Your government loves you

I got back from an airplane trip to find the contents of my suitcase was rearranged. At first I was afraid something had been stolen, but then I found a note from the Transportation Safety Administration assuring me that my underwear was safe to put on.

I'm proud to live in a country where the government cares that much about its citizens.

Las Vegas: It Makes Everybody Want To Do Something Bad

One rule about Las Vegas is that regardless of what your moral orientation or strength is, you'll suffer from strong, destructive temptations. If you suffer from alcoholism or a gambling addiction, your problems are obvious. The same goes for those who love lots of food -- the buffets will drain your wallet and stretch your belt. If you're a sex addict, the pornographic playing-card-sized handouts from scraggly men on Las Vegas Boulevard will connect you to whatever kind of stimulation you need to implode your soul.

If, however, you don't suffer from any of these temptations, you'll still discover that your rather conservative mindset has a volatile nature when challenged. After a short while, you'll be tempted by some vulgar behaviors of your own, flipping off or cussing out the hustlers on the street, taking a megaphone with you as you walk, screaming "Move faster you fat ------- tourists!" An assault of images of what appear to be nude acrobats in positions that you would call vulnerable if they were humanly possible on a big screen TV the size of a tennis court advertising a show called "Zumanity" by Cirque du Soliel will make you consider taking advantage of Nevada's lax gun control laws to shoot holes in the bright body blaster above the boulevard. Or worse, upon being asked by a cocktail waitress in a top that reminds you of a balcony with no railings what you'd like to drink, you demand to see the manager just so that you can punch him in the nose for making her wear such a trashy outfit to support her kids.

My wife interviewed at Seigfried & Roy's Secret Garden to be a tiger trainer. I went along for the visit, and I can think of more than a few people I'd like to feed to those noble, toothy creatures.

Las Vegas, maybe?

Hi all,

Miri has been asked to fly down to Las Vegas to interview with Seigfried and Roy for a tiger-trainer job. We're going on Sunday.

I had a job interview today for an executive director job. They brought out the whole board of directors to grill me for an hour. I think I did all right, but I'm not sure I want to be a fundraiser (which seems to be what they're really looking for).

So Miri and I are both in transition right now, feeling a little stuck there. This classic Sesame Street song summarizes how we feel right now:

A 30 to 40 percent chance of scattered employment

In meteorological parlance, there are these two words about rain that pop up a lot: scattered and isolated. When you have isolated showers (or thunderstorms) moving through an area, that means that a storm will do something, somewhere, but for any given observer, he only has a 10 to 20 percent chance of getting rained on. Scattered means that more rain is coming and a particular spot has a 30 to 40 percent chance of getting rained on. Growing up in Puget Sound, most of my life has been lived on days expecting scattered showers.

And now, I am getting into a situation of scattered life. I have looked at seven apartments, called 10 others, applied for 20 jobs and had one job interview (although the rejection letter just came for that one). In viewing the apartments or applying for these jobs, only about 30 percent of them seem remotely interesting -- but I feel obligated to make the queries anyway because we need to live somewhere and be able to pay the rent.

The apartments have mostly been all right, although a few have been ghetto or rent-controlled. The reviews of these complexes on the Internet, however, have been atrocious. I've been trying to determine if this anti-landlord invective has any merit, or if only cranky people go on these sites to wish fire, brimstone, locusts and frogs upon distant descendants of their former apartment managers because they took too long to fix a washing machine.

Some of you may be wondering how we ended up back in Puget Sound with a life like the weather. I guess this is where the cheery part of this blog entry starts. Miri got a JOB!

Yes, an actual paying job as a zookeeper taking care of exotic animals. She works part time at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma in the Asia exhibit. This is a very good thing as Point Defiance is one of the best zoos in the world. She gets to work with Asian river otters who sound like squeaky toys when they're vocal, tapirs, anoas, porcupines, Sumatran tigers, gibbons and siamangs. She feeds them and cleans their areas. (But don't worry, it's a protected contact facility, meaning the humans and animals never get to play.) Having a part-time job at Point Defiance is a resume builder job, meaning that they employ you for a year or two and then you have to go work somewhere else. (They rarely promote their own people into career positions.) We are hopeful that one of the other two zoos (Northwest Trek or Woodland Park) will hire her later.

I am searching for a job, and we're really hopeful that after I get employed, we can rent someplace to live that's halfway between the two jobs. If you happen to have a friend trying to rent a duplex, let us know.

We have gotten to do some fun stuff recently. On our anniversary, we went to a bed and breakfast south of Spokane and got to drive around in the Palouse country. Here's a picture of Miri at Kamiak Butte:


Click on the photo if you want to see more from that trip.

Miri's parents came to visit us in Spokane, and we went to Lake Coeur D'Alene to go canoeing. Robin and Grant happened to be coming through on their way to Missoula that day.

The other really cool thing we've gotten to do was a hike up at the Sunrise area of Mt. Rainier National Park. Here's a picture of Miri pointing at a black bear:


I got some pictures of Mr. Bear, but if you want to see them, you've got to click on the picture to get through to the album. That's kind of a cheap ploy, isn't it, but you want to see the album now, admit it!

So that's the news from Ruthfordville. Write back, say hi, tell us how you're doing. Jisa the dog wags her tail for you.

How to say goodbye at the airport

In my family, there are two ways of saying goodbye at the airport. There's the Ruthford way, the way of my father's family. They give you a hug and tell you how great it was to see you, and they leave you at the curb. And there's the Fussell way, the way of my mother's family, when they check in to short-term parking and stay with you through check-in, baggage check, and then they go and wait with you at the gate until your flight actually leaves and through all of the flight delays, too (thank God Homeland Security no longer allows non-passengers past security). I much prefer the Ruthford way of airport departures because as you're doing it, your mind is on where you are going, not where you've been. My aunt Alice, who grew up a Fussell, refers to the Fussell goodbye as the albatross-around-the-neck goodbye.

I think Spokane is giving us a Fussell-style goodbye. Miri and I have been here for a year, and it's been a wonderful experience, but it really is time to move on. The zoo has been making Miri work 14-15 hours a day, unpaid, and I think it's been two weeks since she's had a day when she didn't visit the zoo at all.

I feel like I'm sitting in a chair at the airport, waiting for my boarding call to somewhere else, and my dear friend Spokane is sitting next to me, and it has one more story to tell. Miri and I left church early today just to avoid the possibility of people asking us what we do just because the answer wouldn't be civil. We're getting a little anti-social just because we know that we're not going to be around much longer so being chatty and making friends doesn't have much point.

So, Spokane, I love you, but let me read my book quietly while I wait for my flight! And no, I don't want to talk about what's coming next for me because right now the answer is, "Sitting still in a space the size of a refrigerator and eating pretzels." It's a touchy subject. Okay, rant over.

Never tell a tiger to buzz off

Dear Friends,

A good gauge of your general mental attitude is how you respond to something that happens regularly. When you drive your car, are you happy to see the flowers alongside the road, or are you mad because traffic makes your car go so slow that there's little to do but look at flowers?

In my case, it hasn't been driving (I take the bus) but another experience that's had me saying, "I've had enough!" Specifically, it's been people informing me that I'm tall. (As any tall person will tell you, this is about as helpful as being told your head is attached to your neck.)

If I have a good attitude, my response is to answer their questions about height and try turning it into a more meaningful conversation about family and hobbies. If I'm in a bad mood, I mutter, "I'm 6 foot 9," and I wander off.

Recently, though, I've had a couple of obnoxious inquirers who felt it necessary to use three or four swear words when talking about me and my feet. My response has been a sudden, "Watch your language!" in my best how'd-you-like-to-go-to-the-office tone. It's been fun, watching their faces go from "smart aleck" to "survival instinct is kicking in." It's been something of a sadistic pleasure, making these guys know that something bigger than they is ticked at them, but it's really how I've felt. I've had enough.

This story is meant to illustrate a wider feeling of time-to-move-on-edness, which I think is a literary device known as a metaphorical anecdote. Or would that be allegorical?

I think that Miri, too, has had close to enough of the zoo where she's working, as she's on schedule to be working there four days a week but still manages to clock 60 hours there every week. (The internship advertisements said that students worked 32 hours a week, which would give them time to do things like study.) On the bright side, though, when Miri does get in to a 40-hour job, it'll be like a second honeymoon. (I'll have my wife back!)

This isn't to say that I'm annoyed about everything -- by no means -- it's simply that there are a number of things in my life that I used to endure with fake cheerfulness and now I'm just telling people to knock it off.

I have discovered, however, there is one fellow at the zoo who lets it be known he finds my height interesting, and getting snippy is not the best policy with him. It's also difficult to casually ignore him. His name is Zeus, and he's a 500-pound white Bengal tiger. Every time I walk past his exhibit, he holds still and looks at me intently. As soon as I turn my back to walk away, that's when the fun starts. He walks toward me, keeping his body low and sleek, speeding up until... he gets to the fence. Oh, darn, the fence! Then he paces quickly to the left and right, keeping up speed just in case the fence suddenly dematerializes and then he can chase me. From that moment forward, Zeus continues following me, finding the best point in his exhibit to keep an eye on me. Sometimes he rears up non his hind legs so he can get taller.

On Thursday, when we had this interaction, there were twelve other humans around his exhibit, and he was uninterested in them, staring at the wall until I came by. Then he came out, pacing and stalking me.

I know that it's my height because when Jeffrey and Patrick, my two tall brothers, came to visit a few months ago, the zookeepers noticed Zeus stalking them, too, through the whole zoo, and his exhibit does have a line-of-sight view of the entire zoo. This makes his exhibit an odd one -- for a human viewing most exhibits in museums or zoos, it is a transitory experience to see it, like listening to a portion of a song. You observe it for a little while, and then it's gone. This particular exhibit, however, continues observing you.

I've been trying to understand this behavior, and I don't think it's aggressive because Zeus makes this sound known as chuffling while he does it. Chuffling is sort of halfway between a sneeze and a purr, and it's a social behavior. If you want to know how it sounds, say chuffle" five times quickly while poofing out your cheeks like Louis Armstrong. Zeus' brother, Apollo, on the other hand, makes it very clear he does not like me by putting his ears back, growling and getting ready to pounce.

So, what other explanations are there? It could be that I look like a small elephant (food) or that he wants to come out and play, like he did in this video with the zoo director.



This leads me to believe that Zeus is not really that aggressive of a cat. Rather, I think maybe he just enjoys seeing a small person's face go from "happy-go-lucky" to "survival instinct." Sigh. Comeuppances are such a difficult justice to accept.

I will miss this tiger, and I think Miri will miss all of the cats when she leaves Cat Tales, although we both know it is time to leave. When we came to Spokane, we thought that if one of us landed a really good job, either Miri at the zoo as an instructor, or me at a company here, we would stay a while longer. She might get offered a job as a manager at Cat Tales, but we know that the pay is $100 a day with no benefits, long hours and no comp time or overtime, sort of like being a substitute teacher. Now, Miri is going to graduate on Sept. 21, and we are going to blow town like fugitives fleeing outstanding warrants.

We have a minor problem, though, and it is that we don't have a destination picked out yet. Miri has job applications out to zoos and aquaria in the following cities:

• Tacoma
• Seattle
• Las Vegas
• West Yellowstone, Mont.
• Colorado Springs, Colo.
• Pueblo, Colo.
• Garden City, Kan.
• Chicago
• Boston
• Norristown, Pa.
• Baltimore, Md.
• Washington, DC
  

The Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma would be by far our favorite both in terms of the work Miri could do and in being close to people we know. And, the head of the carnivore department of the Point Defiance Zoo is coming to Cat Tales tomorrow, and we're hopeful Miri can chat with him a little bit. We have also found out that Miri's been shortlisted at the Mirage in Las Vegas, where Seigfried and Roy run a small zoo and are said to be planning one show in 2009.

I'm still trying to decide what my great vocation should be in these fair cities. I took an aptitude test recently, and the testing agency suggested I think about urban planning, which would be kind of cool. One of my happiest memories from being 4 was building a system of irrigation ditches in the backyard of our house in Virginia with my sister. It was the only game we ever played with water that did not involve ambushes and soakings (usually me being the victim). . . maybe it means something.

I have, however, been able to find some other work than just working for the quirky non-profit. I wrote an article about huckleberries, and the local weekly paper published it. Click here:

http://www.inlander.com/localnews/305513576761415.php

Researching this article made me happy because I learned about how huckleberries might be possible to be grown commercially in a few years. Invest in mountain property with trees!

I got to ride my bike through quite a bit of huckleberry country recently, which was a great deal of fun. I went on the 2008 Ride Around Washington, a Cascade Bike Club event. It started in Packwood, and did a six day loop around the east side of Mt. St. Helens, down to the Columbia River Gorge, up to Trout Lake (which, by the way, I highly recommend as a getaway location), then to Goldendale, Naches (where we saw a cantaloupe cannon) and finally back over White Pass to Packwood. Five Ruthfords made the trip, and I took some pictures you can look at here:

http://www.pbase.com/allears/volcanoes_bike_ride_2008

The ride was a lot of fun, except for the fact that my poor wife had to work all the time I was gone and didn't get to do anything fun. But our dog made her go out and play a few times.

Anyway, that's the news from Spokane. We'd love to hear from you!

In Christ,
Thomas Eric Ruthford

Job hunting and such

Hi all,

These days Miri and I are diligently looking for jobs that we can get in the same city. We know that this city won't be Spokane because the management of the zoo there is good at taking care of cats, but they're not so good at taking care of their humans. (And, there are a couple of 500-pound cats who seem to think I am a giraffe. I get the heebie-jeebies sometimes.)

Miri's internship at the zoo is winding down. She graduates in September, so, we're looking at jobs all over the country in places such as Las Vegas, Boston, Baltimore, West Yellowstone, Mont., and Garden City, Kan. Yes, there really is a zoo in Garden City. I don't know if Las Vegas has a zoo, but they do have Seigfried and Roy (and the tiger that tried to eat Roy Horn is still happily living there but we won't go in to that). Cool thing about working for Seigfried and Roy is if you're employed by them, you're employed by the Mirage, a big resort that actually pays benefits and stuff.

I am working in my job at the non-profit that is too quirky to be described. I am also teaching classes at our summer journalism institute for teenagers, giving talks on ethics and writing. Yesterday, we talked about adjectives, and how you have to be careful with your judgmental adjectives, such as "horrifying" or "every mother's worst nightmare." I made them listen to Alice's Restaurant and asked them why there was so much useless detail in the song, such as "implements of destruction" and "twenty-seven eight by ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back..." (Because there's so much useless detail in the draft.)

I am getting ready to do the Ride Around Washington at the beginning of August. This will be a fun spin around the volcanoes of southwest Washington. These rides are always 6 days long and take up around 80 miles. I have composed a limerick about the people who do the daily ride announcements:

Never make a promise that's impossible to fulfill
The war will be short, you can cure anything with this pill
The harm from the worst promise of all never mends
Rather, you'll lose 200 friends
It is to say, "Today's route is mostly downhill."

Usually when I make updates about what's going on in my life, I have some quirky, humorous story to tell like 6-year-old children lecturing me on the importance of paying attention. But alas, I don't this time. (Life is a little dull.) I have, however, been reading an assortment of library books that I can tell you about:

• Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright. I found out about this book by watching an episode of the Colbert Report that also featured Cookie Monster. Bishop Wright, an Anglican Bishop, was there, too. This book takes a look at popular religion seen through funeral sermons and tries to connect that way of thinking back to the real teachings about the Resurrection. I've only gotten to chapter 3, but I am enjoying it so far.
• Bottomfeeder, by Taras Grescoe. This book tries to take on the whole ocean at once as an ecosystem which can provide us with excellent protein. He talks about oysters in Chesapeake Bay, the monkfish, the bluefin tuna and salmon. His argument is that we should try eating from the middle of the ocean's food chain, with fish like sardines and anchovies, because they're not endangered. The section on shrimp farms was really gross.

Okay, that's only two books, but the other ones I've been reading are mostly cookbooks, or I just tossed them aside after the first chapter. But, there was this one article called "No," in the Kenyon Review about writers receiving rejection letters. Here's a link to it. It made me laugh, especially as I keep getting rejected, too. My wife tells me I ought to be a famous writer like J.K. Rowling, that way we can live someplace like West Yellowstone and I won't have to find a job driving a tour bus. But, I don't get discouraged -- persistence does pay off, as lots of asking did get Miri to marry me. Oh yeah, if you want to read some humor articles about Christians getting married, you can go to this blog, Orthromance, that I started.

Anyway, that's the news from Spokane. I'd love to hear from you!

Thomas / Eric / Thomic

p.s. A hysterical political video came out today on jibjab.com It's done to the tune of "The times they are a changing" The Obama section had me on the floor.