Show 9 Crossword 10 Classifieds 12 The Herald Journal Logan Utah Monday July 20 1998 Liars having field day in modern US ByGIna Wtekwar A firiend and I were ducussiof a mutual acquaintance ihakinf our beads over hii propensity for — not to put too fine a point on it — dissemblinf We marveled he felt compelled to ne about trivial unimportant things things so easily checked amazed he didn't realize his friends were “on to him" Several stories had spurred our conversation One concerned the increasing number of people who lie oo their resumes forcing businesses to do a lot more fact checking than formerly Another noted the large per-centage of parents who lie about their income actually forging false tax returns to further their chil dren’s chances for student aid Et cetera etcetera b We recalled liars we’d known over die years and I admitted to one bout of prevarication that took place when I was five After visiting neighbors 1 returned home to recount a fantastic trie of a that ttnril collapsible meny-go-rouCould be erected quickly m the living tjooni and plugged in My fothet entertaining Tom Swiftian visions raced next door to view this wonderful contraption He returned red-facdemanding to see me “in my room1 Years later he confided he'd thought this actually a splendid idea but at the time his reaction was less sanguine and no doubt went a long way to deter if not actually stop my flippancy with facts I also recalled a boss I had who was so prone to lies about minutiae that it made her staff suspicious Enough so we eventually caught her "cooking die books" and watched with glee S police led her away hi the modern equivalent of leg irons My friend related a time she lied to her mother about money taken from a purse tutting her brother and so forth but after several more confessional stories we concluded it wasn’t so much there was more lying going on these days just that people seemed utterly unconcerned by its increased use as a mode of operation Trice for example the story of the boMches My son and daughter-in-la- w called last weekend They had Rache informed me ordered a wroughl-iro- n chandelier from a tiny craft shop in Vermont She’d requested an eight-armchandelier decorated with a certain kind of 18tfa century boMcbe (Lest you wonder any longer a toMche" is font little saucer-lik- e thingy used historically to catch candle drippings Now you know) Weeks then months passed with Rache periodically calling to enquire of chandelier status No problem she was assured it just takes time —you know Yankee craftsmanship and all duo But finally after being pressed the Vermonter chandelier-maker informed her there’d been a mistake The boMches she'd specified were not foe ones on the chandelier Did She still want it? Yes she sighed figuring who’d care except maybe a Revolutionary War aficionado More weeks passed Another call this one revealing that along with the incorrect boMches said chandelier unfortunately had seven arms not the eight requested By now desperate forlightiiig of any sort Rache bit the bullet OK send the seven-arme- d one Another few weeks another call The artisan was er sorry but there didn’t seem to be a seven-arme- d chandelier after alL In fact the chandelier she had ordered nearly six months earlier still did not exist Why wailed Rachel did they LIE? Why didn’t they just TELL her they hadn't manufactured the chandelier? And WHY the crazy story about the boMchnd ed Scrippt Howard photo ed es? ' And why the countless "The check is in the mail” excuses we listen to daily often embellished with preposterous details that amaze us with their creativity? Why do we tolerate them? We all know a lie when we hear it yet we persist us countenancing the prevvicators making it easy for them to "get away with it” because we’re too polite to say "You're lying and I know iL" We do so because our society discourages the kind Dig deep and find your nnsx Bv Star Murder' Scrippa Howard News Service between a barren desert jungle you have a yourself place you played as a place you were happiest It could be a tree you climbed to sit among the leaves and look down on the world or a grassy field in which you spun around until you were dizzy It might have been a balcony of an apartment building with potted petunias to perk up the setting or even an indoor nook hidden by bouseplants If you can dig up that childhood garden and transplant it figuratively into your present landscape some of that happiness is bound to come with it Julie Moir Messervy author of The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning (Little Brown and Co $40) told a recent workshop Add some dreams past and future and you have a garden to love There are bushels of experts extolling the practical virtues of gardening But only a few authors ret to its roots talking about the connection between nature and humanity Somewhere aasn Messervy is among them Your garden she states in "The Magic Land: Designing Your Own Enchanted Garden” (MacMillan $1995) is “a place distilled from the elements of your imagination your memories and your dreams” She has workshop participants draw their favorite garden from childhood then talk about those places "Every one of us is full of all kinds of places we’ve collected — that gave us joy” Messervy sail Joy is an important part of your adult land scape she addled: "A garden is all about joy” How do you make the trip from that child's garden to here? "That” Messervy said "is the creative process” She likens it to a journey in which the traveler explores what gardens mean to her or him considers the possible archetypes that can be designed into the landscape analyzes those inward and outward sites studies the primary elements of a garden and garden composition then draws all parts together with “The Big Some rtf the creative process is pretty See GARDEN on Plage 16 of honesty that might "harm” people by making them feel Uncomfortable ns if comfort were die goaL But what of the harm when we continue to kt deception as strategy set our foorri compass? For what it's worth I fold Rache at least we all learned a new Word Unfortunately it wasn’t "110111” J Features: 752-212-1 |