New York highlights (part 1) and music comments

Some favorite NYC moments:
Talking to a homeless guy everyday outside my hotel - he was pretty cool. I talked to a few homeless people, and a lot of natives in Central Park. I explored almost every square foot of that - there was little else to do on Sunday.

Visiting Ellis Island - I was not expecting to be moved, or that it would be so interesting, but it has some great displays, and I learned a lot about historical immigration patterns while I having fun there.

Within two hours of arriving I went to look for the temple - which doubles as a church meeting house - and on my way there I was taking in the sights which were interesting. It is the neighborhood where "You've Got Mail" was filmed, so it is a nice area, but the people are still...colorful. Anyway, as I was walking along about a quarter mile from the temple, I saw a young woman who looked very wholesome and I thought, "Well, I suppose there are all types everywhere". She came up to the same stoplight I was at dragging her rolling luggage behind her. Then she turned to me and asked if I knew where the Mormon temple was. She was from Utah, and I was the first person she talked to after arriving. What are the odds of that?

I hopped off the bus tour down at the southern end of the city and walked most of the way back to the upper west side, which was a lot to explore, but I enjoyed it very much. I finally got tired after several miles and took the subway (very easy to navigate with) to Times Square, because I had not seen it at night and I wanted to see the huge displays. Upon arriving I noticed that the police were setting up barriers and weren't saying what they were for, so I decided to hang around to wait and see. I talked to a couple of teachers from the mid-west and told them my little miracle of finding my glasses (another time, dear readers), and we had a nice testimony as well as a discussion of the city. I helped them plan out the rest of their trip because I knew where everything was by then. Anyway, pretty soon a band started to set up on the platform above the entrance to the Hard Rock Cafe, and it turns out it was Ozzy Osbourne. I could of thrown a rock and hit him - "missed opportunity" some of you are probably thinking. Anyway, I listened until they played Crazy Train and a few other songs and left.

I also loved Grand Central Station - I have a poster in my office and it was as cool as the poster, and had a great atmosphere. By the way, if you want to see a good prank done there, here is a cool site for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

It is the same link that is on my Facebook site if any of you ever go there. I'll tell the rest of the NYC story later.

Music:
Lately I have been really into Neal Morse. He is a progressive rocker (along the lines of Kansas, Yes, and early Genesis) who was the lead singer/songwriter and multi-instrumental genius behind the band Spock's Beard. Anyway, he left the band a few years ago to do Christian music, and some of it is quite amazing, although a lot of it is still progressive rock. My favorite disc is called simply "?", and it is a theme album about the tabernacle in the wilderness, of all things. It is quite amazing.

This first link is actually a live performance of a Spock's Beard song called June, which I think is amazing. If you don't like live music, there is a video accompanied by the studio version right beside it at the linked site:
http://www.last.fm/music/Spock%27s+Beard/+videos/+1-P9NLFpzh9d4

This last one is my favorite - although it is not progressive, like most of the rest of the "One" album that it comes from. It is called Cradle to the Grave. It is a song written with a verse for man and a verse for God, then their two parts mesh together. You can find it here. There are a few other songs as well, although some of you might be shocked by the distorted opening of Solid as the Sun.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=285998991
You can see the lyrics here if you want.
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Neal-Morse/Cradle-To-The-Grave.html

That's all for now kids, other than to note that we are still having a good time with all the runts, at least when the boys are not making our lives miserable by tormenting Michelle. For her part, she gives us all a trial when her emotions heat up, but overall we are having a great time with our fun children this summer.

I just put up my NYC mini-slide show

I'll write a couple of stories about it later.

Music and Movies Part I, etc.

Hello Everyone. We are having a good if busy summer. I thought I would take a minute to comment on a movie or two and some music you might like. Before I get to that though, I have to tell you about some silliness. Last night at scripture study, we were reviewing the teaching of searching for the one lost sheep and leaving the 99. As part of the teachings about that, I mentioned that the scribes/pharisees and priests sometimes thought they were above repentance, and asked if anyone was actually above that. All three of our children raised their hands at the same time. So much for the lesson. I was hoping that at least Michelle was just asking a question, but no, she was also claiming the state of perfection. Sigh. My kids...we did laugh pretty hard about all of them doing it at the same time though. : )

Movies: We recently went to see Prince Caspian (Narnia 2.0) as a family, and it got mixed reviews. I thought it was alright, but a little light on plot. Cameron (who has read the book about 10 times) hated it because it was too far off the mark. The rest of the family liked it reasonably well. Cameron and I preferred Martian Child, because of just the right amount of wacky weirdness (like John and Joan Cusack are perfect for), and very heart-warming moments. It was flawed by one or two formulaic elements you could see coming a mile away, but it was a good film, and I liked some moments A LOT. In case you don't know about it, it has to do with widower writer trying to get his life together and how he looks into adopting a little boy (who has a few problems, one of which is that he thinks he is from Mars). At the risk of sharing a lot of the charming parts of the film and thereby diminishing the impact of it, here is the link to the trailer. If you get interested enough to see it, you might stop watching to keep some great fresh moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo--9mYFpVM

Music: I got a great steal at our local music store, and am listening to The Thorns right now. They are sort of a supergroup made up of Matthew Sweet (100% Fun - my favorite disc of his), Shawn Mullins (Soul's Core and Beneath the Velvet Sun), and the sort of folky Pete Droge (http://www.myspace.com/petedroge). The one I have has the original disc (which has electric and acoustic songs), as well as an acoustic only session with them doing all their songs with just an acoustic guitar or two, a bass, and occasional drums. It is great. If you want to hear their music, you can find it at: http://www.myspace.com/thethornsmusic

My favorite song on their player at that site is "No Blue Sky". They are little like Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Another band that resurfaced at the Quist house is an old favorite "Toad the Wet Sprocket". They are my favorite 90s band, and Brandon has just found them, causing a bit of a resurgence. They were pool fodder at our pool exercise/fun time this morning. In Light Syrup is an odd collection of their weird stuff that never made it on a regular album, but it may be their best album. The song "Good Intentions" on this page is from that album.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=69945434
The song Walk on the Water was a hit for them as well, although it is not one of my favorites. It is one of Jamie's favorites. The other songs on the page are not very indicative of their best music. My favorite albums other than In Light Syrup are Dulcinea and Coil. Check them out at your local library! : )

For those of you who don't remember Shawn Mullins, here is a link to a video of his biggest hit, "Lullaby": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sQIX1NTkcQ

This is a link to an acoustic version of Lullaby (live) where he tells a bit of the story behind the song. The sound quality is not the best, but it is interesting, and you can see how he plays it (open G).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgyA-6Br1HA&feature=related

Happy Birthday, Michelle!

Well, today is Michelle's birthday, and we did something special for her. Actually, a relative or three did. Michelle's favorite author is Stephenie Meyer, and we recently discovered (a couple of months ago) that she is my second cousin. Anyway, to make a long story short, Carol Corpus (my department office manager) and I hatched a plan to use my connections (Hi Mom! :) to try to surprise Michelle. To make a long story short, we arranged to have Stephenie send Michelle a birthday note, and Stephenie's mom (Candy -thank you!) sent my mother a few books that were autographed, so Michelle got an autographed copy of Twilight as well. She was more than thrilled. I probably shouldn't write this, but after grinning ear to ear and waving the note around like a complete weirdo, she finally exclaimed, "Holy Crap!". I don't think she meant anything disrespectful by it. We have a little video of the event, and Cam took a few pictures of Michelle ("Chella" - our little inside joke for you Twilighters). I'll post them another time. In the meantime, here are pictures Michelle took while convincing herself that it was all real. (She really was very excited, and after about a half hour she started to pull on her cheeks to make herself stop smiling because her face hurt from grinning so much).

Wow!

We had a spectacular rainbow yesterday, as the setting sun illuminated the whole eastern sky line. The picture here is just a fragment of it (Ohio treelines can be annoying on occasion). The other picture is of the Serpent Mound. For those of you who don't know, there are dozens of digs and mounds in Ohio. So far, the most complete book I have seen on them is Bradley Lepper's "Ohio archaeology : an illustrated chronicle of Ohio's ancient American Indian cultures". It has many illustrations, maps and pictures. I just got it from the library, but it is so great I'm picking it up for our family. A couple of interesting things about the serpent mound is that carbon dating puts it's origin at about 1000 b.c., and the people who lived in the region at that time seemed to disappear around 400 a.d. It is somewhat unclear exactly who they were - anthropologists are still debating about it. Of course other tribes have been here off and on since then. The other interesting thing about the serpent mound is that it has some astronomical orientations, much like Stonehenge and other early sites (the head/tail line orients to the north, various features point to sunrise and sunsets at solstice and equinox times as well as lunar events) . I'm trying to talk the family into an archeology-themed camping trip this summer.

Here is some info about the serpent mound from Wikipedia:

The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,330-foot-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound located on a plateau of the Serpent Mound crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. Including all three parts, it extends about 1,370 feet, and varies in height from less than a foot to more than three feet. Conforming to the curve of the property on which it rests with its head approaching near a cliff point, the serpent winds back and forth for more than seven hundred feet and ends with a triple coiled tail. The neck is stretched out off a gentle curve from the seventh coil from the tail, ending with open mouth around the east end of a lengthwise one hundred twenty foot hollow oval feature, thought variously to be an egg, the sun, the body of a frog, or merely the remnant of a platform serving to support something. The effigy's extreme western feature is a triangular mound approximately 31.6 feet at its base and long axis. It is the largest effigy earthwork in the world.

While there are several burial mounds around the Serpent mound site, the Serpent itself does not contain any human remains and wasn't constructed for burial purposes. The Cherokee relate the legend of the Uktena, a large serpent with supernatural appearance and power. The question raised regarding such Indian legend asks whether the ancient native people actually created very large totemic shrines based upon platforms made of earth and stone. Subsequent changes in the form of inheriting cultures or war could conceiveably have deconstructed such a marvelous effigy, leaving merely its platform.

Astronomical significance

The oval-to-head area of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset. This calendrical alignment was first noted in print by Clark and Marjorie Hardman in the journal Ohio Archaeologist 37(3):34-40 (1987). William F. Romain, a northern Ohio resident, suggested an array of lunar alignments using the curves in the effigy's body, but these sightlines are over a much shorther distance than the head and oval summer solstice sightline, and their legitimacy is therefore less plausible. A link to this image and others is noted below.

The carbon dating attribution of 1070 coincides with two significant astronomical events: The appearance of Halley's Comet in 1066 and the light from the supernova that created Crab Nebula in 1054. This light was visible for two weeks after it first reached earth, even during the day. There is speculation that the serpent mound was to emulate a comet, slithering across the night sky like a snake. However, it must be noted that Halley's Comet's tail has always appeared as a long, straight line, and in no way resembles the convolutions of a serpent. Also, Halley's comet appears every 76 years, and there are an untold number of other supernovae that may have occurred over the centuries than span the possible construction dates of the effigy, so that such suggestions are at best tentative speculations.

The Serpent Mound also may have been designed in accord with the placement of the stars composing the constellation Draco (Draco), an idea admittedly as speculative as the theory of its construction being associated with either Halley's Comet or the 1054 supernova. The star pattern of the constellation Draco fits with fair precision to the Serpent Mound. An image of this and other astronomical information regarding the Great Serpent Mound is available through this link:

http://greatserpentmound.info/The_Draconian_Serpent_and_Stonehenge.pdf

There are other articles by the same guy available online, but fair warning: the author is a little nutty. : )

Catching Up

Here are some recent shots of us. The first one is Michelle at girl's camp with some friends. Unfortunately her back is to the camera, but she is still cute. Both Jamie and Michelle went, and they had fun. The theme this year was Heros of the Heart, and each level had a superhero mascot. Michelle's level was supergirl - notice the cape? - Thank you Gae Lambert! I was up there for a day with the bishop and we had a good time. The girls did dances and cheers along the lines of their mascot. Jamie did one of Rosie the Riveter, and I got a picture, but my impending doom did not seem like a good exchange for sharing it with you, so...

I also put up a picture of Cam as an Arab. He is tan from landscaping and his beard has a week or so of growth because he had some poison ivy on his face. He's better now. The other one is a quick candid of the boys in the hall. I was trying to get a good one of Bran smiling, but he is a tough customer. Cam is looking surly on purpose. Wierdo!

The last one is of Jamie, Cam and I taken by my nephew Wade when we visited Kirtland with him and his wonderful wife Jessica. Wade isn't bad either. Hi guys!

Two More

Cam kept hiding and peering out like "Kilroy was here" throughout the day, so I put this in here to remind us. I also put one of me with the kids, so Jamie doesn't complain - she hates having her picture taken, and made me pose for this one as turnabout, fairplay, or something. : )