Dear Led Zeppelin IV,

Today is your 42nd birthday.  I know!  You're totally middle-aged now!  And how is that even possible?  Was it really so long ago that I went to the record store at the old Union Block in Provo and bought you?

I was an unlikely fan in many ways, but I loved LZ beyond reason.  That driving beat.  Those screaming vocals.  The alternating hard and soft and hard thing they had going on.  And I listened to you, LZ IV, endlessly.  You were the background music to all my dreams.  Dreams of boys.  Dreams of new clothes and new dreams.  Dreams of making poems myself.  Dreams of life after high school.  Dreams of travel.  Dreams of Aragorn and Frodo and Gandalf.  Dreams of everything badass.  You were it, baby.

There was a time when I would have said you were my favorite LZ album, but the truth is "Stairway to Heaven" got a little boring--especially since it was played at every high school dance I ever went to.  I'd probably pick I or II or even parts of III over you now.

But still.

You are a fine, fine, fine album.  Keep rocking the free world, okay?

Sincerely,

Ann Cannon

Catalogs

So I do way more stuff online than I ever thought I would.  But when it comes to browsing, I still prefer a catalog in hand.  What about you?

Maybe this stems from my childhood.  The arrival of the Sears Christmas Wishbook was a HUGE deal.  My friends and I would sit on the front porch, eating cookie dough and poring over the pages of toys.  What a pleasure that was.

My current favorite catalog is the Vermont Country Store catalog.  As one radio dj I heard remark, it has awesome lingerie.  Girdles!

An anniversary and a retrospective

I received an e-mail from friend Robert Kirby who informed me that today is my third anniversary at the Salt Lake Tribune.  This, by the way, is a very Kirby thing to do.  Beneath the jester's mask, he has the soul of a serious and careful historian.

Anyway.

Some of you may remember me writing about jumping ship from the DN to its competitor, the Trib.  It was a terribly difficult thing for me to do at the time.  It was like I had to suddenly start cheering for the Utes after spending a lifetime of cheering for the Cougars, and I am not, by nature, a person who switches teams casually.

The transition was harder, too, than I let on.  Whereas I pretty much knew who all the subsets of DN readers were, I was unsure of who my audience was at the Trib.  Some of it looked like the DN audience, but there were more subsets of readers, some of whom felt actively hostile to my column.  I second-guessed myself a lot for awhile there, although I always felt like I'd made the right decision to leave the DN when I did.

(Just to be clear--for many years the DN was a good place for me.  The people I knew there--Susan Whitney, Chris Hicks, Carma Wadley, Katy Clayton, Dennis Lithgow, Brad Rock, Lee Benson, Doug Robinson and others--were terrific.)

I was especially grateful that first year at the Trib to my then-editor, Lisa Carricaburu, who called every week to check in with me.  And of course I was grateful to Kirby, too, for alerting Lisa to the fact that I wanted to make a move.

And now?  I'm happy.  And given the state of newspapers today, I'm so grateful to still be writing regularly.   The Trib has done a good job of promoting the column, and I like that the local readership represents a broad spectrum of individuals.

The take-away?  I don't know.  Maybe it's that while change is scary, it's often a good thing to make a leap.

What brothers do

So the column is already up.  As I was writing this I remembered that episode of Modern Family when Jay's brother shows up and the two of them start giving each other nuggies like they're still in grade school.

It never ends.  No.  It does not.

Still thinking

. . . about the Meridian piece.  Here's a curious by-product.  While Hilton's checklist isn't my checklist--at all--her piece did cause me to think about the things I value and ask myself if I am, in fact, measuring up when it comes to my own beliefs.  As it turns out, I could be doing better.  A LOT better, in some cases.

Life is full of strange and unintended consequences.

The problem with echo chambers

This week Geoff sent me a link to an online magazine for Mormons called Meridian.  It featured a brief essay by a woman named Joni Hilton called "Are You a Liberal Mormon?"  In it she delineated steps (in her view) that are sure to lead to apostasy.

It was a curious piece.  Although I'm guessing Hilton is probably my age, parts of it sounded like it had been written by a zealous BYU coed.  You're a liberal Mormon if you see R-rated movies or fail to read your scriptures daily.  Other observations were just odd.  You're a liberal Mormon, for example, if you go to Europe and then talk about it?????   Basically the thrust was this:  get on board or get out.  At least that's how it read.

Now here's the thing.  I don't know Hilton and so I have no way of knowing if the tone of this piece--which was judgmental and petty--is an accurate representation of her in real time.  I am very aware that columnists can and do craft public personas that are only a piece of the entire package.

Still.

I'm guessing that Hilton was surprised by the HUGE blowback the column received--so huge, in fact, that Meridian took the piece down and then offered a fairly lame defense for its publication in the first place.  In an online editorial Maurine Proctor assured readers that the term "liberal" did not refer in any way a person's political beliefs (as far as I can tell, none of the readers thought it did) and that the senior editorial staff had been out of the country (hopefully not in Europe) working on a project when the piece was launched.

Here's the deal.  Even though she probably doesn't want it (or perhaps even deserve it), I feel a real sympathy for Hilton.  She must be hurt and surprised by the reaction--especially since Meridian is by no definition of the word a liberal publication.  So how did this happen?

Again, I'm only speculating.  But I'm guessing that Hilton has done a lot of talking and reading and listening and thinking and writing in an echo chamber--a place that pretty much reflects back her own views.  We all do that to some extent.

What this experience reminds us to do is to get out and stretch our legs a little so we can get a real feel for how other people experience this great big complicated world.

Meet Jan Pinborough!

One of the perks of writing an extra books piece for the Trib is the opportunity it gives me to interview authors.  Here's a nice Q and A with Jan Pinborough, who just published a lovely picture book about the creation of children's libraries.

Enjoy!