Inversion Defined

With my trip to Utah this past week, I had several thoughts on the term "inversion".  When I told Glo the title of this blog post, she kept asking me exactly what "inversion" meant.  I will define it as best I can (not being a dictionary, or a scientist):

~Inversion, simply put, means to turn something upside down.

You might wonder why I was thinking about this infrequently used word, and I will answer that for you by describing the weather in "Happy Valley".

Normally, in Utah (or in any other location for that matter), a higher altitude results in colder air.  It's warmer on the ground, and gets increasingly cooler higher up.  Naturally, air rises from the ground (because it's warm).  Because of something funky going on (obviously meteorology is not my strong suit), there ended up being an inversion throughout the valley. What this meant was that it was bitterly cold on the ground, and significantly warmer in the air (up near the mountain peaks).  As a result, the air was trapped near the ground and couldn't rise as it normally does.  I don't think this would have been much of a problem in say, central Pennsylvania, but it was a cause for concern in a valley with a large, productive steel plant.

Have you ever seen a steel plant?  They are those plants that you usually see on the horizon with big plumes of steam and other assorted chemicals coming out of the smokestacks.  They produce crazy amounts of pollution.  (I'm not making any judgments here, as I adore my stainless steel cookery--I'm just restating the facts--and I have no solution to the problem.  No one can deny though that it is a problem.)  Within Utah Valley, the pollution conveniently rises on any normal day, and nobody cares about it particularly, but when there is an inversion, it's a different situation.  All that pollution is trapped in the air, and stays at ground level.

I noticed this on the first day, as I tried to get my first look at the surrounding scenery.  From a higher altitude, I saw a brown line that traversed the sides of the mountains, and I asked Ethan what it was (I honestly wondered if it was the dirt on our windshield making that line...).  He reassured me that our windshield wasn't THAT dirty from driving through six different states, and the brown line was indeed in the air.

As we were driving to Salt Lake City Sunday morning at 8 a.m., this was the scene:

That's not snow in the air, nor is it fog, or rain.  It's just normal air that is heavily polluted, and believe it or not, there are mountains on the horizon.

I had wondered why I was becoming violently sick every time I stepped outside.  It was like a light switch.  Having just recovered from walking pneumonia, and being a regular asthma sufferer, I discovered that this outside mountain air was like poison to my lungs.  Sometimes I couldn't even talk without going into paroxysms of coughing.  With filtered air (in homes, in the Tabernacle, in restaurants), my breathing would return to normal.

As a parent, I don't understand how any self-respecting mother or father could raise their children in an environment like that.  John even wondered if anyone has done any studies on the rates of asthma in children in Utah Valley because of these moments of poor air quality.  When I met with my dear friend, Claudia, for breakfast, she having moved from State College to Provo last summer, she noticed how ill I was.  She then shared an interesting fact:  the EPA says that 35 particles/million is the norm for air quality.  The rate that day in Utah Valley?  85 ppm.  The news was reporting it as "unhealthy", and we were only two notches away from "hazardous".

Hearing the word "inversion" used so much in such a short period of time, I naturally began thinking a bit deeper about it (it's the running dialog in my head, always thinking of the next blog post).

I first understood the idea of "inversion" when I was in 8th grade math.  An inverse relationship is defined in this way:

A relationship between two numbers in which an increase in the value of one number results in a decrease in the value of the other number.

In other words, as one value goes up, the other value goes down.  Here are some examples that might help you understand this:

• The more money an individual makes, the less money they seem to have.  How many of us thought "when I make x number of dollars, I'll have enough money" only to find out that we spend every dollar we make, so no matter the income, we always feel like we need more?
• The more chores the Kennedy children are asked to do, the less happiness they feel with their parents.  (As a result, the Kennedy parents hate their lives, so it's a lose/lose situation...)
• The more junk food we eat (which should be an enjoyable thing), the worse we feel about ourselves.  This is a tricky one for me, as my brain tends to think that junk food will bring me lots and LOTS of happiness, but I just feel like a slug afterwards.
• Looking at Utah, an inverse relationship would be represented by the increase in population in the area leading to a decrease in the air quality.  More people = more pollution = poorer air quality.

I must admit that it's hard for me to find a positive inverse relationship, or one in which there is an increase in the negative with a resulting positive.  I'm not a math major, so who knows if it's possible?

Unfortunately, I found a greater example of an inversion, and I'm hesitant to even mention it.  However, it plays into my extreme dislike of Utah Valley, and I want it recorded for any of my posterity that ever considers moving there.

I think everyone in our church would see Utah as the place to live.  A large majority of the population is Mormon, and seeing my children grow up where they are in the minority, it would be a relief.  I can't even imagine if my kids didn't have to explain why they don't drink tea, why they don't swear, why they don't watch rated-R movies, why they get up at 6:30 a.m. for a religion class, why they are in church for three hours every Sunday, why they don't date until they are 16, why they leave college to serve missions, why they don't attend birthday parties on the Sabbath, and every other awkward explanation.  There would be a great feeling of safety, living there.  

Too, many of the leaders of our church are from Utah, they currently live in Utah, and these men are great men.  They expound doctrine that help members of the church change our lives for the better.  They set examples for us of how we want to be.  Many mission presidents (who are called to serve around the world) come from Utah.

Being in a ward and stake in Pennsylvania that struggles to do anything, I was very much looking forward to attending a ward in Utah.  I imagined that my spirit would be filled, listening to the thoughts of people who live in "Zion".  I went into the meeting, expecting great things.

Crazy thing?  I discovered that there is an inverse relationship with the number of members of the church, and the level of spirituality.  Granted, this was a very small sample population, but I must admit that I've never seen it any differently.  Only a couple of neighborhood blocks makes up a congregation, so the population is thick with members (versus the 20 square miles that make up ours in central PA), but the depth of thought was minimal.  I wondered if perhaps this was my jaded personality, defining what I was seeing, but as I turned to Ethan, I could see that he was disgusted by it too.  Words like "vomit", "I need a stiff drink", and "staged" filled our conversation about it.  In my opinion, this meeting should have been the ideal as to what meetings should be, but I could find little meaningful in it.

And with that, my feelings towards Pennsylvania did a 180.  In other words, I went from hating Pennsylvania, to feeling that there is a purpose in living here (shall we say my feelings are "inverted"?).  Our lives aren't easy (see four paragraphs above), and we spend a lot of time defending our faith.  However, in that defense I think we find our beliefs growing, and we become stronger people for it.  If Mormonism was to surround us 24/7, I believe we make take it for granted, or at least be passive believers, not really having to think about what we believe, and why.  Yes, it would easier, but would it be better?  I don't think so.

As I stepped out of the Pittsburgh airport, I could hardly believe the difference.  I certainly would never have called that air "clean" before, but after the nightmare I had endured for the past four days, it felt like the "clean, mountain air" that I should have been breathing.  And my mind cleared too--poor air quality and easy faith?  I'll take difficult, redneck, rural, clean-air Pennsylvania any day.