Sitting outside the café, reading poetry out loud to my daughter, I struggle to gauge her reaction. The young guys at the neighboring table are making me nervous, not because of anything they've done, but because they are too close. What will they think? It doesn't cross my mind to wonder the same about the white and purple scarf draped around my neck. Maybe reading poetry makes sense for someone so idiosyncratically attired.

When I get to the part in Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" that describes a memory of the ladder's rung, inscribed on the musculature, I think of my forays into the mesquite to trim away the excess weight. Charles Bowden has it right. There's something both wonderful and disturbing about a tree that grows so fast. It serves as the ideal allegory for my life. I turn excess into huge piles of waste, spend hours laboriously chopping it into pieces small enough to cart away, then get back up on the ladder to do it all over again the next week and the week after that. My daughter says she gets the poem about two thirds of the way through. I stop. She says she wants me to continue, that she likes it.

Next up is T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The protagonist depresses her, makes her impatient. Some lines resonate but many more fall flat. I am disheartened. But then I decide to read her Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird." This poem, the hardest of the bunch, delights her. Five minutes after I'm done reading I ask her what she thought of it. She enthusiastically quotes a whole stanza back to me, every word in the proper place, even though she has only heard the poem once.

On the drive to the dojo for her martial arts class she comes up with the idea, for a school assignment, of writing about thirteen ways of looking at a banana. I think she's just being silly until she composes a beautiful line about the star you see inside the circle of the peeled fruit's cross-section, what she calls a "perfect figure." She tells me than when she is a teacher she plans to make her students write different poems modeled after "Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird."

Tags: daughter, everyday, poetry, slice of life
Current Location: 85704

Tags: photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

The major snowfall hitting the Washington D.C. area has me torn. I worry about my parents, since they aren't able to shovel their driveway. But I am also filled with regret for never having experienced a storm of this magnitude during the entire time I lived there. The magical February, 1979 white-out preceded our moving down there by five months. I would look at the iconic photos of Georgetown streets obliterated by drifts and fervently wish for a reprise.

Practically speaking, of course, snow usually sounds more appealing to those who don't have to go to work, find a way to get to the store, deal with power outages and so on. It's a novelty in these parts, as it was during my years living in California. I fondly remember taking the drive up to Mount Saint Helena during a Bay Area cold snap and rushing up the trail to reach the place where the snow was sticking to the ground. For me, the trek conjured childhood memories of a world muted with wonder. To my companion, though, who had spent most of her life in and around San Francisco, the outwardly modest winter spectacle was even more special.

During the recent inclement weather in Arizona, my daughter Skylar, who had played in snow several times -- there's a 9000-foot mountain just a few miles away from us as the raven flies -- but never had the chance to see it falling from the sky, begged to be taken where she could finally cross that experience off her list. But high winds and record precipitation on the state's mountain ranges made it a challenging request to honor. Finding a place that was low enough to still ensure safe passage yet high enough to have the promise of hexagonal bliss was not easy.

In the end, though, the lovely landscape of Madera Canyon, about an hour's drive south, proved to be the perfect destination. The views of the Santa Rita Mountains beyond the canyon were breathtaking, the temperature was not so biting as to make being outdoors unpleasant, and the white stuff dropped from the clouds on cue. Here is Skylar catching snowflakes on her tongue for the very first time:

While not quite as astonishing as the video I was lucky to capture of her first-ever laugh -- at the IKEA in Burbank, of all places -- it's still pretty amazing to see such a milestone documented in this way. I will treasure both the photos and video I took and the memories that flesh them out for the rest of my life. And they will go a long way towards easing the urge I currently feel to be truly snowbound.

Tags: daughter, photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

Tags: everyday, film, humor, pets, photography
Current Location: 85704

Lately, my wonderful daughter has been going through what the two of us amusedly refer to as a "Veruca Salt" phase. I tolerate this behavior because I love her, but also because our exchanges give her an outlet for aggressions that might not otherwise see the light of day. As I see it, that's what fathers are for. Sometimes, though, my patience runs out.

After picking her up from her flute lesson this afternoon and being subjected to an unending stream of knock-knock jokes, fake shrieks and attempts to distract and disturb me by making rapid movements I could only see out of the corner of my eyes, I decided that I was going to assert myself. Since she was already rendering the classical station inaudible, I switched to the new album by The Soft Pack that I'd been making notes on earlier in the afternoon. Predictably, this move led to anguished pleas for me to turn off the loud music. But when I did, her high-decibel onslaught on my sanity continued unabated.

So I turned it back on again, only a little louder. This led her to turn it off on her own. I switched it back on. Off and on, off and on the cycle went. Soon enough, though, our self-ironizing conflict became a mutually enjoyable game. Even though she continued to protest the music, I noticed that she was swaying to the catchy rhythms. By the time I had delivered her to her destination, I'd gotten to hear the first half of a few different songs many times over. And Skylar was flushed with a delight that she immediately doubled by informing her mother of my horrible misdeeds. Parenting can be really strange sometimes, but all the more rewarding as a consequence.

Tags: daughter, everyday, music
Current Location: 85704

I am still not sure how to maximize Twitter for my own personal use, even though I can understand how it works well for others. Part of my difficulty stems from my conviction, powerfully reinforced after years of using Live Journal and, more recently, Facebook, that I should be using it to keep up to date on the people I know, rather than just deriving passive benefit from the postings of those to whom I have no personal connection. It's horribly difficult to keep tabs on everything while still focusing on tighter circles of acquaintances.

Still, I continue to seek a more effective approach or, to be more accurate, attitude towards Twitter. Tonight I realized that one of its unexpected advantages as a platform might be the highly ephemeral nature of its content. While poring over the list of who and what I'm following, I stumbled upon the name of a performer who recently passed away. Assuming that his feed would have been turned into a shrine by friends and fans, I was surprised that it had instead assumed the function of a memento mori because it simply came to an abrupt end:

It's hard not to look for clues when examining the evidence left behind after a life cut cruelly short. Particularly with performers, there's a tendency for the public to think that hard living may have been to blame. But the last tweets here offer no proof of excess, unless a hankering for Pho is considered a sign of life in the fast lane. And that's what makes this man's account so unsettling to peruse.

I'm not sure how this insight will help me to make broader sense of Twitter. But it does occur to me that the service is full of accounts that also come to an abrupt end for less drastic reasons. Of course, the web more generally is awash with sites and feeds that linger on as virtual ruins long after they have ceased to be updated. Maybe the "little ends" betokened by such abandonment tell us something about changing attitudes about death. For my part, though, the fact that I know that the performer mentioned above passed away imbues his final public statements with a gravity at odds with the everyday experience of the internet.

Tags: blogging, new media, theory
Current Location: 85704

Tags: everyday, health, photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

I doesn't want to tempt fate, especially with a likely road defeat looming Sunday -- "likely" because I will be in attendance, that is -- but I really have to wonder whether the Pac-10 bashing has gone too far. Yes, Cal lost at New Mexico. But the game was on the road and they were missing one of their Big Three. And I seriously doubt whether going down to Kansas in Lawrence or Syracuse in Madison Square Garden should be considered a sign of weakness. Their only semi-bad losses were to UCLA at home -- again, with a key injury -- and Washington on the road. Neither of those teams has come close to their pre-season reputations, certainly. Yet they have played far beneath their level of talent, which still emerges from time to time. Anyway, the negativity depresses me. The idea, as one ESPN commentator suggested today, that the Pac-10 will only be able to get two teams into the tournament if Cal wins the regular-season title and loses the conference tournament just seems insane to me. Then again, with the annual East Coast bias finally being fed by indisputable evidence of the Pac-10's overall decline, insanity might turn out to be the order of the day. It's enough to make a Bear say, "Grrrrrr!"

Tags: sports
Current Location: 85704

Tags: arizona, autobiography, home, photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

It's warmer and sunny today, after a week of weather that was pretty wintry by Tucson standards. But instead of looking forward apprehensively to the heat of summer, I'm realizing that I've lived here long enough now to take pleasure in our lovely, extended spring -- it goes from now, for plants that can handle light frost, up until May -- without worrying about the hell to come. Not to mention that I have also learned to appreciate the virtues of June. First, the tension leading up to the Monsoon -- one of my two favorite seasons here -- has its thrills, like Advent. Second, swimming a lot tempers the horror. And, most importantly, the road-clogging visitors from out of town and the students who only come here for a year-round tan are long gone. But enough about the weather to come. Today is beautiful and I'm flush with good feeling!

Tags: everyday, tucson, weather
Current Location: 85719

Tags: autobiography, photography
Current Location: 85704

Back when Skylar was five or so, she developed a fascination with tornadoes. She wanted to learn about them, but also wanted to make sure that they weren't a threat here in Tucson. Based on everything I'd read about the weather in these parts, I assured that she had nothing to worry about. But this day of insane winter weather -- the whole state of Arizona is a set of overlapping alerts -- has made me wonder whether I spoke too soon:

Yes, that's a tornado watch, for those of you with keen eyesight, one that encompasses not just Maricopa County to the north, where they've had a few minor twisters over the years, but Pima County as well. I highly doubt whether a tornado will hit Tucson. I'm more concerned about the gale-force winds that are supposed to accompany the fierce thunderstorms that pose the threat of cyclonic action. That said, I'm going to stay up and monitor the storm. It doesn't hurt to be careful. And I don't want to be punished for my insouciant statement about Tucson being a tornado-free zone!

Tags: everyday, tucson, weather
Current Location: 85704

For as long as I can remember, I've been extraordinarily sensitive to the moods of people around me. In fact, I've usually been more attuned to how others are feeling than how I am feeling myself. Again and again, friends have advised me to focus more attention inward and worry less about what's going on around me. But that's easier said than done, when you're psyche is configured the way mine is. I'd be hard pressed to recall a time when I was intensely caught up in a mood that wasn't the result of identifying with someone whose mood was similar. And that's a problem, obviously, one that's been brought home to me with renewed force in the past few days. At the same time, I don't want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. While it may be a bad idea to be consistently other-directed, I think that some disregard for the self might turn out to be a positive, in the end. So where -- and how -- do I draw the line?

Tags: analysis, autobiography, everyday
Current Location: 85704

Finally, after many self-inflicted delays -- I kept finding excuses to do something, anything else -- I have begun the process of radically reconfiguring my home office. Well, "radically" probably isn't the word you would choose. But even what most people would deem superficial changes feel pretty earth-shattering to someone as set in his ways -- I'm a classic Taurus -- as I am.

Rather than simply rearrange the things that are presently cluttering the space, I'm trying to rethink how I use it now that I have become a laptop-first person. Among other things, that means that I need to find a way to make more of my computer peripherals accessible to multiple machines. Right now, they are all connected, in a manner that is difficult to modify, to a desktop computer that has been on its last legs since 2005. My laptop may not be very au courant itself, but at least it doesn't crash every ten minutes.

Anyway, the process of disconnecting everything and rerouting cables and such is requiring me to deal with the collateral problems occasioned by such disruption, including my double-stacked bookshelves. It's a laborious process, not least because I keep finding things too interesting to move without at least a cursory glance. My goal this time is to be as reasonable as I can about how I proceed with this task. I can't afford one of those stay-up-all-night sessions in which I burn myself out because the mental icebergs being cast adrift release massive amounts of energy!

Tags: analysis, autobiography, everyday
Current Location: 85704

I washed the kitchen floor this afternoon. As I have previously noted here, in a variety of contexts, I have a devil of a time doing anything by rote. But it's when I'm doing the floor that this deficiency is made most apparent. I had sworn to myself that the method I devised the last time I executed this time-consuming and onerous task was good enough to stick with. When I actually got down on my hands and knees, though, I was unable to repeat myself. And I'm content, because the method I chose today now strikes me as the best of all possible methods. It seems unlikely, though, that my conviction will last until it's time to do the job again. Still, I haven't given up hope that I will one day settle into a mode in which I accept the mechanical reproduction of everyday activities.

Tags: analysis, everyday
Current Location: 85704

Tags: architecture, photography, theory, travel
Current Location: 85704

Thanks to satellite television, I've been able to see nearly as many Cal games each year since moving to Arizona as I did when I lived in the Bay Area. Sometimes it doesn't matter where you live. Historically, the road trips to Corvallis and Pullman -- neither major urban centers, obviously, and not on an interstate either -- are the games least likely to be broadcast. When there' s no crew present, even the information-rich updates that websites like ESPN.com provide are unavailable. All I can do is refresh the naked score on my computer or phone until the game is over.

So that's what I did tonight, during the Bears' game against the Cougars. As I did my household tasks of the evening, I kept checking the score every minute or two, to see what was happening. Cal was up big, then blew a lead. Then they were up again and blew another lead. It was nerve-wracking, particularly since I had no idea why or how these fluctuations were occurring. And then, with about ten minutes to go, it was time for me to read to Skylar.

Last winter I began reading The Lord of the Rings to her as a father-daughter ritual with which to transition out of the holiday season into the normal routines of the new year. At first we made major progress. When her mother went out of town, we would sometimes read for a long while, though the discussions we inevitably got into made turning the page a challenge. Somehow, though, as the spring trimester drew to a frenetic close and the heat started to beat down on the desert, we lost our momentum.

Since then, opportunities to read together have been few and far between. She has lots of homework and projects. Not to mention that she needs to use what limited free time she does have engaged in the role-playing that has been deeply important to her since she was two. Over break, I kept wanting to read. But it never worked out somehow. Tonight, though, we'd both set aside earlier in the week as the time to definitely, absolutely pick up the tale. That's why I ignored the end of the Cal game and happily read to her of Saruman's ignominious downfall without a single glance at my phone. It felt right. My anxiety about the result -- yes, I know that it's "just a game" -- melted away. And when, after a wonderful bonding experience, I finally checked the score, I was delighted to see that the Bears had prevailed. Being the superstitious sort I am when it comes to sports, I may try to "watch" more games this year without actually watching them!

Tags: autobiography, daughter, everyday, sports
Current Location: 85704

Last night, spurred by my parental duty to help Skylar with her Science Fair project -- she's studying yeast -- I made my very first loaves of bread. We worked together, of course, but a few delays in the process and her exhaustion made it necessary for me to take over from the dough mixing stage onward. I can honestly say that the phenomenon cookbooks describe, whereby the process of producing homemade bread leads to a profound sense of well being, hit me with a force I did not expect. Even if the loaves had turned out inedible, the sheer joy of watching the dough rise would have been enough to give me a serious emotional boost. But they came out pretty tasty, if a little denser and wider than I was hoping.

This brings me to my motivation for sharing this with you. If you have recipes for making yeast bread that you find particularly stellar or tips that have proven useful over the years, Skylar and I would be most grateful to benefit from your knowledge. The loaves we made last night were an attempt at baguettes, though insufficiently airy to meet a French standard. We're going to continue producing them for the course of the experiment, since we need to limit our variables, but will also try our hands at other kinds of bread. We also aim to make spontaneously leavened bread down the road, even if its creation seems too time-consuming and unpredictable for the Science Fair.

Tags: autobiography, food, home
Current Location: 85704

Tags: autobiography, photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

Last night I had a great conversation at The Grill with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. Thanks to our participation in social media -- we became Live Journal friends about five years ago and are now connected via Facebook as well -- we were able to start several levels above simple "catching up." Although we both had significant news of the sort that a careful user of social media is unlikely to share directly, there was enough common ground to make it quickly to topics we'd never discussed before.

Today, I was able to keep tabs on the Arizona-Green Bay playoff game while hiking in Ventana Canyon. When we stopped at Frost on the way home for gelato, I had no trouble joining in the conversation with other patrons who were staring intently at the flat-panel from a position of real-time statistical awareness. I didn't have to ask what had happened up until that point in the final quarter. Instead, I could immediately engage in the sort of sophisticated debate that sports radio shows provide.

I mention these two examples because it has struck me recently that the most striking distance between life today and what things were like in my youth is that it has become far, far easier to "get up to speed" in a speedy fashion than was the case in the 1970s and 1980s. Mind you, you still have to want to achieve such synchronization. Desire and will remain crucial factors. But if the investment of time and energy is sufficient, ignorance, at least in a factual sense, is now very difficult to sustain. I realize this probably sounds obvious. Still, I am excited to commence pondering the deeper implications of this insight, among them the realization that potential knowledge can be a pretty difficult burden.

Tags: blogging, new media
Current Location: 85704