Print Shop: Wednesday, May 21

Andrew didn't actually have to work on Wednesday, so he came to the beach with us in the morning for a quick splash in the gulf before playing tourists. It was another red flag day and the waves were just right for boogie boarding again.

Here's Phoebe enjoying some snuggle time with Daddy (she sure likes being held):

Here's Zoë heading out to catch some waves:

And here's Alexander coming in from a ride:

Phoebe typically wants a lot of snuggles in the morning and she won't rest until she gets them from someone. She's been known to climb bunkbed ladders to join her siblings for some snuggles, but most often she climbs into bed with Mommy for a little while. If she can't do that...then she gets her snuggles some other way (like being held on the beach).

Eventually she'll get down to play...

Rachel and Miriam had a fun time hanging out together, I think. Believe it or not they didn't plan to both touch their hats at this moment.

Sometimes people confuse them for each other. I've even been asked if they're twins. And usually I can't see it, but here they do look rather similar—definitely like sisters.

We recently had a family move out of the ward (unfortunately—and my first thought was "I wonder who will move in to replace them!" which I then realized was such a "Utah" thought because there is 0% guarantee that a new family will move into our ward simply because a family moved out). They are from Korea and they have twin boys—with very similar names (Woo-jin and Woo-chan). I had a terrible time telling those two apart and when I asked the parents what the "tell" was between them they couldn't really give me anything. They said the boys looked nothing alike and they had no trouble telling them apart. 

Now, I could tell the difference between the twins and their younger brother, who had his own look, but I swear these twins were virtually identical. 

"But do you know who we have trouble telling apart," the dad said. "Your oldest daughters! Are they also twins?"

And I...mean...they are not twins and truly don't look that similar to me. One has glass and braces, the other doesn't. One has brown hair, the other is dirty blonde. But, to be fair, it's easier to tell faces apart within your own race than outside of it (for whatever reason). This interaction made me feel like if they can't tell my non-twin daughters apart then I'm probably okay not being able to tell their identical twin sons apart. 

Anyway, in those particular photos, I can see some similarities between Rachel and Miriam.

The morning was a little overcast, which made things a little chillier than we'd been used to, so we spent quite a lot of time playing in the sand after we tried boogie boarding. Phoebe had met her snuggle quota by this time and was happy to get down and play.

Rachel suddenly tackled Zoë here and tried to dunk her in an incoming wave.

"I got that all on camera!" I told her. "First Grandpa, then Benjamin, then me, now Zoë... Who is next?"

"Oh, no!" she laughed.

We joked that we could blame every mystery bruise on Rachel for the entire trip (but she was really a delight to be around, even if she was involved in several incidents).

Here's Miriam before she took my camera to take some pictures (although some of the pictures below are also from Darla's phone):

Phoebe was definitely pulling out all her municipal engineering skills; I had strict instructions to follow on how to form our "village." 

Here's Grandpa and Darla wading out into the water:

And here they are, back to inspect the castle:

And that's about where we called it a morning. We packed up and headed to the beach house for a quick lunch before driving into Panama City (actually St. Andrew's). Our first stop was Oaks By The Bay park.

It has an old "sentry" live oak tree at the center of the park, which surely is very old. It's estimated to have sprouted 100 years prior Florida becoming a territory of the United States in 1821. The branches of these live oaks often get so weighty that they need help staying propped up. We have often seen structures built to help keep them aloft—metal poles and things like that. This particular tree is using its dead comrade as scaffolding. 

We took the boardwalk down to look at the bay—this is where Garbage Baby was spotted and rescued.

Benjamin wanted me to come appreciate the "good graffiti" he found on this board:

It has the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" written on it (along with some other things, such as "You're burning the wrong Amazon"). While I don't disagree that antisemitism is wrong, while I mourn the senseless slaying of the Israeli staffers at the Jewish Museum in DC, I also cannot agree that Gazans don't deserve freedom (or, you know...food) or that expressing support for Palestine is antisemitic.

We have some big problems in the world, and I just don't think that any of them will be solved by meting out more violence (and increasing security is often a coded phrase to rationalize exactly that). It's complicated. As sad as I was to hear about two senseless deaths of Israelis, I am gutted to hear about the Gazan pediatrician who lost 9 of her 10 children in one day (and whose husband and remaining child are in critical condition). Tragedy after tragedy...and it won't (can't) be solved with Even More Violence. 

Call me a pacifist and you'd probably be correct. I've been shaking my head over war since the day I was born. I remember a debate in a philosophy class I took back in 2002—you can imagine what we were talking about, being so soon after 2001. We were big into the Global War on Terror. My PE teacher was called up in the middle of the semester and we had to be assigned a new teacher. One of the boys on my dance team had to ship off as well. My Uncle Wally went overseas to act as an interpreter. So...war...was the topic of the debate. 

I was arguing against the war and was called unpatriotic and was told that I didn't support or appreciate the troops and...that's not really it at all. I might be less visibly patriotic to some, but I do appreciate my freedoms, and understand the cost of human lives that has sometime been...necessary (though I hesitate to use that word) to maintain those freedoms. Mostly I believe that war is when governments or other organizations decide that human lives are expendable—sometimes their own soldiers (for example, kamikaze pilots, who were trained to simply be a weapon) but always whoever they've defined as the enemy. 

And I just disagree that lives are expendable like that.

I don't believe that Israeli lives are more valuable than Palestinian lives (or vice versa). I don't think that either side should be acting like the other side is expendable. And while I mourn those two slain Israelis...I also mourn those nine children. It's reprehensible—and downright hypocritical—to refuse to mourn Palestinians, to consider Palestinians an "unmournable" population (as per Judith Butler's theory; see also Mbembe). 

50,000+ deaths (and many more injuries and even more displaced and starving). 

Those lives matter as well. 

I think the gunman in the DC situation was in the minority (just as—I hope—was the landlord who stabbed to death a young Palestinian-American boy). I think/hope that rational people on either side of the debate feel like no deaths is better than some. I think/hope that no one is cheering about these situations. 

But...then I see videos (of either side) cheering when they ought to be sobbing. So I don't know. It's complicated. And I really think we should all just get along. And I don't see how that can be construed as unpatriotic or antisemitic, but I've been accused of both, so...who knows...

Anyway...Oaks By The Bay was...less interesting than the internet made it sound. We walked around old town for a bit...visiting St. Andrew's marina...and successfully not adopting any stray cats (whose lives surely are valuable and mournable as well, but who seemed perfectly well taken care of, judging by the number of food dishes set out for them all along the pier, even though Phoebe wailed time and again that "the beach is no place for a cat!").

Here's everyone by the St. Andrews Marina sign:

Somewhere we have a picture of Andrew by a mural that says "keep it salty, St. Andrews"...or something like that (I think it's on Rachel's phone). We liked it because (1) it was Andrew and (2) it reminded us of Durham's "keep it dirty" slogan (both against gentrification, I assume...and which I also consistently confuse with "geriatrification," which isn't really a word...but knowing that "old" neighbourhoods are targeted for "gentrification" leads me to the word "geriatric).

I don't have that picture, though, so here's a picture of Zoë and Grandpa by the docks instead:

And here are some people out on a dock:

There was a cute art installation wall downtown, where local artists (of any age and skill level) can put pieces of artwork up. That was pretty cool to look at—and there were some nice pieces, too. Here's Andrew pointing out to Alexander about where we were on a map:

And here we are at the Panama City Publishing Company Museum which was much cooler than what the internet led us to believe. Also, I should note that the kids got new swim team shirts (which you probably noticed by now).

Inside we had a few minutes to wait for our tour guide, so we registered and put push pins in the map. Technically, I suppose we visited from Atlanta, but Benjamin (having recently received his certificate of Canadian citizenship) wanted to put a pin in for Canada, so I told him he could do Calgary or something. And then I think someone else put a pin in Utah somewhere. Will it mess with their statistics? Perhaps...but it's note entirely falsified information.

The tour involved a scavenger hunt, some time typing on typewriters, and a printing demonstration. Here's Zoë working on one of the typewriters:

And here she is perplexed that the other typewriter doesn't have a 1 key.

"Correct!" the docent told her. "You have to use the lowercase l for that!"

I suppose l and 1 are close enough to being the same character, especially if they're in a monotype font. 1l? 1l? I'm not sure leaving out one extra key really solves anything mechanically speaking, but...that's what this typewriter manufacturer decided to do.

She had wanted to write that she was turning 10.

Here are the kids locating some license plates on the floor. The floor had to be replaced in 2019 after a hurricane, but the wood is in keeping with the time period of the building, having been scavenged from an old factory somewhere (what kind of factory—I can't remember...some kind of candy, I think). Before they ripped up the floor they mapped out where Mrs. West had patched up her floor with old license plates and then put those back on the floor in the exact same places after they replaced the rotted floor. 

Here's Alexander at the typewriter:

And Phoebe:

Do my kids wish they had a typewriter now? Absolutely they do.

Here they are using some stamps to create their own newspapers:

I've never been a stamp-friendly household, but that might change. They just sounded too catastrophic of an activity. But Phoebe loved stamping and I have a feeling it would keep her occupied for hours. 

That said she also loves painting...but I have to be in a very patient mood to facilitate that because that is also a catastrophic activity. So...I don't know...I'll consider the stamps.

Here's Andrew showing off his typing skills:

We still used typewriters for some tasks in our employment at our time at BYU, though I think it's doubtful they still use them twenty years later. The real question is: how is it twenty years later all of a sudden? I suppose having a child reach the age of young adulthood really kicks Andrew and me out of that category, doesn't it?

Anyway, here's a mimeograph:

I've never used one of these, but I've heard about using them (and Darla told us about using them as well). I knew they made purple "photocopies" of things and I've used papers that were mimeographed...but I've never used one myself.  

Here's Zoë back at the typewriter:

Benjamin wrote about Garbage Baby:

Here's our tour guide telling us about the linotype printer:

And here's Benjamin getting to try out the perforating machine:

We had a hard time dragging everyone out of the museum...and we were greeted at home with a few packages of supplies that Andrew ordered to rekindle our linocut hobby. Our guide showed us some of her linocuts and we learned you can buy simply the linoleum (you don't have to buy it glued onto blocks) and it's a lot cheaper that way. And she had a few other tools she recommended. It was a very fun visit!

We had an early dinner when we got back to the beach house and then returned to the beach to enjoy the sunset and early evening. We were excited to see that our castles were left undisturbed! I had attempted to emotionally prepare the younger children for the potential destruction of our abandoned sandcastles—sand is an ephemeral building material, many other people would be using the beach, etc., etc., etc.

But look! There they were, still standing!

"Wow! They didn't destroy our village, Mom!" Phoebe told me, speaking of the other beachgoers. And then she, uh...stomped all over the village herself...so...that was the end of the village.

We didn't get in the water much, but instead played with our "surfminton" set. Zoë loved these racket games (being surfminton as well as pickleball), though I don't think she's pictured playing below.

L to R: Alexander, Phoebe, Rachel, Benjamin, Andrew, Zoë, and Miriam

Phoebe "planted" this piece of driftwood and then watered it like her life depended on it. She looked like she was trying to bail out the gulf!

In the end the wood remained dead and the gulf remained full, but Phoebe had fun and wore herself out for bedtime, so it all worked out!

Here's a picture with Zoë at play (kind of—I think she's also hunting for shells on the side):

Here she's found a live clam of sorts:

And here's Benjamin leaping to hit the ball:

Overall a wonderful day—it was nice to spend part of the day away from the beach and out of the sun for a change. But as much as we were ready to take a break from the beach on Wednesday, we were ready to hit the beach hard again on Thursday and Friday—our last two beach days!