Moab Marching Madness

We've made our way west to Moab for a spring break. It's good to have the family together. We flew out Saturday night to Salt Lake. Our first big choice, at the Alamo counter, was whether we wanted an HHR or a G-Six. It turns out that Chevrolet makes a car called an HHR and Pontiac makes one cleverly named the G-Six (or perhaps "G-6" - I'm not really sure). I had never heard of the HHR (though I've known about the number 6 for a very long time). I asked what it was like and the friendly Alamo rep said "a milk truck on wheels." How could you pass that up? Makes me wonder why American car companies are in trouble! That description and a clever name like the HHR? We took it.

Our drive to Moab was beautiful. A fun trip through a mountain pass. A lunch in Price at "Los 2 Amigos" - Peter and I differed on whether the name was a good one. When we reached our condo - which is perfect for our needs - we were faced with our second choice. Where to hike first? It was 4 pm, so we make the short junket to Arches (skipping without hesitation the NCAA selection show, which illustrates how beautiful this place is). We walked "Park Avenue" - which was stunning.


Then took a hike to Utah's post card - Delicate Arch - to watch the sunset.

It's popular for a reason. It's really quite beautiful.

It's on to longer hikes and more vistas.


Monday - Island in the Sky. A day of long views and lots of short hikes.

Mesa Arch, with 100 miles of the Colorado River in the distance.

Upheaval Dome - salt coming up or a meteor? The Oleson named family members favor a meteor explanation. Ms. Morton-Peters finds the salt explanation more plausible.

This looks like an album cover. With Kate as the bass player who the band had to put in the photo.


Pretty amazing spot to have lunch.

Needles / Chesler Park / The Joint Trail

Tuesday was a long 11 mile hike through just an incredible area. Whereas the amazing hikes in Island in the Sky were looking down over broad expanses, our hike in Needles was lower in the canyons, with more immediacy. Round every corner (or more accurately in most cases, through, around and over every opening between rocks) were incredible sights to behold. Peter and I couldn't stop photographing.

For hour after hour we just followed the cairns to the vistas beyond.



Eventually we came over a gap in the rocks to Chesler Park, a "green space" provided by the desert planner, surrounded by Needles.

The "band" took another album cover photo.

Then it was on to the Joint Trail, an amazing section of the trail in very narrow cracks in some very large rocks.

An amazing day.

Arches / Devil's Garden

We spent Wednesday in Arches, mostly on the Devil's Garden primitive hike. Arches is more heavily travelled than Canyonlands, but still beautiful. It was a day of arch viewing, beginning at Double Arch,

and, at least for us, reaching its peak at Double O Arch.

Some of the hike was breathtakingly beautiful and plain old breathtaking at the same time, like the gentle stroll down to our lunch spot.

We have survived unscathed though. I think our biggest injury occurred yesterday. As a considerate family member and sometime snorer, I've taken to wearing Breath-Right Strips to bed - they seem to reduce my offensive snoring somewhat. Unfortunately, the removal of the strip from a sunburned nose took a layer of skin with it.

Along the way, I tried to horn into the band.


Peter invented the "Barkless Lounger."

and, as we were hiking to Navajo Arch, a pun contest ensued. The upset winner was Madeline - with the name for a Native American junk food snack, the "Navi Ho Ho". As a person who honors the pun, it is a gratifying moment to hear my three family members firing off puns one after the other. I know, as I always have, that my life has not been wasted.

Potash Road / Corona Arch / Center Cafe

We spent our last day in Moab driving out the Potash Road by the Colorado River to make the hike (a fairly short and reasonable one) to Corona Arch and Bowtie Arch. Early on the cliffs along the river are sheer and rugged, and attractive to climbers.

The river was cold, fast and beautiful.

We particularly loved Corona Arch. It was a beautiful day, and for much of our time there we had it mostly to ourselves.

Kate is the tiny blue dot beneath the arch. It's just a stunningly beautiful place. We finished our week with a couple of wonderful meals. The first was at the Center Cafe in Moab.

And finally, a great Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City - the Red Iguana. Less elegant but lots of fun.

The trip was exceptional. We got along well (with just enough bickering between the kids to bring back memories). The places were great. A wonderful week.

Morning of Living Dangerously

We're off to Moab, Utah tomorrow for a much anticipated hiking trip with the kids in Canyonlands and Arches. Watch this space for photos. When I awoke yesterday it was 5 below zero here. Since we are off to Utah next week, it's reasonable to assume that yesterday was the last really cold morning of my winter - so dammit I'm going to ride my bike. I'm not a particularly macho guy. No "man's man." But I do have a Y chromosome. And, though the conditions have been worse on my path this year than the three previous years, I really enjoy riding in the winter. So I wasn't going to miss this last cold ride. I remembered I had an 8:30 videoconference meeting, so I went into scramble mode. Forgot that the recycling needed to go out. Did that. Shorted Greta on her walk (she didn't complain - it was cold and she lacks a Y chromosome). I was cutting it a little close but I'd make it.

I didn't ride the previous day. Really cold and really windy. In fact, when I last rode Tuesday it was 34 and a little wet. Too wet, it turns out. My front derailleur was stuck on the middle chain ring and the rear stuck on the lowest gear I have. Perfect for riding up a steep hill. Not so good for the entire ride to work when time was of the essence. But "Bob Scoular" (the name I and some others use to personify The Scoular Company) needed me, so I did a quick maintenance job, getting the rear gear to the second lowest gear, and pressed on with now frozen fingers to my meeting. I upped my cadence, tried to be a bit more aerodynamic down the hills, and kept plugging away to do my corporate duty. I dramatically shortened my daily ablutions and scrambled through the front door of the office at 8:32. I rounded the corner in a harried state only to see my friend Jann, who was also a participant in the videoconference, working away at her desk. She informed me that at 8:18, while my legs were churning at 100 revolutions per minute in a ridiculously low gear, the meeting had been cancelled. The now freed up hour and my early arrival at the office gave me the opportunity to dash off a witty and sarcastic email to the Cancellers of the Meeting (one of whom is Scoular's version of the Chancellor of the Exchecquer) and put my work in good order for a guilt free vacation. And on the way home, after a day in the heated underground parking lot, my bike was once again in good order too.

And now for something completely different . . .

It occured to me the other day that the baby boomer generation is probably done having presidents. And the two we produced were Bill Clinton and George Bush. I find it hard to imagine two more different presidents. Pick any spectrum you want, and it seems to me that they would be on fairly opposite ends. Conservative / liberal. Likelihood to produce "great moments in presidential speeches." Moral / amoral. Need for the approval of others. On almost every level they are nearly opposite.

Their fundamental division perhaps is reflective of our somewhat polarized generation. A generation of protesters against "the man" and those who just wanted to be "the man." It seems to me that we were and probably still are a little too good at staking out our positions and not good enough at building bridges. Compromise for us, was "selling out." Flip-flopping. So we have failed to do what we should have to solve problems. Preferring to yell at each other across our own Grand Canyon (clearly, my mind drifts to the desert these days)

President Obama has tried to change that tone. Or at least I see it that way. I know some will say, with some justification, that the leftward direction he is trying to head the country is anything but leading from the middle. It is what he was elected to do. The result of these attempts so far seems to be lots of carping from Republicans on the right and even some from Democrats on the left. I hope he keeps trying. Because we need to realize that solving our problems will require give and take. And probably some sacrifice. And certainly consensus.

Madeline has just graduated from college, and is therefore no longer eligible to be covered under our health insurance. She has a minor medical condition which, while not serious, should be monitored. The result, she can't get Blue Cross or similar coverages. A rational economic decision by Blue Cross. So the default is Cobra coverage at $460 per month. Our family has the economic horsepower to deal with this. But it's come home to me as we have worked with Madeline to muddle through this that many families just can't afford this sort of thing. So they have no coverage. And when something goes wrong the results are disasterous for the individuals and on the health care system itself. It's a problem we have to solve. But it will have to be solved with compromise. Not with yelling at one another across a Grand Canyon.

Happy Holidays!!!

Happy holidays to you and yours from Madeline, Kate, Peter and Stan. All is great with us here in Minnesota. Madeline and Peter grow more mature every day.


Maybe maturity is in the eyes of the beholder. But they are fun to be around, and Kate and I enjoy the breaks in the quiet and order of the empty nest when they come home for a visit (and the return to the quiet and order of the empty nest when they return to college).


Actually, they are maturing. Madeline, after a meteoric 11 semesters at the University of Wisconsin, has graduated!!! The teaching profession awaits (after a couple more weeks of student teaching).



Peter continues to do well at the University of Iowa. He's spent the last two summers in Alaska canning salmon. A great money earning adventure. The return of the rugged fisherman is always a highlight for Kate and me.


He'll be staying in Iowa City this summer to complete a couple of summer school classes which should enable him to add a marketing degree to his political science major. As the photo below of Madeline and Kate lecturing one another illustrates, lively discussions are easy for us to come by.

2008 was another year of weddings for us. These great events gave us several opportunities to get shined up, celebrate four great young couples and even do some dancing.

Kate has made lots and lots of dough in 2008 (as in bread dough - like most we are not immune to the recent economic downturn. But we eat well nonetheless).

Kate made a couple of trips to Pennsylvania, one to join in a celebration put on by Kitty and Bob. While there she had a chance to see family and friends.


I made two really fun trips to the BWCA this year in the spring and the fall. On our spring trip we were canoeing on a lake which had been frozen just a day before.


A family spring break trip to the shores of Alabama was tremendous. A long but laugh-filled drive to and from through M-I-S-S-I-P-P-I (ask Kate) and a relaxing week on the beach were a nice break from the northern cool.

We had lots of great get togethers with friends and family this year.


Our major holiday gift for the family was iPhones all around. So data is never far away! Need to find a restaurant? How about resolving a dispute over some arcane fact? We are there with the answers.

We've done lots of remodelling around the house this year. The house looks better than ever. We are ready for your visit.

All the best!!!

Stan, Kate, Madeline and Peter

Evening Rides

I love riding my bike to and from work - even in the winter. Part of it, I suppose, is the macho joy of being able to say I ride along even in Minnesota's cold and windy winters. But the fact is that keeping warm is not really very hard. It's dark on my ride home, which makes for a slower and more careful ride. But particularly with our newly completed bridge, it's really quite beautiful. I have lots to be thankful for (see my previous posting). One small thing is my ride home.







Lately, the lights aren't always on on the bridge. You would think that that would be a negative, but oddly it isn't. They are on sporadically. And I think I notice and enjoy them more when they aren't guaranteed to be on. I'm sure there is a lesson there somewhere. But I'm often too chilly to figure out what it is.

A Decade

Ten years ago today was a day I'll never forget. I awoke that day with a mysterious inability to control or support myself with my legs. Ultra-strange and quite scary. By the end of the day I had had an MRI and was admitted to the hospital. A massive dose of steriods had gone a long way towards relieving back pain I had been having for three months or so. The physical relief was offset by the knowledge that my 8th thoracic vertebrae had been eaten away by a tumor which was either a localized tumor called a plasmacytoma or a manifestation of a form of cancer called multiple myeloma which - though very treatable - is not normally curable.

Since that time, as I had been for the 46 years leading up to that time, I've been lucky (or, if you want to look at it that way, blessed). The tumor was a plasmacytoma and not myeloma. Treated with radiation and gone. In the past ten years of testing (other than one testing blip that turned out to be nothing) things have gone well. No reoccurance of cancer.

While I would never recommend flirting with cancer to anyone, in some very real ways being a cancer survivor is a very positive thing. Many of those things I may have believed intellectually I now know in a more fundamental way. The blessing that is each day. The perspective on the magnitude of a given problem. The joys of a happy marriage, children that you like, love and are proud of, great friends to share the experience of life with. In my case, I came to value and hope to emulate "heart-driven" people (though I probably will always remain more "head driven" than "heart driven" - if that makes sense). In so many ways having your "life flash before your eyes" changes your perspective on the world and your place in it. For the better.

I think I even laugh from a different place now. I love the ironic even more. In any event, I am so thankful for the decade since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 1998. 3,652 days, if my count if correct. Each a gift. There is so much for me to give thanks for.

Thanks.

The Wrong Questions - A Short "Stanifesto"

Several weeks ago Kate and I were watching Joe Biden being interviewed by Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Tom Brokaw inquired of Biden, a practicing Roman Catholic, about the "simple" question of when life begins. Biden's gave, at least to my ears, a perfect answer to a question with no "perfect" answer. He began by saying that as a matter of faith, he accepts and believes the teaching of the Catholic church that life begins at conception. He then acknowledged that there are equally religious people of other faiths who believe differently. He then took the "wrong" question - when does life begin - and transformed it to the "right" question (for a politician, though perhaps not for a minister or a philosopher), which involves the right of a society to impose that view on all of its members. He pointed out that we are a pluralistic society, and at least purport to respect the rights of our citizens to have differing beliefs on matters of this kind.

Brokaw proceeded to again ask the wrong question - asserting that Biden had "voted for abortion rights". Again Biden responded with what for me was the perfect response - that he hadn't voted for abortion rights, he had voted against criminalizing abortion. That he had voted against telling every other American that they had to accept his religiously-based view. You can watch that portion of the interview on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc3_mATe3uY

Biden's answer caused a few things to fall into place for me.

First, I remembered reading Roe v. Wade in law school 32 years ago or so. The majority opinion, written by Harry Blackmun, was and is in my opinion a well-reasoned response to an almost impossibly difficult question, even if we as a society have been arguing about it since 1972. I think many people feel that Roe v. Wade "outlaws" abortion. At least as I read it, the opinion is really a balancing of the interests of the mother and the state. I'm willing to bet that less than 1% of Americans (probably way less) have read the opinion. I went back and reread it and I thought I'd excerpt a few passages. It's a little less lawyerly that most Supreme Court opinions - but it's still a Supreme Court opinion so it doesn't necessarily "flow" like a novel:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. . . .

In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes "compelling."

Here's the bottom line of the opinion:

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. This holding, we feel, is consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved, with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present day. . .

The various justices used different constitutional analyses in reaching their balance of competing interests. But it set me to thinking about the Bill of Rights. It seems to me that the freedoms enumerated in those ten amendments are the fundamental "point of difference" we have as a country. Our freedoms of speech, religion, due process, assembly. The pluralistic idea that decisions are made after the free exchange of ideas. So we have elected to protect not only the right to salute the flag (easy to protect) but also the right to burn the flag in protest (much harder to protect - but more meaningful in terms of actually protecting the freedom itself). We have chosen constitutionally to protect our citizens from unlawful searches, even if it means that we may leave some criminals who are subjected to unlawful searches unpunished. These are the tradeoffs we have to make in order to protect the freedoms set forth in the Bill of Rights.

At least to me, these constitutional liberties are fundamental safeguards, critically important to what we are (or aspire to be) as a country. Though I'm not a "card carrying member of the ACLU", these are for me the "litmus test" issues.

So when I hear Barack Obama say "when an Arab American family is rounded up without due process, that threatens my civil liberties" I agree wholeheartedly. When I hear of politicians seeking to ban books, I disagree just as wholeheartedly - without regard to what the books say.

On taxes, on health care, even on Iraq, there are for me reasonable grounds for disagreement and we should encourage the free exchange of ideas. That free exchange of ideas is made vital because of the constitutional liberties contained in the Bill of Rights.

There is another side to the principle of pluralism that it seems to me we have lost our way on - the idea of a debate on the issues followed by attempts at solutions which involve compromise. Today politicians who change positions on almost any issue are branded "flip floppers." Rather than encouraging a fresh look at an issue, we discourage it. We are, or at least have been, in an era of politics which reminds me of power football. One party or another trying to ram ideas down the throat of the other. The worry lately has been that if the Democrats get to the point where they have 60 members of the Senate, they will run roughshod over the Republicans. Sadly, that concern appears to me to be legitimate.

Let's hope that all the talk about "reaching across the aisle" is more than just talk. That would be a change to believe in. For lots of reasons (including the way my knee jerks, and my preference for a "wealth spreader" over a "wealth vanisher"), I'll be voting for the Obama/Biden ticket next Tuesday. But for me, the single most important reason is my belief that Obama and Biden are much more interested in protecting our constitutional freedoms than McCain and Palin.

Back to the Woods

Harry and I made our way to East Pike for our annual fall trip to the woods. And a great trip it was. We've been making our way to the BWCA in the fall since 1993. And since 2002 we've been going to the same lovely campsite on the east end of East Pike.

Lots of happy hours have been spent on this rock, splash cup in hand, watching the sun set in the west.

I have literally hundreds of photos taken from "the rock" - of the lake in all its moods. And in September there are many moods to northern Minnesota lakes. We've sat there wearing every bit of clothes we brought. And on other warmer years we've been able to dive right into the lake. This year was somewhere in between.

The fishing was good - and that is a fun part of our trip. And fishing provided me with an "Einstein" moment - one where relativity is made clear. I had caught the fish on the left, which was well into the "keeper" category. I was happy to have caught a fish which could turn a soup into Bass Stew. Then I caught the fish on the right. The smaller fish is now a believer in relativity as well. In one instant, she went from the main ingredient in Bass Stew to being a smallmouth plying the amazing waters of East Pike.


But mostly it's fun paddling the lake, laughing about things, sometimes talking about life. A tradition that will go on as long as we do, I'm sure.