Archive for August, 2006
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Yesterday I spent some time thinking about writing in general, and specifically, how writing in this blog has opened up a part of me that was closed for a long time. When I was in school, writing and reading deeply were just part of who I was. After graduation, I had so much else going on--family, taking care of the house, working, actually doing things!--that I really didn't write as much as I should have. I still read, but casually, without much thought about how that reading was directing my life.
Writing a blog has reopened that corner of my intellect, allowing me to explore once again issues that I hadn't touched for some time. One of these recurring themes is spirituality. A comment on an earlier post reminded me that I haven't yet posted on my own religious and spiritual beliefs, or at least the development of those beliefs. This is a subject that with every passing year becomes more important to me....
Continue Reading August 30th, 2006
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Friday night we had the big party at Mom and Dad's house. Lots of family in attendance: Nathan and Tawnya, with their boys; Kayla and I with our boys; my cousin Robin and wife Valerie, with their coterie of children (7 out of 9 came); Mom, Dad and David; my aunt Debbie with her daughter Diana; and of course, Ryan and Sarah. Josh showed up that night after driving up from Gresham. The weather was beautiful; the bug zapper was kept in constant operation; and the pinata was smashed in a single stroke by one of the Ekenes boys (though not until all the little 'uns had been at it for at least ten minutes with plastic whiffle ball bats). Indeed, as the old timers would say, "a good time was had by all"....
Continue Reading August 27th, 2006
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On a business trip last winter one of my coworkers introduced me to Cormac McCarthy, one of the truly great writers of the last quarter century. My first book was Blood Meridian, a vicious tale of evil centered around the enduring symbols of the American / Mexican frontier. Since then, McCarthy has become one of my favorite authors. A couple of weeks ago I found a whole slew of his books at our local bookshop for $4 each and grabbed them all. I immediately read "All the Pretty Horses" and am now working on "The Crossing"....
Continue Reading August 25th, 2006
I've been casting about the web recently, trying to dig up memories from my high school past. I came across a couple of people I knew in high school who have set up pages on MySpace. My brother David has a site there too, but I've never really gone and spent time there. So I figured, what the heck, I might as well set up a profile on MySpace and point people to my "real" blog at ScottCorner. That's exactly what I did. And I can say without any doubt now that MySpace has got to be one of the most ill-conceived community sites I've ever dealt with (which really says something, because it's one of the most popular; I'll get to that later)....
Continue Reading August 24th, 2006
So it's time for that event of all events, that great pinnacle of early adulthood, the moment we've all been waiting for.... my ten-year high school reunion. A deliberate reunion of people who once were idiots and didn't know it, and who are now idiots and do know it, has to be one of the most complex emotional issues to face humanity, ever. Some people loved high school and hate the thought of growing old; others loved school but would rather leave the past dead and buried in the yearbooks. I suppose I'm in the middle. I had a lot of good experiences at Barlow High. I also spent a lot of fruitless hours during that period trying to be happy and achieving exactly the opposite. In fact, I don't believe I knew how to maintain a stable emotional and intellectual state until about the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. And that was only after graduating from college, getting married and having children. (You might wonder what raising children has to do with a stable emotional state: I wonder too sometimes)....
Continue Reading August 23rd, 2006
I’ve often noticed that among the older generations there is a very high occurrence of life-long nicknaming. Paging through the obituary section one sees that practically every man is listed with his formal name as well as his nickname, like Robert “Hank” Smith, or Henry “Buddy” Jackson. The use of these life-long appellations seems to have faded with time, only reemerging as a strong cultural phenomenon with the mass popularization of the Internet.
I started to ask myself some questions to figure this out. Why were nicknames so ubiquitous two or three generations ago? And why did the use of life-long nicknames fade in the late twentieth century? More importantly, what is the significance of a nickname, and what do they mean today?
Continue Reading August 21st, 2006
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So we're about to have the second Scott / Reese wedding in our family. The first was mine (which is further complicated by the fact that my father-in-law's first name is Scott). My little brother Ryan is marrying Sarah from New Mexico. I haven't met her yet and won't until they come up for the local reception in a couple of weeks. This makes him the sixth married sibling in the family. Only David and Amy remain strong against the tide of matrimony.
Best wishes!
August 17th, 2006
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Our last day on the GR4 brought us to some unique scenery above Rougon and on the north face of the Verdon River. We left our house at Rougon at 9:30 and began a long, steep ascent out of the valley for about thirty minutes. When we crested the hill, we found ourselves on an empty, open plateau that reminded me strongly of the western United States (think Wyoming). A herd of sheep were grazing in the shade and we explored the ruins of a farm that sprawled along the middle of the plateau. The rest of the day was spent on the north side of the Verdon River valley, winding in and out of ravines and eventually making our way to Castellane, a tourist town on the banks of the river. Kayla convinced me to stay at this huge campground complete with twp heated pools and what seemed like about a thousand campers from all over Western Europe. We spent part of that evening climbing yet another impossible cliff on which the local medieval church was built....
Continue Reading August 17th, 2006
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What a wonderful feeling: waking up on the edge of a panoramic gorge, watching the sun pouring slowly down the far side of the canyon as it rises above the rim. We packed up early and set off in great anticipation of a day spent in the bowels of the Gorges du Verdon. We weren’t disappointed. The trail quickly begins a steep descent through the trees, zigzagging down the cliff to the Verdon River flowing in azure curves below. We soon found ourselves walking a gently rolling trail just above the level of the water, getting glimpses of the sandy banks and the cavernous bowls carved into the side of the canyon by the meandering stream. It was simply amazing to stand at the bottom of the canyon and look up at the towering weight of all that rock, seemingly piled on top of you, up to the forested rim high above. In several places the entire vertical length of the canyon wall was covered in small scrub trees clinging impossibly to some miniscule crack in the cliff....
Continue Reading August 17th, 2006
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For the stretch of the GR4 from Moustiers Ste-Marie to Chalet de la Maline, we chickened out and hitchhiked. I guess we couldn’t face the prospect of an eight hour day on the trail. After putting out the thumb for only about five minutes, we were picked up by a twenty-something who lives in Moustiers but works in La Palud. His French was pretty difficult to follow—he rattled off at light speed while I tried to keep up with the slang and slur. As we drove we quickly ascended past some amazing scenery, as the Gorges du Verdon cut a crooked swath through the mountains. The canyon is quite deep, but very narrow—from a distance it looks as if someone took a knife and cut a slit in the mostly flat surrounding countryside....
Continue Reading August 17th, 2006
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