Zion Bound on the Enoch Train

You can't make this stuff up! The name of the ship was the Enoch Train!

The Enoch Train, Boston

And I can't remember the date I was baptized. Sometimes I have to think real hard to remember how old I am.

OK. Sure. I can walk over to my file cabinet and pull out my baptism certificate. And with a split second of cogitation I can remember that I'm 56 years old. But if I was about 70(!!), walking across the plains with a handcart, a long way from home - not to mention a long way from the strange, new home I was walking to, I think I might have a harder time remembering dates with exactness. Besides, my wife just quizzed me on the date of my youngest son's baptism and I hadn't a clue even if I could eventually approximate it.

And it doesn't help that so many people were named Elinor on the Welsh border country. Jenkins and Vaughan are pretty common too. But how can it be possible that my ancestress Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, baptized on 17 December 1841 according to Elder Needham's Missionary Journal, is not the same person as the Eleanor Jenkins Vaughan who went across the ocean in 1856 and was a member of the very first handcart company to cross the plains?

Gone to Zion

Winter Quarters just got a bit more real for me.

Winter Quarters, Nebraska Territory. Winter of 1846-47.

The LDS Branch established by Elder John Needham in Llanfoist, Monmouthshire, just couldn't have ended in failure! Well, my ancestors joined the church forty years later up in Durham after the example of their grandmother, Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, baptized in Llanfoist in 1841.

Something in the "Code Blue" Muse

Layton-Kaysville's "Code Blue" performing for our Ward Party last night at Trump's Field. Anon-D on right.

Brother Love was good enough to paint his trailer bed with that great non-skid surface after we asked to use it for a stage at the ward party last night. It worked perfectly!

So did the band. I promised them a good blog review for all of you two dozen or so readers out there. They really are really good for a suburban, old-guys, garage band. Well, there is one young guy - the son of the lead singer - who had all the teen (and pre-teen) girls enthralled with his cajon drum (electronic drum box with various sounds). Or maybe it was his "dangerous" RM-rock persona.

Back When the Future Was Orange!

Call me old-fashioned, but I really liked the LDS Provo Temple when it had an orange spire.

In 1976 from my room in the LTM (MTC), the whole Temple seemed to glow orange at night. Yes, some had their architectural-critiquing  fun with the flaming candle in the center of the birthday cake. But it was cool! The reason I liked it was because of the architectural style known as Googie. Yes, Googie. Which is pretty odd especially since I only just discovered the term "Googling" around for "Orange Provo Temple" and, of course, "Space Needle." Googie style came out of (where else?) a drive-in restaurant in Southern California.

Ross Perot? Who? What?

And you thought President Obama had funny ears.

"United We Stand America" was Perot's big movement. We need an episode of "Where are they now?" or something. I still say the tea-party/Randian element of the Republican Party will soon be as forgotten as Ross Perot and his crowd - which did have its effect helping to tip two elections to Bill Clinton. Of course I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of Ross's folks ended up in the tea party. They just forgot their graphs and charts.

Forbes Magazine on-line, of all places, just published an article on the theme that President Obama may be one of the best, perhaps the best, president for the economy in history! (h/t Phil). Imagine that! Of course, he inherited a mess that gave opportunity to improve and any improvement would look good compared with the economic disaster W Bush left us from the surplus budget he inherited. And remember this - it's called the Great Recession not the Great Depression II. Somebody did something right.

Secretarial Invitation

Congratulations to the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Arizona Parties on the Water Settlement!

Help Deseret Book Ban Beck

With a very compelling guest post in the SL Trib from Historian Alexandra Karl this morning, I updated my posting here on Glenn Beck's latest disturbing behavior - much more disturbing than even I thought when I was joking about it. And, I was motivated to send the following to Deseret Book: