Morbid Romantic

If you could study a subject that you’ve never had the opportunity to learn, what would you choose? This could be an academic class or the study of a specific skill or art. Tell us your passion about it!
I chose the perfect field of study: history. I can’t imagine having devoted my life, my heart, to a different area of study. Not only does it make me great at Jeopardy, but it always gives me an interesting fact to spew or a tie-in to make at any given moment. And when there is no one around to listen to me ramble on, I just go through it in my own head and entertain myself. Though, I can’t say that history is my only subject of interest. I don’t think that history is the only thing that I could be good at, or happy to make my career/life’s work.

I would have loved (maybe using past tense is incorrect because I still would love to, I just feel like I am to old and missed my chance) to study Mortuary Science and become a Mortician. I’m not ghoulish, I swear! And I don’t wear black lipstick and recite the black mass. I dress in sweater vests and have a personal notebook that is pink with flowers on it. Yet I admit that I do have my own gargoyle, I decorate my room with coffins, and my curtains are black spider web design. Both parts of me aren’t sell outs of the other part at all, I promise.

I don’t romanticize the profession, either. I realize the dangers. I know that some students become desensitized to the dead and become a little cold-hearted– they begin to see the human bodies as objects and nothing more. I know that morticians see some pretty gruesome stuff. I also know that there is a chance of infectious disease contraction. With the proper precautions and safety measures in place, the issue of disease shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Let me tell you why I have always wanted to be a Mortician. It’s not because I love death and morbidity (okay, I DO love morbidity, but that has nothing to do in this case), or that I enjoy looking at dead bodies. There’s nothing pleasant about death, not for the person who might have suffered and for the family still around who continue to suffer.

The job of the Mortician, aside from preparing a body properly for burial, is to treat the family and the body with the last bit of kindness they will experience. The least someone can do for a dead person is treat them with the utmost kindness and respect. It will surely ease some of the stress on the family, too, to know that their loved one is in good, caring, kind hands. The end result, while by no means a substitution for the person they lost, will at least take some of the shock of death away as family says their last goodbye.

What are your earliest childhood memories? How old were you at the time? Why do you think those memories are what stayed? How are those memories important to you?

I didn’t have a ‘nice’ childhood as childhood’s go. Both of my parents were alcoholics who spent a lot of late nights locked in a bedroom getting high. My father was abusive and my mother was really too weak and too scared of him to do anything about it, which I don’t blame her for. Because of the chaotic and frightening nature of my childhood, a lot of it I have chosen to simply forget. Oh, it’s always there in the back of my mind, and if anything I am the result of all that I have been through, but my memories are jumbled up because of the things I have chosen to lay aside in the name of emotional progress.

If anything, this makes me cling all the more passionately to the few moments that I do have, the few things that really shine out as great and fun. My important times are all the more vital and bright because they were so rare and such a relief to the standard run of things around the house.

It is really no surprise that my childhood memories, the good ones, involve my sister and me. She was and still is my best friend, the only person I really think understands and accepts me for better or for worse. We grew apart as teenagers because that’s what teenagers do, but we’re becoming friends again now that we are adults. When we were part of that isolated world that is childhood, we played together, ate together, and did everything together.

My earliest memories are of the two of us playing. Barbies were our thing. We were both hardcore Barbie addicts with the remote control cars and Dreamhouse to prove it. The two of us would sit for hours, confined to our bedroom as our parents did their ‘thing.’ We’d dress Barbie, get her and Ken into all sorts of drama, and decorate/redecorate the Dreamhouse (it had flippable walls to turn rooms into different areas… awesome, I know).

Then there were the fights, which the two of us laugh about now. Yes, we were quite violent as kids. We still have scars that last to this day! I accuse her of being the reason I need therapy so badly. But she was mean! Always chasing me around, always making me be the ugly stepsister when we’d play… threatening me with a knife. Yes! A KNIFE! She was crazy, I tell you, absolutely out of her mind. I tell everyone that I should get a survivor’s medal for having grown up with her. All in the name of fun, of course. Kids will be kids.

And then there was the time we decided to run away…

But only got to the backyard before giving up. The idea died just as quickly as it was birthed from our minds. I guess we didn’t quite have it in us to be so adventurous. It was fine and easy when it was Barbie, but not so easy when it was us.

So, I have a lot of great memories. I can’t tell you how old I was when these things happened, or what grade I was in. I just remember the events and how happy I felt during them.

Which author’s writing surprised you when you first read their work and what about it grabs you?

Okay, there is something that all of you should know about me. Are you ready? This is my grand confession…

I am a vampire book snob.

There, I said it. It is out in the open and I can’t take it back. All of you now know my terrible truth.

You see, it all began in the year 1994 when my mother took me to see the motion picture version of one of her favorite books Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice. Entranced can’t even begin to explain what I felt when I watched the sophisticated, sensual, elegant vampires gracing the large screen of the small Ft. Monroe military base supplied theater, which was probably there before the Civil War AND the slave contraband decision. I had always thought vampires to be pallid, disgusting creatures. Like animals, I would say. Yet when I saw Lestat and Louis in their Frenchman clothing, vampires became something new to me.

I became and still am completely in love with the Vampire Chronicles (Marius is the end all and be all of literary characters in my mind and heart).

It made me a snob.

As a result, it is very hard for me to even pick up a vampire book. I’m close minded. I worry that the vampires within the pages won’t live up to my expectations. I don’t want them to be gothic cliches and I don’t want them to be full on beasts a la 30 Days of Night.

But, upon many recommendations, I decided to give the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris a try. Everyone said that they were great and the show True Blood was interesting. It was just that previously, I had read the back of the first book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries and thought to myself, “oh man, some superhero telepathic waitress and vampires ‘out of the coffin.’” It just sounded like one of those Mary Sue, vampire cliche books that I wanted so desperately to avoid.

With much trepidation, I opened up the first book.

And LOVED it.

Oh man did I love the book. I am a full fledged fan of the series now. I have learned that I can love sophisticated, elegant vampires, but I can also love your normal, sometimes country, very human in nature vampires. Where Anne Rice is elegant and reads like prose, Charlaine Harris is witty and down to earth but no less talented. The characters in the Sookie Stackhouse novels aren’t grandiose or extraordinary (funny to say when referring to vampires, I know). The world that Harris makes seems as if it could be real. I think that is what I like the most about Harris’ writing– when you real, you feel as if the things happen are possible.

What event in history or historical person do you feel had the greatest influence on the modern world and why?

I am the one who asked this question, yet even I realize just how impossible a task it is to decide with any certainty an answer. I am a historian and I know that no one person or event has singularly shaped the modern world. Indeed, we are now the culmination of the contributions of millions of people and things. So, this answer is really a matter of opinion coupled with facts and/or sentiment, but it presents no finality. In essence: there is no right answer. I also think given the question, it would be acceptable to single out a nation or country. An answer would have to be based on the world as the answerer sees it.

But what to choose? What to single out and put my finger on, point to and say, “this?”

Roman Emperor Justinian I created the Corpus Juris Civilis that helped form some of our modern laws. The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution. The New Deal inspired The Great Society, which in turn evolved the welfare state, the demolition of which characterizes the Reagan administration. There are millions upon millions, perhaps even billions, of historical connections that fuse the past with the present in very obvious ways. In fact, it is almost futile to try to make sense of it all and unwind the tangles of history. Though one may isolate history and determine cause and effect, even causes have causes, and those causes have causes, and effects are rarely ever singular in nature. In short, you start with one point and end up with countless threads extending both back and forth.

All that said, I have thought this over for a while and come to my event: the Assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Este Franz Ferdinand on June 14, 1914. He was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia who was also in affiliation with The Black Hand organization. The purpose was to break free from Austrio-Hungarian control and become part of Greater Serbia. The first assassination attempt failed when a grenade was lobbed at the car and bounced off harmlessly. To protect the Archduke and his wife, the driver took a backway route out of ‘harms way’ and managed to end up right in front of Princip, who shot both Franz and his wife dead.

It was a snowball effect from here.

Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia the July Ultimatum, which they knew Serbia would not be able to accept because Serbia did not want Austro-Hungarian police in their territory. Based on the response of Serbia, Vienna declared war on July 28th.

So, a small war between two small world powers. Easy to quell, right?

Wrong.

The arms race of nations to compete and tip the scales of the balance of power made everything volatile, and nationalism heated up everyone. And the war wouldn’t have been as wide reaching if not for the secret treaties previously delegated that began to come out one at a time. It was like a European wide domino effect once Vienna declared war on little Serbia. Russian joined in the war to defend Serbia as part of a treaty, and Germany came in on the side of their Austrio-Hungarian friends. Then cue Britain, France, and Italy and the whole mess escalated into…

World War I.

What is the legacy of World War I? Why has it had such a influence on the modern world?

First, World War I was the first war fought in a ‘modern’ sense. Rather, the men learned very fast how to fight a modern war since the war began with modern weapons being used in old fashioned ways. This had the unfortunate result of men being offed like desperate lambs sent to slaughter. Militaries learned to hide in trenches or in tanks, to wear uniforms that blended in with the surroundings, to wear masks or lob at each other gases that would suffocate a person in seconds.

Second, it was during World War I that Russia began to shift towards Communism in earnest. With the creation of the Comintern, Communism began to expand to surrounding areas such as North Korea, China, and Vietnam. Americans would later fight in Korea and in Vietnam, and China would shift greatly under their Communist Regime. Also, Communism went head to head with Democracy during the Cold War, which shifted American thinking and society a great deal.

Third, the Versailles Treaty would wind up the cause of another great war. Yes, World War II. The War Guilt Clause placed the blame of the war on Germany… and the cost. Anger towards not only America and the Allied Powers, but also the German government that had submitted to the clause, would plant the seeds of a later take over by Adolf Hitler. You would think that would be all to this, but it’s not. Germany went into debt trying to pay off the cost of the war that they were blamed for. The German government had to borrow money from America to pay off their debts. When the American stock market collapsed, so too did Germany’s. Since the payments were going to other major European Powers, they too felt the devastation of the Great Depression. It was a world wide phenomena. Out of the Depression, we got the New Deal, which created the foundations of the Welfare State.

Fourth, Wilson created the League of Nations. Though the League of Nations was a weak body (not enough diplomacy, no military, etc), it was the beginnings of what would later be created and called the United Nations.

Fifth, the end of imperialism. After the war ended, the Western powers began to dismantle old empires and pull out of their external holdings. New countries were created and supported. Nationalism won out. But, the effect was not all positive because new lines were drawn in continents such as Africa, which paid no attention to tribal lines. A lot of conflict in Africa today derives from these random boundary lines.

These are just five things that have come from World War I that have changed the world. They are by no means the ONLY effects. The assassination of a barely significant Archduke in a small Baltic country led to a world war that shaped us into the world we are today.

Then again, we could just blame all of this on Kaiser Wilhelm’s gimp arm and call it a day.

I read a book a few years ago for a class I took called ‘America in the 1960s,’ which was really a class on America post WWII through to the Nixon administration and his impeachment. It is hard to classify eras by dates because they are more easily described by the events that shaped them and make them distinct parts of the totality of history. To understand the 60s, one has to understand why the 60s came about and how the heat of protest and advocacy not just died but shaped the future. I love the 1960s because I am proud of it; I look about myself and realize how my world has been influenced by it. The 60s gave us civil Rights, Voting Rights, abortion, Title IX, the Vietnam Syndrome, the environmentalist movement, the gay rights movement, the idea that we CAN change the government if only we have the strength to stand up to it (Locke said it, but it seems we’re still too timid to try it).

Maybe we’re more comfortable as a Hardinist people rather than Lockeian.

I digress.

The book that my female, feminist and absolutely hilarious professor assigned us was called The Other America by Michael Harrington.

It’s a book about the side of America that people often fail to see– the poor, the old, the discontent, the people who have lived for so long and through so many generations in a culture of poverty that the ability to change is almost impossible. The Other America was written decades ago, but is still very relevant today. Just as President John F. Kennedy read the book and formed some of his New Frontier policies on was within the pages, so too can President Obama. Ultimately, JFK failed to bring about the change he tried to enact, specifically to strengthen the economy of the Appalachian area, but this does not have to predict Obama’s success.

I think it’s important that government officials remember that there are real human faces, personalities and suffering behind everything that happens. The formality of government policy makes it seem detached from true hardship and disenfranchisement. Poverty is a disease and not isolated within itself. With poverty comes depression, crime, and the break up of families. Anyone who says, “if a person works hard enough, they can succeed” is either very naive or very cruel. This just simply isn’t so. I don’t want President Obama to succumb to the idea that a few scattered resources and solutions will solve the problem for everyone, that all he needs to do is sprinkle out some tax breaks and stimulus programs and expect everything in America to be fixed.

Change has to be rooted in the system. It will be long, it will be hard. In the end, though, we will all be better off for it.

For Mrs. Obama, I would suggest that she read My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962.

Eleanor Roosevelt is a powerful example of a what a woman can be and what she can achieve. I feel that she is easily one of the greatest and most influential women of the 20th century. I want Mrs. Obama to realize just how much good she can do as the wife of the President. One does not have to sit back and take on beautification projects or wear a pretty smile from the background. A position of power must and should be used to the greatest benefit of the people. Reflecting on the personal words and observations of Eleanor Roosevelt may help her with this.

Share With Us Your Family’s Best. Who Is the Oldest Living Person In Your Family? What Makes Him/Her So Special To You?

The oldest living person in my family is my maternal grandfather, who is affectionately known as ‘Papa’ to his grandchildren. He is special to me because of the history we’ve shared and because he is simply who he is. There’s no one thing that I can put my finger on that shines out above the rest, but rather he is special because of everything he has done throughout my life. Really, both of my grandparents are, but this is about my grandfather.

My sister and I were his first grandchildren, so I suppose we are special in that way. We are definitely the oldest and benefited from having very virile and young grandparents who could take us places like Disney Land and Sea World as children. When I was about 11, my sister and I spent a month with them in Orange County, California. Papa wasn’t at all against spending money on my sister and I, which isn’t the important part. The important thing I took out from that was, is, his willingness to make us happy. To him, money was no object because our happiness was worth all of the money in the world. It was was like that and is still. I can’t tell you how many times he has saved me, though he is very humble about it. Papa helps because he wants to, not because he wants to brag about it and have people indebted to him. When I was in college and my computer crashed, he bought me one. When I needed to get home from Utah, he bought me a ticket and gave me money for the trip. When I had to take my GREs just a few weeks ago and didn’t have the money, he sent it to me. Over and over again, he’s done everything he can to help. He even bought my mother a house.

My Papa is such a health nut that my family jokes he will outlive us all. As a kid, we used to help him grind up bran to make muffins… totally horrid tasting muffins that we jokingly referred to as ‘Nothing Muffins,’ because they had nothing good or tasty about them. He worked out and ran and always ate very light. Still, he battled three rounds of cancer and an eventual infection that led to the loss of his leg. But, even after all of that, he’s still impossible to keep in one place. He had his SUV adapted to his prosthetic leg, has given what was left of his cut off leg a nickname, and shows off the battery powered high tech new leg that he has.

And he still golfs and takes care of the veteran’s graves over at the cemetery.

You’ve got to envy and be proud of a man who can take on so much adversity and still want to selflessly help people. Despite his age, he can’t settle down. His and my grandmother’s volunteer service is so wide known that they got to marshal the July 4th parade in Salt Lake City, Utah. Jon Huntsman Jr. might be the most well known Huntsman in Utah (he’s the Governor), but my Papa is definitely the most giving and selfless Huntsman (and takes great pride in having helped his family member win the post of Governor).