Sisal Soup

Why Don't I Ski? --Good Question, Stupid Answer

2010-12-03T09:00:00.005-07:00

Mt. Shasta 1960 Snow Gear

People are often incredulous when they learn that I’m from Utah yet I am not a lifetime, avid skier.

The fact is that in the day when I was learning to ski, ski clothes were not made with space-age fabric and insulation, but with good old crap that got wet, froze and was miserable to move in. Most of the day on the slopes was was spent standing in front of the huge lodge fireplace trying to get warm and meet cute guys, in that order.

There were no lovely ski lifts either that I remember. There was the “T”-bar that was a suspended track with a chain hanging from above that dragged you with a bar that you willingly caught between your legs that froze to your butt and which was dicey to get loose from at the top of the hill.

We would often ride to the canyons and back in the back of a pickup truck buried under piles of blankets laughing ourselves silly, miserable as you can imagine, hauling along food, good and bad cheer, and wondering what we had gotten ourselves into again.

We would generally rent our skis, but one day, I broached the possibility of buying some. So Dad excitedly hustled to the basement and and brought out his vintage laminated wood skis that were tall enough to reach his wrist as he reached his arm up as far as he could. I wanted to cry. He thought we’d probably want to replace the old, crusty, dried-up leather bindings.

When my other brothers and I griped the Christmas baby-brother, Rex got his season pass, skis, boots, bindings, and full ski outfit, mother simply said "You had each other. Rex had no one."

Of all the stupid things that all parents have ever said, and we all must confess that we’ve said stupid things, in my humble estimation, that is the stupidest that a parent has ever uttered with a straight face. I love you, Mother, but you cannot ever make me take that back.

The Sex Talk -- The Basis For Life, the Bedrock of All Parental Trauma

2010-11-30T09:00:00.004-07:00

Brad got a nice refresher from Ali, his six-year-old on his sex ed talk that we had so many years ago when he was eight the other day. She told him that he has no womb. She knows this because of a book she checked out of the library.

Brad and Julia apparently don’t feel the initial sex talk I had with him him went well enough so many years ago provided a decent enough pattern, so they’ve allowed Ali to do it for herself it would appear.

I really didn’t do a very good job. I actually used paper and pencil with him for some unbelievable reason. I have no defense. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Brad and I I were parked in my Volkswagen Beetle outside of Peruvian Park Elementary School for appropriate privacy, I remember, and I stammered and stuttered through the whole thing. At the last minute I remembered talking about the rabbits we’d been raising and I recall saying “Didn’t it ever occur to you knowing how baby rabbits were made?”

And he responded, “Yeah, but then I thought, ‘That couldn’t be.’” And our conversation was over.

Ben’s sex talk was even worse. I just kept talking to him waiting for some

response to come over his face. It never came. He stayed perfectly stoic. I asked him later about it, years later, and he tried to comfort me by saying he knew most of it anyway. I knew it was a lie, but I took comfort from it anyway.

It’s amazing more of our children are not in analysis from the way we raise them. We probably ought to just give them books and let them learn about the Facts of Life on their own anyway. Didn’t most of our parents do a pretty lousy job of it, either by omission or blundering through.

Friends had it all wrong, by-and-large, but at least they weren’t so traumatizing.

Animal Friends

2010-11-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

For Ali and Soph

Gratitude is Me For Carl

2010-11-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's been an awful year for Carl and his health. He has been the picture of health all his life, so this has not been easy for him or for me. i don't know what I'd do without him either so I'll hang on as you see me doing here.

The above picture was taken by our good friend and ward member, Kimball Ungerman, a couple of weeks ago. Thought you'd like to see it.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T09:00:00.001-07:00

Thou hast given so much to me,

Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;

Not thankful when it pleaseth me,

As if Thy blessings had spare days,

But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.

~George Herbert

Popcorn - A Filler

2010-11-24T09:00:00.001-07:00

I was working on something else and got sick of working on it (it's on Grandma Peterson, the anti-semitic semite), and I wanted to find a picture, so here's this instead. Could be worse. We could be unable to leave our house due to the abounding snow that never arrived.

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-popcorn.htm#mkcpgn=kaw1

Megamind, Maybe

2010-11-22T09:00:00.001-07:00

We went to see Megamind with the little people, ages six and eight, and I did enjoy myself, but thought it was a little beyond them.

Maybe I did underestimate them but I kept wanting to explain things. For one thing the bad guy was just dropped into a prison and was bad by default "Superman babylike". Also he had a magic watch that made him look like anybody he wanted to, so that was a little bewildering as he became people at will for rather subtle reasons. Also, "good guy" got tired of being good, so he just faked his own death, which isn’t okay in my book. Substitute "Bad guy" was just a doofus.

The female interest ultimately falls in love with the original "ambivalent" bad guy who is serving time in prison having given himself up, and then he is suddenly made town hero without too much explanation being made. We six-year-olds aren’t stupid, but we don’t go for coming up for explanations in our cartoons or for messed up cross-purposes.

It really was quite entertaining, but even as an adult I don’t think I would’ve gone by myself.

One of the tests of a good kid movie is that Ali quotes lines afterward. She quoted none after Megamind. I couldn’t think of any either.

What is a Paradox?

2010-11-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

Here you go. I like to teach, I like to amuse and further I like to render others incredulous.

Doesn't the above do all three quite facilely? A paradox you say? Also good advice? Confusing, also to those easily rendered confused, so my advice is not to place these around your home if you have friends who smoke if you value your carpet and furniture.

The obedient won't use this ashtray.

Updike Improves On Shakespeare, Haha

2010-11-17T09:00:00.005-07:00

Oh my stars. Of course John Updike is about the finest writer we’ve got around today, but who would have guessed he would have presumed to write a prequel to Hamlet, of all things, and have pulled it off beautifully in the hilarious Gertrude and Claudius?

He even answers some of the wilder questions in Shakespeare’s play, changes some of the names to keep you guessing, makes motives really interesting, and I think makes Shakespeare proud.

If you’re not familiar with Updike I don’t think this is where you’d like to start with him. And if you’re not familiar with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you probably don’t want to start here either. But if you’re familiar with both, I think this’ll give you a really good time. Like I said, I love John Updike, and I do like Shakespeare and this blend is a beaut.

One of the Truly Inspired

2010-11-16T09:00:00.001-07:00

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has retired from public life due to worsening lymphatic cancer. Recently, he sent this farewell letter:

He is from Columbia, is considered one of the finest writers of 20th century.
"If for a moment God were to forget that I am a rag doll and granted me a piece of life, I probably wouldn't say everything that I think; rather, I would think about everything that I say.
I would value things, not for their worth but for what they mean. I would sleep less, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes, we lose sixty seconds of light.
I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others sleep, I would listen when others talk.
And how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream!
If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul.
My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show. Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream a Benedetti poem, and a Serrat song would be the serenade I'd offer to the moon.
I would water roses with my tears, to feel the pain of their thorns and the red kiss of their petals... My God, if I had a piece of life... I wouldn't let a single day pass without telling the people I love that I love them.
I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love.
I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!
To a child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting.
So much have I learned from you, oh men ... I have learned that everyone wants to live at the top of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled.
I have learned that when a newborn child first squeezes his father's finger in his tiny fist, he has him trapped forever.
I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other get to his feet.
From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when I keep them within
this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying."

He truly is a hero of mine.

Sophia Is Baptized, Ali Accompanies

2010-11-15T09:00:00.004-07:00

Sophia has been baptized. She said she was nervous, but she didn’t seem it. She was as cool and pristine as always. she only required one dipping, too.

Ali was the one to deal with. She knew from the beginning I was going to be accompanying the song after the confirmation. She asked if she could be on the piano bench right beside me. Of course I agreed. What harm could she do? What harm indeed?

She confirmed this with me often. And I continued to agree not realizing that in fact she planned to sabotage the situation -- unknowingly, of course.

When it was just about our turn, I informed Ali, and she almost took off. I grabbed her arm just in time. Soon we were serenely seated on the piano bench. The chorister began to wave her arm and I began to play. Then my horror, Ali placed her hands firmly right on top of mine. I could barely move my hands. She left them there for the entire first verse. She is strong for a six-year-old.

She played around for the second verse for which I was grateful but she returned her task for the third verse.

I don’t think I humiliated Sophia on her special day. I don’t think Elmer Nelson, my piano teacher, from age ten to twenty took note in the celestial kingdom.

But I do think the world ought to take special note, pun intended, of Alison Aukschun. she is definitely someone with whom making music is magic time. It’s hard work, you must be alert and there are no advance warnings of anything.

Not Necessarily Appropriate For Sunday, But Isn't Truth Always Good Every Day?

2010-11-13T19:06:00.001-07:00

These are good. I know how to fold fitted sheets, but I'll not argue with most of these. And they are clean aside from the occasional asterisk. Based in many are causes I could march behind. Love them on many levels. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5QRbAT/media.funlol.com/content/img/mature-people-truths.jpg

Words Are Better Than Music

2010-11-12T09:00:00.003-07:00

When I first started hearing about how women talk so much more than men. I thought I was on moon.

My father was the King of Talk. My brothers are almost as adept as he and I am no slacker myself. And versatility, (BS) is the Watch Word in every conversation.

One of the most famous conversations we’ve ever had was around the dinner table when we had silenced Dad for ten minutes as he figured out how many soccer balls it would take to fill the Marriott Center down at the BYU campus. Good times.

My mother was always silent during these and most conversations.

We would talk about anything. Not just sports, not hunting. Vulgarity was frowned upon and fighting wasn’t acceptable, and things didn’t get personal, but we had a great time.

I still love to talk my brothers. In fact they are my favorite people to talk to. The tragedy is they’ve ruined my life by being too busy. Mark”s on his mission. Scott has a stupid job. Rex is a Bishop plus he has a stupid job too and Brent works at the car wash even though he could retire, too.

I had my colleagues at LDS Church Education, and they were pretty fun, but they were usually pretty narrow-minded. They’d get pretty scared at some topics. Others would not be, though, and I would gravitate towards those because I love to talk about possibilities as regards to God, His minions, His worlds and His potentials and my brothers and my dad would all love to get into that stuff. Wild speculation of any sort was just the best.

Words to me are music, and the words of my father and my brother are symphonic. And that’s not hyperbole.

Artistic License Forms At Home

2010-11-09T09:00:00.004-07:00

it would be my best guess that my granddaughter thought she was only being helpful and perhaps being decorative when she labeled my piano room with Post-it notes. She would surely never consider it insulting to my intelligence. She knows I know what a piano is and she also knows I know what a room is.

I just think she thought it was something pretty and also something fun to do. I happen to agree with her and so I think I’ll leave it up for a while. Maybe a good long while. I happen to like her style. Thanks, Sophia.

The Mormon "100"

2010-11-08T09:00:00.005-07:00

Billy Barty

Here’s a list that requires a little understanding before reading and quoting. It’s a list of the 100 Latter-day Saints who have had the most influence on the world. They are not necessarily famous, heroic, celebrities or “big deals”. They might not be generally well-known, liked, or had a high or continuing level of church “activity’. and their influence was judged as to its impact on the world and not just on the Church. Remember, however, since the Church membership is close to 14 million, that is no small influence.

Though we do claim them, the “Mormon 100” lists no one who died before 1830’s official organization of the Church.

We are also instructed to not quibble too much about the rankings.

BTW, Mattie Hughes Cannon was one of my great grandfather’s wives, and I have it in writing she was jealous of my great grandmother!

1. Philo Farnsworth - inventor of the television

2. Joseph Smith, Jr. - founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

3. Brigham Young - 2nd President/Prophet of the Church; led Saints to Utah

4. Marvin Harris - inventor of the transistor radio

5. Alan Ashton - inventor of the modern word processor

6. Nolan Bushnell - Father of Video Games; inventor of "Pong"

7. Harvey Fletcher - inventor of the hearing aid, stereophonic sound, the audiometer, more than 20 other inventions

8. William Clayton - inventor of the odometer

9. Jonathan Browning - revolutionary gunsmith; inventor of the repeating rifle

10. John Moses Browning - revolutionary gunsmith; inventor of the automatic shotgun and many other developments

11. Lester Wire - inventor of the electric traffic light

12. John Taylor - 3rd President of the Church

13. Alvino Rey - inventor of the electric guitar

14. John Gilbert - silent film star

15. Thomas Stockham - father of digital sound recording (CDs, DVDs); led the 1974 technological effort to recover sound from the 18-minute gap in Nixon's White House tapes

16. Paul Boyer - received Nobel Prize for describing the mechanism of ATP synthesis

17. Ezra Taft Benson - 13th President of the Church; U.S. secretary of agriculture

18. Lino Brocka - most influential filmmaker in the history of the Philippines

Which of these individuals are among the 100 most influential Latter-day Saints of all time?

• Emma Smith - wife of Joseph Smith

• Eldridge Cleaver - Black Power revolutionary

• Drew Major - inventor of NetWare -- corporate computer network; founder of Novell

• Esther E. Peterson - one of America's most effective consumer and women's rights advocates; establish such regulations and practices as truth-in-advertising, truth-in-packaging, nutritional labeling, and unit pricing

• Stephen R. Covey - author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Gordon B. Hinckley - 15th President of the Church

• James Cruze - Hollywood film director

• Lorenzo Snow - 5th President of the Church

• George Romney - President of American Motors; governor of Michigan

• Gerald ("Jerry") Molen - movie producer

• Emmeline Woodward Wells - an early leader of the women's rights movement

• Joe Hill - labor organizer

• Spencer W. Kimball - 12th President of the Church

• Don Bluth - director of animated films

• Ab Jenkins - "Mormon Meteor"; race car driver, designer; held world land speed records between 1932-56

• Alex Oblad - fundamental work in catalysis and contributions to the production of high octane gasoline and synthetic ammonia

• Alma Richards - Track and field star; first Utahn to win a gold medal in the Olympics (1912, Stockholm); In all, won 63 national and regional championships

• Anne Osborn Poelman - author of the definitive textbook in neuroradiology

• Anne Perry - mystery writer

• Arthur Henry King - scholar

• Avard T. Fairbanks - sculptor

• Billy Barty - actor; founder of Little People of America

• Bruce R. McConkie - apostle, author

• Carlyle Harmon - major improvements in disposable diapers

• Colin Low - Canadian documentary filmmaker and IMAX technology pioneer

• Cynthia Garner - first woman to appear on Fortune Magazine's cover

• Danny Ainge - pro basketball player

• Dave Wolverton - science fiction writer, long-time head of the Writers of the Future contest

• David O. McKay - 9th President of the Church

• Donny and Marie Osmond - entertainers

• E. Park Guyman - developed a patented solvent extraction process that has the potential to convert American tar sands into billions of barrels of high grade asphalt and crude oil

• Earl Douglass - Geologist, dinosaur fossil hunter

• Ed "Big Daddy" Roth - Hot rod designer and creator of anti-hero, pop culture icon "Rat Fink"

• Edwin Catmull - computer animation pioneer; co-founder of Pixar

• Ellis Reynolds Shipp - one of Utah's most distinguished leaders in the practice and teaching of medicine

• Elouise M. Bell - English professor and literary scholar

• Emerson Tippetts - contributions to synthetic textiles

• Eugene England - literary critic; English professor; pioneer in study of Mormon letters

• Ewart Swinyard - developed drugs to suppress epilepsy

• Fawn Brodie - author of No Man Knows My History

• Forrest S. Baker III - film producer; founder of Feature Films for Families

• Gene Fullmer - boxer, held Middleweight titles in 1957, '59

• George Albert Smith - 8th President of the Church

• George Hill - coal research including development directed toward the transformation of coal for liquid automobile fuel

• Gideon O. Burton - English professor and literary critic

• Gladys Knight - singer

• Glen A. Larson - television producer

• Harold B. Lee - 11th President of the Church

• Harvey Greenfield - member of the Jarvik-7 team that developed first artificial heart

• Heber J. Grant - 7th President of the Church

• Henry Eyring - chemist and researcher noted for work in molecular reactions; received highest awards in chemistry, including Joseph Priestly Medal and the Wolf Prize

• Homer Warner - development of computer sciences to a fine art in medical diagnosis, particularly for heart ailments

• Howard W. Hunter - 14th President of the Church

• Hyrum Smith - founder of Franklin (as in Day Planners) and partner in Franklin-Covey

• Ina Coolbrith - California's first poet laureatte

• Ivy Baker Priest - U.S. Treasurer, whose signature appeared on U.S. currency from 1953 to 1961

• J. Edwin Seegmiller - helped develop amniocentesis, to learn about the health of fetuses

• J. Willard Marriott - hotelier

• Jack Anderson - Washington muckraker; Pulitzer prize winner

• James T. Fletcher was appointed twice to be Director of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan

• Jean Westwood - first woman to serve as chairperson of the National Democratic Party

• Jim Parkin - pioneered artificial ears through cochlear implants

• John Bennion - English professor and author; "Burial Pool"; Breeding Leah and Other Stories

• John Dixon - pioneered laser surgery

• Johnny Miller - PGA golfer; won 24 major tournaments; in golf Hall of Fame; Designs golf courses

• Jon Huntsman - billionaire industrialist

• Joseph F. Smith - 6th President of the Church

• Joseph Fielding Smith - 10th President of the Church

• Kathleen Burton Clarke - first woman director of the Bureau of Land Management

• Kieth Merrill - Latter-day Saint filmmaker and early IMAX pioneer

• Kim L. O'Neill - patent in 1997, monoclonal antibody that quickly, accurately and inexpensively detects cancer at early stages, by measuring Thymidine Kinase 1 (TK1)

• Laraine Day - actress

• Marie Windsor - actress; a director of the Screen Actors Guild for 25 years; founder of the Screen Actors Guild Film Society

• Marriner S. Eccles - Banker; helped create World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as structure the Federal Reserve System; Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C., is named after him

• Martha Hughes Cannon - first woman elected as a state senator in the United States

• Mary Lythgoe Bradford - author and essayist

• Melvin Cook - development of slurry blasting agents which have replaced dynamite

• Michael Austin - literary critic; teaches Eighteenth-Century British Literature, World Literature, and Rhetoric at Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia; has written about Mormon literature

• Milton Wadsworth - new methods for the beneficiation of minerals

• Mitt Romney - director of SLC Olympics and Candidate for Governor of Massachusetts

• Nephi Anderson - (1865-1923) the most prominent fiction writer of the "Home Literature" period of Mormon Literature. Author of Added Upon (1898); Dorian; John St. John; Marcus King, Mormon, more

• Orson Scott Card - writer

• Paula Hawkins - first woman senator from Florida

• Pete Harman - co-founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken

• Randy Bachman - rock musician, of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Guess Who

• Raymond F. Jones - popular Campbell-era science fiction writer

• Reva Beck Bosone - (1895 - 1983) first woman member of U.S. Congress from Utah

• Rhonda Fleming - actress, philanthropist

• Richard Dutcher - filmmaker

• Richard Rich - animation director

• Richard Thomas - head of the National Academy of Science Committee on Toxicology

• Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball - (1818-1898) Early suffragist and women's rights activist

• Scott Woodward - selected by the Egyptian government to study the DNA and lineage of Egyptian mummies

• Sheri Dew - CEO of Deseret Book; member of Relief Society First Presidency

• Sterling Van Wagenen - filmmaker and film teacher; co-founder of Sundance Film Festival

• Suzanne Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff - socialite

• Terry Moore - actress; USO star; wife of Howard Hughes

• Terry Tempest Williams - environmentalist, writer

• Tracy Hall - synthesis of diamonds

• Tracy Hickman - fantasy author; co-author of the popular Dragonlance series

• Waldemar Young - Hollywood screenwriter

• Wayne Quinton - developing artificial kidneys

• Wilbert L. Gore - Developed waterproof fabric Goretex.

• Wilford Woodruff - 4th President of the Church

• Willam F. Christensen - Ballet choreographer and company director; founder of Ballet West; choreographed more than 50 ballets, including the first "Nutcracker"

• Yuki Saito - Japanese singer/actress

• Four BYU music students invented LAN or Local Area Networking which spawned Novell becoming an international leader in networking software

• Zenna Henderson - early female science fiction writer

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Millet; Ron Brand; Ron Fellows; Ron Wright; Roy Halladay; Rudger Clawson; Rudolf Wobbe; Rulon Gardner; Rulon Jones; Russell M. Nelson; Saints Unified Voices; Samuel Brannan; Samuel Harrison Smith; Sandy Petersen; Scott Brumfield; Scott Bunker; Scott Mitchell; Scott Pollard; Sean Salisbury; Shakeh Crowfoot; Shawn Bradley; Shawn Davis; Shawn Estes; Sheri L. Dew; Sidney Rigdon; Skouson Harker; Spencer Adams; Spencer W. Kimball; Stephen Covey; Stephen L. Richards; Steve Benson; Steve Young; Sylvester Q. Cannon; Terry Rooney; Terry Tempest Williams; The Osmonds; Thomas B. Marsh; Thomas S. Monson; Thurl Bailey; Tim Hanshaw; Todd Christensen; Todd Heap; Todd Miller; Tom Chambers; Tom Udall; Tommie Sisk; Tracy Hickman; Travis Hall; Travis Knight; Ty Detmer; Vai Sikahema; Vance Law; Vernon Hatton; Vernon Law; Victor Cline; Virginia Sorensen; Wally Herger; Wally Joyner; Warren Parrish; Wilford Brimley; Wilford Woodruff; Willard Richards; William E. McLellin; William Harrison Folsom; William J. Flake; William Marks; William Smith; William W. Phelps; Zenos H. Gurley Sr.; Zina D. H. Young

Please send suggestions, comments, questions, additional information, etc. to: webmaster@ldsfilm.com

Webpage created (but not posted) 28 January 2002. List posted online 11 August 2005. Last modified 14 August 2005.

Speaking of Jerks

2010-11-05T09:00:00.003-06:00

I am so tired of Brian David Mitchell.

You would think when a story had so many hot, salacious twists and turns that a person like me would never get tired of it, but I have. Put a fork in me, I’m done.

He’s a sick, perverse child abuser who has ruined more than a few lives, but he’s back on television again with his crazy hair, crooning the hymns again. I want to snatch that face bald he makes me so mad. Today they broke into TV to let us know that a judge thinks he can’t, maybe, get a fair trial in Utah. Ya think? We are so sick of that crazy monkey, any one of us would take a stick to him if given half a chance just to get him out of our faces.

Elizabeth Smart seems to have emerged from her ordeal eight years ago pretty well and has gone on with her life except she has to come home from her LDS mission to testify. Yiiiiikes.

I can’t imagine any state would let him loose regardless of where they try him so let’s just get the whole thing over and done with so we don’t have to see his ugly face or run the risk of anyone having to hear him sing again. Who cares where. Where is Joran Van der Sloot? We don’t hear about him anymore. Maybe that’s a good spot for Mitchell.

Church - What It's Good For

2010-11-04T09:00:00.006-06:00

What’s church for? Worship you say? Hahahaha I laugh. That too, of course, but who is kidding who?

God knows it’s for a lot of things. He’s been watching us, you know.

A new item is texting. An old one is good old chatting. Showing off new duds is fun. Daydreaming, arguing, wishing, hoping, planning, scheming. Writing new blogs happens. I asked the bishop on Sunday to excommunicate Joyce Cusick because she said I looked like a pumpkin, but I was really kinda kidding. Really.

Folding the program is always a good activity except for airplanes which is always forbidden in our home after one of our sons threw one during Sacrament Meeting years ago. I still fold flea catchers for old times sake.

Then there are color books and crayons, of course, but graduation to the big-time -- drawing! That’s when you get good. All you need is a notebook and a pencil and within a few minutes you have a startling likeness of Uncle Ben as you see above done by Ali Aukschun!

Church grows great citizens, varied worshippers, wonderful friends, artists, authors, speakers, musicians, cooks, campers, thinkers and granddaughters.

i think we are who we are because of church. Maybe some of it was not as focused as it could have been, but probably won’t improve much in the future. But we’ll still keep showing up since we likely are better because of it anyway, and it’s not so bad anyway, is it?

Carl's Good!

2010-10-28T09:00:00.001-06:00

And here’s to the best news I’ve posted in a long, long time. Carl’s cancer, it would appear, is gone.

They did the PSA blood test on Monday, and reported today the results was -.004 -- virtually undetectable. It would appear that even good old water itself doesn’t get a perfect .000000 on the PSA test for prostate cancer.

I hate to think what would have happened had Carl not had his kidney stone and met up with the good Dr. Dan Hibbert, the sneaky urologist who chances a check on the adjacent prostate while calming a raging kidney stone. Fortunately an additional plus for Dr. Hibbert is he is unique in the area in his ability to perform the prostatectomy via robotics enabling Carl to recover considerably faster than he otherwise would have. Further, the precision is much better than a manual surgery so damage is less likely.

Carl has always cursed his kidney stones and his propensity to create them and yet it turns out that they were blessings in disguise. Isn’t that the way of things?

How often we complain of the very things that ultimately we find make us strong and even save our lives.

I thank God for this. I am a firm believer than we will realize that there has not been a wasted moment, experience, pain, loss, or ache that has not “come together for our good.” I believe in that kind of great economy of our God. For example, I would have never believed that I could have loved Carl more. But here I am, loving him more than I could have ever imagined before.

Snappy Facts for Wednesday

2010-10-27T09:00:00.001-06:00

There are some things you need to know.

1. I've been out of town for two weeks and have been not busy so I've not been doing much and my arm hurts so I've not had much to write about.

2. Carl's been down and out.

3. It's late.

4. I think only Annie and Lindsey are following me anyway now so I'm disencouraged anyway. Even Carl accused me of not writing regularly though I only missed Friday and Monday.

5. I've got a list of snappy facts you need to know anyway so click on the following:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5hmMuB/mysnapplerealfacts.blogspot.com/

Hereafter - Clint Eastwood At His Best

2010-10-26T09:00:00.003-06:00

I think Clint Eastwood is a genius as a director. I loved Hereafter but it’s not at all what you think it’s going to be. Nothing heavy-handed from this guy.

Eastwood doesn’t underestimate his viewer. This movie is not difficult, but it’s deep and rich both visually and auditorily. You see incredible beauty. You see despair. You see things vaguely, yet clearly. You hear Dickens, then you see why he matters. You see incredible, people, some fascinating, not especially beautiful, but fascinating, and acting incredibly. You hear such understatement. French is spoken at length by beautiful, accomplished people, English by a beautiful, poor, broken little family in terrible distress, all to be tied in a strange and seamless way. Only a couple of times I thought things could have been done less awkwardly, but I didn’t know how.

Eastwood makes his many statements throughout maybe only once and expects you to remember them and build on them. If you don’t, no problem, but if you do, great beauty comes of it.

He gives abundant visual clues and cues that you can learn from and build on, some from beyond, some binding humans through the beyond some indicating caring from beyond and some indicating vestiges from beyond that linger from the past. It’s wild.

The woman takes the hand of a child, a father grieves from beyond, a twin brother instructs his brother acting both humanly, childishly and also angelically, a doctor/scientist informs with just a line in a hospital making a huge difference, a vision appears and reappears, the kiss from the future, and phony clairvoyants are outed. You almost feel you are watching your own thoughts happen.

The sheer beauty of the movie is enough to draw you along though the movie is very slow in its progression. Though little is known about much, much is indicated to drive thought about everyone and everything. Just like life and the hereafter. It’s beautiful. I’m going to see it again. It’s that much.

I Laughed, I Cried, I Spilled My Drink . . .

2010-10-21T09:00:00.002-06:00

I didn’t even know such a movie was out yet we went to see Red yesterday afternoon in a movie theater that was empty save for us. I thought I’d laugh myself silly. It was wonderful. I could laugh as loud as I wanted without Carl telling me to shut up. I needed those magic shields up, too, because it was just that funny.

Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and of course John Malkovich were crazy old former agents of varying types, with Malkovich having lots of paranoia thrown in, who shoot things up, chase around the country in cars, blow people up, and are absolutely hilarious. Julia, my beautiful daughter-in-law will be thrilled to note that a Russian is a hero in this one.

The story line is interesting and pretty surprising, too, keeping you guessing as to how this is going to work out, too, without somebody you like doing pretty hard time at some point.

The timing is perfect as they zip from place to place and the the pace is perfect. We’re never bored so be sure to buy a medium drink and go to the bathroom before you go in. I wouldn't know where to recommend a bathroom break.

Mary Louise Parker is the love interest but you’ve got to see her to care, and you will.

Please see it. Just trust me on this one.

Makes Alot of Sense

2010-10-20T09:00:00.000-06:00

The Parable of Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson

about a battle that goes on inside all people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two
wolves that dwell inside each and everyone of us.

“One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority,
lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is Good.
It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity,
truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for
a minute, and then asked his grandfather:

“Which wolf will win ?”

The old Cherokee simply replied:
“The one you feed.”

Book of Mormon Blessings Attested to in Herriman

2010-10-19T09:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of Sundays after his surgery, I forced Carl into the car and took him for a ride to see Herriman, Utah, “post fire”. I’m mean. I’m nurse-like.

It was astonishing for a couple of reasons.

One was the closeness to homes the fire came along a miles-long line behind houses above Herriman for a very long, terrifying time. Few homes were destroyed and no lives were lost and no one was seriously harmed. That even included animals and there were lots of those in that area.

The other, more amazing thing, was the feeling I got was from the people and the neighborhood itself. It was the feeling that a real miracle had taken place. The people were walking through their neighborhood, looking happy and grateful. The neighborhood, beautiful and cared for, looked serene, safe, and loved, and felt very blessed.

All the way through the Book of Mormon it talks about how the Lord blesses people when they are righteous and stands back when they are not. It’s not usually about individuals but people as a group which is a very important point. The Lord wants us to care for each other. I got the feeling in Herriman that these people were good people, not just individuals, but as a group, who had been protected because they were good people who cared for each other and were grateful for all they had.

I did do one thing that my family hates and that is I stopped and talked to a guy that was working outside of his house with a bunch of Harleys and four-wheelers. I learned that his business is out of his house re-doing the leather in cars and motorcycles and the like and he didn’t leave when the fire came behind the houses across the street from him. He told me he figured he could out-run the fire himself if it came to his house, so he sat at his house drinking beer watching the fire while his neighbors put their kids into their vans and hauled out.

He said that one cop told him that if he didn’t evacuate his house, they’d come drag him out, but apparently their word wasn’t law so they didn’t come back.

The guy had a bunch of punching bags in his garage, and the police probably figured he could take care of himself anyway so they left him alone. I bet his neighbors love him a lot. I did in just the minutes I talked to him. And he was swept up in the safety of Herriman. What a great place to live.

http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story/Herriman-fire-destroys-homes-some-evacuations/yq_6ZdGHFEGVR9FwaQOJjg.cspx

Fairytale Destinations Exist

2010-10-18T11:00:00.000-06:00

There are places in the world that are taken for fairytale spots. Above is Colmar, considered the most beautiful city in Europe, little Venice, located in the Alsace region of France. Want to see more? Follow this link. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1kenHj/opentravel.com/blogs/fairytale-destinations/

Don'tcha Kinda Gotta Like This Guy?

2010-10-16T19:33:00.001-06:00

William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"

If I when my wife is sleeping

Ballet russe (photo of Adolph Bolm and Flore Revalles, taken in 1910)

and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
[c. 1917]

Girl Fads - Insanity and Dollars Ensue

2010-10-15T09:00:00.004-06:00

The dream would be to invent something that would appeal to girls ages five to fourteen. Something that would be sold at the checkout stand at just about anywhere from a convenience store, to Wal-Mart, to a grocery store. Something that would make girls melt down until they get their own version of it. It would be something that would be easy to manufacture, something that would have universal appeal, would go winter and summer, be useful internationally and would be cheap. Ha! And here (above, actually) is the current item, as it rests on my skirt at church, and as it adorns Ali’s wrist. I hope it made someone rich.

All it is is a bunch of rubber bands, in various shapes in various colors and voila, girls go nuts and mothers and grandmothers buy them by the gross.

What thought progressions go into such things? Is it the same ones that go into coming up with mother boards and recipes for brownies? For systems for making cartoons happen by computers and great American novels or cures for major diseases? Or for the combine or the steam engine for that matter? I’d like to know. Or the pogo stick? Somehow it just doesn’t seem fair.

Those things are relatively or considerably difficult. Rubber bands? How long can you stand them on your wrist anyway? They’d roll up in your arm hairs and rip them out before long. You can’t even tell what they are once they’re on your wrist.

Here’s what I have to say. Life is just not fair. I want to be in charge and be the one who decides what’s worth what. Serendipity just can’t be let loose any longer. This has gotten ridiculous now that I’m thinking about it.

And for sheer foolishness like this, perhaps jail sentences will be involved. I’ve had it.

Chance Encounters Are Often The Best

2010-10-14T09:00:00.016-06:00

Had an all-too brief but fun conversation with a woman in my beloved O’Hare Airport with a blind woman on her way to a conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The conference was for people who work with prisoners, teaching them braille so that they can translate textbooks for blind students.

The woman was fascinating. She has been blind all her life and has been reading Braille since the second grade. This was her first time on her own in twenty years but she was delightful, seemed completely brave, competent, bright and was absolutely terrified. She was also getting the runaround on the phone about whether someone would be picking her up at the airport when she arrived at the airport in Louisville. No one there seemed concerned that she was more than a bit handicapped either.

We spoke of the ubiquitous Braille in restrooms and elevators. I said I’d never seen them used ever in my life. She said that they are used often by many, but that the problem with them is that there is no uniformity in their placement so it’s difficult for the blind to find them to use them! Hilarious.

I spoke to her of a friend who has diabetes who is now blind, who has her doctorate so is not stupid, and is now learning braille, and her chances of becoming competent. She said her problem might be neuropathy, but she still could do it.

Her problems with work with prisoners is not with the prisoners themselves but with the prison system. Obviously, she works with long-term prisoners, those who either have long sentences or life sentences. But the problem is that she works with privately-run prison systems, and consequently their funding runs out, and her workers are moved all over the place, from Wyoming, to California, from hither to yon and are governed by different regulations and restrictions. Also, by definition, funding for her work is very limited.

Needless to say, however, what she is doing is so wonderful. She is providing something needed for those few who need to learn. Textbooks would be otherwise too costly for blind students. Plus she is helping to provide an opportunity for service for those who otherwise have no chance to pay back the society they have wronged.

Unfortunately, an aide came and took her-all-too early to another gate as her flight had been changed, but it was one of those delightful encounters that life allows only occasionally. She was so much fun. I wish I had gotten her name. That’s my only regret.

But Would Your Parents Have Gotten Atlas Shrugged Anyway?

2010-10-13T09:00:00.002-06:00

E.L. Doctorow Does It Again

2010-10-12T09:00:00.001-06:00

William Tecumseh Sherman’s storied march through the south to free the slaves is wonderfully told by E.L. Doctorow in his The March, richly and clearly illustrated by various persons and stories, placed together, sometimes harshly, sometimes gently, never without us caring about each, giving us yet another view of another war and its hideousness, compassion, wildness and death.

Pearl, a white slave, is particularly fascinating character as is Sherman himself. So are many, many other members of the cast who make up this story whose lives were heroic or callow to say the least.

I couldn’t believe how much I cared about these people and what was happening to them. There were the slaves, those medical people who were were working to patch together the lives and bodies of military men, both on the side of the Union and the Rebels, the freed slaves trying to get to the north and those slaves who couldn’t see their ways to freedom, the inhabitants of the south run through by the armies passing by.

E.L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner award for The March. Also he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the National Book Award for this book. Needless to say, others feel his work is a literary achievement of the first rank as well.

Those interested in the history of the Civil War and in the history of the United States might give this book a chance as it more than gives a great view of what took place in a small part of the final days of that piece of the history of our country.

Eye-Opening News of Various and Sundry Importance

2010-10-11T09:00:00.003-06:00

Here's a link to some interesting misconceptions. Particularly the one about alcohol being cooked out of foods. That one should send most of us beating a trail to our bishop's door except for the fact that most of us have a a reasonably short-term memory of such things as this.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2lEkZX/www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2010/10/10-more-common-misconceptions-dispelled/

Gendarmes En Parade

2010-10-08T09:00:00.004-06:00

Standing at attention before some awesome unmarked police cars

What’s with this?

I was driving home from Provo, heard sirens, checked the rear view and saw police lights as expected, then, to my amazement, saw seven police cars -- all unmarked -- zipping by. all with lights ablaze, heading north on I-15, ranging from SUVs to a pickup, to various kinds of cars. But no marked police vehicles among them!

My point? I was about the only one on the road who wasn’t a cop for a minute and who knows? How many of you are packing and carrying badges without me knowing? My paranoia is flaring.

And, BTW, how did they all just show up together and where were they going? Just wondering. Don’t think it was a garden variety speeder they were in hot pursuit of. I wanted to follow, but they might have gotten mad. They seemed to be mighty serious. They were in top speed in the HOV lane. I could have gotten on their nerves.

School Programs Are the Best

2010-10-07T09:00:00.003-06:00

I’m pretty sure I saw the primo class program ever over at Eastlake Elementary a week or so ago. It was called “Zoo Adventure.”

Alison’s in Miss Burdick’s kindergarten class. The program involved a couple of peppy songs by an assortment of “animals”, some more obviously costumed than others,

Ali, in the blue skirt, refused to come out of character

The camel, so realistic, is almost lost in the background of the Sahara

The common thread in this group seemed to be lots of energy and a little ADHD

Loving the sixties as I did, I was proud of Ali posted so near the walrus

Then the bevy of beasts were sent to their various dioramas, obviously student-designed, where students fielded questions about their own individual animals.

Parents and grandparents were told to put a hand on each shoulder and ask the student about his animal and received a most competent report. If the response seemed a bit short, you’d ask, “Is there more?” and indeed there would be.

There were five dioramas representing Africa, South America, The Arctic, the Ocean and the other one was probably North America. I learned about wolves, sharks, gorillas, bears, lobsters, camels, turtles, foxes, rabbits, whales, deer and more. And not just a sentence or two. But five or six sentences competently and clearly stated from each of the children. It was great.

The venerable Miss Burdick claims never to have had a bad class. I'm not surprised

Ali was a polar bear. Polar bears usually have two cubs and are the largest bear in the world. But did you also know star fish have no bones? Also, when I asked, the walrus stated in absolute seriousness at the conclusion of his statement, that he was not a Beatle. Oh, well.

But as I said before, it was absolutely wonderful. Not only did these kindergarteners get a chance to perform, but they learned some real specifics, got a chance to report what they knew, to speak up to adults and to feel important and knowledgeable as individuals and to be people who not only are learning but are teaching what they learn.

No wonder Ali loves Miss Burdick.

Dedicated to Carl Aukschun as of Late

2010-10-06T10:54:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Greg Olsen

Someday, When I Figure Things Out . . .

2010-10-05T09:00:00.006-06:00

Most pictures you find are kinda good. Maybe really good. Lotsa talent. But they don't evoke much from your heart beyond just a wish to be able to paint or draw just as competently. They're just good. But this one above I like. It makes me happy. It makes me feel something. It's not just talent or good art or pretty. It's focus and feeling. It matters. It's about caring. It makes me like. It makes me really want to like more.

I want to like something so much that I want to go outside in the cold and let my nose run and not care.

Today I was sitting in the sixty-something weather in a cloth chair freezing my behind off and Sophia was sitting beside me waiting to be sent back into her soccer game. Her mother had put a blanket over her and had gone over to talk to friends. Soph got up and placed the blanket back on the chair and said "I'm going over and stand by the line."

I asked "Why?"

She said with a big smile, "In case the coach wants me back in the game." Of course he did within minutes.

All I wanted to do was get warm.

I want a magnificent obsession. Something that makes my heart just want to do more. Something to make me want to stand right at the line. Something that would make me smile when my mother would shout "Enough is enough!" Something that would never be enough. Someday I'm going to run so hard again that my side will just ache. Just you wait.

Mormon Church Makes the News In a Positive Way!

2010-10-04T09:00:00.018-06:00

Mormons, along with Jews, were named to be pretty smart about religion -- right behind atheists. If this were not true, then everyone is really sleeping in church. We joke about it and we actually do it sometimes, but the revolving door of four years through the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Church History/Doctrine and Covenants plus Seminary/Institute has got to be doing something don't you think?

If it's not amounting to something, let's just set up cots in the Cultural Halls throughout the Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday-Saints, that is) or just fold up the tent (pulling up the stakes) haha, haha and trudge off into the night.

The Church is true. I can't imagine any other Church getting people to sit through three hours of of those manuals year after year. This is spoken with solid testimony with only a tiny bit of sarcasm slapped in. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Heavenly Father. I'm sincerely thankful.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2IluDB/motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/09/atheists-know-their-religion

Why Not?

2010-10-01T11:00:00.002-06:00

A Little Doggie Dental Work Today

2010-09-30T09:00:00.003-06:00

This is the sweet little ole Chip. He probably doesn't feel too good right now.

He's getting his teeth fixed today.

He''s five pounds, ten years old, and it's costing between $600 and $1,000, depending on what needs to be done. No matter how you chart it out, it doesn't seem right, does it?

But I just can't bring myself to haul out the pliers myself, so I guess we'll just have to hand over the plastic to someone else.

That Sixties Liberal Is On The Loose Again

2010-09-29T09:00:00.018-06:00

An incredible story came out of Iraq stating that on Sunday nine American mothers received comfort from dozens of Iraqi mothers who had lost their sons during the Saddam Hussein era which ended in 2003.

"When I hugged an American woman we couldn't express ourselves in words, but what helped us to express our feelings and understand each other were our tears. We found them as a true expression to our grief and suffering," said a 55-year-old Kurdish woman who had lost most of her own close family during the scorched-earth campaign against the Kurdish rebellion.

The American women expressed how they had been angry before their visit to the country in which their sons had died, and yet had found peace and comfort as they visited the land where their children lived their last moments and spent time with people who inhabited that country and felt their same pain. "I'll have visited the land where a piece of my heart will remain forever," said Amy Galvez, who is from Salt Lake, and whose son, Cpl Adam Galvez was also from Salt Lake City.

The meeting of the two groups of women was organized by a group called “Families United Toward Universal Respect’ from the state of Virginia and officials from the local f Kurdish government and our State Department.

Yet while these women were meeting together in the northern part of Iraq, which is a mostly peaceable area currently, other parts of the country were experiencing ongoing bombings and death.

Doesn’t it seem silly to fight and kill? The people who are doing the fighting are hardly able to sit down and discuss the points and minutiae, doctrines and principles they are fighting for. If people have differences, it’s ridiculous not to work them out with discussion, arbitration, judges.

But using innocent people as battering rams, target practice and ammunition? Mothers can see how stupid that is. Why can’t supposedly intelligent old men? Old men who are too old to fight themselves?

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39369062/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

My Heros

2010-09-28T09:00:00.001-06:00

Soph and Al

Today I sat in the warm sun watching Sophia and Alison play soccer.

What a gift this September is. It more than makes up for the crummy, rainy June we had. To see the girls play soccer is just a huge bonus. Thank you God.

Ali’s team is no longer ‘Fire Dragons”, or “Dragon Fire” or whatever it was. It’s “Lygers” or maybe “Ligers. Snappy and much easier to yell. Also they are very rare. Don’t tell the team they’re impotent when they do come along. The team is rough and ready to score, though they are a little bedraggled towards the end of the second twenty-minute half.

I’m pleased to say that both girls get into the fray. I was worried they’d hang back, but no. They like to get into the pack, which is definitely what you call the team positioning. At this age, there are no positions. There are those who hang back and those who are in the bunch. Ali is in the five-year-olds and they don’t even have a goalie. The Lygers won 9 to 2 today. They might be named the “Marauders” next week.

Sophia’s team remains the “White Dragons”. A quiet dignity which bespeaks their 1 to zip loss today and their 1 to 1 tie at their last game of play. I think, though, she’d rather win.

But what makes it all really beautiful, though, is that the girls seemed to just really enjoyed playing. Running, breathing, kicking the ball, laughing, throwing grass, wearing uniforms, eating oranges and having fun with friends. Here’s my hope: that they never stop having fun and enjoying themselves just like that in some form or another. The points? They really aren’t that important after all.

Churchill, The Man of the Twentieth Century, And What A Man He Was

2010-09-27T09:00:00.004-06:00

From the ridiculous to the sublime, I finish first Cheever, then Churchill. I enjoyed Cheever more but certainly admired Churchill much more.

But Churchill taught me one thing: I knew next to nothing about the World War I from the point of view of the British. Plus, I really knew relatively little about World War II from the perspective of the British.

He was the only British Prime Minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first person to be recognizes as an honorary citizen of the United States. He singularly impacted the twentieth century as no one else could. He is quoted to this day. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/winston_churchill_2.html He was Prime Minister of England twice, he was listened to by everyone, loved by his countrymen, inspiring, though certainly not loved by all, but a brilliant, and incredible speaker and writer.

His public image was first greatly damaged in the First World War in the Dardanelles as he underestimated the power of the Turks and the British suffered tremendous losses. He again took his blows as he supported King Edward VIII in his marriage to Mrs. Wallis Simpson in 1936. Many felt, each time, his political career was over, but as history shows, it was indeed not. He showed his resilience and became, well, Churchill.

In spite of his philandering mother, he was always faithful to his Clementine and she to him even though they had their own bedrooms right from the first. They did have four or five children (I foget which) and adored one another.

He took up painting in mid-life to and profesionals were more than amazed at his abilities. He entered an amateur painters' contest anonymously and judges could not believe he was an amateur. He painted all the rest of his life and his many paintings have sold for very high prices.

He landscaped his own home, as well, complete with lakes he carved out himself with his own dredging machinery and walls he built himself. He even applied to a masonry union only to be refused on general principles and not because of his lack of skill. He was an amazing man to say the least.

I've studied World Wars I and II a bit since and plan to do more. I must read this book again after I do.

I do remember one thing that wasn't mentioned in the book. My father used to say that Roosevelt and Churchill were drunk at Yalta and sold us out to Stalin. My dad was one interesting guy and I kinda don't want to know for sure anyway. However read this article from a 1955 Time Magazine article. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,937135-1,00.html

I Warn You, I'll Curse the Skies

2010-09-23T09:00:00.007-06:00

What do I hate most about the end of summer?

The unpredictability of the weather? The wearing of coats? The shortening of days? The irregularity of the blueness of the sky? The onset of chilliness? Potential precipitation? Not really. that's not it.

I really like Autumn. I like harvestime. I like crisp beautiful days.

I like the holidays. I even like goofy Halloween. I like Thanksgiving, Brad's, Julia's and Ben's birthdays. Sophia's and Alison's birthdays too. And of course Christmas. Who wouldn't? Then we get to go to Hawaii!! Three glorious weeks in Hawaii!! Most of January in Hawaii. What's not great about all of that?

But then what?

Winter. February. Nasty, cruddy, ugly old February. That should sum up my Winter.

I should then perk up and say "March!" Nearly the onset of Spring again is it not? "Who can't tolerate the short, little month of February?" you say.

But remember this year? Didn't we have Winter until the end of June? Didn't we? I thought in retirement we'd beaten it. We head off to Arizona to see Ben, to Hawaii, to warmer climes like Las Vegas, but global warming doesn't seem to be hitting us if you use Utah as a reference point. And we can't stay away forever. Really, if you were paying attention, it was a miserable Spring.

Well we'd just better not have that happen again. I'll raise my fist to Zeus or whoever is in charge of the weather and also fire off a letter to Al Gore -- as if he had any power over the situation. I warn you, I'll curse something, anyway.

Can't Learn Enough About Theodor Geisl

2010-09-22T09:00:00.003-06:00

Trust me on this one. You can't. And you can't wish too much he was your uncle.

And also, still alive. Let's just hope Heaven is happier for having him around because they're sure all the better for it. Know who he is? Hit the link.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/8Vzkqu/www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/66293

John Cheever -- A Book Worth Reading

2010-09-21T09:00:00.008-06:00

Oh, no. I’ve finished another good book. I hate that.

Cheever, A Life, the biography of the writer, John Cheever was fabulous and I’m not sure why I liked it so much. He was a lonely bi-sexual, a drunk for most of his life, an unhappy man, yet I loved this book.

It was honest, sharp and so insightful yet no one around him seemed to know him well. Everyone seemed to think of him as a nice and kindly man except for his wife who despised him for most of his life and his children who didn’t understand him. These were the people, incidentally, he wanted to please most, but he didn’t seem to know how to do it. Relationships of all kinds seemed to elude him.

What interests me, too, is that much is told from the point-of-view of his journals which he seemed not to want to hide, in which he referred to his loathing of his homosexual tendencies and fears that his drinking is what made his wife hate him so much (though she fixed him dinner without fail for all the years of their marriage and cared for him during his final bout with cancer.) I wonder, too, why more didn’t read his journals during his life and find out more about him. He invited his son to read them and sat watching him at one point as he read. No one seemed interested. It made me want to keep a journal better and more honestly.

I think I love the beauty of the writing of this book and the mingling of that with the beauty and honesty of the writing of John Cheever himself is what got me. I don’t really know if I’ve read much of John Cheever’s work at all. I’ve read much of his rivals’ works: John Updike, whom I love, Saul Bellow, John Irving. Cheever is mostly known for his short stories. But I’d heard so much about this biography that I had to give it a shot and I’m so glad I did. I still may not try much of his work as it has settled back into obscurity a bit, but his life I love.

Hope my family, friends and former students aren't too alarmed at the range of my reading interests. Somehow such things don't alarm me as much as they seem to other people. I think there is great beauty in understanding the difficulties of others. I don't enjoy crassness nor do I have a prurient interest in obscenity and suffering. In fact I'll stop reading if I find in books things that appeal to such things.

But perhaps that is what the appeal in my Master's Degree in Educational Counseling was. To understand the human heart a little better and sympathize, empathize and wish a little I could help out those for whom life is tough. God knows everything and I am so far from that but something inside me tells me that he approves when I seek to understand the hurting that goes on. I think that's why he made me tough and not especially judgmental. No excuses, just a little explanation I guess.

Carl's Off The Table And Recovery Ensues

2010-09-20T09:00:00.005-06:00

Carl is home from the hospital at last.

He has never really had quite the assault upon his person that he has had the last five days in his whole life.

He had stents put in his heart arteries -- a couple in the early nineties and three last July, but his insides were never quite so abused as this.

I feel, though, that he was so blessed to have his kidney stones a couple of months ago so that Dr. Daniel Hibbert, a 6 ft. 9 in. giant could check out his prostate and PSA count and find that Carl indeed did have prostate cancer. It’s just a little like my brother, Brent having kidney stones about this time last year and finding he had kidney cancer. I think it’s God’s way of putting on a little sticky note to say “I don’t want you home quite yet. Do something now right about right here.”

Thank you, God, for both of them.

But there are some inconveniences.

As I said in a previous blog, Carl doesn’t swear, but he does get to wear a little catheter bag for a couple of weeks and he almost cussed out the length of tubing, clamps and bag as he tried to figure the whole mess out his first day with it at home. I wasn’t laughing to be sure as he commented that anyone who thinks catheters are funny doesn’t know what funny is. It’s not that we think they’re funny. We just are mighty glad it’s not us. He's more used to it now, but he still doesn't like it.

He hurts pretty bad still. Not as bad as he did yesterday and not as bad as he did the days before. I presume tomorrow will be even better.

His surgery was the robotic laproscopic prostectomy which is much less common than the usual wide open hands-on job, but has far less hacking and hewing on the outside and is far more precise on the inside, but it still requires lots of cutting through the muscles of the stomach and still hurts like a son-of-a-gun.

He will have a total of two weeks with the catheter and some recovery besides, including another four weeks of getting better and better, according to the good Dr. Hibbert and then after that he should feel pretty good. Who knows how long before he's "back to normal" whatever that is.

I did mention to Dr. Hibbert that a "Dr. Hibbert" is also on the Simpsons and wondered if he gets teased a lot. He said that those in the circles he travels in don’t watch the Simpsons much. What? You’d think patients of Urologists would gravitate right to the Simpsons. I’ll let you provide the punchline yourselves.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl, I Only Wish I'd Known

2010-09-14T09:00:00.015-06:00

What do you do when it’s too late?

Cristi Buffenbarger and I were about all there was when we lived in Bolingbrook, Illinois.

We lived across the lawn from each other when our children were little. Ben was three when we moved in, her Stephen was two, Brad was one and her Suzie was a baby.

She came over and held Brad in cold water when he was running a fever while I was reading to Ben and Carl was working and I was desperate. I babysat for her and she babysat for me. We spent hours together, laughing and talking. We were kindred. Neither of us had a car, both of us loved to laugh, and hardly the day went by that we weren’t together, outside in the summer, inside in the winter. She was so funny, so kind, so dear to my heart.

She was raised in Chicago, I was raised in Utah, and we had much to share.

One day, I borrowed a thermometer and broke it. She told me not to worry because she had another, but I replaced it anyway. She thought that was a remarkably honorable thing to do. It was really nothing, but a long story made short, she investigated the Church and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- a Mormon.

It’s hard to relate how much I love her.

Yesterday I went on Facebook to wish her a Happy Birthday and things were strange there. People said they’d miss her. Then someone said she’d make a great missionary in the Celestial Kingdom. I Googled her name and there was her obituary. She’d died on June 10 of this year after a three-year battle with breast cancer. I’d known she was sick. But I thought she’d beaten it. I’d not talked to her in so long. I am crying.

She’d not even had a funeral. She was cremated. If I’d only known I’d have been back there before she died. Why didn’t I know? She’d been divorced for so long and her children wouldn’t remember me so who would have told me? I guess it would have been her, but was she too sick? I should have stayed closer. I should have done something. I should have known somehow. Maybe she thought that would be too much to ask for me to come see her. It wouldn't have been. No way. Not for Cristi.

God give us strength. God preserve our love. God fill the in blanks. God, thank you for those we love and still have in our midst. God help us.

Some People Can Really Say It For Us

2010-09-13T09:00:00.001-06:00

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

It seems like so much is going on. Some is personal, so much has a national and an international impact. Some is good, some is not. So many lives impacted. Some hurting. Some rejoicing. Some afraid, Some hopeful. Some just living on. That's why I love this poem. It reminds me that Heaven knows about it all, too. Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a very talented contemporary poet, don't you think? Try to read it through to the end. I think you'll like it.

The Worlds in this World

Doors were left open in heaven again:

drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages

around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters

flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,

its last angles caught in sopped

newspaper wings and billowing plastic —

all this in one American street.

Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide

recedes, incense is lit, an infant

sucks from a nipple, a grenade

shrieks, a man buys his first cane.

Think of it: the worlds in this world.

Yesterday, while a Chinese woman took

hours to sew seven silk stitches into a tapestry

started generations ago, guards took only

seconds to mop up a cannibal’s brain from the floor

of a Wisconsin jail, while the man who bashed

the killer’s head found no place to hide,

and sat sobbing for his mother in a shower stall —

the worlds in this world.

Or say, one year — say 1916:

while my grandfather, a prisoner of war

in Holland, sewed perfect, eighteen-buttoned

booties for his wife with the skin of a dead

dog found in a trench; shrapnel slit

Apollinaire's skull, Jesuits brandished

crucifixes in Ouagadougou, and the Parthenon

was already in ruins.

That year, thousands and thousands of Jews

from the Holocaust were already — were

still — busy living their lives;

while gnawed by self-doubt, Rilke couldn’t

write a line for weeks in Vienna’s Victorgasse,

and fishermen drowned off Finnish coasts,

and lovers kissed for the very first time,

while in Kashmir an old woman fell asleep,

her cheek on her good husband's belly.

And all along that year the winds

kept blowing as they do today, above oceans

and steeples, and this one speck of dust

was lifted from somewhere to land exactly

here, on my desk, and will lift again — into

the worlds in this world.

Say now, at this instant:

one thornless rose opens in a blue jar above

that speck, but you — reading this — know

nothing of how it came to flower here, and I

nothing of who bred it, or where, nothing

of my son and daughter’s fate, of what grows

in your garden or behind the walls of your chest:

is it longing? Fear? Will it matter?

Listen to that wind, listen to it ranting

The doors of heaven never close,

that’s the Curse, that’s the Miracle.

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Where Are the Fire Extinguishers?

2010-09-10T09:00:00.003-06:00

This whole business of burning the Koran for whatever reason makes me heartsick. Of all people, we members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints know what it’s like to be assaulted for what we believe and to have our scriptures belittled.

However, I was pleased the other day when the Church issued a statement (September 8, 2010) through a spokesman which said, “A key tenet of our faith is to accord everyone the freedom to worship as they choose. It is regrettable that anyone would regard the burning of any scriptural text as a legitimate form of protest or disagreement.”

The Church is definitely not defending the actions of the church in Florida or the one potentially in Kansas which are threatening to burn the Koran. It is merely defending their right to do so.

Does that leave us to allow such disgraceful behavior to take place on our country’s soil? Certainly not. Nor does it leave us vulnerable, as says General Petraus, to retaliation against our troops who are serving in Muslim countries.

I have a former student, Nathan Dalley, who is shown in the picture above, who was killed on November 3, 2003 in Iraq. He was as fine a person as I’ve known. Among other things, he was Senior Class President at Brighton High School in Salt Lake City which shows the value other students placed on him. He was a great kid. He was respectful, loved the Lord, was bright, was a fun, joyful boy who loved everyone. He is missed to this day. I, and many others, don’t want to run the risk of losing anyone else if we don’t have to.

So do we put our hands in our pockets and say, let anyone just go ahead and do anything they want regardless of how it might impact on the rest of us? Of course not. That’s not what the Lord meant when he inspired the eleventh Article of Faith which is: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”

He also taught us to teach, preach and to pray to bring upon ourselves and our families, friends, and our detractors his greatest blessings. And these we need so badly these days. He also taught us to be courageous and to take heart.

We can’t forget this because of fear, despair and in our forgetfulness of one of the greatest scriptures of them all: Luke 1:37, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

Watching Your Mouth

2010-09-09T09:00:00.001-06:00

I’m feeling pretty good about myself today. I didn’t swear at all, all day. I don’t think I did yesterday either. I don’t know that for sure.

But I’m still pretty good according to the August, 2010 issue of Psychology Today. It reports that the average English speaker utters 85 swears per day. I never come close. I bet I don’t touch that in 85 days. Maybe, but I doubt it.

It also seems that women have raised their percentages among the outbursts of public swearing from 33 percent in 1996 to 45% in 2006. It’s risen to almost half of public cursing! (But then, how do they document this? Who really checks the facts and figures? Where do the folks with the clipboards stand and is there really a fair cross-section of society represented? Just wondering, Psychology Today.)

Unfortunately, the “F”-Bomb tops the top ten list of preferred swears with “sucks” rounding out at #10. I prefer not to list 2 through 9 but I am glad I don’t live in the society that enjoys using these words in this order. The folks I generally know are those who kinda hang onto “suck”s as first with the “H” and “D” word occasionally thrown in. I'm lucky that way, I guess.

I’m almost always sorry when I swear. I think when when I do it, it probably offends more people than I think, even when it’s just Carl, who rarely if ever swears himself.

I am trying to stop, even under my breath in traffic. Especially in front of Carl.

A final note that is kinda funny from the PT article is in reference to a deaf boy who has Tourette’s. Some unfortunate people with Tourette’s Syndrome often curse involuntarily without the ability to control themselves as you probably know, and this poor lad signs his profanities!! It hardly seems fair, though those offended would be reasonably rare.

Whattaya Know? We Liked It

2010-09-07T09:00:00.003-06:00

Today Carl and I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World because it was rated sky-high by Rotten Tomatoes, because I like Michael Cera and because I was in the mood for a movie. Julia had planned to g.o to Despicable Me, but she had wearied of spending, having bought carpeting for her downstairs, so I was left in the lurch. Carl had no idea of what he was in for.

And we liked it. It was funny, pretty clever and quite entertaining though Carl said it was “good but a little silly” for his taste.

I found upon my return that it was based on a “graphic novel” which I presume is a smarty-pants word for a comic book but that’s okay. Comic books are for kids, graphic novels are for geeks probably.

We were easily the oldest people in the theatre but that’s okay. If anyone has a problem with that, they can stuff it. And if anyone there thinks that popular culture stuff was beyond us, it really wasn’t all that arcane. Pretty easy to figure out, actually. Sorry.

I Do Love Coincidences

2010-09-06T09:00:00.001-06:00

Don't forget to scroll down to see the first one.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/564z2F/listverse.com/2007/11/12/top-15-amazing-coincidences/

Chicago -- City of Never-Ending Surprises

2010-09-03T09:00:00.003-06:00

Well, then, I still really love Chicago, in spite of ever unfolding truths.

To the left is Edgewater Hospital, the site where my beloved sons, Ben and Brad, each first saw the light of day. which is situated, obviously, on the shores of the beautiful Lake Michigan, address, 5700 No. Ashland Avenue in Chicago. It truly was at the time a distinguished and reputable spot, one which anyone would have been proud to call their birthspot. Dr. Eli Bernick was indeed the finest of obstetricians, competent, patriarchal, and indeed very Jewish.

Recommending it further is that Hillary Rodham Clinton was also born there. Perhaps less thrilling is that John Wayne Gacy was born there, but I’ll not go into that. He certainly wasn’t a mass-murderer as a newborn. You’ll have to Google for more details. I’ll not stoop to those here.

But here's something I didn't know until just the other day when Carl notified me of something he'd discovered.

Edgewater fell on hard times in the late 1990’s. Ugly doings shut the place down, in fact. Programs funded by the State of Illinois and the Feds were stopped due to some of Edgewater’s cheesy dealings. Unnecessary operations and amputations on homeless guys they picked up from the methadone clinics around seemed to irritate the powers-that-be and without their money, Edgewater, the former Grande Dame on the Lake, had to close her doors. Sounds like a really bad Law and Order episode.

Now when Chicago looks down its nose on you, that really is the last straw I guess.

But let me tell you, I love that city still. It’s got something. I think it’s because it’s brassy. And I like brassy. Wonder why?

The Sixties Liberal Stumbles Onto the Stage Again

2010-09-02T09:00:00.007-06:00

Yet while these women were meeting together in the northern part of Iraq, which is a mostly peaceable area currently, other parts of the country were experiencing ongoing bombings and death.

But using innocent people as battering rams, target practice and ammunition? Mothers can see how stupid that is. Why can’t supposedly intelligent old men? Old men who are too old too fight themselves?

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39369062/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

Hope for the Brain

2010-09-02T09:00:00.005-06:00

Brain problems have been mixing around in my life since forever.

I had a fiance who had an aneurysm while we were alone together in his car on a Sunday afternoon. He never recovered.

My father had a stroke when he was my age, never recovering his speech or his ability to use his arms, legs, or any kind of useful movement in his body aside from the ability to turn his head in a direction he chose. This lasted almost a year until he died eleven months later.

My mother suffered from serious dementia and had so for too long a time.

My brother’s sons suffered from serious, debilitating OCD.

I have a great-nephew who potentially has Asberger’s Syndrome.

ADD and ADHD seems to have its way with about everyone in my family.

As a result, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D., really intrigued me, but it’s cutting edge ideas and hope really won my heart. It deals with all these difficulties and more.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to adapt, and is the topic of the book.

It was earlier thought that areas of the brain were set from infancy and damage to various areas caused permanent damage to different skills and functions. But this book shows that other parts of the brain can take over where failure in a specific area takes place. Dozens of examples are given.

The first story is of a man, a professor in higher education in the 1960’s who suffered a stroke. His son worked with the man well beyond the time, two-plus years, when recovery is expected by health-care professionals to be worthless. His son had him crawl like a baby, pick up marbles, worked with his speech, until finally the man was able to return to teaching. After the man died a few years later in his seventies, an autopsy was performed and it revealed he had indeed suffered a massive, debilitating stroke. But his brain had rerouted its innerworkings to where it could re-command his functions

I wish we’d known this. The professionals had given up on my father well after the time of this man. His stroke was in 1988.

The book spoke of a man who had had a stroke while in-utero during the second trimester. Yet at an age about in his mid-forties was able to recover substantially through working with the principles of changing his brain in a clinic designed with this hope in mind though he had never been able to function well in his life to this point.

OCD, it would seem, can be worked with by some of these ideas as can autism.

The same principles, however, can work in a negative way. Addiction to pornography can recircuit the brain in the same way to a terrible result. Hope for recovery from this, however, is in the same vein.

This book is really is quite readable as well. It won the 2008 U.S. National Alliance on Mental Illness Ken Book Award, it was a New York Times bestseller and a Scientific American Main Selection.

If the brain interests you and hope for brain health appeals to you, it’s worth a read.

Gotta Love The New Hole In The Head

2010-09-01T09:00:00.001-06:00

Remember when losing your teeth was cool? Here's Sophia, at the height of the fresh corn season enjoying the lack of her front teeth. She doesn't even seem to mind. Second Grade is all the better for the missing toothage.

"I Was A Prisoner, and You Took Me In . . . "

2010-08-31T09:00:00.023-06:00

The entrance to the Oquirrh Facility

Went back to prison yesterday and it was wonderful.

Ed Leary is in the Bishopric of the Oquirrh Facility Branch and he asked me to come and talk at a Fireside knowing I had been their Sunday School teacher for three years about five or six years ago.

I jumped at the chance because I remember how wonderful it felt being out there before.

The Spirit is so strong there. Matthew 25:36 says "I was in prison and you visited me," and the promise is reciprocated. Rare is the Sacrament meeting on the outside where the Spirit is like that and I suspect one reason is it's because those men read their scriptures constantly. I mentioned that yesterday and asked for a raise of hands and I would say that two-thirds, three-fourths of them read their scriptures in groups daily. I mentioned that I was reading the Book of Mormon for the fourth time this year and one man afterwards said in a very sweet, humble way that he was on his fifth way through.

Another reason is the humility of those men. They are so remorseful. They are sick with sorrow for what they've done. Many are in daily religious classes, they are prayerful, they are in miserable surroundings with nothing but television, each other and boredom. Nothing distracts them but their situation and what brought them there. And many of them are sober for the first time in a long time. Many are addicts. And in their sobriety, they are turning to God and hoping and praying that they can stay that way when they get out.

And many are working hard on Genealogy, doing service as best they can, hours and hours hunched over a computer. Look at the following link: http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.htmlhttp://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.html http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.html http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.html These are our boys, Carl's and mine. Carl used to go out and spend Thursday nights with them at this center. It was amazing what they could do. They did my genealogy back to the kings and queens of England. I've never been able to duplicate it since.

Last night, I talked to them about hope. That's what these men need more than anything. I'm not talking about all prisoners. I'm talking about these forty or fifty men who work hard to qualify for the privilege of coming over to the Oquirrh Facility Religious Center and worship as best they can and feeling the gentle persuasions of the Spirit to soothe their aching souls. Hope. We all need it, but they need it so much.

I feel so privileged for having been allowed to spend one hour again giving a little hope to some of God's children. One hour in a long sentence isn't very much, but it's something.

But it meant a lot to me.

When Does A Sense of Incompetence Really Begin?

2010-08-30T09:00:00.012-06:00

Here we have the impressive Hawthorne LDS Church which is located at Roosevelt Avenue and 8th East in Salt Lake City Utah.

This would have been the building that my Grandmother and Grandfather Mary Salmon and Ira Bennion Cannon would have attended with my father, Bennion Rhead Cannon, and the building my other Grandparents, Nellie Bull and Edward Axel Peterson with their children, Welby, my mother, Helen Maurine and Patricia Joy would have attended had they been so inclined.

This also is the building, including the side shot of the very door (left side of shot) which my mother and grandmother would glide by and slow down enough to toss me out each Sunday morning to attend Sunday School as I lived at Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's. The circumstances of living at Grandma's and the reasons I was to be eliminated from the household on Sundays are not clear. I'm figuring I must have been about four. All facts are vague except for the following. It is just too traumatizing.

No one went in with me ever and I know this for a fact because no one at Sunday School ever knew my name. I was asked, and I told them, every week. But I must have been as unintelligible as Brad was at the same age because they never got it.

The same routine went on every week. They would ask me my name, I would tell them, and they would ask me to have my mother come in the next week to talk to them to tell them my name. I'd agree, time and again but would forget to comply. That was just the beginning, I guess, of my letting God down.

But as I look back, I'm wondering, why didn't they just take a clue from the schools? The old "pin a note to your shirt" trick wasn't all that secret. But nevertheless, the mere sight of the old Hawthorne Ward House raises a greater sense of inadequacy in me than fear of wearing a shirt twice and smelling bad or using bad grammar in my blog. I'm not kidding.

Good Music is Good Music -- Isn't It?

2010-08-27T09:00:00.006-06:00

I will not exaggerate at all in this in the least.

We were having lunch at Southtowne Mall and Carl went off to the restroom. I felt comfortable alone so I sat mindlessly watching a rap video on one of the major video screens placed randomly around the place.

Then suddenly I noticed a guy with an askew baseball cap glaring at me. He didn't look unlike the guy in the photo above except he was younger, you could see his numerous tattoos, his look on his face was even nastier and, no, he definitely wasn't Eminem.

Am I not allowed to watch rap even? I had no particular look on my face though he definitely did. In fact, I forget the name of the rapper who was on the video, but his rap was kinda catchy, in no way offensive (it was a public mall, after all) and I actually liked it. I don't plan to download it, but it was okay.

I haven't been living in a basement, you know. Rap has been around for a long time, since maybe the seventies, and only a real shut-in doesn't have some awareness of it. And you have to be a real bigot not to be able to appreciate its finer points, it's rhythm, rhyme, it's dance.

It's violence, mysogyny, its language, its hate is not quite so pleasing. This one had none of that. It was nice.

I think this kid was wondering what business I had watching it or at least was presuming I had a negative judgement of it. I remember about twenty years ago when Reno Mahe, who was in my seminary class at Brighton High School at the time, was asking a white kid sitting next to him why he liked hip-hop when it wasn't his music. The answer then was simply because he liked it. Reno seemed to buy that.

My answer would have not been exactly the same the other day, but close enough. It would have been "Why shouldn't I like it?"

Danger, Danger, It's Liberty Park Back in It's Scary, Fun Days

2010-08-26T09:00:00.004-06:00

This photo was taken at Liberty Park with the maniacal Uncle Brent going particularly nuts back in 1987. The children pictured are all currently in their thirties. Certainly, most of them in the photo are hoping they don't embarrass themselves by throwing up in front of their cousins, aunts and uncles and parents and likely, grandparents. Humiliating yourself in front of a family member was worse among these Cannons than committing a crime. I'm not kidding. "Help me, Mommy," they are shouting within as they laugh with bravado without.

All of these people have their own children now and wouldn't dream of allowing their own precious children to be treated in such a reckless abandon. This photo was taken with a fast lens after all. And Uncle Brent could really whip that merry-go-round around in his hey-day. But then, only a couple of generations from Ben R. Cannon, they'd not utter a whimper. They knew what was good for them. And the Silver Fox himself was likely in their presence.

Ducks, the New Family Pet

2010-08-25T09:00:00.005-06:00

My brother owns his very own flock of ducks. Scott bought them about fifteen weeks ago for his home in Mendon, Utah when they were tiny balls of fluff, having paid a premium price of 50 cents beyond the usual one dollar because he chose a variety of specific kinds of ducks to provide additional interest to his property. And that they do.

He chose all males because apparently ducks get all silly when there is a mixed group. This bunch just charges about all together, quacking, eating bugs out of the lawn, swimming in the little pond, pooping and waddling, clueless that they are free to leave at anytime though these seem to be flightless. They also get all confused and quizzical when one gets out of step from the rest of the group. Not a smart lot.

When one was attacked by a dog and lay in the road for awhile, Scott thought he was dead, and plans were made to clean him up, but soon he was up and gimping around. He continues to lag behind the others, but the rest refuse to allow him to malinger, prompting him constantly to keep up, which, he cheerfully attempts to do. They are a group, you see, and a bum leg is no excuse.

Scott's grandson, Sean, inadvertently stepped on one when it was tiny and it lay there all squished and wonky, but that one, too, came around. Maybe ducks aren't terribly smart, but they are resilient.

Winters get pretty drastic up there in Mendon but Scott isn't worried about his ducks. "They can probably take the Winter weather," he says. But if they can't, he says, he's learned from a pal that there's a Chinese family down the road who quite enjoy duck and he can always invest in a new flock next Spring. They're really not that pricey and from what I hear, quite delicious.

The Verbing of America

2010-08-24T09:00:00.005-06:00

The verbing of America

Is getting out of hand,

Yet many nouns are also verbs,

Like toast and rake and land.

When I first heard hospitalize,

I thought it was a crime;

Why don't we apartmentalize?

We will -- just give us time!

If when we change a noun to verb

To come up with our `verbing,'

Why can't I, when I'm using herbs,

Refer to it as herbing?

For if I call myself a cook

, The verbal form is cooking;

And if I give someone a look,

It's also known as looking.

I give a gift

But I'm not gifting.

You get my drift,

Or am I drifting?

I get a bill

Because of billing,

But taking pills

Is never pilling.

I place a pin,

And I am pinning.

Play a violin --

Is it violining?

But play a fiddle,

And you're fiddling;

Or is this getting

Much too piddling?

Planting some seeds

Is always seeding,

And pulling weeds

Is surely weeding;

If drawing blood

Is always bleeding,

Why does a flood

Not lead to fleeding?

I'm wined and dined

But never beered.

I've eyed someone,

But never eared!

Turn on a light,

And I am lighting.

Turn on a lamp,

And it's not lamping.

If I can verbalize

A needle,

And egging on

Can mean to wheedle,

And I am doodling

With a doodle,

When I cook pasta,

Can't I noodle?

With all these punctuation marks,

I'm doing quite a lot of dotting;

But if I were to use a dash --

Don't you agree that I am dashing?

But comma-ing and period-ing?

And yet I can italicize

And sometimes must capitalize.

I Anglicize -- but Germanicize?

Or Swedicize, or Gaelicize?

With this I could go on and on,

Really ad infinitum;

Whether I lick these word problems,

I sure cannot beat 'em.

Our language is an enigma

In how its words are used;

And that is why, in verbing nouns,

We ought to be excused.

Thanks to Jessica Kestner, who found this in St. Paul Pioneer Press

We Have Squatters on the Premises

2010-08-23T09:00:00.001-06:00

They're here. We've got four baby barn swallows in a nest on our front porch who own two frantic parents that are desperate for a little sleep, time to themselves and peace and quiet.

We've been watching the nest from construction to today for about four weeks now, from tiny eggs to the gaping maws you see in the picture. And isn't the nest a beautiful thing to behold?

Carl has cleverly jury-rigged his camera with his computer, chairs, valuable antique table, wrench, twisties and other stuff to shoot the pictures you see, proving that sometimes the simplest of things make for the most significant moments in our lives. It has been beautiful.

We have also learned a thing or two. Barn swallows fly around as a pair during the day when the eggs are in the nest checking back on the eggs from time to time and swoop about when someone is too close to the eggs, i.e. on our porch. They sleep with the eggs and later, with the babies, at night.

Also, when sitting on the eggs, (and you can't tell if it's the male or the female because they look just alike,) they stick their little bottoms over the edge of the nest to poop to keep things neat and tidy in there and as a result, make a mess on our porch. (I do understand, however. We were young parents once and remember how stressful the situation was. We'll take care of it later.)

Also, common as they are, they are Federally protected. You can knock the nest away before the eggs are laid and can clear it out after the babies are gone, but in between, expect the Federales to come and take you away if you mess with the little guys while they have habitation.

But who would want to? They are the cutest things ever. We feel kind of "chosen" this year, even though we haven't been able to sit on our front porch at the peril of getting our eyes pecked out.

What Are Little Girls Made Of? Showtime!!

2010-08-20T09:00:00.002-06:00

Girls put on shows. I don't think boys do. At least the boys I know haven't.

The shows can be quite elaborate affairs, complete with tickets, music, singing, dancing, props. And they can be long.

People can get hurt during these shows. Generally the audience is tolerant of brief intermissions for blaming, crying, maybe some slugging, but the show must go on.

But somehow strife and tragedy only increases beauty and fervor of the dance.

The movements become more strenuous, the timing more reckless, the interaction seemingly less cautious, inspiring more alertness and awareness in the audience.

But as just as the magic of the dance has begun, it's over. Yet it lingers long as beauty does when it touches deeply. The applause still rings.

Looking For a Mouthwatering Book to Read?

2010-08-19T09:00:00.002-06:00

Salubrious is a word my father used for some incongruous reason, but it always worked.

And it’s a word that works for for Joanne Harris’ novel, Five Quarters of the Orange. Delicious. But fiercely delicious. I loved every bite.

Here is a woman, Framboise Simon, recalling herself as a wild and willful tomboy, raised in a little French town, occupied by the Germans during World War II by a strange, and sickly mother. There are marvelously developed secrets and bizarrely formulated interplays that can hardly be anticipated.

But now she, as an elderly woman, has returned to the town, unrecognized, opens a restaurant and puts the whole thing together. Believe me, my Kindle got its workout.

This book never moves slowly; You delight in the child and fear for her just as you do for her as the old woman. It makes you long for the food, the smells, the sights, the sounds.

It even teaches. War is Hell. But it is fought with and around people who love, feel, suffer, live, long and certainly have to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

This book was yummy. Wish I could read it fresh and new again.

71 Amazing Wizard Of Oz Facts

2010-08-18T09:00:00.001-06:00

Stuff is happening with the Wizard of Oz. For example the following: "Jell-O crystals were stuck over all the horses in the Emerald City palace to lend them their colour. The scenes were shot speedily, before the horses began to lick them off.'

Facts, 71 amazing facts, exist concerning this beloved movie and its production for its 71st birthday. Click on the following and you will find them all:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/12/the-wizard-of-oz-google-doodle?CMP=twt_gu

Liberty Park -- Not Where The Big Kids Play

2010-08-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

We had a picnic at Liberty Park a week or so ago.

Liberty Park makes my heart sing.

It's the site of the old farmland where Brigham Young would send the men and boys out to farm while he kept the womenfolk urban in the city in his famous city blocks.

Later on, Grandma Peterson, nee Nellie Bull, who was born January 26, 1886, would take her little brood there to play, to skate, to swim, to picnic. Maybe she played there. I'm not so sure about that.

Later, my mother won a swimming suit as a champion swimmer, swimming at the old Liberty Park pool and won my father's heart playing tennis with him at the Liberty Park courts. He took some chick named "Ruby" to the school dances, but he married my mother. Liberty Park.

We spent many days as children at Liberty Park. First, during the war I lived with Grandma with my mother at 807 Bryan Avenue then at at 938 Kensington until first grade. And during the summer, we spent lots of time up visiting Grandma, so again, Liberty Park was home away from home. I love that place.

In those days, the slides were metal, slippery and probably thirty feet high. The swings were numerous and probably twenty-five feet tall. It was crazy-wonderful there. Sometimes we'd swim, but usually just run wild through the playground and have picnic lunches at the long picnic tables under the trees.

I wanted to go there the other day because our granddaughters are getting a little big for the usual playgrounds. You know. The ones that are safe and small and the slides are slow. Ali and Sophia are five and seven.

Shock of shocks, the playground I remember at Liberty Park is gone. It's now moved north of the tennis courts and swimming pool and it, too, is small, safe and slow.

Liberty Park looks a lot the same. The trees are big and beautiful. The swimming pool is the same pretty much and the tennis courts are still there. The playground is beautiful and brightly colored. But what happened?

It's safe!!! And it's for four-year-olds, and younger.

Church - An Especially Good Place To Be Yesterday

2010-08-16T09:00:00.007-06:00

Andrew Unsworth at the MoTab Organ

Nobody churched it up like we did yesterday.

We sang like we really could all through Sacrament Meeting yesterday. "Abide With Me," "High On A Mountain Top," "Redeemer of Israel," "I Need Thee Every Hour," and some other favorites. with different people explaining why they were their favorites. It was great. We even slopped over into Sunday School time by about fifteen minutes which our rule-abiding bishopric rarely tolerates. Just fantastic.

But the capper, the frosting, the creme de la creme was oddly, right in the middle.

We have the magnificent Andrew Unsworth in our ward and he plays the organ for us on Sundays when he can, alternating with our own talented Lynn Alvord, He played yesterday.

Andrew, if you didn't know, is an organist some Sundays for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and he talked a bit about his choice, "All Creatures of our God and King." He spoke of how he loved how the powerful words and music intertwine. He asked that we sing the third verse with only the melody and the rest, he said, "Do what you want."

There are, he mentioned, further verses, which you can read if you check this link, which St. Francis of Assisi apparently wrote shortly before his death: http://www.lovetolearnplace.com/Curriculum/ALL%20CREATURES%20OF%20OUR%20GOD%20AND%20KING%20Worksheet.pdf St. Francis and "All Creatures" is more than worth researching further.

Andrew took off the chapel roof, used all the stops like a magician and did something amazing with the third verse. Can't describe it.

Too bad you weren't there. I wanted to stop the world.

Mormon Doctrine At An End -- (J/K)

2010-08-13T09:00:00.005-06:00

Sunstone Magazine is worth a perusal every now and then even the current issue which is devoted largely to the maniacal Glen Beck.

In the back is a mention that Deseret Book is discontinuing the publication of Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine!

Publication of the book began in 1958 and started trouble right from the start by calling the Catholic Church the “mother of harlots”. Subsequent publications didn’t contain the comment but up until 1978, the book contained the assertion that blacks would never receive the Priesthood. Of course that was then removed.

Whenever references were made from MD in Church Education settings, smart remarks were usually made from sources about concerning Mormon Doctrine because of the “personal” nature of some of Elder McConkie’s views, but this turn of events still surprises me, coming so soon.

Deseret Book says they are discontinuing publication because sales are low, but maybe not. Sunstone says (though I didn’t get the footnote, it is the current issue) “At Amazon.com, Mormon Doctrine now sells, used for $45 (paperback) and $80 (hardcover). The rare first edition sells for about $300."

That kind of bites for me because I had two hard copies and when I retired, I gave one to Deseret Industries in an urgent flurry to divest myself of the massive pile of books I’d accumulated over the years. I did get points from Carl, though, worth at least that much. He was impressed with how much I didn’t bring home with me after twenty-four years of teaching. How do they put it? Oh yeah.

“Priceless.”