25 Things about Shawn (from facebook)

1. I am the third of six children. The oldest son. I love my family. Some of them more than others. I was going to rank them here in order of most to least-loved. But some people are really sensitive. Email me if you want to see the list.

2. Andrea Knowlton is the love of my life. She is beautiful, talented, intelligent, good company, a great mom, nice-smelling, and so on and so on.

3. Annie and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary in Hawaii in about two weeks. Anticipating a tropical vacation in the middle of a hazy, frigid Logan winter is almost as good as the vacation itself.

4. We have two girls: Audrey and Clara. They give us unspeakable joy and exhaustion—usually at the same time. We are in for even more of the same. The due date is August 21, 2009. It may be a boy.

5. In the space of a couple of years, Annie or I (or both of us) were involved in a series of car accidents we didn’t cause. The scariest: a lady ran a red light and hit us going 40+. The oddest: the Park City Fire Department dropped a fire hose on our car on I-80 in Parley’s Canyon. The most annoying: a girl hit us on my birthday and then gave us fake insurance information. The police showed up at her house while her family was watching general conference together. Turns out that her dad is a judge—I actually practiced in front him a few years later. There were at least three other accidents. We never got seriously hurt, we sustained many thousands of dollars of property damage, and we acquired an abiding aversion to insurance companies.

6. I am a Utah boy. I love the terrain, climate, and history of my home state. I was amused to learn (while living on the east coast) that some people think Utah is just a really crappy place. I didn’t try to change their minds.

7. I ran unsuccessfully for class office in high school. Twice. My campaigns were hilarious and odd. Slogans I used on posters, buttons, and fliers included: “The Candidate Preferred by 3 out of 5 Small Woodland Animals,” “The Candidate Who Does Not Own or Operate a Monster Truck,” and “The Mother of All Candidates (Not Literally).”

8. My parents’ marriage fell apart when I was about 15. They got divorced four long years later. My older sisters were out of the house, so I was the oldest child at home. This part of my life was not very awesome.

9. I am an attorney. I work for a great law firm in Logan called Bearnson & Peck. I do business work (litigation and transactional), patent litigation, plaintiff’s work (personal injury), and various other things.

10. When I was in sixth grade, I hung a sign on my desk at school advertising my services as an attorney. And I actually took on some “cases.” I argued with my teacher and the ground duty (the recess cop) to get my friends out of trouble.

11. I didn’t always want to be an attorney. I entertained a lot of high-falutin’ romantic-genius ideas about art and stuff as a teenager. So naturally, I passed some years thinking that lawyers were beneath me. I wanted to be a writer.

12. Sometimes I wish I was born an English gentleman 200 years ago. I would spend mornings with my children and dogs tending to the estate, afternoons reading and writing (and maybe practicing law), evenings by candlelight with Andrea, Friday nights dancing at balls I would throw for everyone in the county, and Saturdays shooting things from my horse with Darcy, Colonel Brandon, and the rest.

13. I am a Mormon. I have a testimony of God, Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and the prophet Joseph Smith. Certain aspects of Mormon history, culture, and theology challenge me—I certainly understand why people think we are weird. But I can’t deny the things that I have seen and felt. The church is both good and true.

14. I served in the Brazil Recife Mission. And I waited in the Mississippi Jackson Mission for the Brazilian Consulate to issue my Visa. This proves that God has a sense of humor because I told people before my mission that I wanted to go anywhere but South America or the Deep South. My mission changed me. I was a skinny kid when I left, and I came home twenty pounds lighter. Also, I am incurably enchanted by Brazil. Particularly the music, the barbecue, the futebol, the beaches, and on and on. My mission was a watershed spiritual experience too.

15. Unlike most people, I like vacations. Favorite destinations include Hawaii, Waterton Lakes National Park, and the Colorado Plateau (various points). All great places to hike, bike, and kayak. I badly want to go to Europe. Especially London.

16. Contrary to the proper study habits I was taught as a child, I like to work with good tunes playing. Some favorites by genre and artist: Indy rock (Radiohead and Death Cab for Cutie). Brazilian (Djavan and Marisa Monte). Alt country (Wilco and Ryan Adams). Jazz (Thelonious Monk and The Bad Plus). Musical theatre (Sondheim and Bernstein). Classical (Bach and Ravel).

17. I have followed and contributed to the Bloggernacle (mainstream Mormon blogs) since 2003. I blog at A Motley Vision, which covers Mormon art and culture. Annie affectionately calls the Bloggernacle the “nerdernacle.” An apt description in the best possible way.

18. I am a BYU football fan. I like underdogs, and BYU (strict, religious, based in Utah) is an underdog by definition. I hate the BCS, ESPN, and stupid BYU fans (see cougarboard.com). But not the Utes.

19. I hate partisan politics, cable news, right-wing talk radio, and all other sources of glib, divisive demagoguery. If I was running for office or something, I could probably pass for a moderate republican or a conservative democrat. But I don’t lose too much sleep thinking about where I fit in. If Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign teaches us anything it should be this: nothing unites some Democrats and Republicans like their shared contempt for Mormons.

20. I am conservative by instinct and learning. David Mamet’s essay “Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal” is a great short read on what thinking like a conservative means. Google it. And don’t be offended by the article’s title. Trust me: Mamet is a genius playwright, not Rush Limbaugh. Also, I shamelessly admire the achievements of Western Civilization. Read Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence if you don’t know what I mean. Also, both my common-law training and my lifelong inculcation in restoration theology prevent me from underestimating the accumulated wisdom of the ages or overestimating my own (or my contemporaries’) ability to remake the world.

21. I love good literature. Favorites include: Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Stegner.

22. My literary tastes are not entirely pretentious. I am into crime/thriller/mystery lit too. Noir classics like Hammett and Chandler are great. The Sherlock Holmes and Rumpole books are good fun too. And I am a sucker for Alfred Hitchcock films.

23. I like the paintings of Brian Kershisnik.

24. Under the influence of Andrea and her family, I started road cycling last summer. I did a century in September, I have been doing a spin class all winter, and I am looking forward to riding again when the snow melts.

25. I have published a small pile of short stories and poetry. You can check out some of my stuff at shawnbailey.com. Also, I have stories appearing in upcoming editions of Dialogue and Irreantum. Apologies in advance for my eyesore of a website.