Dear Hawaiian curbside check-in dude for Delta Airlines,

Thank you for dutifully servicing my family’s luggage needs during our recent trip home from Maui. We so appreciate the manner in which you transformed what might have been a pleasant, 90-second experience into a 14-hour nightmare.

We were particularly impressed by your ability to handle our group’s four pieces of checked baggage. By systematically interspersing them among our party’s myriad carryons, car seats and strollers, you were cleverly able to form a 16-foot baggage cluster more reminiscent of a teenage bedroom than an organized command center.

I am also grateful that I ignored my wife’s petition to abandon you in favor of the inner sanctum of efficiency—the Delta check-in counter. Surely, the agents inside wouldn’t have been nearly as adept at scattering our belongings, blithely asking the same questions, or placing our baggage on a one-way prodigal vacation to L.A.

Perhaps most refreshing was your sense of urgency and concern in charging us the requisite $15 first-bag fee prior to even gathering our information. Such care truly demonstrates your attention to detail and flare for customer service. Indeed, I was happy to impart an extra three-dollar tip, knowing that our party’s belongings would safely arrive 800 miles from our destination—with keys to our in-laws’ vehicle in tow.

Had you competently performed your job duties, our vacation would have unnecessarily been cut short upon our 6:00 a.m. arrival in snowy Salt Lake City. Thanks to you, the Maui memories flourished for several more hours with multiple trips to the airport, phone calls, and a much-anticipated reunion with our newly bronzed luggage.

We will forever remember your kindness and have framed our bank statement to prove it.

Much love and appreciation,

Your overly optimistic and severely penitent patron from the mainland.

Dear portly, middle-aged boogie boarding lady,

Thank you for allowing me and my wife to share a pleasantly unexpected, and entirely special laugh at your expense. Your exuberance was admirable, but ultimately foolhardy.

Surely, you knew that “taming the waves” with a flimsy foam cracker showed a lapse in judgment, no? Your demise was sudden, yet brilliant.

A lack of sure footing, a forceful rip tide, and a merciless violent surf converged on your pasty white knees and buckled you like a soggy mattress—cascading you up the sand with arms flailing and nether regions leading the charge.

Thank you my dear. Thank you for not shying away from your embarrassing and inevitable end. And thank you for making my wife laugh heartily with guilty pleasure—head lowered in shame and shoulders shaking violently.

May your next boogie outing be more triumphant.

Sincerely,

The unrepentant onlookers at Napili

Granted

I just finished listening to "The Poisonwood Bible" this week by Barbara Kingsolver. It never ceases to amaze me how little I read as a paid writer.

The two seem inextricably connected, but I rarely make time to sit down and enjoy a good book. Sure, I devour news, blogs, and scriptures, but I seldom enjoy a good work of fiction. And this was a great one.

For me, the measuring stick of good writing is the degree of emotional reaction that it elicits in me. In other words, Does it stir my insides? Do I experience a paradigm shift? Do I find myself chewing on the themes and messages for days afterwards?

Since this book is the only thing that's prompted me to write a blog entry in the last 100 days, I'd say the answers to those questions are a resounding yes.

I was particularly struck by the theme of white privilege throughout the narrative. Not only white privilege, but male privilege and American privilege.

Consider the following excerpt from the novel:

"White and black lives are different kinds of currencies. When 30 foreigners were killed in Stanleyville, each one was tied, somehow, to a solid exchange—a gold standard like the hard Belgian Frank. But a Congolese life is like the useless Congolese bill, which you can pile by the fistful or the bucketful into a merchant’s hand and still not purchase a single banana. It’s dawning on me that I live among men and women who simply always understood their whole existence is worth less than a banana to most white people. I see it in their eyes when they glance up at me. "

How poetic. How condemning.

I was never even exposed to the concept of white privilege until I was at school in New York City. I read an article by Peggy MacIntosh entitled "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." (you can read it here: MacIntosh") I reflected on it for weeks. I read other writings on white privilege and attended conferences. I joined with a handful of other students to form Columbia University's Coalition Confronting Racism. But it all seemed to fade when we returned to Utah.

While reading this book, all of those feelings again resurfaced and I found myself confronting my own prejudices, stereotypes, and willful ignorance when it comes to Black Africa and even Black America.

The other big theme, which is too big to get into in this post, was on the balance of piety and Christianity—which has always been a tough theme to sort out in my own life.

Unfortunately, finishing the book brought no resolution to either of those themes for me. On the up side, I now have a lot more to stew over than the writings at macrumors or msnbc.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

So, I just signed up for a YouTube account today and thought I'd try embedding a video in my blog. I guess my next step is creating a Wikipedia entry since those two web sites are where I spend a great majority of my virtual time. The original video of SiSi I was going to post got hijacked by her own blog. So without further adieu, I present the Vangünderheim diet—a series of 3 short films created/directed by our Bishop in Brooklyn. Super random, but kind of funny since most of my family is on a diet right now.

Cross your tabs as I try this:

Modos & Harromog

On Saturday night, Krista and I attended the 2007 Utah ADDY Awards Banquet at the Marriott Hotel in Downtown SLC. Ironically, the night polarized everything I love and loath about advertising. The presenters showcased and awarded the year's most beautiful, compelling, and creative work. To my dismay, they also showcased and awarded the year's most annoying, banal, and trite work.

I can't decide if I'm more upset that they awarded such terrible work or that they gave me an award and I'm unsure into which category it rightly belongs. Either way, the dinner salad was phenomenal and, throughout the evening, I heartily enjoyed ingesting a flank of prime rib the size of my head. (Which, if you know my family, is quite commendable). One of my fellow BYU creative trackers, Colin Barrett, took home Best of Show for his freelance work for the Utah Film Commission Brilliant. Executed on an $800 budget no less.

As my despicable advertising habit continues to mire me, I can't help but recall the Biblical story whose name adorns this post backwards. Granted (and thankfully), the ADDY award banquet did not include any illicit Gomorring or Sodoming, but the general air of the evening (unimportant people patting themselves on the back for insignificant and morally irrelevant accomplishments) was quite disquieting and entirely backwards.

The chocolate cake, however, was delectable.

Can't fight this feeling

The deluge of mudslinging propaganda is in full swing and once again I find myself completely jaded with the Republicrat two-step. Granted, I'm the poster child of uninformed, uninvolved, and arguably uninterested eligible-to-vote America, but this post is more about reflection than criticism. So far.
This reflection has mostly been, "Am I a Democrat or a Republican?" (Don't get me started with neither). As a matter of DNA, my moorings are steeped in self-reliance, responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit, religion and conservative thinking—tenets Republicans vocally espouse. The problem is that I've seen enough inequality in this world to know that such ideals, while inherently noble, tend to benefit those who are already disproportionately benefited. And I'm not a believer in meritocracy.
I can already feel an impending jaunt to a nearby virtual soapbox so I'll wrap it up. I read an interesting blog last week (I PROMISE I'll start keeping track of these things so I can make a reference—I'm still pretty new at this). Anyhow, the gist of the post was that the reason Republicans were so successful was that they supported candidates who were loyal to the party. The author then continued by condemning "fence-sitting" democrats like Joe Lieberman and Senator Clinton because they often undermine the Democratic Party as a whole by voicing dissenting opinions to further their own agendas. The author then commented that Republicans generally stick together on "core" Republican issues rather than diluting party momentum through self-indulgence or indifference. I'm not sure if I agree or not, but it's an interesting viewpoint—which leads to the crux of my post-reflection musings. Why is a person's stance on hot-topic issues the litmus test for his or her political affiliation? If I'm against abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research, why does that make me a Republican? What if I believe in a right to privacy, wish for greater economic, gender, and racial equality, want affordable healthcare coverage, and support low-cost, publicly-funded university education? Is the fact that I'm not a "liberal" a deal-breaker? Worse, am I seen as a traitor? As a Republican or Democrat apologist?
To move out of the hypothetical realm, my two-cent conclusion is that I'm a Republican who yearns for a more Democratic world. I support the Democratic vision, but not the approach. I don't think the government should be responsible for funding and enforcing Democratic ideals. I think the people should. Our government rewards charitable giving more than any other. I wish that our conscience was what galvanized us into humanity. Not politics.

Ready, set, blog.

May my musings be met with merriment.