Sue

Utah Women and Education Project

June 7, 2011 by Sue 4 Comments

I was asked to be involved with this project in a small way and one of the outcomes of the research and summit were three videos that are hot off the press and now available for distribution. They detail the drop in college attendance and graduation rates by Utah women and explain some of the benefits of college. You can read more about the project here. I was interviewed for the videos last February and my wisdom was edited down to a couple of brief snippets, but you can see me in the following videos.

Making College a Priority at 2:10, 7:18, and 8:00.

Pieces of the Puzzle at 1:06.

I don’t appear in In Their Own Words, but it’s great and you should watch it, too!

Please make an effort to encourage the young women in your sphere of influence to attend and graduate from college, because research shows that your example and encouragement are one of the main elements that help women to stay the course. And a big shout-out to two of favorite women who are going to college this fall: Leslie, who will be doing a post-baccalaureate program for teacher licensure, and Holly, who will be starting a baccalaureate program from scratch. Both of these women have grown children and it takes a lot of courage to do what they’re doing, but I know they’ll reap big rewards of personal fulfillment!

Thanks to great teachers!

May 31, 2011 by Sue 1 Comment

I read this awesome post by Ali Edwards about her experience at a school conference for her autistic son. She looked around the table at all the great people who work together to make her son feel successful and was so very grateful for their dedication and hard work. My sons have left public education and are wending their way through higher ed now but I think back to all the great K-12 teachers they had in Florida and Utah who helped them on their way. Teachers who work hard, go the extra mile and really care about students.

Thanks!

Wherein we become explorers…

April 24, 2011 by Sue 2 Comments

Scott uncharacteristically decided we should go on a spontaneous vacation. On top of that, he decided to indulge me in the kind of vacation I’ve always wanted to take, where we just drive with no destination and stop whenever we want. He got out a nickel, put it on the dashboard and said when we came to a crossroads we would flip it to decide. We never actually did that, but it stayed there the whole vacation as a symbol of our freedom. We set out and every time we saw something we wanted to stop and read or look at, I’d say, “Let’s stop…we’re explorers!”, or “Turn off here…we’re explorers!”

We left on a Friday morning and headed north to explore Idaho. We made a stop at Smith & Edwards by Brigham City because it had good recommendations from friends and family. We’ve seen it by the side of the road but we’re usually headed to a family thing and don’t have time to stop. It is huge and has absolutely everything. After our eyes stopped bugging out, we hit the road and drove on. We passed through farming country and our first stop was the Minidoka National Historic Site where Japanese-Americans from Washington and Oregon were interned. It only became part of the National Park Service a few years ago and only the entrance buildings are still there. Most of the camp was divided up after the war and sold to farmers so it’s mostly all private land now. It was sobering to think of the people being interned there. And it was very windy.

We had to traverse a lot of back roads in and out, and saw lots of interesting small towns. We took off along the Snake River and found Shoshone Falls, which I’d never heard of but rang a bell with Scott. So we headed towards that and it was totally awesome. It’s called the Niagara of the West and is actually higher than Niagara Falls. It was really amazing and we stood there watching it for a long time. Why have I never heard of it? We hiked around on the trail a little and got some other views and it was a nice day, although evidently the wind blows all the time in southern Idaho. We stopped at several interpretative signs along the Snake River canyon, which is really deep and really wide, and there were several places where there were big farms at the bottom. We saw BASE jumpers on the Perrine Bridge which is really high up over the Snake River and people jump off the bridge and parachute down to the bottom, then climb up the rock face to the top. That night we stayed in Twin Falls.

Saturday we went to Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument which had a fire in September so the trail was closed and we didn’t get to see the Oregon Trail wagon ruts up close. Darn! There are horse-like fossils that have been excavated there and we saw the famous Hagerman Horse skeleton at the Visitor Center, along with a display on Minidoka. We left there and saw signs for the Hagerman National Fish Hatchery and since we’re explorers and it said “Scenic”, we decided to check it out. They had a self-guided tour so we followed the blue painted fish on the ground and learned all about salmon and how they are fertilized, bred, and raised. That fish hatchery was quite the operation, and it was interesting to see all the little salmon jumping around in the raceways. It was also my first trip to a fish hatchery. We took a turn-off in Buhl to see Idaho’s famous Balanced Rock. It was windy and rainy so I stayed in the car and saw it from there, but Scott jumped out and took a quick picture. It looks like a couple of buff guys could push it right over.

It was cooler on Saturday and we headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument, which is high up in the mountains so there was still snow on the ground. We saw lots of lava all over the place but a lot of it was covered with snow. Even so, it was eerie and really awesome. The road through the park was still closed due to snow, but they said we could walk in. So we walked in on the road but the wind was blowing so hard and it was so cold that I got a bad headache from being blasted by the freezing wind. It was a very interesting place and we need to go back sometime when it’s warmer. We forged on to Pocatello and stayed there that night. We saw lots of farms and ranches while we were driving.

Sunday we left Pocatello and drove on some really small back roads (think gravel) to find the Curlew National Grasslands which turned out to be a real adventure for explorers and also pretty disappointing. There was no grass growing and even with Scott’s GPS on his phone we were driving out in the middle of nowhere. I finally found an Idaho public lands site on my phone that helped us figure out where it was and it looked like all the terrain we’d been driving through for 3 days. There was a reservoir and a pretty plain campground. So we finally got back on the main road and all of a sudden we were in Box Elder County and realized we were back in Utah even though there was no sign on that little county road. We made it to the freeway and headed back through a lot of snowstorms. We stopped at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and drove the auto tour. We saw lots of ducks, Canadian Geese, grebes, four white American pelicans up close, and lots of other birds that we had no idea what they were. It was really cool but the auto tour goes on a little dirt road that is really bumpy. Fortunately, Scott had brought the binoculars and it wasn’t actually snowing there so we got to see birds.

So…our exploring yielded lots of fun and some interesting facts about Idaho that I never knew. For example: Arco is the first city in the free world to have been totally powered by nuclear energy beginning July 17, 1955 which happens to be my Dad’s 16th birthday. And there have been 50 nuclear reactors built since then in a 900 acre reserve belonging to Idaho National Laboratory. Only 3 are still working. And if it had been after Memorial Day we could have seen the world’s first breeder reactor which is now a National Historic Landmark. Who knew? The 1000 Springs area has waterfalls just pouring out of cliffs-all over the place. So cool.

We’re up for another exploring adventure soon!!!

(Click on a photo to see them all larger in a gallery)

A Cozy Catch-Up

April 17, 2011 by Sue 2 Comments

As Harry Potter’s friends come to spirit him away from danger, Mad-Eye Moody tells them, “All right, all right, we’ll have time for a cozy catch-up later!” Mad-Eye ends up dead not long after and never has time for that chat. Which is really sad and brings to mind the old axiom, “Never put off until tomorrow that which can be done today”. While I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, I notice that I’ve been extremely derelict in my blogging duties lately, and perhaps it’s time for a cozy catch-up.

It’s been a month since the end of the Utah Legislative Session, that marathon of policy-making that lasts 45 calendar days and seems to last twice as long. My word for the year is balance and the first quarter of the year is always my most unbalanced portion of the year. Not that I am unbalanced, as in crazy, although that’s been known to happen during session, but unbalanced in that it’s all I really do for that time period. All in all, it was a difficult session as public education took a real beating and there was a fair amount of unpleasantness. On the other hand, this was the first session in several years where I didn’t experience a lawmaker yelling or screaming in my face. I’m not sure if that’s a sign of my effectiveness or non-effectiveness, but it was certainly more pleasant for me. I tweet a lot and live-tweet meetings, and mostly I avoided twitter wars, which are really tempting. The fallout from some controversial legislation has allowed us political junkies to already experience a special session and numerous extra public meetings to discuss open and transparent government which has been fun and entertaining. It looks there will be a veto override session soon so it just goes on and on.

Now to my gardening news-feel free to skip this paragraph. I have started seeds in shifts because I only have so much shelf room in the furnace room. We have all the available space rigged with shelves and lights, but I can only start so many flats at first because when it’s time to transplant them into 4″ pots, they take up more room. I transplanted some more yesterday and all my shelves are now full. Soon it will be warm enough at night, (I hope), to start moving some out to the shelves and lights in the garage, freeing up more shelf space in the basement. Oooh, I love to see my babies getting bigger and bigger! It’s so fun to start from seed! We’ve had nice days when I’ve been in Salt Lake City for meetings and rain or snow when I’ve been home so I haven’t been able to get going on the flower beds outside, but there are lots of early daffodils up and many mid-spring daffodils ready to bloom soon.

I signed up for a quilting class at my local quilt shop next week and am excited to learn some new techniques. It was advertised as perfect for a confident beginner, so I’m ready to roll. I’m still crocheting baby blankets and burp cloths and reading as much as I can.

Scott got a promotion at work and is now up a level and managing lots more people. It just happened so he’s still trying to get it all figured out. Mark has finals at BYU this week and then a break for a few days and it’s on to spring term. He is a student manager in the Missionary Training Center media department and directs the Sunday and Tuesday night meetings, as well as training new hires on the equipment.

Brian is still on his mission in California and is currently in San Clemente. He is struggling with mono and has been sick for over a month now. He seems to be improving some but has been restricted in his activities for the last couple weeks and things are still touch and go with his future there. It’s been really hard for the three of us here to worry and not know all the details, but we keep fasting and praying that he’ll improve and can finish out his mission.

So that’s the news. Thanks for catching up with me!

A new scrapbook

January 15, 2011 by Sue 2 Comments

In September of 2009 Scott and I went on a trip for our 25th anniversary to Washington, D.C. and New York City. Before we left I had read about a technique of making an album using a 200-slot photo album of 4×6 photos and journaling blocks, and then embellishing the pages. I thought I would try it for this trip album and finally started on it late last year. I got it all finished up this afternoon and I’m pretty happy with the result. I liked using the new technique to create an album and I especially like having it done!