Zion National Park, Zhang Yimou-Style

11 May, 2010

For those of you who haven’t been following my recent exploits, early summer is when I start doing my Partners in the Parks projects. Partners is a program I run with my colleague Matt Nickerson, the Southern Utah University honors director. The gist of it is this: we take college honors students to national parks for a week at a time. They hike, learn from professors and rangers about park management and resources, and really get a deep experience instead of a four hour drive through, which is common for most Americans.

We’re funded through a National Parks Service grant, and we get some pretty amazing access. This summer I’ll be leading or advising projects in Zion National Park, Grand Canyon-Parashant (in the remote NW section of the Grand Canyon, and Denali National Park in Alaska. We’ll also be exploring new possibilities for projects in Olympic National Park in Washington, Great Basin, King’s Canyon, and Sequoia. We also have projects that I am not directly overseeing in Cape Hatteras and Manhattan (many are unaware of the many, many urban NPS sites).

For the last two days I’ve been hiking through an upper section of Zion National Park, called Kolob Canyons. This morning we awoke to snow. We knew it was coming, but we sort of hoped we’d be wrong about that. It made for a miserable slog: lots of mud and being cold, but it was spellbindingly beautiful.

I kept expecting to see Chinese warriors flying overhead with spears and flowing silk robes, engaging in silent battle between the sandstone ramparts and the mist.

Today was hard going, but it was very beautiful. It was a good day, all in all, because I had good gear, I was in pretty good shape, and I was at work.

Posted in Campus Life, From the Camera, Rave | 0 Comments

Summer Reading List Challenge

27 April, 2010

I’m planning to read like a monster this summer. The idea is one book a week, netting me 16 books before I have to jump back into things. Some of them will be school books, but most of them will be things I’ve been collecting, as well as some new things coming out. This list isn’t in any particular order.

  1. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
  2. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (First 1/2)
  3. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (Second 1/2)
  4. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
  5. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
  6. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
  7. Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle
  8. Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder
  9. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon
  10. Count Zero by William Gibson
  11. Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
  12. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
  13. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  14. In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
  15. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
  16. A World Beneath by Aaron Gwyn

I’d also do Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist, but it is 700 pages. I’m buying it today, but I’ll be reading it this fall, I think. I’m really excited about this book.

So, it seems I’ve started a movement. My friend Rae English has started her own list and a challenge to others. So, I’m issuing the same challenge to you all: what kind of reading can you squeeze out of the summer at the rate of one book a week?

Posted in Culture | 6 Comments

But You’d Be Wrong

20 April, 2010

The other day we found this drawing in the house. It was done by our four-year-old son, Ike. At first glance it might seem that our sweet little boy is a little bit fixated on—let’s just call them “lady parts.”

But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong, actually. After a little questioning we discovered that these are actually the young artist’s rendering of a pair of Cylon Raiders.

Innocence restored, for a season.

Posted in Family Life, Strangeness | 4 Comments

To Do List

17 April, 2010

In the spirit of my friend Scott Rogers, I will post the end of the semester to do list. This is pretty much in the order of stuff what I got to do first.

  • Review syllabi for all classes, to see what I said is due.
  • Respond to 4 ENGL 2010 student podcast assignments.
  • Write 3 final exam questions on Gibson’s Neuromancer.
  • Write 2 final exam questions on the film Moon.
  • Respond to 4 more ENGL 2020 short stories.
  • Respond to 1 more 50 page novel section for ENGL 4020.
  • Respond to remaining 4020 reading responses (this is going to suck).
  • Write up response to Dean’s new policies.
  • Figure out exactly when Ike will not be in school.
  • Schedule early final with testing center.
  • Respond to ENGL 2020 portfolios.
  • Respond to ENGL 2010 final projects.
  • Grade ENGL 2130 exams and compute grades.
  • Send failure/low grade notifications to students.
  • Go through ENGL 4020 portfolios.
  • Final grades for ENGL 2010.
  • Final grades for ENGL 2020.
  • Final grades for ENGL 2130.
  • Final grades for ENGL 4020.
  • Plan for Partners in the Parks Zion project.
  • Plan for Partners in the Parks Grand Canyon-Parashant Project.
  • Schedule dentist appointment.
  • Schedule annual physical.
  • Schedule annual skin cancer screening.
  • Enter evaluation data into spreadsheet.
  • Nap in the hammock with a book on my face.
Posted in Campus Life | 1 Comment

New Project

28 March, 2010

Here’s a panel from a project I’m working on for a special edition of Sunstone Magazine. It’s a special comix issue, for which I was invited to contribute. I am writing and drawing the piece, which has been great because I used to eat, sleep, and breathe, comic books when I was in high school. I’ve dabbled a little since, but this is really letting me get the rust out of my joints.


I’m not going to give away the whole farm, but I thought I’d throw this out to answer the question I’ve been getting a lot lately: “What are you working on?”

Posted in Creativity, Writing | 0 Comments

Look at Those Bad Boys

10 February, 2010

On Superbowl Sunday, we made all the game day food (wings, guacamole, etc.) and then Alisa watched Masterpiece Theater. I read Proust. And, oh, yay, without any help from the Petersen family, Manning took a dive so New Orleans could win, selflessly healing the country, just like Sandra Bullock.

Sorry, America. Football is boring.

Posted in Culture, Family Life | 0 Comments

Big Star

31 January, 2010

Zoë has astounded everyone with her announcement that she would very much like to audition for a local production of Seussical: The Musical. This comes from a kid who is pretty close to winning the Oscar for shyest person in the universe.

Here’s a secret video of her song rehearsals. She chose Priscilla Ahn’s song “Wallflower,” which isn’t really a Broadway hit, but we don’t listen to many Broadway hits around here. In this respect, Alisa and I are useless to her budding career in musical theater.

Zoë’s Audition Practice from Todd Robert Petersen on Vimeo.

We’re proud of her. She auditions at 5:15 on Monday. Wish her luck.

Learn how to manage your kid’s career by taking a few courses through one of the many accredited online universities. A class or two in management and your number one star will be on the way to fame.

Posted in Family Life | 2 Comments

Good Point from Jon Ogden

31 January, 2010

This snippet from an excellent argument on Mormon Artist.

We Mormons have the same expectations of Church members in almost all other professions. We expect, for instance, that dentists will favor dentistry over promoting religious orthodoxy while they are at work. To illustrate, we don’t expect dentists to give the missionary discussions to clients strapped, mouths agape, in the dentist chair. Nor do we expect accountants to slip copies of their testimonies in with their client’s tax returns. Dentists and accountants may be inspired in certain instances to share their beliefs, but we generally don’t expect such acts to be a mainstay of their professions. We shouldn’t expect it from artists either.

This saves me a blog post, really. What’s more important, though, is why so many assume that artists should be doing more evangelical work than a dentist, because they do. My wife’s Uncle Joe has been making this same argument about “uplifting work” for a long time.

Posted in Culture, Rave, Writing | 0 Comments

Look Away and They’re Gone

19 January, 2010

It is nearly ten o’clock, and
from my chair I can hear
pages turning crisply, slowly
in another room.

Thinking I am the only one
still awake, I walk the house
until I find a canted box
of light painting the hallway
in front of my daughter’s room.

I stand in the doorway
with an elbow against the jamb,
fist to my temple.

She’s contorted in her bed,
angling a book toward
the lamp. One sweep of her finger
reveals an ear.

She turns one page, then
another. How long until she
is just a snapshot on the fridge?

Posted in Family Life | 0 Comments

My 15 Minutes of Punditry

01 January, 2010

I had a great 40 minute conversation with Lisa Carricaburu at the Salt Lake Tribune. She was working on an end-of-the decade piece on shifting cultural values and demographics in the state. It was cool that I’d come up on her radar. Here’s an excerpt of my part in the whole thing. I’m keeping company with a U of Utah research economist, a BYU polysci prof, and a Salt Lake City community activist.

Cedar City writer Todd Robert Petersen explores Utah’s changing landscape in his newly published novel Rift , the story of interconnectedness, conflict and isolation in a small Sanpete County town.

He is not surprised Utahns, such as those he portrays in his novel, are upset by changes occurring around them.

“You can’t blame people for being scared,” Petersen says.

But slowly, with enough time to think about it, “they come to realize maybe all this change isn’t as dangerous as we think it is.”

He sees the promise of a more diverse Utah in the young people he teaches at Southern Utah University.

“Their attitude, whether they’re what I’d call ‘high faith’ or already on their way out [of the LDS Church] is ‘bring it on,’ ” he says. “Utah is amazing. I’m so interested in what’s next.”

Here’s a link to the full article. Should be live for a while.

Posted in Culture, Writing Life | 1 Comment