Dreams Found and Lost

The joke yesterday was that I was getting my wife a new roof for mothers' day. She'll still get her regular flowers--in the garden. The Saturday before is time for the family tradition of buying and placing bedding plants in front of the house as we are solidly in May and almost past the freeze threat in the shadow of the everlasting hills. With global warming and all, we're pretty safe. However, there are no longer any children at home to help me plant annuals which is just fine as gardening is one of my new passions (note the lilac hedge above, lower right, coming in just fine!).

Waking up too early this morning due to other stresses, the thought came to me that the number-one, cliché responsibility of a good provider is "to put a roof over your head." As we're getting quality shingles with a "life-time" of 30-50 years, they will last me out and I have fulfilled my obligation here.

Sol Hurok is credited with:

"The sky's the limit if you have a roof over your head." 

We are getting a slate-colored asphalt shingle "a cool gray with a beautiful green undertone--exactly like real slate." Green is my wife's favorite color and slate matches with our Welsh homestead. (Our house, like nearly every home in Britain, has a name, "Tŷ Fychan" or "Vaughan House.")

The Baby in the Bathwater

No, it's not me. I was never that cute. (And I'm not saying who it is.)

Almost all babies are cute. But they all stink a lot. They get messy faces. They are in constant need of bathing. After a baby's bath, you don't save the dirty water. Hopefully, you dry off the baby and enjoy the cuteness until the next episode of eating or pooping or both. You simply, "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater!"

That phrase, of course, is not about babies. It is an analogy for losing what's essential when we discard the trivial or the false. It comes to mind so often when I see people struggling with their belief systems in the face of intellectual or other challenges.

LIVE BLOGGING! LDS General Conference Notes: Saturday Morning, October 1, 2011

I have my Cheese Nips and Diet Coke supplies. My UofU boy went off to his game-day activities. My Viewmont (BYU fan) boys are going off with the marching band competition soon to be followed by their mom as the uniform mom. I already took the old, Dodge van to Jiffy Lube so I did a Saturday chore if anyone is keeping points (apparently not). I saw the Jiffy-Lubers struggling to open the side, sliding door. I told them, "Don't open that door. If you do, it won't go back on." They gave up on it. The green van looks like it might keep going for a few more miles.

The pre-conference ads [not official church sanctioned but this is KSL] on Nashville songs for missionaries and newly digitized Book of Mormon cartoons.

On to conference:

The Hope of Jerusalem

Just back from round one in three days of Shakespeare. It was Henry IV, Part 2 tonight at the Cinemark in South Salt Lake that used to be the domes where I went once before in 1975 and saw "Yessongs" in that old pickup we borrowed and had to push to start at every stoplight on State Street - but that's another story. My wife and I are heading to Cedar City tomorrow for our anniversary to see Richard III, and Midsummer Night's Dream. Tonight was a special showing filmed at London's Globe Theater last summer with the same cast and production that did the Henry IV, Part 1, that we saw in person. It was our chance we could not pass up.

So, I was so moved, and surprised again by it, at the scene of the dying Henry IV and his yearning for Jerusalem. He had wanted to be a Crusader, yet he was too occupied in defending his crown "uneasy lies the head" and all. His speech in being lead to the Jerusalem Chamber evokes that strange, mystical yearning the British have for Zion:

Heal the Horror in our Hearts

Oh! My heart breaks yet again for this new and senseless tragedy in Norway. I am unaware of any Norwegian ancestry, yet my mom is a Peterson from Danish origins. And we are all human beings.

What a sickening, heart-rendering and unnecessary horror. The supposed perpetrator is in the custody of Norwegian law enforcement. They are a civilized nation and will see that our weak forms of human justice are exercised as well as they can in their own honorable tradition of law.

Live-blogging LDS Conference April 2, 2011

We'll give this a try. I think the way to do it is to type and post then edit the same posting. This may even help me stay awake as I take notes for the world. Of course, there may be a few private inspirational things that I will not launch out into the cyber-ether.

So the big news from the Saturday Morning Session, besides the new Temples, one in Meridian, Idaho closer to my parents and sister's family than Boise, was Elder Cook's talk that we should respect women who choose to be in the workplace outside the home and President Eyring's talk that we should be doing more to live up to our covenants in the nature of the Law of Consecration to serve the poor in the Church Welfare Program.

Saturday Afternoon was about Charity, Testimony, Families, Faith, Desires, and Miscellanea from President Packer.

Errors in reporting are mine and not from the speakers or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.