they should build things to last in the first place.

This all devolved when we started shipping manufacturing processes to low cost labor markets. This never really helped lower prices for consumers. What it did was enable several layers of middle persons to add cost to the price in exchange for no actual value added other than the logistics of matching up distant labor with distant markets. Now the price reflects the commissions of all these interim sales people (who make a bundle and spend lots of time at resort golf courses all around the country schmoozing one another just to make a sale). And with the increasing cost of fuel there goes another jump in price.

How do we respond? Well, first of all most people stop buying, which is not such a bad thing. How much of the junk stacking up in your house do you really need anyway? Does it really matter how stylish your flatware is that you have to change it every season?

A corollary to stopping buying is that when something breaks we need to get it fixed. This gives rise to employment opportunities for the repair sector. If only you could find a way to solve the problem of spare parts. I seem to recall lots and lots of machinists losing manufacturing jobs, maybe they need to get back in the game. Cottage industries may be seeing a resurgence.

And think of what you can do with all the time you save not shopping. Too bad this downturn didn't coincide with the TV writer's strike; we might have seen a return to the long lost art of visiting. You remember; when you were a kid and people would pop in for 45 minutes or so for a chat and a cup of coffee?

Come on by, we have a french press-no electrical parts, nothing to break, I promise it will be working; but I can't make any promises about the instant hot water tap, but as long as we have natural gas and the stove works we can get hot water and if that breaks there is always the gas grill and if that goes on the blink we can light a fire-oh, wait, we never bought one of those backyard fire pits like everyone else. Well, we can drink tap water if you don't mind a few pharmacueticals.

Grand Gusher

I am still trying to sort out how I feel about all of it. I am talking about the river.

The first weekend in April I was fortunate enough to find myself on just about the finest weather days you could imagine fly fishing on the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. Located 15 miles below the Glen Canyon Dam. Named for the fellow who lived at the Lonely Dell Ranch and schlepped his fellow Mormon pioneers, wagons and all across the wild and muddy river at the only spot in 400 miles that could be crossed, it is now the site of a dock and boat ramp. If you are coming to fish this is where you meet your guide. If you are coming to ride the pontoon boats down from the dam this is where you get out. If you are rafting through the Grand Canyon, this is where you start.

So, here we are, literally in the middle of no where. There are peregrine falcons dive--bombing ducks and red tail hawks coasting on the wind thermals and trout spawning on thousands of redds and boats racing up and down.

Outside of the river gorge there is nothing. Not a tree, not a bush; just the most vibrant and well-aged rock formations you could ever imagine. The condors are hanging just below the edge of the cliff where the front yard of the lone house we are lodging in culminates.

I found myself wondering about the people who live there (there are not too many of them-most commute back and forth to Page, Arizona) and if they somehow over time forget how incredible the scenery is much the same way we slowly forget that $1.30 per gallon gas was once expensive.

A couple of weeks prior there was a huge big release from the dam. They started this a few years back to see if it would mimic the river in its wild state, creating sand bars and beaches. One big impetus for this was the humpback chub, an endangered species with a human public relations machine behind it that rivals that of any major movie star. The thought is that maybe the release would help augment the chub’s habitat thereby increasing its chance to survive extinction.

But the chub is not the only stakeholder in this barren place. In order to make this happen a confluence of dozens of stakeholders -- the power company/operator of the dam; the drain the Lake Powell folk, the river runners and local guides, the EPA, US Fish and Wildlife, AZ Game and Fish, a gaggle of interested scientists-- was needed to get the open the dike. Well, they did it, but not before they put in place a whole bunch of funding to run lots of scientific tests.

So among the wildlife on the tiny bits of shore lining this 15 mile stretch, you will see, if you look carefully, some metal equipment that is “tracking” those fish with electronic finder devices attached to them. Not the chubs, but the trout. According to the data, even with this gusher of water, the trout pretty much stay put.

Incidentally, the trout are plentiful but not indigenous. Even so we are on a catch and release program with this fly fishing endeavor.

And every day, all day, there is a boat in the water staffed by a couple of college age looking gals tasked with taking water samples. Seems they really are guessing about the impact of these gusher flows. Impact on what, you might ask. The fish? The shore plants? The rocks? The water itself? If we know more will we be in any better shape than now in terms of manipulating it? To what end? To save the chub? To save the guide industry? To save the pleasure of trout fishing? To keep water in the Grand Canyon? To keep water in the zillion mile long ditch that flows to our urban doorstep?

I can’t figure out if this headache is from thinking about all that or just from the unavoidable after effects of the sunburn on my lips.

In Case This Doesn't Make the Paper

From: RMiller451@aol.com

> Sent: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 8:55 pm

> Subject: We are being railroaded

> Editor: We are being railroaded

I had the pleasure recently (March 24th) of hearing a speech at a meeting of the Urban Land Institute given by one of the Valley s most renowned architect/planners, Vern Swaback. What a breath of fresh air he was. With respect to getting around he advocated things like alternative vehicles that allow for individual choice in time of travel and route. He said heretical things like planners attempt to serve rapidly changing 21st century urban forms with an inflexible, 19th century technology such as rail. He went on to say in his new book Creating Value: Smart Development and Green Design such radical things as proposing rail transit as a regional transportation solution usually requires that commuters accept significantly less convenience on a daily basis and that rail transit is the most expensive and least flexible regional transportation mode.

He continues with comments like The sooner we acknowledge that mass transit will never eliminate our desire for personal mobility, the sooner we will get behind innovations that do more with less especially more mobility with less bulk and greater fuel economy with less pollution. Or how about this: Experience shows that it is not realistic to expect people to give up personal transportation in favor of public transit that starts and stops nowhere near people s multiple points of departure and arrival.

At last, someone understands the needs of real people, and does not genuflect to all the socialist central planners. I think everyone involved in transportation planning in Arizona, from Governor Napolitano to ADOT director Victor Mendez to community transportation leaders like Marty Shultz should read Vern Swaback s book. Maybe there is still time for some sanity in transportation planning. We do not need any more 19th-century solutions to our 21st century problems.