RHYDDID!

It seems important to state today if only to reassure my few readers, much less myself, that I still believe in God and in the United States of America. This is true even if I go to church today without a blazingly bold tie in red, white, and blue. I'm thinking of the one my Dad gave me some time ago with the Frank Lloyd Wright designs on it. That's a more subtle homage to the American Spirit as well as his Welsh ancestry.

"Negroes Attack Bothell, Washington!" Didn't Happen!

1968 riots in Washington D.C. after MLK,Jr. Assassination
 Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress, Public Domain, 

1968 was a really bad year, Assassinations, Riots, War in Vietnam (my uncle was there), and really bad politics. I was an elven-year-old kid in the suburbs and it was a little scary. My Dad was talking with a friend on our front lawn. The friend said that he was buying a gun for his wife for when the Negroes come.

To my Dad's credit, he wasn't really going along with this. He didn't buy my Mom a gun. But, he didn't push back too hard with his friend. He just sort of winced and said something like, "I don't know if that's ever going to happen."

Returning to Church - or not....

An email drafted for my Bishop and EQ President that I'm not sure if I should send. Comments?

I just got my second Covid shot and I'm feeling pretty good about that.

I posted on Facebook that I'm looking forward to meeting with friends again in a couple of weeks as long as they were also vaccinated and still wear a mask in public places (-pretty much the standard of my mission to be in the Church History Library). But if I were to apply that standard to meeting with the ward how long would it be? Am I wrong to assume that it's probably never?

Art Comes Home from the Sea

My Dad's art is still in a bit of homelessness as he is with my Mom in assisted living and much of it is in storage. We are trying to help him decide where his art should go believing that it should be passed down through his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to be preserved through generations to come and not wind up in somebody's garage or a rummage sale. I mean, he signed his name on completed works and that should be respected down the generations and not forgotten. My wife recently came by a mountain landscape done by a great-uncle that has a family surname on it and the date of 1956. It will be preserved in family.

My sister had some pieces divided up for safe storage by display among our brother, herself, and me. We are trying to care for those and I had several pieces framed by the studio that my Dad prefers here in Salt Lake City. We found a lot of art in the dusty, mice-infested attic. One piece broke my heart a bit as I blew the dust off and passed a paper towel over the surface. I had the art dealer clean off the marks as best he could and frame with the closest to driftwood we could match:

I remember the day.

Punch to the Gut

 Stunned since January 6.

The pressure had built from the election up to that point with the monstrous lies too ridiculous and too outrageous to laugh too long.

I honestly don't know if our America will survive. There was so much unfinished work yet to do and now it seems to be in vain.

I can't trust the people who supported the horrible man who caused this. Well, it wasn't just him but all his enablers. Does that include us all? I don't know who all of them are. They are all around and I am brokenhearted. 

There are people I greatly love and have even respected who seem to betray me now. The hard truths I have been dealing with in my own brain have been ground into dirt. 

Post-Election Post 2020 - Not Quite a Blue Wave

 

"Not So Blue" The View up Mercury Passage, Tasmania, Australia by Colin Chick

And yet, it is pretty blue! And very pretty at that.

My body is pretty well oxygenated as I have been taking a lot of deep breaths since the election was called yesterday morning by the Associated Press recognized as the impartial leader of the constitutionally protected Free Press in the United States. It appears to be a solid win with some votes still to be counted in the tight races of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, etc. Votes are certified by each state and the electors convene in December to make it official. In American tradition when the outcome is clear, the losing candidate offers a graceful concession to the winner. That will not happen this election.

It remains to be seen how blue the Senate will be until after two run-off elections in Georgia later this year. They are in newly blue Georgia so don't count out the Democrats yet.

But even if there is a Republican Senate led by the Obstructionist-in-Chief McConnell, there is so much good that will happen and so much bad that will not in the next four years. The President will not be constantly tweeting outrageous lies and insults. No matter how evil and corrupt you believe the Biden Family to be (and I don't think they're too bad) it will be nothing like the horrible example of moral turpitude we have had these last four years. I have yet to understand why so many millions voted for him. I know some say it's not for him but the conservative "policies" but still....

School Board Update

 Dear School Board Members:

I'm just back from dropping my wife off to teach school [....]. We loaned our second car to our daughter-in-law who is finishing her student teaching [elsewhere in Utah]. On the way to dropping off my wife, we stopped off at 6 a.m. when the store was open to pick up bags of ice for the Science projects today as my wife is the Science team lead. We did the same Monday when the sidewalks were so icey themselves. My wife will call when she's ready to come home. Usually it's about dinner-time, so she is putting in 12-hour days, sometimes more, and then there's the grading and prep time at home. I'm not trying to give another hard-working-teacher sob story, just context.

I am aware that many teachers are in favor of going to 4-days of students in school because it is easier to manage in a lot of ways. There still remains an increased risk of covid transmission when you double the number of students in school no matter how hard you try to implement distancing and mask-wearing. As you should know, cases are climbing in Utah and around the country. Last Summer, Governor Herbert said he wanted to see the case rate below 400 before schools opened. We barely made it and now we are well over a thousand a day. The hospitals are nearly full.