Somusing

Friday morning I left on an overnight backpacking trip with Zed, Jacob, and Phin. We drove up Teton Canyon from the Idaho side and had our camera take a picture of us.

We hiked past the Devil's Stairs fork toward Alaska Basin, and stopped for lunch here.

We arrived in Alaska Basin having met only 2 or 3 other hikers.

We had made good time, so unlike the last time we hiked up to Alaska Basin 3 years ago, we decided we'd hike all the way to the east side of the Tetons to Jenny Lake.

Thus motivated, we hiked up to Sunset Lake.

These were some of our views leaving Sunset Lake and heading up to Hurricane Pass.

Soon we arrived at the border between the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and Grand Teton National Park.

Then we descended down to Hurricane Pass.

Here was our view over Schoolroom Glacier.

Zed looked down from Hurricane Pass into the South Fork of Cascade Canyon and the Teton Crest Trail.

Morning sun made it a nice time to play around the lake under Schoolroom Glacier.

Here Phin and Jacob filter water from a snowmelt stream for us to drink.

We met a lot of other people on the trail the further down we went in Cascade Canyon. It was a nice late-summer day and lots of day-hikers had headed up the trails from the Jenny Lake side.

Erin picked us up at Jenny Lake at 4:30 pm. Our total hiking distance over those two days was about 24 miles.

After our trip to Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam for a night. We stayed in a hostel that was movie themed. Our room was Star Wars themed, and had a huge picture of Darth Vader on the wall.

We went to the Anne Frank house, and looked at some of the older buildings along the way. One of them was an old church that had a really weird Roman numeral on it.

It looked like cbbc, but for real it was C I backwards C = M, I backwards C = D, C which adds up to 1600. Wikipedia has a close-up image.

At the Anne Frank house we saw a lot of cool stuff. I didn’t really know anything about her before going, so I’m glad I could go.

We went to an Indian restaurant that was really good, and then we returned to our hostel for our last night in Europe. This square was nearby:

Our ferry to Helsinki from Tallinn was canceled because of rough seas and they sent us over to another ferry, but we had to wait another two and a half hours so we walked around Tallinn for a while. Finally we got on the ferry and there we met these two Finnish guys who didn’t speak any English at all. They didn’t even understand hello. Dad thought they were speaking Estonian at first and kept trying to communicate with them using our phrase book. Finally one of the people next to us asked us if we wanted them to translate for us. After that little adventure, we went to our hotel. We just stayed in there because it was late.

The next morning was Sunday. We went to church at a building about a quarter mile down the street. A lot of the people there spoke English, and missionaries translated for us.

After church, we walked around in the bay area for a while, then went to a ferry to go to the fortress island Suomenlinna. That was awesome. It was probably a ten or twenty minute ferry trip, and was really cool. It has lots of old cannons, and stuff.

At the south island there were a lot of tunnels running around underneath the walls.

It was totally one of my favorite parts of the trip.

After Suomenlinna we went to a couple of the big churches near the docks. In one of them we heard an organist practicing for his performance that night.

Then we met up with someone Dad knows from Interchange named René Hertell. We went to dinner at a restaurant called Virgin Oil. After that we went back to our hotel.

Thursday, 18th August 2011
We went for a walk around Riga for one last time before we went to Tallinn. Then we went to the bus station. There we met a guy who went to YAPC::EU. (We could tell by his t-shirt.) His name was Sergey and he lives in Tallinn. He rode the same bus as us there and was nice enough to show us how to get to our hostel. Our hostel is awesome. We are in a six person bedroom with four Germans. After that we walked around town for a while, seeing some of the sights. Here's a building by our hostel:

It’s really a nice place. We went into the Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral, and saw some of the inside.

After that we went back to the hostel and hung out in the lounge. They have guitars and other musical instruments that you can play in there. After a while we went to bed.

Friday, 19th August 2011
So after a good night’s rest, we went to a bookstore in the old town that sold some old magazines, and stuff. We went to a free walking tour that lasted two hours. We went on almost the same route as the one we took on our own the day before. It was still good though. One of my favorite things about Tallinn is that half the city wall still remains and it’s really cool.

One of the towers along the wall was named the Virgin’s Tower, a town joke because it was used as a prison for prostitutes.

There were probably 75 or 100 people on the tour, but the tour guide had a loud voice, so we could all hear.

After the tour we went to the beach at Pirita. We swam and stuff for a while, then we started walking back. We took the bus there and after a while we decided to take the bus the rest of the way back. Dad contacted Sergey, and arranged dinner with him. Then we went back to the hostel. We hung out in the lounge for a while. I played guitar along with some people who were playing bongos. We went to bed a little after 1:00.

The weekend is over now, and tomorrow morning the YAPC::EU conference (Yet Another Perl Conference, Europe) begins. We'll be busy for the next three days with the conference, so we won't have much time for sightseeing. Here are some more photos from our trip so far, in chronological order.

A balcony of The Powder Tower and Latvian War Museum:

Jacob a short distance from the central market area:

Views of the Riga central train station, Rīgas centrālā dzelzceļa stacija:

A neighborhood of Communist-era Neubau apartments seen from the train en route back from the beach at Jūrmala:

A street in Vecrīga, old town Riga:

This morning Jacob and I went to church at one of the two Latvian Latter-day Saint (aka Mormon) branches in Rīga. There are also two Russian-language branches here. It was conveniently located just a few blocks from our hotel, on the appropriately named Baznīcas iela (Church Street), though of course named not for the LDS church but rather for Vecā Sv. Ģertrūdes Evaņģēliski luteriskā baznīca, the Lutheran St. Gertrude Old Church. The local LDS people were very friendly, and English-speaking missionaries translated for us, an unexpected bonus for our comprehension!

Even nearer to our hotel we stopped in the early evening to see the Kristus Piedzimšanas pareizticīgo katedrāle (Riga Nativity of Christ Orthodox Cathedral). It has had a troubled history. It was built between 1876 and 1884 by decree of Russian Tsar Alexander II, then during World War I was turned into a Lutheran church by the occupying German military. It was restored during Latvia's inter-war independence, and then was turned into a planetarium by Soviet authorities in the early 1960s. It has been recently restored. Here is Jacob's photo of the outside:

It is said to be the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic region. The interior makes quite an impression. There are beautiful icons and murals with various Old Church Slavonic texts. No photography was allowed inside (quite understandable for a church in active use), though printed brochures have some interior photos.

August 10th–13th, 2011, Rīga, Latvia

We woke up at 5:30 to go to the Jackson Hole Airport. We then proceeded to fly to Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Airport is pretty much a mall. We went to a burger restaurant there that was pretty good. We then flew to Amsterdam. I watched Green Hornet on the plane. In Amsterdam we had a seven hour layover. We didn’t leave the airport for that. Finally we got on our plane to Rīga and arrived about 3 hours later.

Dad bought a SIM card for his phone, but it partly doesn’t work. We then rode a bus from the airport to the old town. There were a lot of street musicians performing on corners. Some people playing accordions, Two girls playing the cello and flute together, some other stuff. We walked about half an hour to the Albert Hotel.

The Albert Hotel is themed on Albert Einstein. I don’t really get how it’s themed after him, but it has quotes from him in our room, which works for me. Our room is really nice, we have special place you have to put your room key or the power goes off. It has a good view, and is on the ninth floor. It has a really good breakfast too. Huge selection, good food, all in all it’s an awesome hotel. We went to dinner with Stefan and Jure, two of Dad’s friends who work on Interchange. The restaurant was an outdoor restaurant with live musicians. After dinner me and Dad got lost on our way back to the hotel for a while, but got back on track.

We woke up at 8:30ish on Friday, and went to meet Stefan and Jure at their hotel. We went to the wrong one, because there are like four of the same one in town. Once we got there they started to work on their presentations for the conference. I got bored and walked around old town alone for a while. I saw some pretty cool stuff, but didn’t do much. Once I got back we went to lunch at an Armenian restaurant. It was really good. At night me and Dad went to an organ concert at the Rīga Cathedral.

The organ was the biggest organ in the world when it was first made. The cathedral had lots of cool stained glass windows, some cool statues, the tombs of a bunch of dead bishops, and some cool paintings. After that we went back to the hotel for the night.

I woke up at 9:00 on Saturday. We went on a free walking tour of the city. We saw some cool churches, the central market, the main train station, and what’s left of a synagogue that was burned down in World War II.

The tour lasted about three hours. After that we went to the train station to go to Jūrmala (means sea-side in Latvian, made up of a bunch of towns all spread along a long beach).

We got to swim and Dad ran four miles on the beach. After we got back, we went to the market and bought some food. We looked for a restaurant we had read about in a magazine but it was closed down or something. We couldn’t read the sign on the door because it was in Latvian. So far our visit has been awesome, and I’ll be posting again in a few days.

(Another church we saw:)

Jon and I have been libertarians forever, but we didn't really know what to call it until we found and bought a copy of Liberty magazine at Barnes & Noble many years ago. Well, Jon was an anarchist in high school, and he still sometimes borders on that; I think I've always been a libertarian. Liberty became the only magazine we subscribed to without interruption, until they stopped making the print edition a year or so ago. There were times when that magazine was like a cozy, cuddly blanket for me, even though much of what appeared in it was argumentative, sarcastic, sometimes pessimistic. Even our friend Brian, who is not known for his sunniness, found Liberty too caustic when we tried to indoctrinate him with it. But I loved it. So did Jon. We still read it online, but I do miss the print version.

Anyway, my point is that many times over the years, Jon and I saw ads for various libertarian conferences and one of us would always say, "We should go to that someday." Well, someday finally came: we went to FreedomFest in Las Vegas last week. Their tagline is "The world's largest gathering of free minds." FreedomFest has been going on every year since 2002 and is organized by Mark Skousen, with significant help from his wife Jo Ann Skousen, who organized the first-time libertarian film festival Anthem this year. (Jo Ann is the entertainment editor of Liberty and Mark is a frequent contributor.) We didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be interesting, inspiring, and thought-provoking, as well as full of useful and practical information that we'll be using in our home school, finances, and other areas of our lives.

I'm used to being alone in my political beliefs. Most of my friends and family are conservatives, with a healthy dose of liberals among them. Very few identify themselves as libertarians. Of course, there are other things about Jon and me that are "weird"--the home schooling, for example. So it was different and fun to be around so many like-minded people at FreedomFest. I think there were plenty of libertarian-leaning conservatives around, but what a trip to be hanging out with a couple of thousand straight-up libertarians. Here are some of the well-known people we heard speak:

Rand Paul, new Senator from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul. He was delightful every time he spoke. Funny, articulate, principled in his politics (though more open to compromise than his father). I hope he gets a chance to do some good things in the Senate.

Judge Andrew Napolitano. I know he's famous because he's on Fox News, but I never watch TV news, so I'd never heard him speak. Unfortunately, I missed the speech (Jon said it was great), but I heard the Q&A that followed, and he was fantastic. One great thing he said (not quotes, because I'm going from memory here): There's just one party in this country: the big government party. It has a Republican wing and a Democratic wing.

John Mackey, CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market. It's great to have a pro-free market "tree hugger" (his words, and others') running a successful company like Whole Foods. I was really impressed by him, his efforts to re-brand capitalism, and the innovative incentives to live a healthy life he has introduced to his employees and that will soon be introduced to customers. Too bad the closest Whole Foods to us is in Salt Lake.

Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. The highlights of this session by some entertaining impersonators were Benjamin Franklin hitting on all the women who asked questions and Thomas Jefferson breaking the audience down into voting persons according to 1786 standards. I'd say 5% of the audience was eligible.

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and doom and gloom finance guy who frequently appears on TV to argue with people. He's a great speaker and very compelling. But when Jon and I talked to him briefly, he was kind of a jerk. Maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe Jon touched a nerve when he mentioned Schiff's unsuccessful campaign for a Connecticut Senate seat last year. In any case, he is super sharp and fun to listen to (from a distance).

Herman Cain and Gary Johnson, candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. I didn't actually hear Herman Cain, but Jon did and enjoyed hearing him speak, though he was much more conservative than libertarian. Gary Johnson was governor of New Mexico a while back and did some impressive stuff there, cutting taxes and vetoing like crazy.

There were others, too, some from TV, some from the more narrow libertarian world. I wish I'd heard more from Mark Skousen, but I did hear him moderate debates, and he was very entertaining as his 8th great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin. I came away from the conference even more impressed with the Skousens than I already was. Jo Ann Skousen did a session on Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities that was very good and reminded me that I used to want to be a teacher. I think I'll start pursuing that again by teaching a literature course to my oldest boys and inviting other home schooled families in the valley. I do have a degree in Comparative Literature, so I guess I ought to use it. (Some people think that because I home school, I must be teaching my kids, but they really learn most stuff on their own with a little guidance from me.)

One of the Skousen daughters, Valerie, did a session about funding the arts in a libertarian way, something I think about pretty often (with no great ideas yet). Their oldest son, Tim, had an excellent film shown at the film festival (but not eligible for awards, for obvious reasons): Zero Percent, about a successful college education program in Sing Sing prison.

And if you need more proof that the Skousens are cool, here's a great advertisement parody they made for "ObamaCare" (and by laughing with this I don't mean to imply that I think the status quo in health care is fine and dandy):

I wish I'd had more time to take in festival films, but we did see a couple in addition to Zero Percent: Final Census, a dark and hilarious 10-minute short, and The Cartel, a documentary about how more money doesn't seem to be helping public schools, especially in New Jersey. There was a lot of good information in it, but it went on a bit long. Worth watching, though.

I read a blog post about FreedomFest on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website that claimed that the sessions at FreedomFest were of two kinds (and I'm paraphrasing here). One kind was about trying to "take back the country" through political lobbying, money, etc. The other kind explored alternative ways of living "outside" the state. I hadn't thought of this distinction while I was there, but it resonated with me. I'm not the kind of person who tries to change the school system so it will better serve my children; I'm the kind of person who keeps the kids home from school. In fact, I think there should have been a session or two on home schooling to complement the sessions/debates on school choice. I'm glad there are people who are trying to change the status quo in government, school, etc., like the tea parties. But I'm also glad there are people trying to live differently and with as much freedom as possible. It was fantastic to be around many of both types last week. I hope Jon and I will continue to attend.

A word about Las Vegas. Walking through the casino at Bally's every morning and evening was a weird contrast to the conference we were attending. I don't get the attraction of the slot machines, especially. Nobody at those machines looks like they're having fun. However, we ended up moving to a delightful hotel room after one night in a crappy room next to the loud elevators. The second room had a bank of windows across the outside wall that looked out on the Paris pool, Eiffel Tower, and the strip. One night we heard the live, muffled-by-the-windows Ben Folds concert that was going on across the street, complete with video being broadcast on one of those huge, Times Square-like video screens. Our room had a Jacuzzi centered on a marble dais kind of thing. I guess that's the benefit of getting the last non-smoking room next to the elevators the first night. I have been known to kind of freak out in the past when we've stayed in Las Vegas because I don't like it. I get all tense and unpleasant. But I think I did okay this time. I was able to observe the gambling, drinking, guys handing out pornographic cards/flyers on the corners, and the young kids out on the strip with their families at 11:00 pm without taking it all personally and feeling threatened or something. It was the best time I've ever had in Las Vegas.

Salt Lake City's freeways are liberally adorned with billboards to try to distract eyes from the road at all times. Ok, fair enough. But in recent years the percentage of them devoted to liposuction and other plastic surgery has grown rapidly. Now it seems to be something like a quarter or a third of them.

Maybe they're just the most annoying to me and therefore the ones I most often notice. In any case, this is my least favorite of all:

It's totally unattractive, from the lame verbiage to the ugly photo and hideous "graphic design," it's the supreme loser, all right.

And here I am making more people look at it! Sorry.

Last Friday, we woke up to a hot air balloon coming our way:

We often see them in the sky north of us, but they almost never come south. This one went almost directly over our house and then, to avoid power lines, went west and landed in a small park down the road.

The kids and I drove the half mile or so to watch them take it down, and I learned a little about flying hot air balloons from one of the ground crew. (Now that must be a pretty boring job--following a hot air balloon in a van and trying to figure out where it's going to land.) Did you know there's no steering? Just up and down. Wind currents change direction at different elevations, so they steer by going up or down and seeing where the wind takes them. Interesting. And kind of scary. (Maybe they have a way of knowing which direction the wind is going. I don't know.)

That was our morning adventure. Friday's nighttime adventure was attending a star party at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Viewing conditions were perfect--no moon and no clouds, and it's far enough away from major cities that there's very little light pollution. A bunch of amateur astronomers brought their telescopes and let everyone look through them. We saw Jupiter and her moons (are planets she?), a ring Nebula, Andromeda, a few twin stars, like Polaris and the Cub Scout star, so named because one's yellow and one's blue (I didn't know there were twin stars that orbit around each other), and some other stuff. It was also cool just to sit back and look up. Beautiful.

The next morning, we explored Craters of the Moon for a while. It's a pretty weird place, full of only recently solidified volcanic rock. (Not recent like last week, but recent compared to the rest of the earth. Of course, Hawaii's volcanoes are even younger and some are still erupting, and Craters of the Moon certainly can't beat that. But driving a few hours and seeing volcanic stuff is a pretty good deal.)

Also, there were caves. This one was tiny (the picture was taken from the entrance) and it looked like a stone tent from the outside:

But other caves were pretty huge inside, and we could get far enough away from the entrance that we couldn't see any light from outside. I find caves slightly terrifying, but Jon talked me into going into every one of them, even though I wasn't wearing the best cave-exploring foot apparel:

We had three adults and eight kids, the youngest two of which were four years old, and everyone did great. (I think I was the biggest baby, and I just kept my mouth shut most of the time. No need to frighten the young people by thinking out loud.) Jon would be so much more adventurous without me.

I realize that it's starting to look like Jon is out traveling the world! and hiking! and living life! While I just sit at home and read and watch online TV. But really, I get out, too.

Behold one of the practice organs at BYU in Provo. Yes, it's a whole pipe organ inside a tiny room, just for practicing. There are many of these in the bowels of the HFAC (Harris Fine Arts Center), each sequestered in its own room, along with other practice rooms that merely contain pianos. (Bor-ing!) I used to practice on these organs when I took private organ instruction as a freshman and sophomore at BYU. My teacher was Douglas Bush, who is a world-renowned organist. I did not appreciate this at the time. Isn't there a saying about something wasted on youth? (It's late and my brain is shutting down. Also, I'm old and can't remember what is wasted on those ungrateful youth.)

(By the way, the HFAC is named after Jon's great-grandfather, Franklin S. Harris, who was a president of BYU. In fact, there's a picture of Franklin S. Harris hanging in one of the halls of the Super 8 in which I'm staying, a Super 8 where the decor is dedicated to BYU memorabilia. Otherwise it would be pretty weird to find a framed photo of Jon's great-grandfather adorning the halls of a Super 8.)

This week I'm attending BYU's Organ Workshop, where a bunch of organists get together and pretend like playing the organ is normal and that other people care as much about the organ as we do. It's wonderful, and I love it. It makes me want to go back to school and try again. Maybe twenty years later, I'd be more dedicated and studious. Anyway, it's a fantastic four-day workshop with classes and concerts and an inspiring hymn sing. Tomorrow we're going up to Salt Lake for a demonstration of the huge pipe organ at the LDS Conference Center, a recital on temple square, and a Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal. Last year at this same workshop, participants were allowed to play for a few minutes on one of the temple square organs (Conference Center, Assembly Hall and Tabernacle). I got to play the organ in the tabernacle, an unforgettable experience.