Another Milestone

Gareth has hit another milestone this past week - climbing out of the crib. I was wondering if he'd ever figure that out before we moved him to a big bed. I'm hoping to purchase a mattress for him this next week, so he squeezed this accomplishment in at the last minute. Gareth's been really good about waiting patiently in his crib until we decide to wake up and get him. I was therefore quite surprised yesterday as I was getting ready for the day to hear him crying and to hear the sound get nearer to our room. When Ryan got up this morning he walked out to find Gareth in the living room playing with books. And when Gareth woke up from his nap this afternoon he failed to emit his usual cry for me, but quietly got himself out of the crib and came to find us. It's rather nice to have him get himself out of bed - or will be until he does it at 1 am.

Portraits

And now we come to my worst area of all - portraits. These are all pictures of Gareth, since I didn't have anyone else willing to have their picture taken. I would post some that Ryan took as well, but his aren't as easily accessible at the moment.



Now that we've got a nice quality point-and-shoot, we've decided we need to start saving up for a good SLR. Taking pictures of a constantly moving child is practically impossible with a point-and-shoot, unless you like your pictures really blurry.

My neighbor owns a mat cutter and we were able to get some linen tape from a local framing store, so I was able to mat a couple of my pictures myself (the clarinet keys and the water spigot). I was going to frame them myself as well, but when I took them to the frame store to verify I was about to do it correctly the nice man there framed them for me for free (but now I know how to do it myself in the future). My class is over now - our last couple of sessions were about matting and framing and then we held an "art show" at the church with finished products from both photography classes and a quilting class. It was a fun class, though a bit stressful at times, and I think I've learned a lot from it. Hopefully what I've learned will help my future picture-taking improve.

Line and Texture

I'm a bit behind, so I'm going to combine line and texture. A couple of weeks ago our class focused on line and how you can use line to make a picture seem more "positive" or "negative" or give weight or emphasis to objects in your picture. (A line going left to right in an upward motion will apparently give a positive feel to anyone who read left to right. Countries where they read the opposite will get the positive feel from right to left lines in an upward motion. Or so our teacher says.) Here are a couple of my line pictures:





Last week we discussed texture, which is basically what you'd think (the picture above would be an example of both line and texture). The idea behind texture in photography being that you want your viewer to get a sensory reaction to the picture. I had a much more difficult time finding texture pictures, but had more of them turn out decently. Here are some of those:






This week we're working on portraiture, which I'm afraid I'm no good at. In case you haven't noticed the trend, I seem to tend toward abstract pictures rather than representational. I feel that I never quite get everything working together right in the representational world. And it doesn't help that Gareth always, always, always notices when I'm taking pictures. Or that for some reason he's decided that having his feet/toes photographed is the best thing in the world. After this week we learn about matting/framing and then we get ready for our art show (held at the church) on August 4.

Cafe Rio... to eat or not to eat?

And I quote:

"It is no secret that Cafe Rio is one of the more popular restaurants among BYU students. It is for this reason I felt compelled to write this letter to expose something I found both shocking and saddening. I noticed Cafe Rio uses real Coca-Cola in its recipe for pork barbacoa. That means many of us have disobeyed the commandments of our prophets without even knowing it!

"I am appalled Cafe Rio would perpetuate this subterfuge in Provo. Surely the owners must realize how many of us are striving to uphold the Word of Wisdom. How can we do that when they are secretly giving us real Coke? Now that this despicable deception has been brought to light, I think the only solution that we, as students of the Lord's university, can embrace is to immediately stop patronizing Cafe Rio until it uses caffeine-free Coke in its pork barbacoa recipe.

"Until then, let us eat on campus -- BYU Dining would never serve real Coke. Further, I call on the Honor Code Office to consider whether students who continue to order pork barbacoa should have a place at this university. Surely we cannot have students attending BYU who don't think it's important to follow the prophets. If students insist on eating pork barbacoa at Cafe Rio, they should cede their spot at this university to someone who is willing to be obedient, even when it doesn't suit their carnal tastes."

This was a letter to the editor in the Daily Universe. I laughed my head off. Hope to hear what you have to say!

Should give you a good laugh

I have to say this is the funniest thing I've seen in a while! I'm not really high tech like my siblings, so pardon me for just posting the link. http://www.flickr.com/photos/passiveaggressive/3642661392/

Photography Class

A woman in our ward offers a free seven-week photography course each summer - one of the reasons I was glad we ended up staying here. I've finally purchased a new camera for us, since the idea of trying to shoot for two hours with an obsolete memory card that can hold 36 pictures and a camera that probably uses up batteries in 1 hour didn't appeal to me. (When I looked through the manual for that camera I noticed that they assure the owner that the date function will continue to work after the year 2000. Definitely time for an upgrade.) I decided to stick with a compact camera for now, and went with this one. Happily, it arrived late Monday afternoon, just in time for my class yesterday.

The class is called "Learning Design Through Digital Photography", so we are focusing on how to compose our pictures, with an emphasis on line and texture. Our first assignment was due yesterday, consisting of two pictures each of the following categories of art: representational, abstract, and non-representational. Here are my best of the bunch:

I felt like I had a very difficult time finding abstract photos, but I must do a much better job of taking abstract pictures than representational or non-representational, since our teacher seemed to like these. Hopefully I'll improve in the representational category over the course of the class! Our class yesterday was focused on line, so look forward to some line pictures next week!

The Word of Wisdom

A Sunday school lesson on the Word of Wisdom is a very funny thing. Sunday school lessons are funny things for a lot of reasons, but I noticed it particularly this time because my mind has recently been on the topic of food as the result of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Discussing the Word of Wisdom in Sunday school is largely an exercise of patting ourselves on the back for not drinking alcohol, smoking, or dropping acid. First, we dive into D&C 89:4:

Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation—

After reading that, the inevitable Sunday school question ensues: "What are some examples of these evils and designs that we have seen in these latter-days?" Now the faithful members of the Sunday school class will reveal our main enemies, the dangerous, conspiring evils that constantly threaten to undermine our health: the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, and the illegal drug underworld.

Can you see anything missing from this picture? Like maybe the industry whose products end up on our plates every day? Let me state a few observations about the demographics of the Sunday school members in this ward as well as many other wards I've been to in the U.S. The overwhelming majority of them do not smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs. I would bet that a majority of them have never in their lives sipped coffee, smoked a cigarette, sipped alcohol, or would even recognize an illegal drug. I'm practically 30 and the only time I've ever come close to ingesting these things is in the occasional annoyance of a nearby smoker or that one time that I confusedly gave in to the incoherent demands of a teppanyaki chef (long story).

Constant vigilance, brethren and sistren! Let's be extremely conservative and say that 10% of the Sunday school members actually struggle with one of the Big Word of Wisdom No-Nos. What do the other 90% get out of the lesson? They get to feel good about themselves while telling anecdotes about other people they've known (or sometimes younger versions of themselves). For most people there, the Word of Wisdom has nothing to do with sacrifice or resisting temptation. Many of us believe that the Word of Wisdom is as easy as the law of tithing, or easier.

I'd like to submit that "obeying the Word of Wisdom", by which I mean taking the typical legalistic approach and adhering to the simple list of official proscriptions, can be culturally compared to graduating from high school. Congratulations, folks. What an incredible accomplishment. The difficulty of doing this actually depends a lot on what background you have, like what kind of family you were raised in. Most of us middle-class Sunday schoolers have been blessed with a lot, and therefore graduating from high school is about as easy as falling over a log. Similarly, abstaining from Word of Wisdom No-Nos requires minimal effort, because to break it would mean acting against all the ingrained cultural and familial forces that have shaped your life since before your skin was exposed to the atmosphere.

No, my dear Mormon readers, this is not at all impressive or effective. Keeping out a short list of certain types of filth does not make your body pure or healthy. It only keeps it free from a short list of ailments and addictions. The "evils and designs" that threaten your health you may only be vaguely aware of. The industrial machinations in place to provide you with the cheapest possible selection of food would likely surprise you. This industry, from which you and I freely gorge ourselves, is motivated by something that may rhyme with "health" but it starts with a 'w' and has a significantly different meaning.

"That sounds like one of those crazy conspiracy theories," you say. Like the kind in D&C 89:4? Of course not, right? Everybody knows that those conspiracies are the tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drug industries. The evil Marlboro guy. Those devilishly funny beer commercials. The "secret combinations" of teenage gangster wannabe crack-smokers. That's where the evil lies, not the friendly McDonald's ads or the "variety" of processed corn-derived products lining the shelves at the supermarket. The tobacco/alcohol/drug fiends are motivated by something completely different than the food corporations, right? These guys want you to get sick and die! The food guys just want to earn a living!

Another funny thing is the way we like to gloss over the meaty parts (D&C 89:12-13):

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Luckily we have a more modern interpretation of this scripture: "sparingly" and "only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine" actually means "every day".

We sit back and complacently distance ourselves from the soul-destroying monsters of alcohol/drug/smoking addiction, and yet we have no idea where our own food comes from and why. It might be wise to consider these kinds of things, since they directly impact our health. What better time to talk about these things than during a lesson on the Word of Wisdom? Can we get past high school?

[Footnote: My comments regarding high school and the like are not intended to diminish the accomplishments of those people who come from poor or otherwise difficult backgrounds or circumstances and have had to overcome incredible odds.]