March 1

It's March 1st, Sunday afternoon. I haven't blogged here in over two months. Sorry about that. I have been blogging on the regular over at moviehouse, but I know that's not the same. A seven hundred word movie review cut and trimmed to fit in four minutes of radio time is not the same as a genuine, personal blog post. I've felt the difference of not writing here.

Things are pretty crazy this semester. I'm teaching a ton of overload. Way back at the end of last year when we were making our schedules, I thought, "Christmas will be expensive (like every year), so I should take on some extra classes to pay the bills." I was right, both about the bills and the need to pay them, but what I didn't say to myself back then was, "Will I be able to teach that many classes and effectively grade that many papers while still being a husband and father and holding down a calling and blah blah blah?" I think I just figured I'd deal with it - which I am. But holy crimony sakes in the morning, I feel pretty overwhelmed this semester. The nice thing with my job is that it resets every sixteen weeks (or eight weeks in the spring and summer). Some people's jobs are unrelenting marathons all the time. Mine at least has very definitive end dates, so even if I have the worst student/class/textbook/whatever in the world, I really only have to put up with it for four months at the most. And that's not bad.

The thing about March is that it's not February. It will be icy and cold for most of this month too, and maybe the naked eye won't be able to tell much difference between the two months - but I know. I know that March is an early spring month. By the time we get to the end of it, spring - real, honest-to-goodness, warm-weather, walking-around-outside-in-the-evening-and-not-dying-of-frostbite spring - will be here. This fills me with great hope. I'm pretty sure I suffer from mild Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or maybe I just really hate winter. But either way, the thought of warm weather close at hand lifts my spirits a lot.

We're planning a trip to Idaho this June in the quick break between spring and summer terms. We're hoping to rent a cabin big enough to fit all the brothers and their families and just hang out in the woods together for a few days. Family reunions back when we were kids were these kind of gigantic events that, as fantastic as they were, were also a little overwhelming and intimidating. I think we just want to get together and catch up and have fun.

I have two or three books on my nightstand that I'm not reading and several tv shows sitting in the DVR that I'm just waiting for the time to watch. More importantly, I have six stacks of composition essays waiting for my attention over by the desk. This week is my spring break, so I have time to get some work done if I'll just get it done.

Speaking of getting things done, I have to help Avery get dinner in the oven. Our favorite Brown family amazon has taken to cooking Sunday dinner each week. More and more, she does it on her own, but I am usually around to supervise. She's intimidated by the idea of cooking a roast, but I'm pretty sure it's because she doesn't know how easy it is. If we want roast and potatoes by six, we'd better get to preparing it all now.

Friendship

I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

Maryn had her 14th birthday party here the other night and had five close friends over for a fancy Mormon-style tea party, dancing, and general goofing off. It was the dancing that struck me. After they ate, they turned up the background music playing on the iPod and just started romping around the living room together like drunk ponies. As a good parent, I kept my distance and observed out of the corner of my eye while washing dishes in the next room. I didn't want to ruin the vibe by, you know, being an adult in their vicinity. As I watched, I thought, "Yeah, they're friends." Why? Because no one, especially not a self-conscious 14 year old, is going to just start shaking it in the living room to Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" unless they feel supremely safe. You only feel that kind of comfort when you're with real friends, the tried and tested kind that you know you can trust. It filled up my heart to see that Maryn has those kinds of friends here. Each one of them is whip smart and quirky. Some of them are big pop culture fiends, others are talented musicians, and each is a sweetheart who is kind and loving to Maryn. In many ways, I see these girls as a direct answer to countless prayers we offered when we were living in Illinois and Maryn was the loneliest girl in the Midwest.

Avery also has a group of friends. She switched schools at the beginning of this year, primarily because there was a strong little nucleus of LDS girls her age at Jefferson Middle School. We definitely encouraged her in that direction because we knew the kids she had found at Northeast Middle School were sketchy. They swore, they talked about sex, they had boyfriends, they spent lunch hour looking at YouTube videos that they probably shouldn't have. Three or four LDS girls with high standards, good parents, and an enthusiasm for Avery coming to their school seemed like Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan appearing with the rising sun just as Helm's Deep was about to fall to Sauroman's army. (I'm a nerd. Just go with it, please.) So then she had automatic friends at school, and she got to see her school friends at church. It was like it was meant to be.

So everybody's happy, right?

Well, what's that John Lennon lyric? "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." I'm not 100% sure that's exactly applicable here, but it's the idea of unpredictability and the unexpected that I'm getting at.

Two of Maryn's friends have come out as gay in the last month or two. And, what's more, they have decided they like each other. So while their little group is having their intense little gabfests about Dr. Who or the latest funny cat video they saw on Facebook in the lunchroom, one girl is resting her head on the other girl's shoulder with her arm around her back. It's weird any time two friends out of a group start forming a romantic relationship with each other, but I think it's especially awkward and potentially confusing when both friends are the same sex. I'm far from homophobic. I'm certainly far more liberal when it comes to homosexuality and gay marriage than the vast majority of my LDS friends and family members. But these are 14 year old girls and my daughter's best friends. So I worry. If nothing else, I worry about these two girls getting persecuted for being different in Midland, a very conservative place, and I worry about Maryn being lumped in with them. I don't have a ton of faith in other people's kids. I generally assume they're mean and narrow, eager to label, quick to judge. I don't want Maryn to be labeled or mocked for something that isn't even hers to claim.

Meanwhile, Avery is facing something I've struggled with my whole life. What do you do when the nice Mormon kids aren't that nice? She's struggling right now, not because her friends are leading her to make any of the stereotypical  middle school mistakes ("Hey kid, want a cigarette?"), but because sometimes 12 year old girls are just kinda snotty and being Mormon doesn't stop that. ("Do you need help putting on your makeup in the morning? Do you need me to come over to your house early so I can teach you how to put on eye liner?" "You're not going to wear those boots with those pants, are you?" "Avery Jane Brown, what ARE you wearing?") She's struggling because she feels like she has to rely on these good Mormon girls at this new school of hers, and they are not the dancing-in-the-living-room kind of friends. Everything feels conditional and unpredictable. One girl in particular will freeze her out one day, and then cling to her like leech the next. (The worst is when this friend totally ignores her at school on a Wednesday but won't leave her side at Young Women the same evening.) So she comes home moody and miserable almost every afternoon because she is in a new place and doesn't feel like she has a safe haven with the very friends she came over for.

When I was in seventh or eighth grade, I had a friend actually break up with me. His name was Rusty, and we were pals from church. He lived across the street, and we hung out a lot over the summer doing the stupid stuff 13 and 14 year old boys do - go karts, bb guns, movies, talking endlessly about "hot chicks." I was essentially Napoleon Dynamite. Anyway, once school started, he came over one afternoon and said, "I just don't think I should hang out with you as much. It used to be that cute, popular girls said 'hi' to me in the halls, and now they don't as much. I think it's because I've been hanging out with you." Looking back on this experience, I am astounded to realize that he literally broke up with me. The thing is, we were both heterosexual males - so there was none of the break-it-to-them-gently, it's-not-you-it's-me crap. Nope. "You're not popular enough for me, dude. See ya later, sucker." It sucked and is probably part of what makes me so irritable and sensitive about the treatment Avery is receiving right now.

Junior high and the early part of high school were pretty lonely for me. I had friends, of course. I wasn't a total outcast, but mostly it felt like we were sort of place-holders for each other. We would go to movies or hang out because our "real friends" hadn't come along. We knew each other's families, partnered up at camp outs, and sat by each other at lunch, but it's not like we ever talked about anything important or felt great loss if someone was absent from school that day. I'm not in touch with any of those guys these days. (Ironically, I'm Facebook friends with Rusty now. I ought to unfriend him with a message saying, "People used to like my posts but since they saw I'm FB friends with you, they don't as much any more.")

But then high school rolled around and my real friend did show up. I met Tony Mosier when I was 15 years old and for the last 25 years, he has been my best friend. We live two time zones apart, have very little in common when it comes to work or income or family background, and only get to see each other every other year or so. And yet, I know, without a doubt, I could call him at this very moment (11:34 p.m., on a Tuesday night in December) and say, "Dude, I just killed a guy. I need help getting rid of the body," and he would say something like, "How big a guy? Do I need to bring a shovel or should we look into renting a backhoe for half a night?" He's that kind of friend. I spoke to him last week and just whined about the various irritations and inconveniences that accompany being a chubby 40 year old husband and father of three. I didn't think for a second, "Gee, I hope he's not offended/bothered/bored/etc. with what I'm saying." I didn't have to worry that he was going to make me feel bad or stupid for what I was saying. I knew he'd just listen, probably make me laugh by saying something utterly crude and inappropriate, and then just say, "Dude, that sucks."  And that, to me, is perfect friendship. Utter acceptance, a good amount of empathy, and the general feeling of "That person is totally cool. And weirdly enough, they think I'm cool too. Cool."

So my thing is, I know what real friendship feels like. I know how it armors you against the people in the world whose only goal seems to be making you feel stupid or small. I know how it comforts you on those days when the world comes apart at the seams. I know how it makes you feel better about yourself and the world. That's what I want for my girls. Those are the kinds of friends I want them to find and keep. I want them to find people who will protect them rather than lead them into trouble. I want them to have people who will accept them and not act like they are only as worthwhile as what they are wearing.

Friendship has buoyed me through death and disaster in my life. It is, I think, one of the great things we were put on earth to experience. I'm praying for my daughters that they will get to experience the best of it.

A Moment to Pause

As I write this, my English 112 class busily workshops their persuasion essay which is due next week. Subject-wise, there are the usual suspects - legalizing marijuana, raising the speed limit, lowering the drinking age - but there are also some more personal, more localized topics. I have a trio of students who want to persuade Delta College's Board of Trustees that the school needs A. dorms, B. a student nap room, and C. a lactation room for nursing mothers. I think one of those actually stands a chance of happening - I 'll let you figure out which one.

It's been a busy couple of days. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are always nuts at our house. I work later than normal both of those days and that combined with Parker's pre-school, play rehearsals for Maryn, YW for Maryn and Avery, and Scouts for me make it seem like we just spend those days running. So Thursdays always seem nice and light to me. Having my students workshop instead of me having to lecture makes it seem like a spa day for me. Just sitting here and typing a blog is a rare luxury for me. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and we're all looking forward to that. We'll spend it with Suzy's family in the Detroit area. Dinner at Jeff and Amy's, maybe an evening movie somewhere, and then the next day, the girls will all go to their beloved Braeden, Cole, and Addie's house and Suzy and I will go over to Grand Rapids for an early anniversary trip. We'll stay at a nice hotel, go see a show, eat some good food, and just generally be childless for about 36 hours. I anticipate it being a good time.

I've been reading a biography of Jim Henson for the last couple of weeks and really enjoying it. He's kind of a hero of mine, and his work with the Muppets and movies like The Dark Crystal are huge parts of my childhood. The older I get, the more interested I become in things like the guy who created the Muppets rather than the Muppets themselves, you know? I have always thought of reading biographies as such an old guy kind of thing to do. Like watching nature documentaries on PBS or movies about World War II. Slowly, I find myself becoming that guy. And it's okay (he tells himself as he breathes into a paper bag).

Anyway, Henson was a fascinating guy - driven and ambitious but quiet and almost pathologically motivated to avoid conflict. He never set out to be a puppeteer, much less the most successful and influential puppeteer of the 20th century. He wanted wanted to be in television and to direct films, but he had these strong avant garde, hippie-ish tendencies where his work was concerned. It's ironic because a lot of the projects he pursued that were like that, were kind of miserable failures. It was when he combined his whacked-out, absurdist tendencies with the more mainstream medium of fuzzy puppets that really brilliant, beautiful things happened.

I am always interested in reading about people who are the best at what they do. I think there's something really interesting about genius. I notice some interesting similarities between Frank Lloyd Wright, Stan Lee, Jim Henson, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, etc. They're not all necessarily good, positive traits - but definitely similar. (Crazy focus, devoted to the point of utter selfishness, deep curiosity about their field, etc.) I find it endlessly interesting to think about how a person becomes the very best at what they do. I haven't finished the Henson biography, but I hope to soon. I 'll let you know how it ends.

Halloween

It's Halloween night. The coldest wind yet this season is battering the last of the leaves from our trees outside. It snowed earlier today around noon, but all the parents of Midland bundled up their kids and brought them to our street earlier tonight. Parker's asleep, Maryn's in the shower, and Avery is still at a friend's house.

It's been a month since I blogged here last. As the three of you who read this blog already know, I passed my dissertation defense last week. I am now officially Doctor Brown. I've felt no pain to speak of for ten days now. After eight years of that constant weight, I just feel kind of ... bouyant right now, you know? The thing that's just been there for SO LONG is no longer there. It's weird. I feel a little at a loss. It's not as though I don't have things to do. As usual, I have a stack of essays to read and grade just to my left as I type this. There have been basketball games, play rehearsals, holiday parties, classes, and a million other things, so it's not like I've been sitting around eating bonbons and watching Oprah reruns. But that nagging feeling in the back of my head is gone, and it feels weird to not have it there. I feel like I'm supposed to start writing the Great American Novel or start putting model ships in bottles or something. I don't know what though. I'm sure Suzy has some suggestions.

Anyway, victory looks like this:

Yep, victory looks like a pumpkin-head in a tie. 

Anyway, I've been doing my little radio show for the last couple of months now, and it's turned out to be pretty fun. For someone who loves movies and going to the movies as much as I do, I've been surprised at how rarely I actually do either of those things. I get a little self-conscious about how few new releases I review on a Movie Review Show. But I figure most people watch stuff on their phones or laptops or Apple hologram watches or whatever these days, so reviewing something on Netflix or DVD is as valid for most movie goers as a new release. Right? With the winter awards season coming up, I hope to actually get to the theater and see some of the big, new movies coming out. If you're wondering, the link to that blog is marksmovieshed.blogspot.com.

Avery finished her basketball season this last week. Their team ended up winning all but one game all season, and it was just such fun to watch her get out there and be good at something that I just have no concept of. When the girls win Young Authors or get an art piece placed in the community show, I think, "Sure, I get that." When Avery sinks an outside shot from close to the three-point line or snatches the ball away from an opponent and passes it down court, I think, "Wait, what just happened? How did that happen?" It fills me with a lot of pride and satisfaction to see her find something that is just hers. The fact that she's good at it is just gravy.

Maryn is working hard at school and in rehearsals for Schoolhouse Rock: The Musical. She's the president of the Beehives at church and seems to thrive on that kind of responsibility. She's a very good kid.

Parker is getting bigger and smarter all the time. She's insane and loves movies a little too much, but she's fantastic and we love her. She wandered up to me today, hugged my legs, and just said, "I love you, Daddy" for no reason at all. She's pretty great.

I know that this is a short, mostly Mark-centric entry after a month of nothing. But it's all I've got this evening and I think I hear some Halloween candy calling my name.

I Bring the News and the News Is Good

In three weeks, I'll drive to Detroit and defend my dissertation. Assuming I don't set the room on fire or accidentally punch one of my committee members in the neck, I think they'll approve my work and I'll be done. Finally.

I'm in the process of finalizing my formatting and trying to make sure that every little detail is taken care of. It's a weird, exciting time, and it's a little hard to wrap my head around the idea that it's almost over.

Anyway, one component of finishing up the final document was writing an autobiographical statement. I wasn't sure what they wanted, so I went ahead and wrote what seemed right and was then told it was too long. Apparently, they only wanted something short and to the point, and I had written a three page essay. So I cut out the essay and wrote a paragraph because I'm all about getting this done, you know?

But I like what I wrote and I don't want it to just disappear into the junkyard file I've been building for the last eight years. So I thought I'd post it here. It's a little lofty and more formal-sounding than what I usually post, but what the heck - PhD-ing requires a certain amount snooty obnoxiousness, I think, so here's some of mine:

I was born and raised in the high deserts of southeastern Idaho. My parents were both fourth generation members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the area where we lived is a main artery in what is known as the Mormon Corridor, the stretch of land from southern Alberta, Canada to northern Mexico that LDS prophet Brigham Young systematically colonized in the 19^th century. My personal identity is deeply interwoven with my membership in the Mormon church. Every major decision I’ve made and each important life event I’ve experienced has been shaped and colored by my relationship with my religion. At times, that relationship is fraught with conflict and cynicism on my part while at other times it is a source of guidance and peace for me.

Because I recognize Mormonism’s centrality in my worldview and because I believe in the efficacy of writing and research for finding answers to important questions (both personal and academic), I have used my time in graduate school to unpack my particular set of religious, cultural, historical, academic, and aesthetic concerns. During my MFA program at Boise State, my thesis project was a book-length series of poems centering on the conflict between a Mormon’s desire to reach spiritually upward and the various temporal appetites that detract from that reaching.

Once I decided to continue on to a PhD program, I knew two things for sure: I wanted to pursue film studies (because I wanted a subject I knew I would still love even after years of close study) and that I wanted to study Richard Dutcher’s work. As I wrote in the dissertation itself, Dutcher’s work has profoundly affected me since I first encountered it, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes not. Positive or negative, it was important in ways that were a little mysterious to me. I believe that grad school can and should be an opportunity to work out questions and ideas that matter. Dutcher’s work matters to me. Mormonism matters to me. Sorting out my own sometimes conflicted feelings about my religion and reconciling them with my academic pursuits matters.

Over the course of the eight years it has taken me to get to this point, I had some of the most challenging and profound life experiences a person can have: my wife and I welcomed our third and final child after a seven year gap, my father died of a heart attack right in front of me while he was out visiting my family in rural Illinois, my mother died just four months later after finally succumbing to the effects of years of aggressive breast cancer treatment, and, as a result of their passing, I fell into a deep depression that lasted a couple of years. My religious faith was tried and almost worn thin in ways I’d never experienced. My relationship with my beliefs changed like they never had before. Serious academic pursuit is hard work. I think it is made harder still by the fact that it happens as real life is constantly impinging on it.

I was in my early 30s when I began this project. This January I will turn 41. Over the course of this project, I have gone from being a relatively young man to approaching middle age. I have more children, more wrinkles, and more pounds on the scale now than I did when I began, having spent the better part of a decade working on this project. As I write this statement as part of preparing the final draft of this dissertation, I look back and think that, while I wish it had taken about half as long, it has been time well-spent and I am glad I did it. Writing, studying, and talking about my church and my faith in combination with film, something that has been central to my life for every bit as long as Mormonism has been, created new understanding and also generated new questions and concerns. In other words, it has done exactly what both academic study and religious practice are supposed to do: shed light while raising new questions to pursue. One Book of Mormon prophet taught, “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have” (2 Nephi 28.30). I feel as though I have spent the last eight years learning line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. I certainly haven’t come to any kind of “fullness of knowledge” about film studies, Mormonism, or even Richard Dutcher whose life and work continue to evolve and change in unexpected ways, but I made a tentative forward step into the darkness, testing the ground beneath me as I go, and found something useful, rewarding, and new as a result of my attempts. Stepping into the unknown, attempting to make a connection, being both rewarded and a little confounded by what’s found on the other side? This seems to me to describe the process and aims of both religious faith and scholarly pursuit. Despite how separate they sometimes seem, it gratifies me to realize how related the two worlds really are, and I am glad to have spent the last eight years working on a project that, I hope, created a few new nexus points between them.