A Mother's View of Rugby

I am forever in awe of grandparents who love to go to their grandkids' games. I have always felt like I paid my dues as a parent. Luckily, I had more musicians than athletes, though sometimes listening to a 5th grade string ensemble play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is as bad as sitting in the rain watching a second grader who hasn't a clue where the ball is at any particular moment. Both are painful.

But, I did my dutiful duty in both the musical and athletic arena. When Clay finished high school football, I  thought I was done with sitting in the elements, watching my son's potential for injury rise in direct proportion to my inability to understand what had happened on the field.

However, last fall Clay enrolled in the Thunderbird School of Global Management and took up rugby. Yesterday we travelled to Flagstaff to watch him play in a tournament.

Now, I'm married to a football enthusiast, and I have tried mightily to understand the game. And I do, somewhat. I understand downs, off-sides, touchbacks, two-point conversions, offense, defense, most of the basic stuff. I also understand that the last two minutes of a game can take forever. It's a really intense game, but in short spurts.

But rugby! Now, there's an intense game in loooonnng spurts.  I knew very little about the game before yesterday, but here's what I love about it, as opposed to football: The players never have to say die.  Say the ball carrier is halfway down the field and goes down. Even though he's down, he can toss it to someone else who can toss it to someone else who can get buried under a pile. As soon as there's daylight, he can toss it to someone else or someone can get it from him and head on out. The forward motion doesn't stop for anything except a foul.

Also, in the aforementioned pile, it's fair for the opposing team to haul people off, toss them to the side, and go after the ball. Having secured it, they take off for their end zone (not called that, I'm sure).

Also, in throwing the ball in, the players grab their forwards by the shorts and hold them up to get greater height. It's pretty awesome to see those guys catch those flung-high balls.

They have a thing called a ruck where one or more players who are on their feet and in contact, close around the ball on the ground. Once a ruck has been formed, players can't use their hands to get the ball. They have to use their feet. I think that's what's happening in the picture to the left. I think.

And the scrum! That's a sight to see.  Well, I'll tell you the sight to see. It's someone who has burns along the sides of their face from the friction of those beside him in the scrum. The scrum is used to restart play after an infraction. What the players do is bend over, one row behind the other--both teams with 2 rows--and push against each other to see who gets the ball.

Derrill and I sat on the sidelines yesterday and watched as Clay made a couple of brilliant tackles. Then one time, right in front of us, I watched as he picked a guy up off a pile, tossed him aside, grabbed the ball and ran with it. Was that my sweet little boy? I've added the photo to the left because something like that had just happened, though the ball is back out in play when this pic was taken.

A few players wear what they call scrum caps to help prevent the head abraisions. Other than that, no protective gear is worn in the game, and this is a full contact sport.  I begged Clay to at least wear a scrum cap.  As a poor student, he couldn't afford one. I thought about crocheting him one, but figured he wouldn't wear it, though the're about that substantial. However, he found one in the equipment room and has been wearing it to humor me. He's the one in the front in the blue jersey and lime green shoes.

All in all it was a great day. I was particularly grateful for the two EMTs that were standing beside their parked ambulance during the tournament.

This is a postscript.  Clay just sent me a video of the tourney. He's in the first game. Tall, beard, scrum cap & green shoes--that's him in the middle of the photo above. But, enjoy for the glimpses of the game, though glimpses of Clay are enjoyable too. There's a really good shot of a scrum, and you can see how the players in the scrum have to get the ball out with their feet, and one of the non-scrum guys picks up the ball and runs with it.  With any luck, by clicking here you can see the video.

Talk Like a Pirate Day, 2012

My brother, always the whimsical one, tuned me in to “Talk Like a Pirate Day” shortly after it began in 2002.  (You can read about the beginnings of the day on the official Talk Like a Pirate Day web site at http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html ) I always intended to remember and wish him a happy day, but when he’d call me and say, “How arrrrr you, matie?” I’d know I’d missed it again.

However, in the last three years, I’ve had a reminder from one of my colleagues. Here’s how it happened.

I’ve been working with Ted Ritter for almost ten years now. He’s laser-focused in his scheduling and project management work, but very laid back in most other areas. You could not say that his company has any sort of a corporate feel to it. In fact, he resists even having business cards.

However, when he finally decided that Ritter Project Management, Inc. needed a web site, he also agreed to corporate business cards and brochures. We suggested sending Christmas cards to clients each year, but he opted instead for Talk Like a Pirate Day greetings.

I’m posting the picture that came with this year’s greetings. That's Ted with the eye patch. Andreas Aalhus is in the striped shirt and Jeff Anderson is in the puffy shirt.To see other Talk Like a Pirate Day pics, visit the Ritter web site at http://ritterpm.com/Gallery/PirateGallery.aspx?aid=6

And a happy Talk Like a Pirate Day to you!

Middle School Magic, A Review of Braden Bell's THE KINDLING

A pair of headlights drove around the corner, piercing the darkness. “Okay, there’s my mom,” Melanie said.

As the car turned fully, the lights caught a man standing in the middle of the street halfway down the block. His black cape flapped, while the wind whipped and blew his long hair.

“Mel—look at that guy!” Lexa grabbed Melanie’s arm and shivered as something like a swarm of ants with frozen cleats ran up and down her skin.

The darkness seemed thicker and heavier near him, as if the light from the car was scared to get too close. “Creepy! Where did he come from?” Melanie said as her mother pulled into the driveway. She shivered, too. “Glad we don’t have to wait out here anymore. Bye, Lexa!”

Melanie ran to the minivan, and a moment later, she and her mother drove away.

Lexa turned to go inside her house, but she couldn’t. Some kind of power radiated out from the man, drawing her to him, even though she wanted to look away. He made her spirit feel sick to its stomach, but she was frozen.

Braden Bell is king of the inventive simile and he proves this over and over in his latest book, The Kindling.

The word “kindle’ refers to the process where a teenager who has a dormant, unknown, exceptional power finds out that the power has become active. This story is about three teens, twins Connor and Lexie and their friend Melanie, who ‘kindle’ and are thus marked by the dark powers for extinction. This book is about how they fight on the side of the power of light, along with music teacher, Dr. Timberi, English teacher, Mrs. Grant, and other deceptively familiar people.

Braden Bell is not only king of the original simile, but he also is inventive in crafting his action sequences. One fairly decisive battle takes place in the Small World ride at Disney World. It’s mayhem in the Magic Kingdom.

I don’t read a lot of middle grade books. This book did not convert me to the genre. But I love words, I like the way Braden Bell strings them together, and I’d certainly read another Braden Bell book.

Here’s the website for the book: www.thekindlingbook.com  You can find out more about it there and see some scenes from the book.
I was given a digital copy of this book for the purpose of reviewing it with the understanding that my review would be unbiased.

~~~~~~~~~~~ I'd love to have you follow my blog. I'm back in the saddle now after moving south 1000 miles. Look for more reviews, recipes and random thoughts.

Peach Days Surprise

Between my last post and this, we took a vacation to Southern Utah, decided to relocate, put our house on the market, bought a home in Kanab, Utah, and moved. It took a 45-foot van trailer plus a trailer behind the pickup to get everything down here, but we made it. We’re still getting used to blue sky every morning, but I think we’ll manage.


In the midst of stumbling over boxes and trying to find places to put things, my husband, Derrill, joined the local orchestra. He’s a former trombone player, trying to get muscles—both embouchure and slide-operating ones—to remember long-forgotten tensions, and he practices innumerable hours out in his shop.

Kanab has a population of about 4000. It’s not like the small communities in the Pacific Northwest, where they have large populations on 5- and 10-acre plots in surrounding unincorporated areas. Kanab’s surrounding territory is beautifully, ruggedly, colorfully empty. So, 4000 is about what you can count on. That a population of that size would have sustained an orchestra since 1984 is due to the tenacity, drive, and love of music of local pharmacist Kortney Stirland.   The Symphony of the Canyons performs several times a year, one of the performances being at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Another is at Peach Days, a local celebration in Hurricane, UT, a small town about an hour away from Kanab. That performance was yesterday. Derrill was sweating it, but felt better when they said there would be another trombonist playing with the orchestra in Hurricane.

I have to digress now and tell you about the Dallas Brass. I meant to blog about the concert we went to last fall where we heard this marvelous group. Their performance model is to go to school districts, give master classes to their middle- and high-school musicians, and have a performance where they play with the students. It’s a win-win-win situation, for the kids, for the Dallas Brass and for the audience.

As I said, the Dallas Brass came to Skagit County and performed, and two of our grandchildren, Vaughn and Kjaisa, got to play with them. The house was packed, and you could tell it was a musical high for the kids. It was for the audience, too.

So, fast forward to Peach Days. Derrill prays for a rain-out situation all the way to Hurricane, but though there are rain clouds in the sky, they’re to the west. He has to perform.





The other trombone shows up, and who is it? Only D. J. Barraclough of the Dallas Brass. Derrill says if he had known who the other trombone was going to be, he wouldn’t have had the courage to come. As it was, he enjoyed playing second trombone with the master.

The icing on the cake was that our grandson, Vaughn, a great percussionist, was staying with us this August before heading off to college. The orchestra needed another person in that section, so Vaughn jumped in to help out with the Peach Days performance. So, he got to play with D. J. Barraclough again.

I think the smiles in the picture say it all.

The Winner of Connie Sokol's Motherhood Matters is . . .

. . .  Bethany!  I know who you are, Sedromom, so I'll get the book off to you. 

    Stay tuned. I'm going to do another book giveaway the end of May so check back.

Liz is giving away a copy of Connie E. Sokol's Motherhood Matters

I promised to do this on the 21st, and I've been feeling good that I was so on top of this, that I was right on schedule. Then I thought, no, wait--I taught a writing class at the Upper Skagit Library on the 21st, and that was yesterday.  Today is the 22nd.

But that doesn't matter, does it?  What matters is that you get a chance to get a copy of Connie Sokol's gem of a book just in time to give it to someone for Mother's Day. 

I'll press Jens into service again and we'll do the drawing Thursday the 26th.  That's not very long, so get your name in the pot--and I speak literally, because I use an old chamber pot for the drawing.

All you have to do is become a follower of this blog and leave a comment to say you've done so and you want your name entered. If you're already a follower, then let me know.

To read my review of Motherhood Matters, scroll down past my UFO sighting and Jens drawing the name for the Caller ID giveaway, and you'll find it.

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My UFO Sighting

Notice I didn’t call this my ET sighting. I don’t necessarily think extra-terrestrials had anything to do with what I saw in the sky back in 1959, but I do know that I had never seen anything like it before.


Luckily, I wasn’t alone. In fact, my companion, my then-roommate, Roberta Uzelac (now Nelson), asked me just a few months ago if I remembered the incident. The hair stood up on the back of my neck just thinking about it. Yes, I remembered.



Highway between Kanab UT and Page AZ



We were on our way to Page, Arizona from Provo, Utah. It must have been a Friday night, probably about eleven o’clock. I don’t know why my brother Ron wasn’t with us. Usually we’d have him and a couple other people in the car, but this time it was just Roberta and I.

We had talked ourselves out long before we reached the Cock’s Comb, a sandstone formation between Kanab, UT and Page, AZ. Coming through the cut in the hill, we looked forward to the last leg: a flat, relatively straight, uninhabited, fifty-mile stretch of two-lane highway. A dark, sparsely traveled, lonely . . . you get the idea.

It wasn’t long after the Cock’s Comb that we noticed a large, bright light in the sky. It traveled from right to left in front of us. Years later, when my husband was flying out of general aviation airports, I thought that landing lights on small planes as they were coming straight at you were similar to that light we saw in the sky. Only it wasn’t coming straight at us. It was crossing in front of us. Even at that, one could have made the case that what we saw was a light on a general aviation aircraft, except that its last maneuver was something no aircraft I ever saw could do.

The light had crossed in front of us, as I said, from right to left, going at a speed that we could ascribe to a known aircraft. Suddenly it changed directions, zipping up and to the right, crossing in front of us again, in an arc so fast that it seemed it must be a shooting star. And then, like a shooting star, it disappeared.

We were left in the dark, alone, on that uninhabited road with fifty miles still to go before we reached the cozy safety of my house and my daddy’s protection. My knuckles were still white when we got there.

I was so grateful that I had my roommate with me to corroborate my story. However, a few years later when I mentioned the sighting to Addy, our neighbor across the street, she said she had seen something very similar on that same stretch of road late at night.

Here’s how she described it to me a month or so ago when I asked her about it again:

In the early 70's, I was driving with a friend one night from Kanab, Utah to Page, Arizona on a lonely strip of highway in the high desert. As I reached the top of a hill I saw a large glowing ball hovering over the desert to my left. The light could be described as hot pink or light red. My passenger and I both exclaimed, "What is that?" We watched for several seconds and then it quickly disappeared. We wondered if it could have been an oncoming car's headlights, but there was no road in that vicinity and it definitely was the wrong color of light. I still remember it vividly, though it remains a mystery.

So, there you have it. I still hear the Twilight Zone theme song deedle-deedle-ing in my mind when I think about it. It was over 50 years ago. My hair is gray now, and I didn’t want to leave this world without documenting it—my gift to UFO research.

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