A few years ago, I happened upon an odd looking pair of casual shoes that I quite liked. I didn’t like the shoes because they looked weird. I liked them because they felt good.
It used to be that I would buy any shoe that fit, even if it didn’t feel particularly good at the time I bought it. Over time, newly acquired shoes would wear to the point that they felt relatively comfortable.
I’m not sure exactly what happened to change this. But at some point, it was as if new pairs of shoes stopped conforming to my feet. If a shoe didn’t feel good at purchase time, it never felt good. Months of wearing the things didn’t seem to help.
Maybe my feet just succumbed to the natural aging process. Maybe shoes are made of hardier materials than when I was younger so that they are no longer as malleable as shoes of yore. Or maybe some evil shoe gnome decided to curse any shoe I buy that is less than completely comfortable when I first try it on. It couldn’t possibly be that I have simply become less tolerant of foot-to-shoe anomalies as I have aged.
Whatever the reason for the spread of permanently uncomfortable shoes, I have arrived at the point in life where I simply won’t buy a shoe unless it feels fine when I try it on at the store. While I love buying stuff over the Internet, there’s no way that I will buy shoes without first trying them on. So my shoe shopping is limited to inventory that is in close proximity to the location of my feet.
Back to my strange looking shoes. (At least they looked strange to me. I see people wearing much more bizarre footwear on a daily basis.) These shoes looked like athletic shoes, but they were slip-ons. They were very snug on my feet, but they stayed in place even when I ran. They only slipped off when I worked to pull them off. But the main point is that they felt very good on my feet.
Imagine my good fortune when I found a second pair of this same model of shoe a few months later when my first pair was showing signs of wear. I bought the second pair and stowed them under the bed. When the first pair were so shot that I made them my lawn mowing shoes, my second brand spanking new pair were ready for service.
Life was good until the second pair of shoes were starting to become very well worn. I shopped for replacement shoes, but the model I had come to adore was nowhere to be found. After much casting about at various stores over a period of many weeks, I found a different slip-on shoe model that seemed to feel pretty good too. It didn’t look quite like an athletic shoe. It was a casual shoe that looked classier than the athletic shoes.
I threw out my old lawn mowing shoes, which were literally falling apart, moved my athletic slip-ons to that position, and started using my new shoes for everyday wear. The new shoes turned out to feel pretty great. Over the space of the next year, I was able to pick up three more pair of the same model, sometimes paying as little as $12 for a pair. These went under my bed to await their turn to be worn.
Those four pairs of shoes stretched out more than six years. But they weren’t as hardy as my athletic slip-ons. They fell apart faster. I still have one pair left. The sole is worn completely smooth in the high friction spots. The inner is so shot that some pieces poke my feet. But for some reason, I haven’t thrown them out yet. I’m still using the second set of athletic slip-ons for lawn mowing shoes.
Over the past year, I have tried on many pairs of shoes that have a somewhat similar style to the shoes I have found so satisfactory for so long, but no luck. Last winter I found the exact model of shoe I was looking for. It was literally the exact model as the wasted pair in my closet, but it sported a known name brand on the inner sole.
Alas, the shoes cost $40. Knowing what I had paid for the four pair of shoes I liked, I simply couldn’t bring myself to pay $40 for the pair. The store no longer carries this model of shoe, so I couldn’t buy them even if I wanted to.
Given my track record in finding the style of shoe I want that fits as well as I would like at price I am willing to pay, I suspect that I will likely never have those three criteria come together in a pair of shoes again. I am obviously a small minority in the market of those that liked the shoes in question. I was likely able to buy them at an economic price because they failed to sell well.
But such is the nature of the marketplace. There will always be products that become scarce that some of us wish we could find, even while we continually welcome the advent of newer products. In this respect, it is probably best to apply the motto used in the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons: “Keep Moving Forward.”
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Managers and Group Culture
I have been fascinated by organizational behavior since I first had a course on this subject in my undergraduate studies. Each group or organization has its own culture. Each person typically belongs to multiple groups, with each group having a unique culture.
Culture in this respect refers to a set of shared values, goals, and rules. In effect, it is a system that governs behavior. We tend to act largely within the mores of the group culture. Usually it is only those on the margins that significantly violate the norms of a group.
The groups to which I belong include my nuclear family, my extended family, several workgroups where I am employed, church groups, scouting groups, my neighborhood, my town, etc. Within some of these groups are subgroups that have a culture that is distinct from that of the larger group. For example, when I am with only my older children, we have somewhat different goals and customs than when we are together with the whole family.
Each group has leaders. Sometimes groups have formal managers. These are not always the same people as the leaders — the people that actually get others to do things. Formal management positions are more likely to exist in organizations that have formal goals.
A number of theories exist about managing people in organizations. One theory, for example, postulates the existence of natural born leaders. Another theory suggests that all people have the ability to exert one or more types of power depending on the circumstances in which they find themselves. Yet another classes people into naturally intransigent personality types. It is asserted that managers can only be fully effective in organizations where their individual personality type complements the organizational culture.
I once worked in an organization where the manager’s personality was a poor match for the group’s culture. The manager was a great guy — and that was part of the problem. He thrived on lots of social connection and human interaction. Being a group of highly autonomous computer geeks, however, we worked better with managers that were more analytical and that did their thing while leaving us to do ours.
It’s not that it was unpleasant to chat with our manager about matters not much related to work. We all do this in our workgroups. It’s part of the lubricant that allows the group to function. But when my boss would come into a worker’s cubicle and plop down for 45, 60, 90, 120 minutes, or even longer just to shoot the breeze, it became a hindrance both to work and to the relationship.
Being geeks, we soon devised two systems to deal with our manager’s excessive gregariousness. The first was an early warning system based on email and phone that would alert workers of an impending social visit from our manager. If someone was on the phone, he’d usually leave them alone unless his visit was actually work related. If that failed, we’d take turns rescuing colleagues trapped in their cubicle by calling from a remote phone.
Our manager had great relationships with his peers and his direct managers, but he didn’t really know that much about what our group did for work. In effect, we were autonomous enough that we could have operated without his ‘management’ most of the time. But social aloofness would not have matched his personality type.
Over the years I have had managers that seemed to fit better or worse with the group culture. I’ve had a few outstanding managers and I’ve had a few that were deplorable.
I once worked for a guy that was manipulative and extremely verbally abusive. I was among the 80% of his employees that fled to other jobs over the space of a year. I saw no reason that a professional at my level ought to put up with that kind of mistreatment. Sometime later, one of the workers that stuck it out came to work to find the manager’s office cleaned out and an email telling him that he was reporting to a different manager.
For years I harbored resentment for my former nasty manager. I saw him in a store once and avoided him. But a few years later I had the opportunity to meet him in a different job. He had left management, seemed like an easy guy to be around, and was reportedly a great worker. Perhaps his personality type was simply a bad fit for the organizational culture where we worked.
Changing organizational culture may be nearly as difficult as changing basic personality traits. Perhaps some companies go down the tubes because they can’t manage to alter the culture to meet changing business needs.
It also seems that we tend to self select into group cultures where we feel that we nominally fit. We tend to leave groups that prove to be a poor match for our personalities and groups where the culture shifts enough that we find our personalities to no longer be complementary.
Sometimes we have little choice in group membership. I think, for example, about my elementary school classes. There was a bit more flexibility in junior high and high school.
Group culture is a huge factor in the behavior of group members. We all tend to function within the parameters of the culture of the group in which we are operating at the moment. This is why changing a few of the group’s members tends to have little effect on the behavior of group members and why new group members soon adopt the behavior of their cohorts.
I suspect that my interest in organizational behavior will continue as long as I continue to hold membership in various group cultures. And that will be at least as long as I live.
Culture in this respect refers to a set of shared values, goals, and rules. In effect, it is a system that governs behavior. We tend to act largely within the mores of the group culture. Usually it is only those on the margins that significantly violate the norms of a group.
The groups to which I belong include my nuclear family, my extended family, several workgroups where I am employed, church groups, scouting groups, my neighborhood, my town, etc. Within some of these groups are subgroups that have a culture that is distinct from that of the larger group. For example, when I am with only my older children, we have somewhat different goals and customs than when we are together with the whole family.
Each group has leaders. Sometimes groups have formal managers. These are not always the same people as the leaders — the people that actually get others to do things. Formal management positions are more likely to exist in organizations that have formal goals.
A number of theories exist about managing people in organizations. One theory, for example, postulates the existence of natural born leaders. Another theory suggests that all people have the ability to exert one or more types of power depending on the circumstances in which they find themselves. Yet another classes people into naturally intransigent personality types. It is asserted that managers can only be fully effective in organizations where their individual personality type complements the organizational culture.
I once worked in an organization where the manager’s personality was a poor match for the group’s culture. The manager was a great guy — and that was part of the problem. He thrived on lots of social connection and human interaction. Being a group of highly autonomous computer geeks, however, we worked better with managers that were more analytical and that did their thing while leaving us to do ours.
It’s not that it was unpleasant to chat with our manager about matters not much related to work. We all do this in our workgroups. It’s part of the lubricant that allows the group to function. But when my boss would come into a worker’s cubicle and plop down for 45, 60, 90, 120 minutes, or even longer just to shoot the breeze, it became a hindrance both to work and to the relationship.
Being geeks, we soon devised two systems to deal with our manager’s excessive gregariousness. The first was an early warning system based on email and phone that would alert workers of an impending social visit from our manager. If someone was on the phone, he’d usually leave them alone unless his visit was actually work related. If that failed, we’d take turns rescuing colleagues trapped in their cubicle by calling from a remote phone.
Our manager had great relationships with his peers and his direct managers, but he didn’t really know that much about what our group did for work. In effect, we were autonomous enough that we could have operated without his ‘management’ most of the time. But social aloofness would not have matched his personality type.
Over the years I have had managers that seemed to fit better or worse with the group culture. I’ve had a few outstanding managers and I’ve had a few that were deplorable.
I once worked for a guy that was manipulative and extremely verbally abusive. I was among the 80% of his employees that fled to other jobs over the space of a year. I saw no reason that a professional at my level ought to put up with that kind of mistreatment. Sometime later, one of the workers that stuck it out came to work to find the manager’s office cleaned out and an email telling him that he was reporting to a different manager.
For years I harbored resentment for my former nasty manager. I saw him in a store once and avoided him. But a few years later I had the opportunity to meet him in a different job. He had left management, seemed like an easy guy to be around, and was reportedly a great worker. Perhaps his personality type was simply a bad fit for the organizational culture where we worked.
Changing organizational culture may be nearly as difficult as changing basic personality traits. Perhaps some companies go down the tubes because they can’t manage to alter the culture to meet changing business needs.
It also seems that we tend to self select into group cultures where we feel that we nominally fit. We tend to leave groups that prove to be a poor match for our personalities and groups where the culture shifts enough that we find our personalities to no longer be complementary.
Sometimes we have little choice in group membership. I think, for example, about my elementary school classes. There was a bit more flexibility in junior high and high school.
Group culture is a huge factor in the behavior of group members. We all tend to function within the parameters of the culture of the group in which we are operating at the moment. This is why changing a few of the group’s members tends to have little effect on the behavior of group members and why new group members soon adopt the behavior of their cohorts.
I suspect that my interest in organizational behavior will continue as long as I continue to hold membership in various group cultures. And that will be at least as long as I live.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Doing a Disney Park? Do RideMax
As I said in my last post, we significantly improved our Disney park experience by using a private service called RideMax.
RideMax is a small family owned business that constantly gathers data on attractions at Disneyland and DisneyWorld. Using the software you download from RideMax, you plug in the attractions you want to visit on a given day. Add any attraction more than once if you want. For example, our family wanted to ride Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones twice. Schedule the breaks you want to take. Plan your walking rate and choose a few more options. Then the software spits out an itinerary that will minimize the time you spend waiting in line while maximizing your fun at the park.
I was a bit skeptical at first, but the RideMax website has many helpful general tips on visiting Disneyland and DisneyWorld. (Arrive early, avoid early entry days, ways to keep track of your irreplaceable entry passes, how to get the most of each ride, don’t eat breakfast at the park, etc.) For $15, we figured it was worth a try. It was worth every penny and more.
When we told our kids that we were going to stick to the RideMax schedule no matter what, one of my sons quipped, “So, this is like the Nazis do Disneyland?” But keeping to our RideMax schedule worked. In fact, we got ahead of schedule at one point so that we were able to pick up a couple of attractions that weren’t planned. Part of the magic of RideMax is its scheduling of gathering FastPass passes that allow you to come back later and jump ahead of everyone in line.
Doing Disneyland can be difficult for a family like ours, where the kids span early elementary to college ages. The older boys simply aren’t going to enjoy riding Dumbo like their little sister. We could have split into two smaller groups and used two itineraries, but there’s no guarantee that the groups would even run into each other during the day. Since family togetherness was one of our goals, we opted for a single itinerary. The older kids split off to hit other attractions during some of the little kid rides.
You can also plan multiple RideMax itineraries and then choose the one that tickles your fancy on the day of your visit. Since the service is constantly updating its data, it is best to plan your itinerary close to your trip — no more than two weeks before your visit. We finally settled ours four days before our visit.
Thanks to RideMax, we only waited in a couple of longer lines. Most other times, we walked right onto attractions or waited only a few minutes. Bear in mind that this was during peak season at the park. We did see lots of other people waiting in long lines. RideMax schedules you for rides that others are not riding while they’re all waiting in long lines at other rides. You skip those rides until later when the lines are shorter or when you can use a FastPass.
During our visit to California Adventure, we deviated from our RideMax itinerary quite a bit because a couple of the rides on our schedule were temporarily shut down. We also managed to ride some rides earlier in the day than was planned. We were quite pleased with that. We were able to split up more often and got to ride Soarin’ Over California twice.
I’d suggest printing off a copy of your RideMax itineraries for each person in your group that is old enough to comprehend the schedule. Not only will you avoid having everyone pester the only person holding the schedule, it will this make deviations (or partial deviations) from the itinerary work out better. It will be easier to get the group back together afterward.
RideMax does not offer itineraries for Sundays. Their website says that they decided to give their employees Sundays off.
If you’re planning a visit to Disneyland or DisneyWorld, you should definitely spend the money for a RideMax subscription. It will increase the value of your visit by many times the cost of the subscription. Make sure to read all of the tips on the RideMax website. You’ll be glad you used RideMax.
RideMax is a small family owned business that constantly gathers data on attractions at Disneyland and DisneyWorld. Using the software you download from RideMax, you plug in the attractions you want to visit on a given day. Add any attraction more than once if you want. For example, our family wanted to ride Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones twice. Schedule the breaks you want to take. Plan your walking rate and choose a few more options. Then the software spits out an itinerary that will minimize the time you spend waiting in line while maximizing your fun at the park.
I was a bit skeptical at first, but the RideMax website has many helpful general tips on visiting Disneyland and DisneyWorld. (Arrive early, avoid early entry days, ways to keep track of your irreplaceable entry passes, how to get the most of each ride, don’t eat breakfast at the park, etc.) For $15, we figured it was worth a try. It was worth every penny and more.
When we told our kids that we were going to stick to the RideMax schedule no matter what, one of my sons quipped, “So, this is like the Nazis do Disneyland?” But keeping to our RideMax schedule worked. In fact, we got ahead of schedule at one point so that we were able to pick up a couple of attractions that weren’t planned. Part of the magic of RideMax is its scheduling of gathering FastPass passes that allow you to come back later and jump ahead of everyone in line.
Doing Disneyland can be difficult for a family like ours, where the kids span early elementary to college ages. The older boys simply aren’t going to enjoy riding Dumbo like their little sister. We could have split into two smaller groups and used two itineraries, but there’s no guarantee that the groups would even run into each other during the day. Since family togetherness was one of our goals, we opted for a single itinerary. The older kids split off to hit other attractions during some of the little kid rides.
You can also plan multiple RideMax itineraries and then choose the one that tickles your fancy on the day of your visit. Since the service is constantly updating its data, it is best to plan your itinerary close to your trip — no more than two weeks before your visit. We finally settled ours four days before our visit.
Thanks to RideMax, we only waited in a couple of longer lines. Most other times, we walked right onto attractions or waited only a few minutes. Bear in mind that this was during peak season at the park. We did see lots of other people waiting in long lines. RideMax schedules you for rides that others are not riding while they’re all waiting in long lines at other rides. You skip those rides until later when the lines are shorter or when you can use a FastPass.
During our visit to California Adventure, we deviated from our RideMax itinerary quite a bit because a couple of the rides on our schedule were temporarily shut down. We also managed to ride some rides earlier in the day than was planned. We were quite pleased with that. We were able to split up more often and got to ride Soarin’ Over California twice.
I’d suggest printing off a copy of your RideMax itineraries for each person in your group that is old enough to comprehend the schedule. Not only will you avoid having everyone pester the only person holding the schedule, it will this make deviations (or partial deviations) from the itinerary work out better. It will be easier to get the group back together afterward.
RideMax does not offer itineraries for Sundays. Their website says that they decided to give their employees Sundays off.
If you’re planning a visit to Disneyland or DisneyWorld, you should definitely spend the money for a RideMax subscription. It will increase the value of your visit by many times the cost of the subscription. Make sure to read all of the tips on the RideMax website. You’ll be glad you used RideMax.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Doing Disneyland (part 2)
In my last post I wrote briefly about our trip to Disneyland. I’m going to include a few tips and hints that might be helpful to others considering a Disneyland trip.
From what I understand, the middle of the week is a better time to visit a Disney theme park if you want to skip huge crowds. Still, the press of the crowds at Disneyland on Wednesday was pretty intense. It increased as the day progressed. Our family was separated when the Main Street Parade started. We discovered that it was nearly impossible to get us all together again until the parade was finished due to the press of the crowd. (I could not even traverse 10 feet to another family member.)
While Disneyland is constantly being upgraded (for example, Star Tours is closed for renovations until 2011), the basic framework offers some challenges that simply can’t be overcome. The park is an international icon. Disney can’t significantly change certain features without violating the basis of the iconography. The number of people operating in this structure makes efficient management of foot traffic difficult.
It was a lot easier for us this trip because this is the first Disney trip we have made in two decades without using at least one stroller. Moving strollers around Disneyland can be challenging. I did carry my daughter piggy-back several times during the day — sometimes for very long hauls. That kind of thing could be problematic if you’re not in decent shape.
We also discovered that having older children with their own cell phones was very helpful. We could split up and still keep in contact. When we weren’t sure if someone was on a ride or not, we’d send text messages. This worked quite well.
The days we spent at Disneyland and California Adventure were unseasonably warm. We tried to keep our crew well hydrated, but that’s a challenge too. I hauled water bottles in a backpack, but they warm quickly in hot weather. I refilled bottles from restroom taps and water fountains, but most of these fixtures in Disneyland have relatively low flow. The fixtures tend to be newer and better at California Adventure. I think my Mom-in-Law became dehydrated the first day.
One of the big questions when going to a Disney theme park, of course, is how to deal with long lines at attractions. Disney tries to manage this somewhat by raising park pass prices, as was recently done. Higher prices tend to bring fewer customers, but I’m not sure that’s a problem for Disney. Demand seems to remain very strong despite higher prices.
Notwithstanding the huge crowds, we hit all of the attractions we wanted to visit, while spending minimal time waiting in lines. This was possible thanks to a private service called RideMax. We paid $15 for a 90-day subscription to the service. It significantly enhanced the value of our Disney park experience. I will cover our experience with RideMax in a separate post.
We felt that California Adventure offered a more laid back and less harried experience than our visit to Disneyland. When my wife said as much to a park worker, the worker responded that Disney employees definitely notice this difference.
We enjoyed California Adventure, but two huge sections of the park are currently under construction with new attractions to open next year. It seems like there are fewer attractions than at Disneyland. The general consensus was that the Soarin’ Over California ride was our family’s favorite attraction. There were many other attractions that were highly enjoyed as well. Different family members ranked different rides higher. But that’s to be expected.
We helped our vacation budget by informing the kids months in advance that we would not be buying any souvenirs out of the family budget. Each child was encouraged to save to buy their own souvenirs. Thanks to our family discussions on the matter, nobody pestered us for trinkets. Only two children bought souvenirs, and these were modestly priced. It’s amazing how frugal people become when they have to spend their own money.
Food is expensive at any theme park. There are many nearby offerings if you want to leave the park to eat. If you want convenience, you either pack lunches and keep them in a locker or you pay the exorbitant park rates. We made this work for us.
Our drive home on Friday was much less stressful than our drive to Los Angeles. We ran into very few traffic slowdowns. Traffic flow seemed better all around than when we drove down.
All in all, we’re pretty pleased with our Disneyland vacation. Everyone tolerated it. Nobody got lost or was injured. We had a few hectic moments, but we had some time to relax as well. I will be putting video clips and photos together in a home movie DVD over the next week or so. We’ll have some memories for years to come.
From what I understand, the middle of the week is a better time to visit a Disney theme park if you want to skip huge crowds. Still, the press of the crowds at Disneyland on Wednesday was pretty intense. It increased as the day progressed. Our family was separated when the Main Street Parade started. We discovered that it was nearly impossible to get us all together again until the parade was finished due to the press of the crowd. (I could not even traverse 10 feet to another family member.)
While Disneyland is constantly being upgraded (for example, Star Tours is closed for renovations until 2011), the basic framework offers some challenges that simply can’t be overcome. The park is an international icon. Disney can’t significantly change certain features without violating the basis of the iconography. The number of people operating in this structure makes efficient management of foot traffic difficult.
It was a lot easier for us this trip because this is the first Disney trip we have made in two decades without using at least one stroller. Moving strollers around Disneyland can be challenging. I did carry my daughter piggy-back several times during the day — sometimes for very long hauls. That kind of thing could be problematic if you’re not in decent shape.
We also discovered that having older children with their own cell phones was very helpful. We could split up and still keep in contact. When we weren’t sure if someone was on a ride or not, we’d send text messages. This worked quite well.
The days we spent at Disneyland and California Adventure were unseasonably warm. We tried to keep our crew well hydrated, but that’s a challenge too. I hauled water bottles in a backpack, but they warm quickly in hot weather. I refilled bottles from restroom taps and water fountains, but most of these fixtures in Disneyland have relatively low flow. The fixtures tend to be newer and better at California Adventure. I think my Mom-in-Law became dehydrated the first day.
One of the big questions when going to a Disney theme park, of course, is how to deal with long lines at attractions. Disney tries to manage this somewhat by raising park pass prices, as was recently done. Higher prices tend to bring fewer customers, but I’m not sure that’s a problem for Disney. Demand seems to remain very strong despite higher prices.
Notwithstanding the huge crowds, we hit all of the attractions we wanted to visit, while spending minimal time waiting in lines. This was possible thanks to a private service called RideMax. We paid $15 for a 90-day subscription to the service. It significantly enhanced the value of our Disney park experience. I will cover our experience with RideMax in a separate post.
We felt that California Adventure offered a more laid back and less harried experience than our visit to Disneyland. When my wife said as much to a park worker, the worker responded that Disney employees definitely notice this difference.
We enjoyed California Adventure, but two huge sections of the park are currently under construction with new attractions to open next year. It seems like there are fewer attractions than at Disneyland. The general consensus was that the Soarin’ Over California ride was our family’s favorite attraction. There were many other attractions that were highly enjoyed as well. Different family members ranked different rides higher. But that’s to be expected.
We helped our vacation budget by informing the kids months in advance that we would not be buying any souvenirs out of the family budget. Each child was encouraged to save to buy their own souvenirs. Thanks to our family discussions on the matter, nobody pestered us for trinkets. Only two children bought souvenirs, and these were modestly priced. It’s amazing how frugal people become when they have to spend their own money.
Food is expensive at any theme park. There are many nearby offerings if you want to leave the park to eat. If you want convenience, you either pack lunches and keep them in a locker or you pay the exorbitant park rates. We made this work for us.
Our drive home on Friday was much less stressful than our drive to Los Angeles. We ran into very few traffic slowdowns. Traffic flow seemed better all around than when we drove down.
All in all, we’re pretty pleased with our Disneyland vacation. Everyone tolerated it. Nobody got lost or was injured. We had a few hectic moments, but we had some time to relax as well. I will be putting video clips and photos together in a home movie DVD over the next week or so. We’ll have some memories for years to come.
A Trip to Disneyland
I hadn’t been to a Disney theme park during the summer months since I was a kid. The heat and the crowds scared me away.
Over the years, we’ve visited the Disney parks in Southern California a few times and Central Florida once. We have usually hit at least one other non-Disney theme park while on these trips. We’ve gone in the fall and spring. Twice we started our visit during the last couple of days of November and were able to see everything decked out for the holidays. The crowds were smaller and the weather was great.
But our youngest was barely two years old the last time we went to a Disney theme park. When she looked at me with big innocent eyes early this year and asked me if we could “please take the family to Disneyland this week,” my heart melted. “This week” was out of the question, but we started planning a Disneyland trip.
When my wife suggested that the third week of August was going to be our best bet this year, she encountered much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth from me. To top it off, my wife said we’d have to drive to make the budget work. The last two times we went, we flew using special discounts. We couldn’t find any deals like that this time, so driving was the answer. I dreaded that.
But thanks to my Mom-in-Law, things worked out pretty well. Bringing two vehicles allowed us far more room for people and gear. Built-in vehicle entertainment systems are very helpful too. Instead of including a non-Disney park in our trip this time around, we made arrangements to visit a couple of university campuses that have solicited one of my sons. My Mom-in-Law was also able to visit her brother.
We spent one night in Las Vegas to break up the driving. It seemed as if the whole town was under construction. The first real traffic jam we encountered on our trip was due to lane closures on I-15 in Las Vegas. Then we ran into loads of construction on roads surrounding our hotel. Our rooms were pretty good, but the section of town we were in wasn’t great. We watched a police arrest go down in live time. I was glad to leave early the next day.
The rooms at our hotel in Los Angeles were OK, but the queen size beds weren’t really queen size. That made sleeping arrangements difficult. The pool was nice. Traffic on the Los Angeles freeways and highways was very congested. But that’s to be expected.
On some of our previous Disney trips, we have spent three or four days doing the parks. This time, we spent one day at Disneyland and one day at California Adventure. It turned out pretty well, but we’d do a few things differently if we were to do it over again. Our day at Disneyland was very long. Everyone was shot by the end of the day. In retrospect, we’d should have left Disneyland earlier and opted to stay later at California Adventure the following day for the evening show.
I will write another post that describes more tips and hints that might be helpful for others considering a trip to Disneyland.
Over the years, we’ve visited the Disney parks in Southern California a few times and Central Florida once. We have usually hit at least one other non-Disney theme park while on these trips. We’ve gone in the fall and spring. Twice we started our visit during the last couple of days of November and were able to see everything decked out for the holidays. The crowds were smaller and the weather was great.
But our youngest was barely two years old the last time we went to a Disney theme park. When she looked at me with big innocent eyes early this year and asked me if we could “please take the family to Disneyland this week,” my heart melted. “This week” was out of the question, but we started planning a Disneyland trip.
When my wife suggested that the third week of August was going to be our best bet this year, she encountered much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth from me. To top it off, my wife said we’d have to drive to make the budget work. The last two times we went, we flew using special discounts. We couldn’t find any deals like that this time, so driving was the answer. I dreaded that.
But thanks to my Mom-in-Law, things worked out pretty well. Bringing two vehicles allowed us far more room for people and gear. Built-in vehicle entertainment systems are very helpful too. Instead of including a non-Disney park in our trip this time around, we made arrangements to visit a couple of university campuses that have solicited one of my sons. My Mom-in-Law was also able to visit her brother.
We spent one night in Las Vegas to break up the driving. It seemed as if the whole town was under construction. The first real traffic jam we encountered on our trip was due to lane closures on I-15 in Las Vegas. Then we ran into loads of construction on roads surrounding our hotel. Our rooms were pretty good, but the section of town we were in wasn’t great. We watched a police arrest go down in live time. I was glad to leave early the next day.
The rooms at our hotel in Los Angeles were OK, but the queen size beds weren’t really queen size. That made sleeping arrangements difficult. The pool was nice. Traffic on the Los Angeles freeways and highways was very congested. But that’s to be expected.
On some of our previous Disney trips, we have spent three or four days doing the parks. This time, we spent one day at Disneyland and one day at California Adventure. It turned out pretty well, but we’d do a few things differently if we were to do it over again. Our day at Disneyland was very long. Everyone was shot by the end of the day. In retrospect, we’d should have left Disneyland earlier and opted to stay later at California Adventure the following day for the evening show.
I will write another post that describes more tips and hints that might be helpful for others considering a trip to Disneyland.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Trending Toward Religious Disengagement
A couple of evenings ago, I attended a meeting of church leaders at my LDS stake. Perhaps it is my perception, but after years of attending these meetings, it seems that attendees can usually expect to be chewed out for falling short. Then they wonder why turnout is low.
The purpose of these meetings seems to be mostly to call leaders to repentance than about lifting them spiritually, at least in my neck of the woods. Paradoxically, those that are diligent enough to attend the meetings are likely to be the ones that are also diligently fulfilling their leadership callings, however imperfect their performances might be.
It sometimes seems as if the faithful leave these meetings feeling berated and burdened rather than enlightened. Those for whom the messages were likely intended weren’t there to be admonished. Perhaps they glide along in blissful ignorance.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the principle that “he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy” of the kingdom of God (D&C 131:31). That’s why I work my schedule to be at these meetings, why I take notes, and why I earnestly try to improve my performance. But sometimes I feel disheartened when leaving these meetings.
One item of discussion at the recent meeting was our stake’s trend in declining Sacrament meeting (weekly worship service) attendance over the past few years. We used to average 62% annually, but have dropped to 54%. The stake president opened up a discussion about why this was happening and what could be done about it.
While I am not certain of all of the factors for declining worship service attendance in my stake, it would seem reasonable to assume that we are not immune to broader societal trends. Almost three years ago, I wrote about the growing drift toward civic disengagement, which has been documented by political scientist Robert Putnam.
Due to the advent of in-home entertainment technology, the expansion of women into the outside-of-the-home workforce, social trends away from conformity and formality, the crowding out effect of government social services, the ability to rise socially outside of traditional institutions, and a variety of other societal changes, there has been decreasing involvement in civic institutions over the past four decades.
This is not to say that all of the factors mentioned are purely negative. It’s just that costs are blended with the benefits.
The Pew Forum published an interesting study earlier this year titled Religion Among the Millennials. Religious attitudes and practices of the Millennial generation were compared with Generation X, Baby Boomers, and older Americans. Researchers tracked how Millennials stacked up against previous generations at the same age. They also did a good job of tracking the evolution of religious attitudes and behavior among these older generations.
Millennials are less religiously affiliated than previous generations, but they tend to pray more regularly than those who were the same age 10 and 20 years ago. One-fourth of Millennials are non-believers, compared with one-fifth of the previous generation at the same age. While it has been fairly common for Americans of all currently living generations to switch religions, Millennials switch to no religion at a much higher rate than previous generations.
Besides religious affiliation, Millennials attend worship services at a lower rate than previous generations. But this is simply part of a longer trend where each succeeding generation attends church less frequently than their parents’ generation. Millennials attend church at less than half the rate today’s seniors did at the same age.
This is a bigger issue for the LDS Church than for most other denominations, because Millennials make up a larger proportion of LDS Church membership than is common for most other churches.
The whole Pew study is quite interesting. It includes a number of surprising tidbits, such as the fact that religious convictions among practicing believers are just as strong among younger generations as older generations — even stronger by some measures. But the overall picture is clear. Religious affiliation and church attendance are steadily declining with each succeeding generation.
Given the rate of demographic turnover in my area, the decline in Sacrament meeting attendance noted by my stake president is not out of line with overall societal religious trends. I do not doubt that active church members in my area could be doing a better job of reaching out to neighbors and inviting others to worship with them. But it is unrealistic to assume that members could significantly counter a broader cultural trend.
Perhaps I am one of those of “little faith” (Matt 14:31), but it seems to me that the worship service attendance trends we have seen over the past decade or so are going to continue despite our best efforts. That’s no excuse for complacency. It’s just a recognition of cultural realities.
The purpose of these meetings seems to be mostly to call leaders to repentance than about lifting them spiritually, at least in my neck of the woods. Paradoxically, those that are diligent enough to attend the meetings are likely to be the ones that are also diligently fulfilling their leadership callings, however imperfect their performances might be.
It sometimes seems as if the faithful leave these meetings feeling berated and burdened rather than enlightened. Those for whom the messages were likely intended weren’t there to be admonished. Perhaps they glide along in blissful ignorance.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the principle that “he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy” of the kingdom of God (D&C 131:31). That’s why I work my schedule to be at these meetings, why I take notes, and why I earnestly try to improve my performance. But sometimes I feel disheartened when leaving these meetings.
One item of discussion at the recent meeting was our stake’s trend in declining Sacrament meeting (weekly worship service) attendance over the past few years. We used to average 62% annually, but have dropped to 54%. The stake president opened up a discussion about why this was happening and what could be done about it.
While I am not certain of all of the factors for declining worship service attendance in my stake, it would seem reasonable to assume that we are not immune to broader societal trends. Almost three years ago, I wrote about the growing drift toward civic disengagement, which has been documented by political scientist Robert Putnam.
Due to the advent of in-home entertainment technology, the expansion of women into the outside-of-the-home workforce, social trends away from conformity and formality, the crowding out effect of government social services, the ability to rise socially outside of traditional institutions, and a variety of other societal changes, there has been decreasing involvement in civic institutions over the past four decades.
This is not to say that all of the factors mentioned are purely negative. It’s just that costs are blended with the benefits.
The Pew Forum published an interesting study earlier this year titled Religion Among the Millennials. Religious attitudes and practices of the Millennial generation were compared with Generation X, Baby Boomers, and older Americans. Researchers tracked how Millennials stacked up against previous generations at the same age. They also did a good job of tracking the evolution of religious attitudes and behavior among these older generations.
Millennials are less religiously affiliated than previous generations, but they tend to pray more regularly than those who were the same age 10 and 20 years ago. One-fourth of Millennials are non-believers, compared with one-fifth of the previous generation at the same age. While it has been fairly common for Americans of all currently living generations to switch religions, Millennials switch to no religion at a much higher rate than previous generations.
Besides religious affiliation, Millennials attend worship services at a lower rate than previous generations. But this is simply part of a longer trend where each succeeding generation attends church less frequently than their parents’ generation. Millennials attend church at less than half the rate today’s seniors did at the same age.
This is a bigger issue for the LDS Church than for most other denominations, because Millennials make up a larger proportion of LDS Church membership than is common for most other churches.
The whole Pew study is quite interesting. It includes a number of surprising tidbits, such as the fact that religious convictions among practicing believers are just as strong among younger generations as older generations — even stronger by some measures. But the overall picture is clear. Religious affiliation and church attendance are steadily declining with each succeeding generation.
Given the rate of demographic turnover in my area, the decline in Sacrament meeting attendance noted by my stake president is not out of line with overall societal religious trends. I do not doubt that active church members in my area could be doing a better job of reaching out to neighbors and inviting others to worship with them. But it is unrealistic to assume that members could significantly counter a broader cultural trend.
Perhaps I am one of those of “little faith” (Matt 14:31), but it seems to me that the worship service attendance trends we have seen over the past decade or so are going to continue despite our best efforts. That’s no excuse for complacency. It’s just a recognition of cultural realities.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Music of Freedom
A few years ago, one of my children played a piece titled Toccata (see ClassicCat links) by Aram Khatchaturian at a piano recital. This is a challenging, highly technical, fast moving piece that features heavy chord vamps, dramatic romantic movements, hammering tones, flowing falls, and wild runs that fly across huge swaths of keyboard real estate. It’s not something one sits back to enjoy with ease. It demands listener engagement.
Khatchaturian was born in the country of Georgia to a poor Armenian family. After his family’s native Armenia was declared a Soviet vassal, Khatchaturian traveled to Moscow, where he received opportunities to develop his musical talents.
As Khatchaturian’s musical prowess increased, he joined the Communist Party and wrote music to honor the Soviet Union. But the repressive government didn’t see his offerings as sufficiently patriotic. Instead, the government formally denounced him and several other famous Soviet composers of having “antidemocratic tendencies” in their music. Although Khatchaturian was later pardoned, he raised some hackles when he called for greater artistic freedom and when he wrote music about man’s constant struggle for political freedom.
Why is it that authoritarians tend to have a problem with music, even when it is designed to further their aims? Talented writer and acclaimed jazz musician Eric Felten asserts in this WSJ article that it’s all about control. Authoritarianism, by definition, is about controlling people. While music “affects people profoundly,” says Felten, music itself “can’t be controlled.”
After noting how music can be — and is — used manipulatively, Felten exposes why tyrants are uncomfortable with music. Despite all that we know about music, it still has a mystical quality that all of our science has been unable to plumb. It interacts with our emotions and our psyches in ways that are not completely predictable.
Perhaps the most significant feature of music is that it evokes different thoughts and feelings in each listener due to our unique backgrounds. Even in a stadium full of people listening to the same musical performance, each person is experiencing something different than all others present. The same musical recording can even affect a single individual differently at different times. Each musical interaction is in essence a profoundly unique and individual experience.
Individualism, by definition, is at odds with tyranny. Individuals are hard to control. ‘People’ are less of a challenge. As one tyrant is said to have stated, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Authoritarians deal readily with the faceless masses. Any individual is a challenge to their controlling position.
The individualistic nature of music “poses problems for the propagandist,” notes Felten. My Dad grew up hearing and singing the first stanza of the Song of Germany as his nation’s national anthem. The arrogant lines, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt,” (Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world) grated on him.
Despite the fact that this offensive stanza was dropped after World War II and only the third stanza focusing on unity and brotherhood is now sung as the German National Anthem, the lovely Haydn tune evoked anger and disgust in my Dad as long as he lived. A tyrant, says Felten, “can't count on his patriotic anthem not to curdle in the ears of abused people trying to divorce themselves from the state.”
It would seem that music is at odds with tyranny. Thus, authoritarians will always have an uncomfortable relationship with music. We should be grateful that music is as omni-available as it is. It may be that every time we sing, play, or listen to music, we are combating tyranny.
Khatchaturian was born in the country of Georgia to a poor Armenian family. After his family’s native Armenia was declared a Soviet vassal, Khatchaturian traveled to Moscow, where he received opportunities to develop his musical talents.
As Khatchaturian’s musical prowess increased, he joined the Communist Party and wrote music to honor the Soviet Union. But the repressive government didn’t see his offerings as sufficiently patriotic. Instead, the government formally denounced him and several other famous Soviet composers of having “antidemocratic tendencies” in their music. Although Khatchaturian was later pardoned, he raised some hackles when he called for greater artistic freedom and when he wrote music about man’s constant struggle for political freedom.
Why is it that authoritarians tend to have a problem with music, even when it is designed to further their aims? Talented writer and acclaimed jazz musician Eric Felten asserts in this WSJ article that it’s all about control. Authoritarianism, by definition, is about controlling people. While music “affects people profoundly,” says Felten, music itself “can’t be controlled.”
After noting how music can be — and is — used manipulatively, Felten exposes why tyrants are uncomfortable with music. Despite all that we know about music, it still has a mystical quality that all of our science has been unable to plumb. It interacts with our emotions and our psyches in ways that are not completely predictable.
Perhaps the most significant feature of music is that it evokes different thoughts and feelings in each listener due to our unique backgrounds. Even in a stadium full of people listening to the same musical performance, each person is experiencing something different than all others present. The same musical recording can even affect a single individual differently at different times. Each musical interaction is in essence a profoundly unique and individual experience.
Individualism, by definition, is at odds with tyranny. Individuals are hard to control. ‘People’ are less of a challenge. As one tyrant is said to have stated, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Authoritarians deal readily with the faceless masses. Any individual is a challenge to their controlling position.
The individualistic nature of music “poses problems for the propagandist,” notes Felten. My Dad grew up hearing and singing the first stanza of the Song of Germany as his nation’s national anthem. The arrogant lines, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt,” (Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world) grated on him.
Despite the fact that this offensive stanza was dropped after World War II and only the third stanza focusing on unity and brotherhood is now sung as the German National Anthem, the lovely Haydn tune evoked anger and disgust in my Dad as long as he lived. A tyrant, says Felten, “can't count on his patriotic anthem not to curdle in the ears of abused people trying to divorce themselves from the state.”
It would seem that music is at odds with tyranny. Thus, authoritarians will always have an uncomfortable relationship with music. We should be grateful that music is as omni-available as it is. It may be that every time we sing, play, or listen to music, we are combating tyranny.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Back to Camp Loll
Years ago when I worked on staff at Camp Loll, a Boy Scout camp in the wilderness between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, we used to sing an alternate version of the Wood Badge song, Back to Gilwell. I’m sure that some dyed-in-the-wool Woodbadgers would object to this. (For the record, I used to be a bobwhite, and a good old bobwhite too....) But I think our use of the song wasn’t too irreverent. We’d sing:
The reunion is a relatively simple affair. Attendees show up on the first Saturday in August after the scout troops that have been at camp for the week have departed. They set up camp in the campsites. The current staff graciously provides meals and activities. After enjoying lunch together, the current staff spends the afternoon manning their program areas just like they do for the scouts on most weekday afternoons during the season.
Reunion attendees are free to enjoy the rifle range, climbing rock, archery range, waterfront (provided they bring current BSA medical exams), handicraft, and other program areas. Alumni can recall the days they spent staffing those program areas. Their children can see what their dads used to do back in the day. Part of the whole experience is for staff alumni to see their younger selves reincarnated (and improved) in the current staff.
In the evening after dinner, attendees gather for flag ceremony as the staff sings. They then head off to the campfire bowl to watch the staff perform some of the same songs, skits, run-ons, and cheers that alumni performed when they were on staff. On Saturday evening we were pleased to see a bald eagle fly over us during the campfire. Then it’s back to the lodge to watch ‘movies’ — photos of staff from years past made into DVD movies.
Sunday morning breakfast is serve-yourself cold cereal, just like always. Then we head to the campfire bowl for church. I’m not sure why we don’t use the chapel. You’d have to ask Delose about that. But the view of the Lake of the Woods from the campfire bowl is stunning. The last 15 minutes of the worship service is reserved for staff alumni to make remarks.
Following church yesterday, alumni met in the lodge to discuss service opportunities. Last Labor Day, we went up to camp and replaced the footbridge down the trail from the shower house that spanned the swamp over to the trail by the Blackfoot campsite. This new, much sturdier structure is designed to last for many years, perhaps decades. Delose posted about it (including pics) in this blog post.
This Labor Day weekend we are again going to construct a footbridge across the swamp. This one will span the swamp from the trail by the Crow campsite to the trail by the Piute and Sagwich campsites. Some people will go up as early as Thursday, Sept. 2. Most of the rest of us will get there as early as we can on Friday, Sept. 3. We will work until dark on Friday and will start as early as we can on Saturday. We hope to have the work mostly done by Saturday afternoon. Most will head home then.
We could use all the manual labor we could get on this project. Cordless drills and saws, and good wheelbarrows would be useful too. Although skilled labor is handy, we need mostly general labor — the kind of work staffers do regularly. While the focus has mostly been on former staff, any good help would be accepted. Food will be provided, as long as organizers know how many to plan for. Workers will have to provide their own sleeping bag and pad.
Labor Day weekend is a good time to work at Camp Loll, weather permitting. The biting fly population is significantly decreased by that time of the season. Nights are quite cool (which is not a problem, because we sleep in the lodge). Daytime temperatures are pleasant. Working on a project like this is a great way to “give back more to Scouting than it has given to [you].” Send an email if you’re interested in helping.
I have thought about the years I worked on staff at Camp Loll. Ever since then, it’s as if Camp Loll occupies a permanent spot in my soul. Those summers were a foundational experience that helped determine who I am today. In 2007 when my oldest son spent the summer working on Camp Loll staff, I wrote the following poem that I titled, “‘Round the Lake of the Woods.”
“Back to Camp Loll, happy land. I’m going to work at Camp Loll, if I can.”I spent this past weekend at Camp Loll, rubbing shoulders with other former staffers and their families at the third annual Camp Loll Alumni Reunion.
The reunion is a relatively simple affair. Attendees show up on the first Saturday in August after the scout troops that have been at camp for the week have departed. They set up camp in the campsites. The current staff graciously provides meals and activities. After enjoying lunch together, the current staff spends the afternoon manning their program areas just like they do for the scouts on most weekday afternoons during the season.
Reunion attendees are free to enjoy the rifle range, climbing rock, archery range, waterfront (provided they bring current BSA medical exams), handicraft, and other program areas. Alumni can recall the days they spent staffing those program areas. Their children can see what their dads used to do back in the day. Part of the whole experience is for staff alumni to see their younger selves reincarnated (and improved) in the current staff.
In the evening after dinner, attendees gather for flag ceremony as the staff sings. They then head off to the campfire bowl to watch the staff perform some of the same songs, skits, run-ons, and cheers that alumni performed when they were on staff. On Saturday evening we were pleased to see a bald eagle fly over us during the campfire. Then it’s back to the lodge to watch ‘movies’ — photos of staff from years past made into DVD movies.
Sunday morning breakfast is serve-yourself cold cereal, just like always. Then we head to the campfire bowl for church. I’m not sure why we don’t use the chapel. You’d have to ask Delose about that. But the view of the Lake of the Woods from the campfire bowl is stunning. The last 15 minutes of the worship service is reserved for staff alumni to make remarks.
Following church yesterday, alumni met in the lodge to discuss service opportunities. Last Labor Day, we went up to camp and replaced the footbridge down the trail from the shower house that spanned the swamp over to the trail by the Blackfoot campsite. This new, much sturdier structure is designed to last for many years, perhaps decades. Delose posted about it (including pics) in this blog post.
This Labor Day weekend we are again going to construct a footbridge across the swamp. This one will span the swamp from the trail by the Crow campsite to the trail by the Piute and Sagwich campsites. Some people will go up as early as Thursday, Sept. 2. Most of the rest of us will get there as early as we can on Friday, Sept. 3. We will work until dark on Friday and will start as early as we can on Saturday. We hope to have the work mostly done by Saturday afternoon. Most will head home then.
We could use all the manual labor we could get on this project. Cordless drills and saws, and good wheelbarrows would be useful too. Although skilled labor is handy, we need mostly general labor — the kind of work staffers do regularly. While the focus has mostly been on former staff, any good help would be accepted. Food will be provided, as long as organizers know how many to plan for. Workers will have to provide their own sleeping bag and pad.
Labor Day weekend is a good time to work at Camp Loll, weather permitting. The biting fly population is significantly decreased by that time of the season. Nights are quite cool (which is not a problem, because we sleep in the lodge). Daytime temperatures are pleasant. Working on a project like this is a great way to “give back more to Scouting than it has given to [you].” Send an email if you’re interested in helping.
I have thought about the years I worked on staff at Camp Loll. Ever since then, it’s as if Camp Loll occupies a permanent spot in my soul. Those summers were a foundational experience that helped determine who I am today. In 2007 when my oldest son spent the summer working on Camp Loll staff, I wrote the following poem that I titled, “‘Round the Lake of the Woods.”
Those glorious days ‘round the Lake of the Woods,
We frolicked, we toiled, and sang.
The woods nearby heard the loon’s cry
And with the echoes of young voices rang.
The clear starry night and the thunderstorm
Are things of beauty that I’ve loved,
With the deer’s casual canter,
The chipmunk’s fierce banter,
And the eagle’s flight above.
Oh, the games that we played,
The songs that we sang,
And the service with steadfast friend
Will glow in my soul as the campfire’s last coal
When we joined hands and sang at the end.
But summer’s now past,
I’m back in the city
And life goes on as it should.
Still, my heart often wanders
To those glorious days
‘Round the Lake of the Woods.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
When the Music Changed
I grew up in an era when The Beatles were very popular. The face of contemporary music was in a state of change. New acts flared up with wild regularity. Many of them fizzled almost as rapidly. Even new subtypes of music came and went.
It was very difficult for me to keep up with all of this. We didn’t have a hi-fi system in our house. My brother and I had an ancient AM band radio that sat atop a bookshelf in our bedroom. The old wooden radio case had been carefully covered with wallpaper to hide blemishes. By the time we got the thing, even the wallpaper was beat up.
The vinyl record album was the medium upon which music was purchased back in those days. We owned a single turntable for vinyl records. That was a cheap model made for kids. We’d frequently put our 45 rpm records on the thing and either play them at 33⅓ or 78 rpm for a laugh. Lacking a ‘sophisticated’ audio system, we simply didn’t buy music albums.
I am often amazed by how familiar my kids are with the music I listened to growing up. Many songs that were popular when I was in junior high and high school are easily recognized and even listened to by today’s kids. Sometimes it blows my mind to discover that some of those artists are still alive. Some are even still performing.
My generation knew very little of our parents’ music. We still don’t. In my head I can still hear a few tunes from the pre-rock era that people of my parents’ generation used to listen to. I can even remember some of the artists. But it is undeniable that the broader rock genre usurped the forms of contemporary music that had been popular prior to rock’s explosion in the 1960s. Artists like the Beatles and Elvis Presley were/are revered because they played a big role in that shift.
As a kid, I always seemed to be out of the loop when it came to popular music personalities. While I knew who the Beatles were, I knew very little about the members of the group. One day when I was still pretty young, my friend from across the street came over and said that his oldest sister was bawling hysterically because Paul McCartney was dead. “Who’s Paul McCartney?” I asked. My friend breathlessly explained what turned out to be the Paul McCartney death hoax. My eyes just about glossed over. When he was done, I responded, “So what?”
Later on when I did start to buy and listen to music (on vinyl, 8-track, and cassette), I fancied certain types of music and certain performers. But I still fell short of turning my music appreciation into cult-like followership of artists, something that seemed fairly common among peers. I found that I could enjoy an artist’s music without appreciating the artist’s lifestyle.
I was just a few years behind the whole Beatles phenomenon. The Beatles were immensely popular to kids a few years older than me. I mostly heard Beatles music when I visited the homes of friends that had older siblings in the right age range. By the time I became interested enough in popular music to care much about it, the Beatles were long done. Besides, to me they had seemed pretty creepy toward the end of their group career. Although a rock group I used to perform with covered a few Beatles songs, I have never personally owned a Beatles recording.
I don’t much care for some of the music my kids listen to. But I also have to admit that I don’t much care for some of the music I used to listen to when I was their age. Some of it was little more than a passing fancy. Assuming that my kids will also mature in their musical tastes, I cut them some slack on their music choices — as long as they don’t make me listen to metalcore too often.
It was very difficult for me to keep up with all of this. We didn’t have a hi-fi system in our house. My brother and I had an ancient AM band radio that sat atop a bookshelf in our bedroom. The old wooden radio case had been carefully covered with wallpaper to hide blemishes. By the time we got the thing, even the wallpaper was beat up.
The vinyl record album was the medium upon which music was purchased back in those days. We owned a single turntable for vinyl records. That was a cheap model made for kids. We’d frequently put our 45 rpm records on the thing and either play them at 33⅓ or 78 rpm for a laugh. Lacking a ‘sophisticated’ audio system, we simply didn’t buy music albums.
I am often amazed by how familiar my kids are with the music I listened to growing up. Many songs that were popular when I was in junior high and high school are easily recognized and even listened to by today’s kids. Sometimes it blows my mind to discover that some of those artists are still alive. Some are even still performing.
My generation knew very little of our parents’ music. We still don’t. In my head I can still hear a few tunes from the pre-rock era that people of my parents’ generation used to listen to. I can even remember some of the artists. But it is undeniable that the broader rock genre usurped the forms of contemporary music that had been popular prior to rock’s explosion in the 1960s. Artists like the Beatles and Elvis Presley were/are revered because they played a big role in that shift.
As a kid, I always seemed to be out of the loop when it came to popular music personalities. While I knew who the Beatles were, I knew very little about the members of the group. One day when I was still pretty young, my friend from across the street came over and said that his oldest sister was bawling hysterically because Paul McCartney was dead. “Who’s Paul McCartney?” I asked. My friend breathlessly explained what turned out to be the Paul McCartney death hoax. My eyes just about glossed over. When he was done, I responded, “So what?”
Later on when I did start to buy and listen to music (on vinyl, 8-track, and cassette), I fancied certain types of music and certain performers. But I still fell short of turning my music appreciation into cult-like followership of artists, something that seemed fairly common among peers. I found that I could enjoy an artist’s music without appreciating the artist’s lifestyle.
I was just a few years behind the whole Beatles phenomenon. The Beatles were immensely popular to kids a few years older than me. I mostly heard Beatles music when I visited the homes of friends that had older siblings in the right age range. By the time I became interested enough in popular music to care much about it, the Beatles were long done. Besides, to me they had seemed pretty creepy toward the end of their group career. Although a rock group I used to perform with covered a few Beatles songs, I have never personally owned a Beatles recording.
I don’t much care for some of the music my kids listen to. But I also have to admit that I don’t much care for some of the music I used to listen to when I was their age. Some of it was little more than a passing fancy. Assuming that my kids will also mature in their musical tastes, I cut them some slack on their music choices — as long as they don’t make me listen to metalcore too often.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Priorities
My son and I stood in line at the store behind a pretty young mother and her beautiful two-year-old daughter. The mom was dressed casually but not cheaply. Her clothing and grooming reflected significant investments. She was adorned with a number of high quality multi-color tattoos that looked far more stylish that the usual dreck I see glopped on people’s bodies at that establishment. Her high class jewelry and piercings virtually shouted, “I’m worth a lot of money!”
The lady didn’t have many items to purchase. We were, after all, in the express lane. Some of the things looked like common necessities, but others would definitely have been considered discretionary items in my household.
“That’ll be 56.37,” said the clerk. The young mom opened her sleek wallet, extracted a card, slid it through the card reader, and typed in some numbers. “I’m sorry,” said the clerk, “but there isn’t enough on that card to cover the purchase.” The young mom seemed only mildly perturbed as she returned the card to her wallet, pulled out another, and said, “Let’s try this one.”
Once again, the mom swiped the card. The clerk said, “That card has been rejected.” Not to worry. The lady kept her cool and pulled out yet another card. Nope. That one had a zero balance in the debit account. “It looks like I’ll have to run home and get my other card. How long can you keep the groceries here at the check stand?” she asked. “Thirty minutes. You’ve got to be back in thirty minutes, or they put it all away,” came the reply.
By this time, more people had lined up behind us. Some were getting a little anxious about the time being consumed by this one customer in the express lane.
“OK,” said the tattooed lady, “we’ll be back in a few minutes. But I have enough to get this,” she said, as she held up a bag containing a colorful little fish. Her daughter playfully reached for the bag as the mom raised it out of the toddler’s grasp and handed it to the clerk. The bag went across the scanner. The register display showed $15.98 before tax was added. The lady swiped her first card, punched in a code, and was soon walking away with her exotic fish while items that looked to me like essentials remained behind.
Since we had only a few items, we were soon finished with our transaction and on our way out of the door. It turned out that we were only a few yards behind the glamorous gal. It surprised me to see her pile her daughter and fancy fish into a dilapidated old heap that was parked next to our vehicle. The car and driver painted an incongruous picture as the thing sputtered and smoked on its way out of the parking lot.
Inaccuracies are bound to result from judging a person after two minutes of observation. But I couldn’t help wondering what kind of priorities this lady has and how she got to such a state.
The lady didn’t have many items to purchase. We were, after all, in the express lane. Some of the things looked like common necessities, but others would definitely have been considered discretionary items in my household.
“That’ll be 56.37,” said the clerk. The young mom opened her sleek wallet, extracted a card, slid it through the card reader, and typed in some numbers. “I’m sorry,” said the clerk, “but there isn’t enough on that card to cover the purchase.” The young mom seemed only mildly perturbed as she returned the card to her wallet, pulled out another, and said, “Let’s try this one.”
Once again, the mom swiped the card. The clerk said, “That card has been rejected.” Not to worry. The lady kept her cool and pulled out yet another card. Nope. That one had a zero balance in the debit account. “It looks like I’ll have to run home and get my other card. How long can you keep the groceries here at the check stand?” she asked. “Thirty minutes. You’ve got to be back in thirty minutes, or they put it all away,” came the reply.
By this time, more people had lined up behind us. Some were getting a little anxious about the time being consumed by this one customer in the express lane.
“OK,” said the tattooed lady, “we’ll be back in a few minutes. But I have enough to get this,” she said, as she held up a bag containing a colorful little fish. Her daughter playfully reached for the bag as the mom raised it out of the toddler’s grasp and handed it to the clerk. The bag went across the scanner. The register display showed $15.98 before tax was added. The lady swiped her first card, punched in a code, and was soon walking away with her exotic fish while items that looked to me like essentials remained behind.
Since we had only a few items, we were soon finished with our transaction and on our way out of the door. It turned out that we were only a few yards behind the glamorous gal. It surprised me to see her pile her daughter and fancy fish into a dilapidated old heap that was parked next to our vehicle. The car and driver painted an incongruous picture as the thing sputtered and smoked on its way out of the parking lot.
Inaccuracies are bound to result from judging a person after two minutes of observation. But I couldn’t help wondering what kind of priorities this lady has and how she got to such a state.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Ward Phone List Challenges and Opportunities
It wasn’t that long ago that the quickest way to get a message out to other members of the average LDS ward was to ride a horse or walk to a handful of farms. I’m sure that as telephones gained in popularity, people fretted about the loss of face-to-face contact.
When I was a kid, the only phone in the house was a rotary dial model on the wall of the kitchen. When the phone rang, we had no way of knowing who was calling until we picked up the receiver and talked to the caller. It was a really big deal when Dad installed a second rotary dial phone in the basement during my teen years.
We’ve come a long way since those days. My house has phones all over the place. Most of them are cordless and all of them have pushbutton interfaces. You can buy retro rotary dial phones, but I haven’t seen such a beast in a home for a very long time.
When I built my home, few had ever heard the term “landline.” All phone lines were landlines. It wasn’t terribly many years ago that cellular phones were the exclusive domain of the incredibly rich. Those huge handsets were usually integrated with fancy automobiles. Nowadays, tiny cell phones have become so ubiquitous that many are opting to drop their landline accounts completely. Pay phones are disappearing too.
It used to be that everyone in a neighborhood had the same kind of communication technology, but that’s not the case anymore. As I look around my LDS ward, I find people that still have a single landline phone in their home (with no caller-ID), some families that have a landline and a single cell phone that is used only in exceptional cases, those with cell phones but no texting plan, people with full-fledged smartphones, and every other permutation and combination imaginable. This diversity significantly complicates ward communications.
The one commonality here is that every family in my ward has at least one telephone of some kind. They don’t always answer the things (perhaps due to caller-ID) and they don’t always respond to messages left. So even voice calling is a hit-and-miss prospect.
Texting works for some people, especially among the younger crowd. Trent Toone suggests in this MormonTimes article that it’s good to know a person’s texting policy before sending them a text message. (Some people pay for every text message sent or received while others have unlimited texting.) I know that people worry about the loss of personal voice-to-voice interaction, but sometimes texting is the best contact method. One text can be sent to many people, but you have to be careful about generating less-than-useful spam.
As Jacob Hancock notes in this MormonTimes article, a big problem for intra-ward communications is that most ward telephone lists reflect only one phone number per family. For those that have dropped their landlines, the number listed most likely belongs to the husband’s cell phone. That isn’t very helpful if you’re trying to reach a different family member.
We can grouse about technological change, or we can just get with the program and deal with it. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said in April 2007 general conference, nothing “is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.”
Hancock says that the church is working on updating its computer systems to handle the evolving communication paradigm. But the church’s IT folks don’t have the solution ready yet. As soon as you add more data fields to a database, you increase the difficulty of keeping the data current. Not only would it be useful to know whether a phone number belongs to a landline or a cell phone, it would also be helpful to know whether it is acceptable to send text messages to the number. Of course, that would mean even more data to gather and maintain.
In my last post, I discussed my database that tracks participation on Sacrament meeting programs. In that database, I have a phone field that is tied to a house’s address. I also have a phone field for each individual, but I don’t have multiple phone fields for each individual.
It would probably be prudent for me to redesign the database to have a separate table for tracking phone numbers. But as soon as I do that, my data maintenance job will become more complicated. My reports will need to be redesigned too, so that they show the various phone numbers at which a person might be reached. As soon as you display more than one number per person, it becomes important to list the type of number it is and the order of contact preference. It would also be nice to note whether it is OK to send a text to the number or not.
As I wrote above, it makes no sense to gripe about the difficulties inherent in tracking communication points. All you can do is roll with the punches.
When I was a kid, the only phone in the house was a rotary dial model on the wall of the kitchen. When the phone rang, we had no way of knowing who was calling until we picked up the receiver and talked to the caller. It was a really big deal when Dad installed a second rotary dial phone in the basement during my teen years.
We’ve come a long way since those days. My house has phones all over the place. Most of them are cordless and all of them have pushbutton interfaces. You can buy retro rotary dial phones, but I haven’t seen such a beast in a home for a very long time.
When I built my home, few had ever heard the term “landline.” All phone lines were landlines. It wasn’t terribly many years ago that cellular phones were the exclusive domain of the incredibly rich. Those huge handsets were usually integrated with fancy automobiles. Nowadays, tiny cell phones have become so ubiquitous that many are opting to drop their landline accounts completely. Pay phones are disappearing too.
It used to be that everyone in a neighborhood had the same kind of communication technology, but that’s not the case anymore. As I look around my LDS ward, I find people that still have a single landline phone in their home (with no caller-ID), some families that have a landline and a single cell phone that is used only in exceptional cases, those with cell phones but no texting plan, people with full-fledged smartphones, and every other permutation and combination imaginable. This diversity significantly complicates ward communications.
The one commonality here is that every family in my ward has at least one telephone of some kind. They don’t always answer the things (perhaps due to caller-ID) and they don’t always respond to messages left. So even voice calling is a hit-and-miss prospect.
Texting works for some people, especially among the younger crowd. Trent Toone suggests in this MormonTimes article that it’s good to know a person’s texting policy before sending them a text message. (Some people pay for every text message sent or received while others have unlimited texting.) I know that people worry about the loss of personal voice-to-voice interaction, but sometimes texting is the best contact method. One text can be sent to many people, but you have to be careful about generating less-than-useful spam.
As Jacob Hancock notes in this MormonTimes article, a big problem for intra-ward communications is that most ward telephone lists reflect only one phone number per family. For those that have dropped their landlines, the number listed most likely belongs to the husband’s cell phone. That isn’t very helpful if you’re trying to reach a different family member.
We can grouse about technological change, or we can just get with the program and deal with it. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said in April 2007 general conference, nothing “is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.”
Hancock says that the church is working on updating its computer systems to handle the evolving communication paradigm. But the church’s IT folks don’t have the solution ready yet. As soon as you add more data fields to a database, you increase the difficulty of keeping the data current. Not only would it be useful to know whether a phone number belongs to a landline or a cell phone, it would also be helpful to know whether it is acceptable to send text messages to the number. Of course, that would mean even more data to gather and maintain.
In my last post, I discussed my database that tracks participation on Sacrament meeting programs. In that database, I have a phone field that is tied to a house’s address. I also have a phone field for each individual, but I don’t have multiple phone fields for each individual.
It would probably be prudent for me to redesign the database to have a separate table for tracking phone numbers. But as soon as I do that, my data maintenance job will become more complicated. My reports will need to be redesigned too, so that they show the various phone numbers at which a person might be reached. As soon as you display more than one number per person, it becomes important to list the type of number it is and the order of contact preference. It would also be nice to note whether it is OK to send a text to the number or not.
As I wrote above, it makes no sense to gripe about the difficulties inherent in tracking communication points. All you can do is roll with the punches.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Our Sacrament Meeting Database
Years ago when I was called to serve as a member of the bishopric (lay clergy leadership) of my local LDS Church congregation (known as a ward), the need for a way to manage Sacrament meeting worship service programs quickly became clear.
In these weekly congregational meetings, the prayers, ordinances, sermons, and musical numbers are performed by lay members. Any member of the congregation may be invited to participate. In LDS terminology, these invitations are “callings” extended by the congregational leaders — usually members of the bishopric.
As a busy bishopric member, how do you go about arranging for members to fill these callings in an efficient manner? How do you spread the opportunities around so that you don’t rely on the same people over and over while constantly ignoring others? Technology provided part of the answer for our bishopric.
The main members of an LDS ward bishopric are the bishop and his two counselors. Other members include an executive secretary, a ward clerk, and assistant ward clerks. In our bishopric, Sacrament meeting arrangements fell to the bishop and the counselors. The other bishopric members had their own duties to attend to.
Within weeks of beginning my bishopric calling, I devised two tools that proved immensely helpful to us, especially as time went on. First, I built a spreadsheet that listed the dates of the next year of upcoming Sacrament meeting worship services. I had columns for date, main topic, possible participants, musical numbers, the bishopric member that would conduct, and the bishopric member in charge of making the arrangements.
Every three months, we would sit down as a bishopric and develop pretty solid plans for the upcoming three months, somewhat firm plans for the following quarter, and loose plans for the quarter after that. So our spreadsheet consistently covered nine months. While meeting conducting duties shifted among us from month to month, each of us would take a three-month stint to arrange meetings. This three-month window allowed for flexibility to shift program arrangements around to different weeks, as needed.
This worked well for us. Once we had our plans written down, the arrangements weren’t too difficult to make. Occasionally we’d have to revisit the plan when something didn’t work out as originally charted, but it was rarely a big deal. Each of us would take care of extending meeting participation callings for three months. This was followed by a half a year reprieve from that duty.
My ward’s current bishopric manages this on a month-by-month basis. Each bishopric member arranges and conducts all of the meetings for a given month, and then they’ve got two months off from those duties.
The second tool I developed was a MS Access database that tracks who does what in Sacrament meeting. I populated the people table with pertinent data about each ward member. An association table hooks individuals together in families and provides address and contact info. The Sacrament program table lets me plug in the program date, each participant, and the type of service rendered (i.e. prayer, speech, musical number).
I developed a number of database reports that were useful to the bishopric. The main report lists details about prayers, youth talks, adult talks, and musical numbers. Each of these categories lists participants for the past five years ordered both by least recent date and alphabetically. Each list shows how many times each individual has participated in that activity during the past five years. In addition, the prayer and speech categories list available members that have not participated in that activity for the past five years. (I didn’t do that for musical numbers, because only some are capable of public musical performances.)
After wrapping up my stint in the bishopric, I continued to provide monthly printouts to subsequent bishoprics. This has been considered to be very useful. Some that have found out about my database have expressed concern that bishoprics might rely too heavily on the data instead of inspiration in making assignments. While there is some possibility that this could happen, I have not observed such. Access to historical information tends to augment inspiration rather than replace it.
Of course, all databases are only as useful as the data they contain. Like all other databases, this one needs to be updated continually. That task falls to me as a volunteer effort. I enter Sacrament program data weekly. I keep track of move-ins and move-outs, births, deaths, etc. Managing phone numbers is a big enough issue that I will treat the matter in a separate post.
While this kind of database upkeep is relatively easy for me, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. A few years ago, the current bishopric decided to call a guy to take over this duty, since I have other callings that require my time. He was an intelligent man that was devoted to the church.
I developed training materials and loaded the application on this man’s computer. I trained him at his house and over the phone. But after several months, it became clear that this wasn’t a happening thing for him. So I continued doing the job. I think I’d have to develop an entirely new user interface to really make the application work for a non-techie. So far, I haven’t been willing to put that kind of work into it.
My database has evolved over the years to include a variety of information designed to assist the bishopric in developing the quarterly and annual historical reports. But the core remains essentially as I originally designed it.
This Sacrament meeting database has been a boon to my ward’s leaders for a number of years. While I know that the LDS Church is continually updating its computer offerings for local leadership, I haven’t heard about anything on the horizon that would replace my database. So I suspect my application will continue to be used by my ward’s leaders for years to come.
UPDATE 1/14/2017
I have just finished revising the database to be much more streamlined. Since I had become the ward's unofficial historian for many years, I had added some features to the database to assist with ward history. That actually made it pretty messy. It also became clear over time that some database relationships were overly complex.
This new version is much cleaner and simpler. It focuses chiefly on two things: track sacrament meeting program participation and produce useful reports to help ward leaders make decisions about calling people to participate in sacrament meeting programs. I kept a couple of things in the database that aren't essential to this vision. But they are optional and don't have to be used.
Since I haven't upgraded my MS Office subscription, the database was built using MS Access 2010. It should work with any version of MS Access from 2007 onward. It won't work with older MS Access versions without special tools.
Despite simplification, you still need a good working understanding of MS Access to use the database. People with little database savvy will likely find themselves lost. It would be sweet to make the database more user friendly. But I'm just not willing to put that kind of time into it at present.
My current bishopric has me generate the five-year rolling report monthly. I save it as PDF and provide it electronically to each bishopric member. One member of the bishopric asked me about the possibility of making it available as a web page. That would make it much more useful. But I'm simply not willing to deal with the security and confidentiality implications. I don't want to do the work to build a system that would meet Church handbook requirements.
Many have used my database in the past. Some have improved on it. Others have ended up using it as an idea for something that works better for them. I think something along these lines could be helpful to any bishopric that is willing to use it to augment guidance from the Spirit rather than as a way to replace the Spirit.
In these weekly congregational meetings, the prayers, ordinances, sermons, and musical numbers are performed by lay members. Any member of the congregation may be invited to participate. In LDS terminology, these invitations are “callings” extended by the congregational leaders — usually members of the bishopric.
As a busy bishopric member, how do you go about arranging for members to fill these callings in an efficient manner? How do you spread the opportunities around so that you don’t rely on the same people over and over while constantly ignoring others? Technology provided part of the answer for our bishopric.
The main members of an LDS ward bishopric are the bishop and his two counselors. Other members include an executive secretary, a ward clerk, and assistant ward clerks. In our bishopric, Sacrament meeting arrangements fell to the bishop and the counselors. The other bishopric members had their own duties to attend to.
Within weeks of beginning my bishopric calling, I devised two tools that proved immensely helpful to us, especially as time went on. First, I built a spreadsheet that listed the dates of the next year of upcoming Sacrament meeting worship services. I had columns for date, main topic, possible participants, musical numbers, the bishopric member that would conduct, and the bishopric member in charge of making the arrangements.
Every three months, we would sit down as a bishopric and develop pretty solid plans for the upcoming three months, somewhat firm plans for the following quarter, and loose plans for the quarter after that. So our spreadsheet consistently covered nine months. While meeting conducting duties shifted among us from month to month, each of us would take a three-month stint to arrange meetings. This three-month window allowed for flexibility to shift program arrangements around to different weeks, as needed.
This worked well for us. Once we had our plans written down, the arrangements weren’t too difficult to make. Occasionally we’d have to revisit the plan when something didn’t work out as originally charted, but it was rarely a big deal. Each of us would take care of extending meeting participation callings for three months. This was followed by a half a year reprieve from that duty.
My ward’s current bishopric manages this on a month-by-month basis. Each bishopric member arranges and conducts all of the meetings for a given month, and then they’ve got two months off from those duties.
The second tool I developed was a MS Access database that tracks who does what in Sacrament meeting. I populated the people table with pertinent data about each ward member. An association table hooks individuals together in families and provides address and contact info. The Sacrament program table lets me plug in the program date, each participant, and the type of service rendered (i.e. prayer, speech, musical number).
I developed a number of database reports that were useful to the bishopric. The main report lists details about prayers, youth talks, adult talks, and musical numbers. Each of these categories lists participants for the past five years ordered both by least recent date and alphabetically. Each list shows how many times each individual has participated in that activity during the past five years. In addition, the prayer and speech categories list available members that have not participated in that activity for the past five years. (I didn’t do that for musical numbers, because only some are capable of public musical performances.)
After wrapping up my stint in the bishopric, I continued to provide monthly printouts to subsequent bishoprics. This has been considered to be very useful. Some that have found out about my database have expressed concern that bishoprics might rely too heavily on the data instead of inspiration in making assignments. While there is some possibility that this could happen, I have not observed such. Access to historical information tends to augment inspiration rather than replace it.
Of course, all databases are only as useful as the data they contain. Like all other databases, this one needs to be updated continually. That task falls to me as a volunteer effort. I enter Sacrament program data weekly. I keep track of move-ins and move-outs, births, deaths, etc. Managing phone numbers is a big enough issue that I will treat the matter in a separate post.
While this kind of database upkeep is relatively easy for me, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. A few years ago, the current bishopric decided to call a guy to take over this duty, since I have other callings that require my time. He was an intelligent man that was devoted to the church.
I developed training materials and loaded the application on this man’s computer. I trained him at his house and over the phone. But after several months, it became clear that this wasn’t a happening thing for him. So I continued doing the job. I think I’d have to develop an entirely new user interface to really make the application work for a non-techie. So far, I haven’t been willing to put that kind of work into it.
My database has evolved over the years to include a variety of information designed to assist the bishopric in developing the quarterly and annual historical reports. But the core remains essentially as I originally designed it.
This Sacrament meeting database has been a boon to my ward’s leaders for a number of years. While I know that the LDS Church is continually updating its computer offerings for local leadership, I haven’t heard about anything on the horizon that would replace my database. So I suspect my application will continue to be used by my ward’s leaders for years to come.
UPDATE 1/14/2017
I have just finished revising the database to be much more streamlined. Since I had become the ward's unofficial historian for many years, I had added some features to the database to assist with ward history. That actually made it pretty messy. It also became clear over time that some database relationships were overly complex.
This new version is much cleaner and simpler. It focuses chiefly on two things: track sacrament meeting program participation and produce useful reports to help ward leaders make decisions about calling people to participate in sacrament meeting programs. I kept a couple of things in the database that aren't essential to this vision. But they are optional and don't have to be used.
Since I haven't upgraded my MS Office subscription, the database was built using MS Access 2010. It should work with any version of MS Access from 2007 onward. It won't work with older MS Access versions without special tools.
Despite simplification, you still need a good working understanding of MS Access to use the database. People with little database savvy will likely find themselves lost. It would be sweet to make the database more user friendly. But I'm just not willing to put that kind of time into it at present.
My current bishopric has me generate the five-year rolling report monthly. I save it as PDF and provide it electronically to each bishopric member. One member of the bishopric asked me about the possibility of making it available as a web page. That would make it much more useful. But I'm simply not willing to deal with the security and confidentiality implications. I don't want to do the work to build a system that would meet Church handbook requirements.
Many have used my database in the past. Some have improved on it. Others have ended up using it as an idea for something that works better for them. I think something along these lines could be helpful to any bishopric that is willing to use it to augment guidance from the Spirit rather than as a way to replace the Spirit.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Outdoor Activity Hydration Safety
“Our football coaches used to make us do two-a-days in the hot August sunshine with almost no water. They said that water was bad for football workouts,” my co-worker said. Nowadays that would be considered legally actionable abuse.
Awareness of hydration safety has grown immensely in recent years. Dehydration is now recognized as a serious and potentially life threatening problem. My son’s scoutmaster has a “keep it clear” policy. “If your urine isn’t clear,” he tells the boys, “you’re not drinking enough water.”
We have also become much more aware of water purity issues. Years ago when I worked on Boy Scout camp staff, we would head off on hikes with a small canteen, if we took one at all. We wouldn’t go thirsty. We’d drink from any stream that looked clean. After all, how impure could a wilderness water source be? I did this for years without ever becoming ill.
But cases of infection from backcountry water sources have increased dramatically since those days. Human backcountry use has increased. Domestic and wild animals contaminate water too. Even water bubbling up from the highest altitude sources has been found to carry bacteria, viruses, and/or parasites that are potentially harmful to humans and animals.
A couple of years ago, a friend contracted Giardia after drinking from a mountain stream. He said that the common joke about the condition is accurate. He felt so awful that at first that he was afraid he was going to die. When he felt even worse, he was afraid he wasn’t going to die. Fortunately, a trip to the emergency room had him feeling normal within a day.
Sometimes we scare people so badly with tales of water contamination that we circumvent common sense. Dehydration is a much more immediate threat than waterborne infection. If a hiker is out of water and is thirsty, it’s usually better to drink from an available water source, even if it might carry infectious agents. Time is on your side to get treatment for an infection, while refraining from drinking in such a situation might leave you uninfected but dead.
Last week when I accompanied my son’s scout troop on a 16+ mile hike through the Yellowstone backcountry, I started off with more than a gallon of water and a backpacking water filter pump. My son carried nearly a gallon. Although we would encounter a number of water sources on the hike, we carried enough drinking water for ourselves plus extra for others that might be less prepared.
As it happened, hike day turned out to be overcast and cooler. I consumed less than half of my water on the nine-hour trek. But a couple of weeks earlier when my son and I hiked to Lewis Peak, we encountered another hiker at the peak that had already drunk the pint of water she had brought. As I always carry extra water on hikes, I gave her a quart bottle for the return trip. But I thought her to be irresponsible.
I see people carrying all kinds of pricey water bottles. My requirements for a water bottle include size and sturdiness. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to keep from leaking. Liter-sized Gatorade bottles have tended to work out pretty well for me. But I’ve been known to use two-liter soda bottles.
Personally, I don’t care for CamelBak-type water systems for several reasons. They make my back sweat. Consequently, heat transfers from my body to make the water warm quicker. I guess that’s OK if you enjoy a sweaty back and warm water. The bladders tend to have that nasty plastic taste and they leak far too often. To top it off, I don’t really care to sip when I’m hiking or biking. I like to pause, take a deep drink, and then get back on the trail for a goodly distance before pausing again. But, that’s just me.
I’m glad that proper hydration safety is becoming recognized as an important part of all outdoor activities. From personal experience, I can say that you feel a lot better, can go further, and can do more when you are adequately hydrated. It takes some planning to make sure that you take care of this detail. But it’s an effort that pays off.
Awareness of hydration safety has grown immensely in recent years. Dehydration is now recognized as a serious and potentially life threatening problem. My son’s scoutmaster has a “keep it clear” policy. “If your urine isn’t clear,” he tells the boys, “you’re not drinking enough water.”
We have also become much more aware of water purity issues. Years ago when I worked on Boy Scout camp staff, we would head off on hikes with a small canteen, if we took one at all. We wouldn’t go thirsty. We’d drink from any stream that looked clean. After all, how impure could a wilderness water source be? I did this for years without ever becoming ill.
But cases of infection from backcountry water sources have increased dramatically since those days. Human backcountry use has increased. Domestic and wild animals contaminate water too. Even water bubbling up from the highest altitude sources has been found to carry bacteria, viruses, and/or parasites that are potentially harmful to humans and animals.
A couple of years ago, a friend contracted Giardia after drinking from a mountain stream. He said that the common joke about the condition is accurate. He felt so awful that at first that he was afraid he was going to die. When he felt even worse, he was afraid he wasn’t going to die. Fortunately, a trip to the emergency room had him feeling normal within a day.
Sometimes we scare people so badly with tales of water contamination that we circumvent common sense. Dehydration is a much more immediate threat than waterborne infection. If a hiker is out of water and is thirsty, it’s usually better to drink from an available water source, even if it might carry infectious agents. Time is on your side to get treatment for an infection, while refraining from drinking in such a situation might leave you uninfected but dead.
Last week when I accompanied my son’s scout troop on a 16+ mile hike through the Yellowstone backcountry, I started off with more than a gallon of water and a backpacking water filter pump. My son carried nearly a gallon. Although we would encounter a number of water sources on the hike, we carried enough drinking water for ourselves plus extra for others that might be less prepared.
As it happened, hike day turned out to be overcast and cooler. I consumed less than half of my water on the nine-hour trek. But a couple of weeks earlier when my son and I hiked to Lewis Peak, we encountered another hiker at the peak that had already drunk the pint of water she had brought. As I always carry extra water on hikes, I gave her a quart bottle for the return trip. But I thought her to be irresponsible.
I see people carrying all kinds of pricey water bottles. My requirements for a water bottle include size and sturdiness. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to keep from leaking. Liter-sized Gatorade bottles have tended to work out pretty well for me. But I’ve been known to use two-liter soda bottles.
Personally, I don’t care for CamelBak-type water systems for several reasons. They make my back sweat. Consequently, heat transfers from my body to make the water warm quicker. I guess that’s OK if you enjoy a sweaty back and warm water. The bladders tend to have that nasty plastic taste and they leak far too often. To top it off, I don’t really care to sip when I’m hiking or biking. I like to pause, take a deep drink, and then get back on the trail for a goodly distance before pausing again. But, that’s just me.
I’m glad that proper hydration safety is becoming recognized as an important part of all outdoor activities. From personal experience, I can say that you feel a lot better, can go further, and can do more when you are adequately hydrated. It takes some planning to make sure that you take care of this detail. But it’s an effort that pays off.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I Never Knew My Grandpa (part 2)
In my last post I wrote about what happened when my paternal grandfather passed away. That got me to thinking about my maternal grandfather, who passed away a few months before I was born. As I pondered my Grandpa, I came to realize that I have never had much respect for the man; a realization that rather surprised me.
Decades after his passing, it turns out that I really don’t know much about Grandpa. And most of what I do know seems to emphasize differences rather than resemblances. For example, I know that Grandpa loved to hunt and fish. He was never overly concerned about governmentally established seasons, limits, and licensing regarding these activities. While I have grown to enjoy hiking and camping, I am not and never have been much of a hunter or angler. It’s just not my thing.
I think that I have probably harbored a lifelong resentment of Grandpa because he had the audacity to die before I could spend any time with him in this life. Somehow this left me feeling deprived as a child. To top it off, he effectively smoked himself to death because he was apparently too addicted to give up tobacco. In my young mind, Grandpa’s irresponsibility denied me the opportunity to associate with him. It is likely that I have never quite gotten over this resentment.
A decade ago at a family reunion, one of my older cousins related the story of how he and a couple of my other cousins decided to try smoking tobacco out behind Grandpa’s barn when they were quite young. He said that Grandpa caught them and gave them the severest tongue lashing he had ever experienced. Grandpa explained to them how horribly addicting tobacco was and how much he wished he could rid himself of the habit.
My grandparents started out in Illinois. Like many of their era, they migrated westward over time. After spending a number of years in Nebraska, they ended up in a sparsely populated region of northern Wyoming. They were always farmers. Grandpa supplemented this with other trades, including working in the oil fields. He was kind of short and wiry. Someone once said he was a good worker.
Mom has never told me a whole lot about her father. When I was young, the only pictures I saw of Grandpa depicted him dying of cancer. Other pictures surfaced when I was a young adult (probably because my uncle was a professional photographer). Eventually Mom hung an enlarged and framed copy of her parents’ wedding certificate on the wall of her bedroom. The certificate included photos of Grandma and Grandpa in their prime. They made a handsome couple.
My Dad came from Germany, where the frontier had been eradicated centuries earlier. After he and Mom wed, they drove up to northern Wyoming to see her parents. Dad was stunned by the drive. It is one thing to see the road on a map and an entirely different thing to actually traverse hundreds of miles of desolate prairies. Dad had never even imagined that such vast stretches of bleakness existed.
Dad was shocked to see his new in-laws’ primitive living conditions. They lived in a rundown “tar paper shack,” he said. The only decent furnishings in the place had been gifts from my Mom. Their “farm” was a rather ramshackle arrangement. Nobody had lived like that in Germany for centuries. Grandpa was older and in declining health by this time. Dad’s observation was that the man did nothing but sit around the house reading cowboy novels and smoking.
Mom said that Dad’s descriptions were exaggerations, probably amplified by the fact that he was used to living in a fairly urbanized culture. But then a few years ago, my uncle found and distributed photographs of the family from when Mom was young. Mom didn’t like the photos of the family standing in front of the old house. “It looks like the Grapes of Wrath,” she said. “It WAS the Grapes of Wrath,” Dad replied.
This is about the extent of my knowledge of Grandpa. I have little awareness of his better qualities. On the other hand, Grandpa helped raise my Mom, whom I greatly love and respect. Most of Mom’s siblings have passed on, but I admire some of their qualities too. And I definitely think highly of the character of some of their children, who are my cousins. Grandpa must have had something to do with this.
We all have our positive and negative traits. I shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss Grandpa for his perceived faults. I am not called to be his judge. Perhaps some of my finest characteristics are derived from the way he raised his family. And no matter what, he’s still my Grandpa. Perhaps the opportunity will arise for me to get to know him in the next life.
Decades after his passing, it turns out that I really don’t know much about Grandpa. And most of what I do know seems to emphasize differences rather than resemblances. For example, I know that Grandpa loved to hunt and fish. He was never overly concerned about governmentally established seasons, limits, and licensing regarding these activities. While I have grown to enjoy hiking and camping, I am not and never have been much of a hunter or angler. It’s just not my thing.
I think that I have probably harbored a lifelong resentment of Grandpa because he had the audacity to die before I could spend any time with him in this life. Somehow this left me feeling deprived as a child. To top it off, he effectively smoked himself to death because he was apparently too addicted to give up tobacco. In my young mind, Grandpa’s irresponsibility denied me the opportunity to associate with him. It is likely that I have never quite gotten over this resentment.
A decade ago at a family reunion, one of my older cousins related the story of how he and a couple of my other cousins decided to try smoking tobacco out behind Grandpa’s barn when they were quite young. He said that Grandpa caught them and gave them the severest tongue lashing he had ever experienced. Grandpa explained to them how horribly addicting tobacco was and how much he wished he could rid himself of the habit.
My grandparents started out in Illinois. Like many of their era, they migrated westward over time. After spending a number of years in Nebraska, they ended up in a sparsely populated region of northern Wyoming. They were always farmers. Grandpa supplemented this with other trades, including working in the oil fields. He was kind of short and wiry. Someone once said he was a good worker.
Mom has never told me a whole lot about her father. When I was young, the only pictures I saw of Grandpa depicted him dying of cancer. Other pictures surfaced when I was a young adult (probably because my uncle was a professional photographer). Eventually Mom hung an enlarged and framed copy of her parents’ wedding certificate on the wall of her bedroom. The certificate included photos of Grandma and Grandpa in their prime. They made a handsome couple.
My Dad came from Germany, where the frontier had been eradicated centuries earlier. After he and Mom wed, they drove up to northern Wyoming to see her parents. Dad was stunned by the drive. It is one thing to see the road on a map and an entirely different thing to actually traverse hundreds of miles of desolate prairies. Dad had never even imagined that such vast stretches of bleakness existed.
Dad was shocked to see his new in-laws’ primitive living conditions. They lived in a rundown “tar paper shack,” he said. The only decent furnishings in the place had been gifts from my Mom. Their “farm” was a rather ramshackle arrangement. Nobody had lived like that in Germany for centuries. Grandpa was older and in declining health by this time. Dad’s observation was that the man did nothing but sit around the house reading cowboy novels and smoking.
Mom said that Dad’s descriptions were exaggerations, probably amplified by the fact that he was used to living in a fairly urbanized culture. But then a few years ago, my uncle found and distributed photographs of the family from when Mom was young. Mom didn’t like the photos of the family standing in front of the old house. “It looks like the Grapes of Wrath,” she said. “It WAS the Grapes of Wrath,” Dad replied.
This is about the extent of my knowledge of Grandpa. I have little awareness of his better qualities. On the other hand, Grandpa helped raise my Mom, whom I greatly love and respect. Most of Mom’s siblings have passed on, but I admire some of their qualities too. And I definitely think highly of the character of some of their children, who are my cousins. Grandpa must have had something to do with this.
We all have our positive and negative traits. I shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss Grandpa for his perceived faults. I am not called to be his judge. Perhaps some of my finest characteristics are derived from the way he raised his family. And no matter what, he’s still my Grandpa. Perhaps the opportunity will arise for me to get to know him in the next life.
I Never Knew My Grandpa
I never met either of my grandfathers. One died of cancer a few months before I was born. The other lived in Germany. When I was 14, my German grandpa (“Opa”) died after having suffered a stroke. I had chatted briefly with him on the phone a few times over the years, but I had never met him.
Back in those days, communication with Europe was far more expensive than it is today. We would generally talk on the phone with my German grandparents on Christmas and maybe a couple of other times each year. But my German was pretty rudimentary and my grandparents spoke no English. So the phone conversations mostly involved my parents.
Travel to Europe was pretty expensive back then as well. After years of saving, my parents finally managed to scrape together enough money to visit the relatives in Germany when I was eight. This was made possible thanks to good neighbors that took each of us kids into their homes for several weeks while my parents were away.
Over the next few years, my parents communicated fairly regularly with the German family members; mostly by mail, but also by phone calls. Still, it was not uncommon for lapses in communication to extend several months at a time. Given our family’s budget, travel to Germany was out of the question.
Late in my 15th summer, my Dad received a letter from his sister. She explained that my Opa had passed away about a month earlier. Dad was stunned. He couldn’t understand why nobody had bothered to call him. He would have moved heaven and earth to attend the funeral, but he didn’t even know about it.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Dad’s location in America seemed to work pretty well with regard to family relationships. He always said that he “felt like a fish out of water” in his own family and that moving to America had improved the relationship. In other words, he wasn’t that close with his parents and siblings.
But the failure of Dad’s mother and siblings to immediately notify him of his own father’s death left him with a terrible sense of betrayal. As is the common nature of grief, I’m sure that this was mingled with a certain amount of guilt. As a self absorbed and callow teenager, I didn’t appreciate what Dad was going through. I figured that my 75-year-old Opa was so ancient that he was bound to kick off sooner or later. What was the big deal? (By the way, 75 no longer looks so terribly old to me.)
I think you only really gain some comprehension of these kinds of things by experiencing them yourself. While most of us expect to deal with the deaths of our parents, their unexpected passing can leave us grappling with the raw edge of grief. The standard steps in the grieving process necessarily follow at their own pace.
On the other hand, I watched Dad decline for a year and a half until he mercifully passed away. By that time, most of the family members had already been going through the stages of grief for some time. We were prepared for the impending closure.
When we met with the funeral director a short time after Dad’s body was picked up, we already had the obituary written and the funeral program planned. The director noted that we seemed relatively relaxed about the affair. But I think we had all simply been through most of the grieving process by then.
About three years after Opa passed away, my brother finished serving a mission for the LDS Church in another part of Germany. He then traveled and spent some time with our German relatives. They loved it, especially given the fact that my brother could speak fluent German. This helped heal some of the rift that existed between Dad and his family.
A couple of years later, another brother wrapped up his mission in Finland. He too wanted to visit our German relatives. But he was fluent in Finnish, not German. So Mom and Dad arranged to travel to Germany to be with him. It had been a dozen years since their previous visit. My youngest brother went along too. This visit helped further repair relations. By the time I visited two years later, following my mission to Norway, family relationships were in pretty good shape.
Family structures are a deeply important part of our societies. Most of us sense a deep attachment to our family members, even if there are significant differences between us. I never knew either of my grandfathers. Yet, because of the children that they raised, I feel like I know them somewhat. And I still feel a profound sense of connection with them.
Back in those days, communication with Europe was far more expensive than it is today. We would generally talk on the phone with my German grandparents on Christmas and maybe a couple of other times each year. But my German was pretty rudimentary and my grandparents spoke no English. So the phone conversations mostly involved my parents.
Travel to Europe was pretty expensive back then as well. After years of saving, my parents finally managed to scrape together enough money to visit the relatives in Germany when I was eight. This was made possible thanks to good neighbors that took each of us kids into their homes for several weeks while my parents were away.
Over the next few years, my parents communicated fairly regularly with the German family members; mostly by mail, but also by phone calls. Still, it was not uncommon for lapses in communication to extend several months at a time. Given our family’s budget, travel to Germany was out of the question.
Late in my 15th summer, my Dad received a letter from his sister. She explained that my Opa had passed away about a month earlier. Dad was stunned. He couldn’t understand why nobody had bothered to call him. He would have moved heaven and earth to attend the funeral, but he didn’t even know about it.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Dad’s location in America seemed to work pretty well with regard to family relationships. He always said that he “felt like a fish out of water” in his own family and that moving to America had improved the relationship. In other words, he wasn’t that close with his parents and siblings.
But the failure of Dad’s mother and siblings to immediately notify him of his own father’s death left him with a terrible sense of betrayal. As is the common nature of grief, I’m sure that this was mingled with a certain amount of guilt. As a self absorbed and callow teenager, I didn’t appreciate what Dad was going through. I figured that my 75-year-old Opa was so ancient that he was bound to kick off sooner or later. What was the big deal? (By the way, 75 no longer looks so terribly old to me.)
I think you only really gain some comprehension of these kinds of things by experiencing them yourself. While most of us expect to deal with the deaths of our parents, their unexpected passing can leave us grappling with the raw edge of grief. The standard steps in the grieving process necessarily follow at their own pace.
On the other hand, I watched Dad decline for a year and a half until he mercifully passed away. By that time, most of the family members had already been going through the stages of grief for some time. We were prepared for the impending closure.
When we met with the funeral director a short time after Dad’s body was picked up, we already had the obituary written and the funeral program planned. The director noted that we seemed relatively relaxed about the affair. But I think we had all simply been through most of the grieving process by then.
About three years after Opa passed away, my brother finished serving a mission for the LDS Church in another part of Germany. He then traveled and spent some time with our German relatives. They loved it, especially given the fact that my brother could speak fluent German. This helped heal some of the rift that existed between Dad and his family.
A couple of years later, another brother wrapped up his mission in Finland. He too wanted to visit our German relatives. But he was fluent in Finnish, not German. So Mom and Dad arranged to travel to Germany to be with him. It had been a dozen years since their previous visit. My youngest brother went along too. This visit helped further repair relations. By the time I visited two years later, following my mission to Norway, family relationships were in pretty good shape.
Family structures are a deeply important part of our societies. Most of us sense a deep attachment to our family members, even if there are significant differences between us. I never knew either of my grandfathers. Yet, because of the children that they raised, I feel like I know them somewhat. And I still feel a profound sense of connection with them.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sacrificing for the Best Week
“This has pretty much been the best week of my life,” my son said as we sat around the campfire one night late last week. We had left in the dark early on Monday morning to drive to Camp Loll, a Boy Scout camp sandwiched in the wilderness between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. My son’s comment made me realize that taking a week of precious vacation time to live in the dirt and sleep on the ground at scout camp was definitely worth the sacrifice.
I have a deep fondness for Camp Loll. It was the first scout camp that I attended as a 12-year-old boy. As an older teen, I worked on staff at the camp for a couple of years. As an adult, I have frequently returned to the place with scout troops, to volunteer my labor, or just to visit. No matter when I visit, I always encounter old friends and find opportunities to make new friends.
Since I sometimes haul family members with me on my visits to Camp Loll, last week was not my son’s first adventure there. But it was the first time he had spent an entire week at the camp with his peers in his scout troop. And that makes all the difference.
It would have been difficult to get better weather conditions than we had at camp last week. Monday and Tuesday were spectacularly beautiful days. The sunny and cloudless sky was such a deep blue hue that it seemed stunning every time I looked up through the towering spruce trees. Friday and Saturday shared these same characteristics.
It was overcast and just a little rainy on Wednesday when we trekked 16 miles through the Yellowstone back country to visit Union Falls, a spectacular phenomenon that is viewed by only a minute fraction of those that visit the park. But temperatures were great for hiking, and the trails never got muddy. Thursday was filled with variable periods of clouds and sun, but it was never unpleasant. It was almost a perfect weather week.
We started our week at Camp Loll by setting up our campsite and then undertaking the BSA swim check in the infamously icy cold waters of Lake of the Woods. My son is a pretty good swimmer and recently completed a junior lifeguarding course. Showing off for his friends, he swam 200 yards instead of the required 100 yards.
During our battles with the notoriously fierce mosquitoes of the region, my son sustained over 120 bites. I had my share of bites, but I did better at protecting myself with repellant and thicker clothing. I was fortunate enough to avoid bites from the nasty horseflies, which were just starting to proliferate last week. We did, however, succeed in killing a number of those relatively slow and bulky insects.
I was proud of my son as I watched him complete the challenging Climbing merit badge in record time. He also completed one of the four historical merit badges that have been brought back for this year to celebrate the BSA’s centennial, as well as a couple of other challenging badges. (He already has all of the badges he needs to achieve the Eagle rank.)
One of the main facets of spending a week at scout camp is for a boy to interface with his peers in a shared camping experience. It is difficult to place a value on the development of camaraderie afforded by this environment.
Of additional value is interacting with hundreds of boys from other troops. The boys at camp last week spanned various social and economic classes. One troop was from Texas. Another was from Las Vegas. But all these distinctions largely fell away when the boys were participating in merit badge classes and activities together.
Yet another value taught through this kind of experience is appreciation for our wilderness and back country resources. I will be among the first to admit that Boy Scout units have a well earned reputation for careless use of these resources. But we’ve been steadily improving since my early camping days, as we purposefully work to train and educate leaders and youth in proper care of our precious wilderness.
Nothing helps this education process more than spending a week camping in bear country, where mistakes can threaten life and limb. Doing this helps young Americans learn to respect rather than fear the wilderness. While it may take a generation to root out retrograde practices, actual wilderness experience is an unsurpassed teaching tool.
One BSA value that was on full display last week was the proud and unabashed belief in American exceptionalism. Patriotism was purposefully encouraged and love of country was decisively evoked. Youth and adults came away with an enhanced appreciation for the blessings derived from being Americans.
I also like to think that part of my son’s enjoyment of his week at camp was the fact that his Dad was there to share it with him. I viscerally sense the pros and cons of having a parent at camp with his adolescent child. After all, the kid needs to be learning to operate on his own outside of the parent’s direct influence.
On the other hand, what a wonderful thing for a child to know that a parent cares enough to share this kind of experience with him. There’s no perfect answer to this dilemma. I chose to share this experience with my son, as I have done with his older brothers. It was the right choice for us.
As a side note, I wore an old pair of cheap Wal-Mart hiking boots throughout the week. I think I paid $16 for them five or six years ago. I stopped wearing them a couple of years ago when I got a much nicer and more rugged pair of waterproof boots. At an event a couple of months ago, I sensed my feet getting tired in the better boots, so I mostly used the old boots last week. The cheap old boots along with good hiking socks wore well, but I can tell that they will soon need to be permanently retired.
We returned home on Saturday a little sunburned, a little mosquito-bitten, a little sore, a little weary, and a little dirty. But for my son, the week had been a little bit of heaven. I’m glad I was part of it.
I have a deep fondness for Camp Loll. It was the first scout camp that I attended as a 12-year-old boy. As an older teen, I worked on staff at the camp for a couple of years. As an adult, I have frequently returned to the place with scout troops, to volunteer my labor, or just to visit. No matter when I visit, I always encounter old friends and find opportunities to make new friends.
Since I sometimes haul family members with me on my visits to Camp Loll, last week was not my son’s first adventure there. But it was the first time he had spent an entire week at the camp with his peers in his scout troop. And that makes all the difference.
It would have been difficult to get better weather conditions than we had at camp last week. Monday and Tuesday were spectacularly beautiful days. The sunny and cloudless sky was such a deep blue hue that it seemed stunning every time I looked up through the towering spruce trees. Friday and Saturday shared these same characteristics.
It was overcast and just a little rainy on Wednesday when we trekked 16 miles through the Yellowstone back country to visit Union Falls, a spectacular phenomenon that is viewed by only a minute fraction of those that visit the park. But temperatures were great for hiking, and the trails never got muddy. Thursday was filled with variable periods of clouds and sun, but it was never unpleasant. It was almost a perfect weather week.
We started our week at Camp Loll by setting up our campsite and then undertaking the BSA swim check in the infamously icy cold waters of Lake of the Woods. My son is a pretty good swimmer and recently completed a junior lifeguarding course. Showing off for his friends, he swam 200 yards instead of the required 100 yards.
During our battles with the notoriously fierce mosquitoes of the region, my son sustained over 120 bites. I had my share of bites, but I did better at protecting myself with repellant and thicker clothing. I was fortunate enough to avoid bites from the nasty horseflies, which were just starting to proliferate last week. We did, however, succeed in killing a number of those relatively slow and bulky insects.
I was proud of my son as I watched him complete the challenging Climbing merit badge in record time. He also completed one of the four historical merit badges that have been brought back for this year to celebrate the BSA’s centennial, as well as a couple of other challenging badges. (He already has all of the badges he needs to achieve the Eagle rank.)
One of the main facets of spending a week at scout camp is for a boy to interface with his peers in a shared camping experience. It is difficult to place a value on the development of camaraderie afforded by this environment.
Of additional value is interacting with hundreds of boys from other troops. The boys at camp last week spanned various social and economic classes. One troop was from Texas. Another was from Las Vegas. But all these distinctions largely fell away when the boys were participating in merit badge classes and activities together.
Yet another value taught through this kind of experience is appreciation for our wilderness and back country resources. I will be among the first to admit that Boy Scout units have a well earned reputation for careless use of these resources. But we’ve been steadily improving since my early camping days, as we purposefully work to train and educate leaders and youth in proper care of our precious wilderness.
Nothing helps this education process more than spending a week camping in bear country, where mistakes can threaten life and limb. Doing this helps young Americans learn to respect rather than fear the wilderness. While it may take a generation to root out retrograde practices, actual wilderness experience is an unsurpassed teaching tool.
One BSA value that was on full display last week was the proud and unabashed belief in American exceptionalism. Patriotism was purposefully encouraged and love of country was decisively evoked. Youth and adults came away with an enhanced appreciation for the blessings derived from being Americans.
I also like to think that part of my son’s enjoyment of his week at camp was the fact that his Dad was there to share it with him. I viscerally sense the pros and cons of having a parent at camp with his adolescent child. After all, the kid needs to be learning to operate on his own outside of the parent’s direct influence.
On the other hand, what a wonderful thing for a child to know that a parent cares enough to share this kind of experience with him. There’s no perfect answer to this dilemma. I chose to share this experience with my son, as I have done with his older brothers. It was the right choice for us.
As a side note, I wore an old pair of cheap Wal-Mart hiking boots throughout the week. I think I paid $16 for them five or six years ago. I stopped wearing them a couple of years ago when I got a much nicer and more rugged pair of waterproof boots. At an event a couple of months ago, I sensed my feet getting tired in the better boots, so I mostly used the old boots last week. The cheap old boots along with good hiking socks wore well, but I can tell that they will soon need to be permanently retired.
We returned home on Saturday a little sunburned, a little mosquito-bitten, a little sore, a little weary, and a little dirty. But for my son, the week had been a little bit of heaven. I’m glad I was part of it.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
It's Time to Stop Goody Tossing at the Parade
One of the great things about living in North Ogden is my city’s annual Independence Day celebration. While the size of the celebration has grown over my lifetime, it still enjoys a hometown feeling.
Each year we make an effort to get to the parade. Both sides of the main street are lined with viewers. There are usually about 100-120 entries in the parade. You see the same kind of entries year after year: a Boy Scout troop carrying the American Flag, the city’s emergency vehicles, the high school band, local politicians, vintage cars, high school and junior high sports teams and cheerleaders, small businesses, church groups, horse riders, local clubs, etc.
There used to always be a Shriner chapter that had a band playing Middle Eastern music and men driving these crazy little cars. I haven’t seen them for a few years. A few entries come and go each year. There are fewer horse groups than when I was a kid, but the essential nature of the parade entries is not much different than it was decades ago.
Over the past two decades, however, I have noticed a marked increase in one parade activity that used to be rare. Years ago, small pieces of candy would occasionally be tossed from parade entries to viewers on the side of the road. When my oldest kids were young, a kid at the parade might hope to get two or three pieces of some kind of taffy.
The practice of throwing treats to the crowd at the parade has steadily proliferated over the years. Nowadays it is rare to see a parade entry that is not tossing some kind of goody into the crowd. It’s mostly candy, but there are also T-shirts, balls, flying discs, refrigerator magnets, popsicles, water bottles, coupons, and more.
No doubt this practice adds to the fun and excitement of the event for many parade goers. But it has spawned crowd behavior that is problematic. In days of yore, children used to occasionally dash a few feet from the curb to gather candy on the pavement. Now, crowds of children spanning the entire mile-long route surge further and further into the road each year. Carrying bags like Halloween trick-or-treaters, they sometimes go right up to the passing vehicles.
This is an injury waiting to happen. It’s amazing that we have not yet experienced a headline grabbing incident as the result of this practice. I guess it’s a good thing that there are emergency responders in the parade, but the issue should never have reached this level.
In an effort to counteract this increasing problem, the city this year enlisted a number of motorcycle and bicycle cops and an entire LDS stake of volunteers clad in emergency vests. While the cops rode up and down the parade route encouraging people to stay back, the volunteers on foot each patrolled a segment of about 50 feet of road front.
The police officers and the volunteers were overcome by the crowd simply ignoring them. Children, often with the encouragement of their parents or even with their parents in tow, surged around the would-be protectors to approach the goody distributors.
Beside the safety issue presented by the goody distribution practice, the parade viewing experience is marred for those that play by the rules and stay back at the curb. Their view of the parade is now obstructed by throngs of youth standing in the street in front of them.
In recent years, the city has developed rules for parade entrants and viewers. Officially, entrants are not supposed to toss anything to the crowd. It’s OK for them to have people on foot that walk along and hand items to parade attendees. But nobody is supposed to toss anything. Despite putting this rule on paper, it has never been enforced in any meaningful way.
I like to have fun as much as the next guy. And I like it when the children have fun. But the goody tossing at our local parade has reached the point that it is out of control. I can think of only two ways to effectively deal with this issue. They could be implemented separately or together. But it is unfortunate that either should be needed at all.
The least expensive method is to play the heavy. Simply prohibit the practice of distributing anything of any kind by parade entrants. Create an actual statute and make it clear to entrants that it will be strictly enforced. Then have police along the route actually issue citations to violators. This may seem nasty and harsh to parade goers. But what else are you going to do?
The city could also do what many other cities have done: incur the expense of putting up crowd barriers all along the route. In most places, this consists of stringing bright colored rope held up by temporary stanchions. It’s amazing how well a flimsy physical barrier of this nature actually works.
But if crowd barriers are put up without eliminating goody tossing, it will do little to solve the visibility problem. Crowds of standing people would push up against the barriers, obstructing the view of those behind them. The surging crowds would also endanger the safety of the small children among them.
It seems that crowd barriers would be unnecessary in North Ogden if the practice of distributing items from parade entrants were eliminated. How many would venture out into the street if there were no goodies to be gathered? Most would simply sit on the sidelines like they used to years ago. At any rate, prohibition of the practice could be tried first before spending anything on crowd barriers.
Are there other suggestions for feasible solutions to this problem?
Each year we make an effort to get to the parade. Both sides of the main street are lined with viewers. There are usually about 100-120 entries in the parade. You see the same kind of entries year after year: a Boy Scout troop carrying the American Flag, the city’s emergency vehicles, the high school band, local politicians, vintage cars, high school and junior high sports teams and cheerleaders, small businesses, church groups, horse riders, local clubs, etc.
There used to always be a Shriner chapter that had a band playing Middle Eastern music and men driving these crazy little cars. I haven’t seen them for a few years. A few entries come and go each year. There are fewer horse groups than when I was a kid, but the essential nature of the parade entries is not much different than it was decades ago.
Over the past two decades, however, I have noticed a marked increase in one parade activity that used to be rare. Years ago, small pieces of candy would occasionally be tossed from parade entries to viewers on the side of the road. When my oldest kids were young, a kid at the parade might hope to get two or three pieces of some kind of taffy.
The practice of throwing treats to the crowd at the parade has steadily proliferated over the years. Nowadays it is rare to see a parade entry that is not tossing some kind of goody into the crowd. It’s mostly candy, but there are also T-shirts, balls, flying discs, refrigerator magnets, popsicles, water bottles, coupons, and more.
No doubt this practice adds to the fun and excitement of the event for many parade goers. But it has spawned crowd behavior that is problematic. In days of yore, children used to occasionally dash a few feet from the curb to gather candy on the pavement. Now, crowds of children spanning the entire mile-long route surge further and further into the road each year. Carrying bags like Halloween trick-or-treaters, they sometimes go right up to the passing vehicles.
This is an injury waiting to happen. It’s amazing that we have not yet experienced a headline grabbing incident as the result of this practice. I guess it’s a good thing that there are emergency responders in the parade, but the issue should never have reached this level.
In an effort to counteract this increasing problem, the city this year enlisted a number of motorcycle and bicycle cops and an entire LDS stake of volunteers clad in emergency vests. While the cops rode up and down the parade route encouraging people to stay back, the volunteers on foot each patrolled a segment of about 50 feet of road front.
The police officers and the volunteers were overcome by the crowd simply ignoring them. Children, often with the encouragement of their parents or even with their parents in tow, surged around the would-be protectors to approach the goody distributors.
Beside the safety issue presented by the goody distribution practice, the parade viewing experience is marred for those that play by the rules and stay back at the curb. Their view of the parade is now obstructed by throngs of youth standing in the street in front of them.
In recent years, the city has developed rules for parade entrants and viewers. Officially, entrants are not supposed to toss anything to the crowd. It’s OK for them to have people on foot that walk along and hand items to parade attendees. But nobody is supposed to toss anything. Despite putting this rule on paper, it has never been enforced in any meaningful way.
I like to have fun as much as the next guy. And I like it when the children have fun. But the goody tossing at our local parade has reached the point that it is out of control. I can think of only two ways to effectively deal with this issue. They could be implemented separately or together. But it is unfortunate that either should be needed at all.
The least expensive method is to play the heavy. Simply prohibit the practice of distributing anything of any kind by parade entrants. Create an actual statute and make it clear to entrants that it will be strictly enforced. Then have police along the route actually issue citations to violators. This may seem nasty and harsh to parade goers. But what else are you going to do?
The city could also do what many other cities have done: incur the expense of putting up crowd barriers all along the route. In most places, this consists of stringing bright colored rope held up by temporary stanchions. It’s amazing how well a flimsy physical barrier of this nature actually works.
But if crowd barriers are put up without eliminating goody tossing, it will do little to solve the visibility problem. Crowds of standing people would push up against the barriers, obstructing the view of those behind them. The surging crowds would also endanger the safety of the small children among them.
It seems that crowd barriers would be unnecessary in North Ogden if the practice of distributing items from parade entrants were eliminated. How many would venture out into the street if there were no goodies to be gathered? Most would simply sit on the sidelines like they used to years ago. At any rate, prohibition of the practice could be tried first before spending anything on crowd barriers.
Are there other suggestions for feasible solutions to this problem?
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Visit to Utah's Only Real Amusement Park
Our family recently spent a day at the Lagoon amusement park. This was not a new adventure. Lagoon has been around for more than a century and I’ve been visiting the place since I was a little kid.
Back in those days they had no all-day passes. People came and went from the park at will. But everything you there did cost money. You’d buy a sheet of tickets. Each ride had a sign stating the number of tickets required. (That tradition continues to this day, despite the fact that it means nothing under the current system.)
After waiting in line, you’d rip off the specified number of tickets, hand them to the attendant, and climb on the ride. As kids we memorized the phrase uttered by almost all ride operators before starting the contraption: “Keep your arms, head, and legs inside the car at all times and have fun.”
Some of my favorite attractions from my younger days are long gone. I spent plenty of time at the Fun House, with its entry maze, tilted room, spinning tunnel, high slides, spinning disc, and spinning whirlpool. I was scared beyond belief the first time I actually rode the Roll-O-Plane. I rode the aging ride a few years ago, a few months before the frame cracked and the ride was deemed irreparable.
They used to have these swinging cages that were run by human power. I thought those were cool. There was the old rocket ride that sat where the Turn of the Century swings are today, and the paddle boats on the lake. The Hammer was fun. Or at least it was fun to get off and say that you’d ridden it. The old Haunted Shack walk-through spook alley was kind of fun.
When I was a teenager, they had a ride that was like a big spinning canister. You’d stand against the wall. The ride would spin faster and faster until centrifugal force pinned you against the wall. Then the floor would drop away and you’d be suspended against the wall. I liked the ride, but I guess it was too dangerous. I used to enjoy playing SkeeBall on the midway.
I’m glad that some attractions are gone. I hated those hand powered rail devices that were reminiscent of tricycles. I’d always get queasy when riding the Magic Carpet. It was a good thing that they eventually closed down the old swimming pool. It might have been grand in the 1940s, but it was decrepit by the time it closed. Lagoon-A-Beach water park is far better.
Today’s Wild Mouse is much better than the one it replaced. Today’s gas-powered go-carts are a far cry from the old center-rail gas-powered cars. But you have to pay extra to drive or ride in the newer go-carts. I also worry about the workers there. The fumes produced by the car engines are significant.
Many attractions from my younger days are still there. The old “white” roller coaster is still somewhat harrowing to ride because it is so bumpy. Some of today’s kiddie rides are the same ones I rode as a child.
Some attractions have changed over the years — some for the better and some less so. The kiddie land is much better than it was years ago. Pioneer Village has been improved. But some of what I thought were the best features of Dracula’s Castle have been replaced by much more benign elements. They used to do great street shows in Pioneer Village but you never see those anymore.
For the last dozen or so years, Lagoon has focused on fairly significant annual improvements. Some of the rides added during this time are intense. The Wicked coaster, installed in 2007, is highly innovative and exhilarating — and/or terrifying, depending on your point of view.
The interactive fountain was a good addition. Unlike when I was a kid, Lagoon now has so many attractions designed to get you wet that you’d be well advised to dress in anticipation of this before heading off to the park.
One of my fondest memories is when my grandmother rode the Colossus while visiting from Germany. She was in her 80s at the time. As instructed, she removed her glasses before the ride started. After we got off the ride, my brother asked her how she liked going upside down twice. “We were upside down?!” she exclaimed. “But I didn’t see it!” she complained. She had to ride again. Only this time she firmly held her spectacles in place so that she could see what was happening. She was thrilled.
Going to Lagoon with the family is easier for us than it used to be, now that we no longer have toddlers. We still end up splitting up because different ages of kids have different interests. It has been years since I returned from Lagoon without at least one child holding some kind of stuffed toy gleaned (at much higher cost than it was worth) from some midway game. Like we don’t have enough stuffed critters at our house.
Like all amusement parks, the food at Lagoon is pricey. Some might complain that it’s of marginal quality too. But it’s really not too bad, as far as amusement park food goes. Tickets for a ride pass are pretty pricey too. We don’t go to Lagoon without some kind of discount. Fortunately, discount coupons are fairly widely available.
Many of the people milling around the park are school-age kids. For the price of a couple of daily passes, parents can buy a season pass for their child. Many adolescents with such passes roam the park unsupervised in packs. Far be it from me to judge another’s parenting, but I would never get my child a season pass to Lagoon. The behavior I see among the kids with such passes is not something I’d want my children to emulate.
Perhaps the greatest pastime at Lagoon is watching other park patrons. An uncanny number of them appear to be current carnival side show attractions or possibly asylum escapees. It is not unusual to see youth dress and groom bizarrely. They are naturally at a stage where they are exploring their identities. I was, however, surprised at the number of fairly young girls that wore pierced nose jewels. I guess that the boys they hope to attract find this kind of thing attractive.
More eye opening are the seasoned adults that look like they’re still trying to rebel against their parents. While I saw no legal statute violated, some people that should know better certainly were in violation of the laws of good taste and common courtesy.
What possesses a 5’4” 300-lb woman in her late 40s to think that it’s acceptable to go out in public in shorts and a teeny-bopper shirt that brazenly exposes most of her, uh, ample upper body? And, honestly, some people that visit the water park should, before donning swimwear, consider the fact that others around them might have recently eaten.
Lagoon is a great place to go if you want to see what a tattoo is going to look like on wrinkly, puffy middle-aged skin. Or what body piercings are going to look like when you’re in your 50s. As I scanned the park, it seemed to me that the majority of the folks there were members of the dependent class rather than the productive class.
Still, we enjoyed our visit to the noisy amusement park. We were also happy to head home at the end of the day. I was particularly pleased to walk to the vehicle without having to tote a cross or sleeping child.
Back in those days they had no all-day passes. People came and went from the park at will. But everything you there did cost money. You’d buy a sheet of tickets. Each ride had a sign stating the number of tickets required. (That tradition continues to this day, despite the fact that it means nothing under the current system.)
After waiting in line, you’d rip off the specified number of tickets, hand them to the attendant, and climb on the ride. As kids we memorized the phrase uttered by almost all ride operators before starting the contraption: “Keep your arms, head, and legs inside the car at all times and have fun.”
Some of my favorite attractions from my younger days are long gone. I spent plenty of time at the Fun House, with its entry maze, tilted room, spinning tunnel, high slides, spinning disc, and spinning whirlpool. I was scared beyond belief the first time I actually rode the Roll-O-Plane. I rode the aging ride a few years ago, a few months before the frame cracked and the ride was deemed irreparable.
They used to have these swinging cages that were run by human power. I thought those were cool. There was the old rocket ride that sat where the Turn of the Century swings are today, and the paddle boats on the lake. The Hammer was fun. Or at least it was fun to get off and say that you’d ridden it. The old Haunted Shack walk-through spook alley was kind of fun.
When I was a teenager, they had a ride that was like a big spinning canister. You’d stand against the wall. The ride would spin faster and faster until centrifugal force pinned you against the wall. Then the floor would drop away and you’d be suspended against the wall. I liked the ride, but I guess it was too dangerous. I used to enjoy playing SkeeBall on the midway.
I’m glad that some attractions are gone. I hated those hand powered rail devices that were reminiscent of tricycles. I’d always get queasy when riding the Magic Carpet. It was a good thing that they eventually closed down the old swimming pool. It might have been grand in the 1940s, but it was decrepit by the time it closed. Lagoon-A-Beach water park is far better.
Today’s Wild Mouse is much better than the one it replaced. Today’s gas-powered go-carts are a far cry from the old center-rail gas-powered cars. But you have to pay extra to drive or ride in the newer go-carts. I also worry about the workers there. The fumes produced by the car engines are significant.
Many attractions from my younger days are still there. The old “white” roller coaster is still somewhat harrowing to ride because it is so bumpy. Some of today’s kiddie rides are the same ones I rode as a child.
Some attractions have changed over the years — some for the better and some less so. The kiddie land is much better than it was years ago. Pioneer Village has been improved. But some of what I thought were the best features of Dracula’s Castle have been replaced by much more benign elements. They used to do great street shows in Pioneer Village but you never see those anymore.
For the last dozen or so years, Lagoon has focused on fairly significant annual improvements. Some of the rides added during this time are intense. The Wicked coaster, installed in 2007, is highly innovative and exhilarating — and/or terrifying, depending on your point of view.
The interactive fountain was a good addition. Unlike when I was a kid, Lagoon now has so many attractions designed to get you wet that you’d be well advised to dress in anticipation of this before heading off to the park.
One of my fondest memories is when my grandmother rode the Colossus while visiting from Germany. She was in her 80s at the time. As instructed, she removed her glasses before the ride started. After we got off the ride, my brother asked her how she liked going upside down twice. “We were upside down?!” she exclaimed. “But I didn’t see it!” she complained. She had to ride again. Only this time she firmly held her spectacles in place so that she could see what was happening. She was thrilled.
Going to Lagoon with the family is easier for us than it used to be, now that we no longer have toddlers. We still end up splitting up because different ages of kids have different interests. It has been years since I returned from Lagoon without at least one child holding some kind of stuffed toy gleaned (at much higher cost than it was worth) from some midway game. Like we don’t have enough stuffed critters at our house.
Like all amusement parks, the food at Lagoon is pricey. Some might complain that it’s of marginal quality too. But it’s really not too bad, as far as amusement park food goes. Tickets for a ride pass are pretty pricey too. We don’t go to Lagoon without some kind of discount. Fortunately, discount coupons are fairly widely available.
Many of the people milling around the park are school-age kids. For the price of a couple of daily passes, parents can buy a season pass for their child. Many adolescents with such passes roam the park unsupervised in packs. Far be it from me to judge another’s parenting, but I would never get my child a season pass to Lagoon. The behavior I see among the kids with such passes is not something I’d want my children to emulate.
Perhaps the greatest pastime at Lagoon is watching other park patrons. An uncanny number of them appear to be current carnival side show attractions or possibly asylum escapees. It is not unusual to see youth dress and groom bizarrely. They are naturally at a stage where they are exploring their identities. I was, however, surprised at the number of fairly young girls that wore pierced nose jewels. I guess that the boys they hope to attract find this kind of thing attractive.
More eye opening are the seasoned adults that look like they’re still trying to rebel against their parents. While I saw no legal statute violated, some people that should know better certainly were in violation of the laws of good taste and common courtesy.
What possesses a 5’4” 300-lb woman in her late 40s to think that it’s acceptable to go out in public in shorts and a teeny-bopper shirt that brazenly exposes most of her, uh, ample upper body? And, honestly, some people that visit the water park should, before donning swimwear, consider the fact that others around them might have recently eaten.
Lagoon is a great place to go if you want to see what a tattoo is going to look like on wrinkly, puffy middle-aged skin. Or what body piercings are going to look like when you’re in your 50s. As I scanned the park, it seemed to me that the majority of the folks there were members of the dependent class rather than the productive class.
Still, we enjoyed our visit to the noisy amusement park. We were also happy to head home at the end of the day. I was particularly pleased to walk to the vehicle without having to tote a cross or sleeping child.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Lewis Peak Hike
I was not much of a hiker when I was younger. I did it when I had to, usually as part of a youth group excursion. I frequently lagged behind the main body of the group. I first began to enjoy hiking when I spent a couple of summers working on the staff of Camp Loll, a Boy Scout camp near the the Tetons and Yellowstone. Since being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis more than 20 years ago, I have hiked and backpacked more than I did in the years before that.
Not all of my family members share my enthusiasm for hiking. My #3 child has turned out to be more willing to hike with me than any of the rest of the family so far. Yesterday we hiked to Lewis Peak from North Ogden Divide. (See SummitPost for more details and pictures.) This was the fourth mountain peak in Weber County that we have hiked to together. During the past year, we have hiked to Willard Peak, Ben Lomond Peak, and Malans Peak (which isn’t really a peak). We also hiked Little Emigration Canyon last fall and did some hiking in Idaho last summer. We will be going into the Yellowstone back country this month and plan to make a trek to Mount Ogden later this season.
Yesterday was the perfect day for a hike. It was warm, sunny, and clear, but it never got hot. I wanted to get out on the trail early in the day, but my son made me go pick peas with him at a neighbor’s garden. It seems they had a bumper crop this year and needed to get rid of the excess. After our pea picking, we hit the trail at almost exactly 8:05 am.
The first 2½ miles of the 5½ mile trek to the peak is all uphill, with the first 1¾ miles being switchbacks. The trail isn’t terribly steep, but it’s a relentless climb that should tax your cardio-vascular system. When my son complained, I reminded him that you have to climb a mountain to get to a mountain peak. If you need consolation on the way up, you can look across North Ogden Divide and be grateful that you’re not climbing the more extensive switchbacks that lead toward Ben Lomond Peak.
The Lewis Peak trail is well improved and maintained. The switchbacks have no shortage of spots with loose rock. On the way to the peak, we passed fewer than a dozen hikers, a few mountain bikes, and a couple of motorcycles. The highest point of the hike to the peak mounts a hilltop that is actually higher in elevation than Lewis Peak. Once you hit that point, the trail trends mildly downward for about 2½ miles before it climbs the last half mile to the peak. Mountain bikes and motorcycles can drive right to the peak.
Once you crest the top of the switchbacks, you are offered good views of both sides of the mountain range in many spots. You can look north to Ben Lomond and south to Mount Ogden. You can see Pineview Reservoir, Willard Bay, the Great Salt Lake, and the ski runs at Snowbasin resort. You can follow branches of the trail to Pineview and to Ogden Canyon, if you wish.
The wildflowers were beautiful, although, they are at their peak beauty toward the end of July. Once you reach the top of the ridge, you can expect wind just about any time. An eyrie of golden eagles can often be seen near the top of the switchbacks. I have counted as many as seven eagles floating on the breeze up there like they were surfing the wind currents. We didn’t see the eagles yesterday.
We arrived at the peak at almost precisely 10:35. We had made it in almost exactly 2½ hours. A couple of hikers and a motorcyclist had arrived shortly ahead of us. Soon we were joined by eight more hikers and a dog. It seems that Lewis Peak was popular yesterday. One lady was carrying nothing but an empty ½-liter water bottle. There are no water sources on this hike and you can expect to sweat a lot while climbing the hill. So it’s wise to carry plenty of water. Dehydration can be dangerous. As I always carry extra, I gave the lady one of my water bottles for the hike back.
We spent about an hour lunching and hanging out on the peak. More hikers came, as did a couple of mountain bikers and another motorcyclist. We left the peak at almost precisely 11:35 am. After the initial descent, my son was stunned to discover that we had a (relatively mild) uphill climb for the next 2½ miles. It had seemed level to him on the way in. He had to stop and rest a few times before we reached the top of the hill that marks the beginning of the descent to North Ogden Divide.
On the way out, we met quite a few hikers and mountain bikers on their way in. Although I have hiked children as young as eight to the top of the switchbacks, I would personally avoid trying to take children younger than 11 or 12 all the way to the peak. I was surprised to pass several families that had very young children on the hike. A couple of families had young children with mountain bikes. While the trail is quite bike-able, being a mountain biker myself, I’d consider the trail to be too technical for young riders.
After we started down the switchbacks, one mother with an extended family group asked how close they were to the top. She explained that they were headed for the Pineview trailhead. I was concerned. Some members of the group looked about shot already and the Pineview trailhead was more than eight miles away. It seems that some people undertake hikes like this without adequate research or preparation.
Going down the switchbacks can be as challenging as going up, but in a different way. The incessant downhill trek can take a toll on your knees, shins, and toes. We arrived at the trailhead at almost precisely 1:35 pm. We had hiked out in almost exactly two hours. That was very close to my pre-hike estimate.
We met some friends in the parking lot that had hiked to Ben Lomond Peak. They were hampered by snow as they neared the summit, they said. After climbing to the summit anyway, they said the wind howled and that they were very cold. They figured that the bulk of the snow would be gone within two weeks.
My son said that he would take a nap as soon as we got home. But I made him take a shower first. Even though the trail wasn’t particularly dusty yesterday, we were dirty enough. I have a little muscle soreness in my hips, calves, and shins. But that’s a small price to pay for the great hike I was able to enjoy with my son yesterday.
Not all of my family members share my enthusiasm for hiking. My #3 child has turned out to be more willing to hike with me than any of the rest of the family so far. Yesterday we hiked to Lewis Peak from North Ogden Divide. (See SummitPost for more details and pictures.) This was the fourth mountain peak in Weber County that we have hiked to together. During the past year, we have hiked to Willard Peak, Ben Lomond Peak, and Malans Peak (which isn’t really a peak). We also hiked Little Emigration Canyon last fall and did some hiking in Idaho last summer. We will be going into the Yellowstone back country this month and plan to make a trek to Mount Ogden later this season.
Yesterday was the perfect day for a hike. It was warm, sunny, and clear, but it never got hot. I wanted to get out on the trail early in the day, but my son made me go pick peas with him at a neighbor’s garden. It seems they had a bumper crop this year and needed to get rid of the excess. After our pea picking, we hit the trail at almost exactly 8:05 am.
The first 2½ miles of the 5½ mile trek to the peak is all uphill, with the first 1¾ miles being switchbacks. The trail isn’t terribly steep, but it’s a relentless climb that should tax your cardio-vascular system. When my son complained, I reminded him that you have to climb a mountain to get to a mountain peak. If you need consolation on the way up, you can look across North Ogden Divide and be grateful that you’re not climbing the more extensive switchbacks that lead toward Ben Lomond Peak.
The Lewis Peak trail is well improved and maintained. The switchbacks have no shortage of spots with loose rock. On the way to the peak, we passed fewer than a dozen hikers, a few mountain bikes, and a couple of motorcycles. The highest point of the hike to the peak mounts a hilltop that is actually higher in elevation than Lewis Peak. Once you hit that point, the trail trends mildly downward for about 2½ miles before it climbs the last half mile to the peak. Mountain bikes and motorcycles can drive right to the peak.
Once you crest the top of the switchbacks, you are offered good views of both sides of the mountain range in many spots. You can look north to Ben Lomond and south to Mount Ogden. You can see Pineview Reservoir, Willard Bay, the Great Salt Lake, and the ski runs at Snowbasin resort. You can follow branches of the trail to Pineview and to Ogden Canyon, if you wish.
The wildflowers were beautiful, although, they are at their peak beauty toward the end of July. Once you reach the top of the ridge, you can expect wind just about any time. An eyrie of golden eagles can often be seen near the top of the switchbacks. I have counted as many as seven eagles floating on the breeze up there like they were surfing the wind currents. We didn’t see the eagles yesterday.
We arrived at the peak at almost precisely 10:35. We had made it in almost exactly 2½ hours. A couple of hikers and a motorcyclist had arrived shortly ahead of us. Soon we were joined by eight more hikers and a dog. It seems that Lewis Peak was popular yesterday. One lady was carrying nothing but an empty ½-liter water bottle. There are no water sources on this hike and you can expect to sweat a lot while climbing the hill. So it’s wise to carry plenty of water. Dehydration can be dangerous. As I always carry extra, I gave the lady one of my water bottles for the hike back.
We spent about an hour lunching and hanging out on the peak. More hikers came, as did a couple of mountain bikers and another motorcyclist. We left the peak at almost precisely 11:35 am. After the initial descent, my son was stunned to discover that we had a (relatively mild) uphill climb for the next 2½ miles. It had seemed level to him on the way in. He had to stop and rest a few times before we reached the top of the hill that marks the beginning of the descent to North Ogden Divide.
On the way out, we met quite a few hikers and mountain bikers on their way in. Although I have hiked children as young as eight to the top of the switchbacks, I would personally avoid trying to take children younger than 11 or 12 all the way to the peak. I was surprised to pass several families that had very young children on the hike. A couple of families had young children with mountain bikes. While the trail is quite bike-able, being a mountain biker myself, I’d consider the trail to be too technical for young riders.
After we started down the switchbacks, one mother with an extended family group asked how close they were to the top. She explained that they were headed for the Pineview trailhead. I was concerned. Some members of the group looked about shot already and the Pineview trailhead was more than eight miles away. It seems that some people undertake hikes like this without adequate research or preparation.
Going down the switchbacks can be as challenging as going up, but in a different way. The incessant downhill trek can take a toll on your knees, shins, and toes. We arrived at the trailhead at almost precisely 1:35 pm. We had hiked out in almost exactly two hours. That was very close to my pre-hike estimate.
We met some friends in the parking lot that had hiked to Ben Lomond Peak. They were hampered by snow as they neared the summit, they said. After climbing to the summit anyway, they said the wind howled and that they were very cold. They figured that the bulk of the snow would be gone within two weeks.
My son said that he would take a nap as soon as we got home. But I made him take a shower first. Even though the trail wasn’t particularly dusty yesterday, we were dirty enough. I have a little muscle soreness in my hips, calves, and shins. But that’s a small price to pay for the great hike I was able to enjoy with my son yesterday.
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