Water Remembering

One shot.

It lives apart from the designated reality in which I snapped it.

Now, I designate another.

Easter Poetry by Henry Vaughan (1653)

Therefore to weep because thy course is run,
Or droop like flow'rs, which lately lost the sun,I cannot yield, since Faith will not permitA tenure got by conquest to the pit.For the great Victor fought for us, and HeCounts ev'ry dust that is laid up of thee.Besides, Death now grows decrepit, and hathSpent the most part both of its time and wrath.That thick, black night, which mankind fear'd, is tornBy troops of stars, and the bright day's forlorn.The next glad news—most glad unto the just!—Will be the trumpet's summons from the dust.

Mission Journal, Part 2. Trying to Get Set Apart

Don't you just love bureaucracies? OK, I have to be less sarcastic to begin my new mission. And I think it's all working out. It is just a bit odd that this volunteering gets the cart a bit before the horse as the downtown mission is already for me to go with my local leaders still waiting for the paperwork.

With the instructions e-mailed to me from my mission contacts downtown confirming that my Bishop should be receiving instructions to set me apart (the spiritual blessing of laying hands on my head to authorize my work and receive guidance through inspiration), I checked with my Bishop's executive secretary to see if anything had been scheduled. He diligently put it on the Bishop's calendar and I passed that on to my family able to attend. Then the Bishop asked where the paperwork was. Well, no paperwork other than the e-mails.

My friends down the street who already serve with me as ward temple and family history consultants are already on a part-time, downtown mission. They had advised me that the paperwork follows the training, so I was expecting this. I told my Bishop not to worry about it as I would just go start training and let things work out.

"The Ancient Yew" or "Otzi, We Barely Yew Thee"

My photo of one of the yews at St. Mary's Cusop, Herefordshire on the border with Wales.

Many people come to the yew tree with preconceived notions. Modern-day Druids want to believe the yews in British churchyards are from pre-Christian origins as they "return" to the ancient practices that were mostly made up by the Romans in their anti-Celt cultural wars. The author of the yew book* before last tried to convince the reader and perhaps himself that the British yews were all planted in churchyards by the Normans, or maybe the Saxons at a stretch.

My latest dive into yew lore is The Ancient Yew: A History of Taxus Baccata, by Robert Bevan-Jones (Oxbow Books, Oxford 2017). The author is amazing in his comprehensive assembly of the evidence. I think it is all there as well as can be gathered. There are extensive, footnoted sources. However, the writing style is a bit jumpy as is the presentation of the evidence. Bevan-Jones is strongest in his theme that the churchyard yews are "at least" 1500 years old which places them right at the time of the establishment of Christianity in Britain by the Celtic Saints. He first discusses the botanical challenges of the strange growth patterns of the tree and then presents the best estimates by charts and graphs to support his Celtic-Saint-planting theory.

But then came the Iceman. In the final chapter, "Yew: an Archaeological Perspective" (which perhaps should have come earlier at least in a chronological sense):

Cymru, March 2018 II - Accomplishment: Abergavenny, Blaenavon, and Llanfoist

There was time for a nap this afternoon as I felt so much contentment from having achieved my main purpose. It wasn't just visiting the replacement headstone we had put up, but I cleaned it and planted daffodils too.

There remains one more thing on my to-do list in Llanfoist. We'll see if tomorrow works out. It may just be perfect! Otherwise, I would stay in bed. (Check the weather forecast.)

At four o'clock, GMT, I seemed awake enough to call my wife at home. I then went back to bed and slept two more hours arising with the dawn and discovering the key to the back garden in this little place I'm staying for the first weekend. Out in the garden (backyard), I found the postcard pic for the Blorenge, the mountain that begins the Welsh Industrial Valleys to the West.

Gun Love Kills

Just sent this message off to each of my Senators and Congressman:

Gun Love has gone too far in this country. There is no need to ban all guns (just assault weapons). There is blood on the hands of the NRA and all who resist any attempt to regulate weapons of quick and easy destruction of school children. My wife teaches at Mueller Park Jr. High in Bountiful where last year a student blasted a hole in the ceiling of a classroom which could have gone so much worse. We must stop the gun culture in this country that promotes guns as tools for problem solving. Guns are not the problem. The Love of guns and gun money is.

These are the Tweets and FB messages I sent off on yesterday's Valentines Day Massacre:

1. Grant L. Vaughn‏ @Whistlestar_PMM 24m24 minutes ago
   

   Gun Love Kills

   0 replies0 retweets0 likes

   
   

   
   

   
   
2. Grant L. Vaughn‏ @Whistlestar_PMM 11h11 hours ago
   

   Just one more. The infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929? Seven dead. 7. Not seventeen. 7.

   0 replies0 retweets0 likes

   
   

   
   

   
   
3. Grant L. Vaughn‏ @Whistlestar_PMM 14h14 hours ago
   

   Hearts bleed in Florida and all over this country because people love guns more than other people.

   0 replies0 retweets0 likes

   
   

   
   

   
   
4. Grant L. Vaughn‏ @Whistlestar_PMM 14h14 hours ago
   

   Guns don't have Rights, People do!

   0 replies0 retweets0 likes

   
   

   
   

   
   
5. Grant L. Vaughn‏ @Whistlestar_PMM 15h15 hours ago
   

   The @NRA @HouseGOP @SenateGOP @utahsenate @utahhousegop all have blood on their hands. Gun Love has gone too far. Gun Rights require Gun Responsibility. You stand condemned!

Hiraeth from 2016: Day Four, Cardiff

We woke that morning to one of the friendly and very noisy seagulls out our garret window.

A Cardiff Seagull. I've got to look up the species under "noisy" and "annoying."

Our Adjunct Professors of Welsh incorporated as British Expeditions have this system for summer student lodgings in Wales. They rent a different apartment house in Cardiff as the base residence every July when the University students are gone and rentals are cheap. But as it is a different house each year, they have a permanent attic rented. Yes, an attic--in another student house for storage of their non-perishables: bedding; kitchen pots, pans, and utensils; and a special box for Professor Tom who keeps a sports jacket in there for going to church in Cardiff. He also keeps one of those foldable bicycles up there in that attic. I know because I helped him get it down. Their method in reaching the attic is interesting. I have a pic:

Temple Service

Bountiful, Utah Temple at night. (although we're still missing our spire under repair and the scaffolding is still up.)

Last evening I did my regular service as a Veil Worker in the Bountiful Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is one of the great blessings of my life. 

I have no intention of discussing sacred ordinances. They are sacred to me in a covenant with God sort of way. There are many scholarly and not-so-scholarly writings on the various subjects and that's not what this is about.

What I want to say, with some caution so as not to unnecessarily trivialize Temple service, is how amazing it is to work in the Temple. 

Hell to Pay

Sick to my stomach doesn't begin to express what I felt watching the links below. I suffered so you don't have to unless you want to.

The first is the President's melt-down, press conference of yesterday (Tuesday, August 15, 2017, a day that should live in infamy). I watched the whole thing. The first part was about infrastructure. At about 7 minutes, he opened it up for questions and he went way downhill from there.

NY Times Transcript and Video of trump's Press Conference

Then there was this from one of the organizers of the legally permitted march in Charlottesville (Yes, First Amendment protected). It's a selfie-video he did when he learned that there was a warrant out for his arrest. He claims to be a peaceful and law-abiding neo-nazi. [WARNING: rough language].

South Pass

Looking West from South Pass. Pacific Butte on the left.

"Top of the World," some say even if it is not a peak and hardly a pass in the traditional sense of crossing mountains. One does have a sense of a spherical earth dropping down in nearly every direction (Wind River Range on the north excluded).

My grandson and I had a wonderful trip exploring portions of the Overland Trail in Wyoming in commemoration of the day after Pioneer Day and my wife's birthday, as she is out of town. The OT refers to four recognized trails that crossed here although Native Peoples have crossed here for millennia. The trails are: Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer, and the Pony Express. We could also add in the Astorians in 1812, Mountain Men, the Whitman-Spaulding Missionaries of 1836, some commercial stage lines, the overland telegraph, and many visitors, but only us two last Tuesday.

As one of our purposes was family history, I will illustrate a few sites with reference to the Ellsworth Handcart Company of 1856 with my direct-line ancestor, Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, her daughter Jane Vaughan Lewis, Jane's husband John Lewis, and their son, John Samuel Lewis. They crossed South Pass on September 13, the 96th day out from Iowa City. They camped three miles down this road at Pacific Springs which can't be seen but is at the base of Pacific Butte on the left, just before the small ridge, just left of center. My Grandson and I walked down and back to get a feel for the trail. It was a good walk and a better talk.

At one point, I explained that while pioneer children may have sung as they walked and walked, they were probably not always happy. I told him that he was big enough that he would likely have helped with the family handcart, but the younger children above toddler age would get up, have a breakfast of biscuits and tea (long before Pres. Grant started enforcing the Word of Wisdom) and head out on the road in a group led by adults while the others packed up the camp. Eventually, the handcarts would pass the children. Then, the two or three wagons with the company would pass as the oxen were slower than people with handcarts. Hopefully, the new camp would be ready when the children came in. We imagined that mothers might have gone back up the trail to meet their children if they weren't needed for cooking or setting up their camp. I also explained that the children were sometimes guided by the adults with long sticks, like a gaggle of geese. And they were poked or prodded (or worse) if they lagged.

Cholera Cemetery above Tredegar, Wales

Copyright Robin Drayton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

This is one of the bleakest, saddest places on earth up above Tredegar, Wales on Rhymney Hill. The cholera victims were buried up there because, well, cholera. While the story I am writing is not intended to be illustrated, this place makes an appearance.

We don't see much cholera today because of clean and safe drinking water and sewage systems generally through people united in governmental activity. During the Capitalist exploitation of the Industrial Revolution in Wales, there was no economic incentive to provide sanitary or sewers or clean drinking water. It was illegal for the workers to organize. The towns were controlled by the same wealthy men who controlled the pits and furnaces. When cholera struck, the masters left for houses deep in the country. If workers died, more were readily available from the poor of Ireland and elsewhere.

The Big Pit, Blaenavon, Wales

Big Pit's wheel machinery for the ore and people lift.

It's interesting that mines are called "pits" in Britain when we would tend to associate that with a surface strip mine or something like the Kennecott Copper Mine, spiraling down to remove a whole mountain of ore.

It might be because the word in Welsh is "pwll" which is a cognate for "pool" and also means "mine." The Big Pit in Blaenavon, just over the hill from where my ancestors lived, is known as Pwll Mawr in Cymraeg.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the mine which was good in a way because my SD disk went haywire that day. That bothered me ever since because I had limited surface shots, but then I realized there would be pictures on the web!

I've been in potash mines in New Mexico. This was my first coal mine. And it was fascinatingly horrifying.

The Big Pit website even had a photo of the guide who took us down.

Miracles Great and Small

The back entrance to Mueller Park Jr. High that my wife uses the morning after the shotgun blast.
My wife heard that the neighboring LDS Stake President initiated this effort.

There have been a series of bruises to this liberal heart since returning from the Land of my Fathers (Cymru) last summer. First, the Malheur Armed Occupiers were found not guilty. Then, somehow, America elected the most despicable woman-abusing, self-aggrandizing, klepto-capitalist to be President. And finally, a troubled kid with a shotgun blasted a hole in the ceiling of a classroom in the school where my wife teaches.

The first miracle is that in spite of significant emotional trauma to that school community (yours truly included), no blood was shed. The Washington Post noted this is in a fairly accurate article revealing some of the difficult details of he incident that I wasn't going to share, but that 's the press for you. Locally, KSL also had good coverage of the aftermath. Those details do, however, reveal how close this was to becoming a horrific tragedy. Thank Heavens and all involved who acted with good training, smarts, and compassion. No one had to shoot the poor kid down and he was unsuccessful in whatever he was attempting except that first blast.