Football and Fall Leaves

The little Minnesota Vikings!

Dust Mountains in the Carina Nebula

Happy 10th Birthday Hubble Heritage
1998 ~ 2008

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Green Lightning!!!

Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille....

The autumnal equinox occurred on September 22, marking the end of Summer and the first day of Fall. Fall is a great time. I went to Simon's soccer game early today. The morning was cold and rainy, no sun rose over the Wasatch where a snowstorm was falling on the red scrub-oak and yellow patches of quakies. They were playing football to the east of us and several other soccer games were going on to the west. We cheered and clapped and whistled to encourage our Green Team (the Green Lightning's) even though they lost the game. They played well and tried hard. Watching a bunch of frozen seven-year-old boys struggling to kick a ball into a net is exciting, especially so if one of them is yours.

The full moon nearest the Autumn Equinox is called the Harvest Moon, and the markets are full of apples and pumpkins and nuts and egg-nog. The election is coming up! Remember to vote!

This magnificent photograph of the sun, taken just this week, on September 29th, should help to thaw the chills of those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and encourage those of you on the Southern side that Summer is on its way!

(Photo Credit: STEREO project, NASA)

And then there's....this.

For all you poets out there: The Poetry of Sarah Palin. Enjoy.

What It's Like To Debate Sarah Palin

See: here!

How to be a Warrior!

Our friend Tammy, aka Warrior Woman, otherwise known as Robin, and Pam, aka Spike, otherwise known as Batman, and my brother-in-law Mel, aka Mel, have all been diagnosed with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Tammy is sponsoring a team to walk for the Defeat of ALS ~ Tammy's Warriors. Those of you who would like to participate either as a real-life-flesh-and-blood walker or as a virtual walker (like me) on her team, or to simply contribute to the Defeat of ALS, contact Tammy here!
or my personal ALS page here.
Thanx ~ your participation is appreciated! BTW, this is a picture of the Warrior Woman's cool new tattoo...how combative is that! We are on the warpath!
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Breaking News!

All the news breaking today is not bad! We are thrilled and excited to be EXPECTING again! (Not me, silly! ~ Another grandchild!) Congratulations to Slick and Jo ~ they are to be commended for their good work! A sib for Da Rhiesling!
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Seven Hundred Billion Dollars=

One Million Dollars A Day...

For Two Thousand Years....

....

!

Rockin' Jake

Guitar Hero is a Big Deal at our house lately. Jacob has a blister on his strummin' thumb that is rapidly becoming a callus! Rock On, Dude!
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Playing Tag:

Six unremarkable things about me:

1. I'm really messy. But I usually know where everything is.

2. I don't eat anchovies. They are icky. Or fish with bones in it.

3. I avoid parties--except for family do's.

4. I avoid make-up and high heels, unless I'm going to a party. Or to church.

5. I LOVE pictures from the Hubble telescope, and pictures of my grandkids. Both make me swoon. Do people say that any more? Swoon?

6. I don't like to be licked by dogs, even my dogs.


There it is. I could go on, but I won't. If you want to play, list 6 unremarkable things you would like us to know about YOU!

Be Afraid!

Alright, I admit it! She scares the $^*+ out of me!

God Bless David

Wednesday, September 11, 2008
-- WE REMEMBER . . .



DAVID PRUDENCIO LEMAGNE, a police officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was last seen helping form a human chain that was leading people out of the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In the final moments of his young life, he saved two fellow comrades of the PA police and a third civilian security guard. He might have saved himself, but went back to save others.

DAVID graduated as a paramedic in 1994 from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Even after becoming a police officer in 2000, he continued to work as a paramedic at the New Jersey City Medical Center, simply because he loved to help people. When the attack occurred on the Twin Towers, he was told to stay put, but moments after the second plane hit, he asked to be sent to the trade towers, because of his training as a paramedic. Having aided and saved many lives in medical crisis, David understood what it meant to be of "Service."

OFFICER LEMAGNE was a notorious prankster, with an infectious grin. He loved jokes. He loved cycling, playing softball and basketball. Those who knew him best said: "I'll never forget that smile of yours or hearing you laugh."

"From time to time I still see you with your basketball, walking to the courts on 67th Street. I see your dad often, and he still cries...."

"I always looked up to you. I knew you for the brave leader you always were and the good friend everyone wishes they had."

"I don't know many people that was like you, David, kind, giving, down to earth, humble, bright, and a real good guy!"

DAVID loved dominoes games, and Bar-B-Ques, and smoking cigars. He loved hanging out at the "Spot," and throwing parties at "Topps."

David was 27 years old. He is survived by his parents, Prudencio and Ruth, and a sister, Maggie. And an entire nation, who appreciates and honors his commitment to his mission and vocation. We still cry.... To OFFICER DAVID PRUDENCIO LEMAGNE, Badge #834, we say, "Well done!"

The CERN LHC

This is it! And Earth retains its ultimate round Blueness. Party on!
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The Atom Smasher and the God Particle

So. Tomorrow it goes live. The recently canceled Great Experiment is rescheduled for tomorrow. The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland will determine if Higgs boson, the "God Particle," actually exists. Two beams of protons will be set to travel in opposite directions, gaining energy with each lap around the huge circular supercollider, until they smash into each other. There hangs the tale. The result will revolutionize our understanding of physics, anti-matter, mass, the interior workings of atoms, and how the universe began. Scientists will use the LHC to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang. So, things are about to change. Tomorrow.

Or, (more unlikely) they will create a Black Hole that will swallow us all in a flash. Tomorrow. So polish your shoes and comb your hair. And cross your fingers. Either way, I have enjoyed your company!

UPDATE: We are still here! Apparently the beams are going successfully in the same direction and won't be set on a collision course in opposite directions "for some months."

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(Sorry the link doesn't want to work...I hope the LHC works better than the link. Google it if you want to know more, or in my blog search bar type the god particle, to see what I wrote earlier this summer.)

Bookworm and Starfish

Knights in Shining Armour

ZEN and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

Back to School

Rough and Ready

Since flesh can't stay, we keep the breath aloft. Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along." --Erica Jong


"In 1918," writes Jack McGinnis in his little book called RANDSBURG-Southern California's Greatest Gold Camp, "a big silver strike was discovered." And the Kelly mine, where Daddy worked, "was on its way to fame. It was almost unbelievable how rich it was." Other silver mines, the Silver King, Big Four, Silver Glance, Red Warrior, and the Yellow Aster were also booming. A post office was established in 1922. "The miners were calling the town Gin City, and Sin City, and the postal department soon got tired of the confusion, so they settled the name by calling the town 'Red Mountain.' Grandpa was the sheriff, and he wore a silver star on his chest that said so. My brother said he remembered gun shots at night, and always worried about Grandpa. I remember hearing coyotes howl at the moon.

"Red Mountain was a rough and ready town. Saloons were everywhere and this was during prohibition, too. Authorities didn't seem to care and looked the other way. If a raid was planned on Red Mountain, somebody was always tipped off. Girls and liquor were plenty everywhere you went, up and down the main street. Gambling was everywhere. This was really a last frontier town in the west. There were places named the Northern, the Silver Dollar, the Owl, the Shamrock, the Palace, the Stag, and many more. The girls were all young and beautiful. Everybody had fun," McGinnis writes. My brother says, "Red Mountain was an interesting place in which to grow up. I lived there the first fifteen years of my life, and still retain many fond memories of it." He delivered newspapers to the "girls," the prostitutes down on the main street. "They were always nice to me," he remembers. He says, "My dad was the foreman at the Santa Fe mine. He had studied mining engineering through a correspondence course, and I believe he knew more than most engineers. We used to sneak to the edge of the Santa Fe and spit down it until a piece of spit hit one of the miners after gaining several hundred feet of momentum. We got chewed out plenty."

All the mines, Daddy said, were full of Tommyknockers, gremlins who caused cave-ins, who loved to trap miners, and I thought, would surely eat a child whole if one wandered too close to one of the mine shafts. I was interested in Tommyknockers, apparently more than my big brother was! On occasion I did take Daddy's lunch to him, and was lowered down the shaft in a bucket, carrying the food in my lap. The Kelly had a 1400 foot vertical shaft, a head-frame with a large wheel pulley at the top and a hoist house below where a long cable with the bucket extended down into the shaft. I never saw a Tommyknocker, but I loved going down into the mines where it was cool and damp, and smelled of rocks and carbide and old timbers that shored up the tunnel walls and ceilings. Daddy would spit in the lamp on the front of his hard hat and the carbide gave off a gas he lit with a match. The little fire barely lit the rocks walls and the tunnels were shadowy. The fires in the miners headlamps were like little stars.

Daddy came to California from Utah as a young man barely eighteen years old. His father came, too, bringing his fiddle (which, years later and restored, my oldest son would learn to play). Grandpa could make slip-bark whistles, and tie a button over a string so that, wound up, it would hum as the string was pulled tight, then loosened, and pulled tight again, an endless delight to me.

Mama taught me to play "cat's cradle" with a piece of string pulled in patterns from one set of fingers to another. Back and forth. Mama came from Colorado when she was thirteen, a green-eyed little girl with a head full of wild red hair and freckles (which she hated). She had picked cotton all the way across central California, had lived in a cave with her father, her red-haired mother, a red-haired sister named Josie, and a brother named Ray, and she had walked to school in Red Mountain along the very rim of the hill in back of our house, afraid of the wild donkeys that roamed and brayed there, leftovers from the old miner's camps before Red Mountain, Jo'burg, and Randsburg were boom towns. In time, Mama and Daddy met and married, and Mama didn't learn until they'd been married for 50 years that my father had given up what was a promising career as a professional baseball player for love. He LOVED baseball! He once pitched a no-hitter against the famous Satchel Paige, and might've pitched for the Los Angeles Angels, but for love of Mama, and mining. They didn't have much, but they had that. He built the house for her out of railroad ties. They loved each other, and they made beautiful music together, playing for dances at the White House in Randsburg, Daddy on the saxophone, slurring out sweet songs--Mexicali Rose was his favorite--while Mama played the piano. And after my brother was born he went along with them. When he got big enough, 2-years-old or so, he sat up on stage with the band on an upturned Folger's Coffee can, chewed on a make-believe cigar, and drummed alongside the cigar-smoking drummer. (Years later my second son would learn to play his grandfather's sax, and sometimes used it in his own band.)


My brother was an imaginative little boy who liked to dress up as a cowboy, making corrals with sticks and catching horned toads to use as his "horses," or as the "Masked Marvel." He was almost eleven when I was born, and was often recruited to hang out long lines of diapers when Mama needed help. He was a good boy, and a good brother. He went away to High School in Barstow when I was only three or four, and so I only saw him on week-ends and summers. He learned to play the trumpet and took piano lessons and loved model airplanes. He glued together balsa-wood frames, covered them with silk and hung them in the kitchen, and flew them across the desert, airplanes with one set of wings, or with two sets, and propellers, airplanes that smelled of balsa and model glue. And those with real gasoline engines were like birds, alive in his hands.

One picture is my brother and me, the other is my first grade class. I am in the front row, second from the left. First grade is a big deal. My grandson Simon started first grade this week.

(This is for Rick Mobb's son Jason, a story for Bruno: Places We Are From.)

THE FORGETTING

"Our birth
is but a sleep
and a forgetting."

--William Wordsworth

I am
before my mother carried me,
tethered me to earth
with a silver cord,
before I flew prayer feathers
at my Father's knee,
there, where a million moons roll
like black-glass marbles
into the curved valleys of space
before I ever dreamed of earth,
or things of earth: fish
or rocks or bread,
before the luminous waters
of my birth washed me clean,
I am
I always am



--Written for Rick's most wonderful painting yet,painted on English linen and cotton, Supernatural Bridge (Red Shoes).

Heading Toward the Music

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle
Just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me.

See the marketplace in old Algiers
Send me photographs and souvenirs
But remember when a dream appears
You belong to me.

I'll be so alone without you
Maybe you'll be lonesome too---and blue

Fly the ocean in a silver plane
Watch the jungle when it's wet with rain
Just remember till you're home again
You belong to me



I am sad to see another of my childhood icons has died. Every Saturday night when I was seven or eight, my folks listened to a musical radio variety show, Your Hit Parade. Jo Stafford was one of the featured girl singers. They also featured a guitar player who could make his guitar cry and say "Maa-maa," which I loved. But I loved Jo Stafford best. If she was supposed to sing, and it was past my bedtime, I begged to stay up long enough to hear her. While it may have had as much to do with my staying up later, I really did want to hear her sing. Time magazine says she was one of the greatest ballad singers of all time. Her popular hit You Belong To Me sold two million copies. She was, says Time, up there in a group that included July Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. During WWII, and even into the Korean War, she performed for servicemen overseas "who felt as if they were home" when she sang. "Although she was a major star, she was a modest person who would have seemed out of place in a limousine. She was like a girl on a bus, always heading toward the music," writes Jonathan Schwartz. Jo Stafford was 90 years old.

For the longest time now, I have gone to bed whenever I damn well please. Good Night, Jo. Sweet dreams.
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OBAMA ROCKS BIG TIME!

Everyone was perfect--Hillary and Bill were perfect, Teddy was perfect, Al was, Joe was and Michelle was! Go, Obama, Go! Party on!

For the Storybook

What I Should Have Done


I should have cut a hole in the ceiling
to let my prayers out, words
like smoke from incense pots,
unable to rise above that bloody altar.
Look: here is where you should have slept,
your ear only an inch above my heart.
See: this field of stars above the watchtower
that we might have counted, bye and bye.
Now the sky is full of dark matter,
and though I were rich as Herod,
the baby-killer of Bethlehem,
(who was richer than Caesar), I can
not get you back, even though
I would rub salt upon your infant body
and powder you with mustard seeds,
and wrap you up with swaddling bands
embroidered with your genealogies.
Here is the singing bird I'd give you,
the pony, here the toy soldiers,
their cannons in flames.
Here angels play, out of sight
lest they terrify us, though we lie
prostrate, trembling on the ground,
we eaters of entrails, we breaker of bones.
The first to bring an offering
and the first to be offered,
like a burning ram, I continue
to follow your lead
like Nahshon followed Moses, loving him
too much, walking out before him into the sea,
walking out until the water was
all the way up to his nose
before the sea finally parted.


(Another poem written for Rick Mobbs awesome artwork. I wanted to indent the italics a little, but it didn't work out that way. Oh, well. Thank you, Rick, and next time I am going to concentrate on writing something shorter!)

Reliving the Dorm Experience

We spent last week on campus at BYU's (Brigham Young University) Education Week,(please click and scroll down) held every summer in August. About 23,000 people came this year, leaving the comfort zone of their homes across all 50 states and several foreign countries to get a little smarter about a lot of things. More than a thousand classes were offered. This year my husband and I decided to stay in the dorms rather than drive back and forth every night and every morning. Unfortunately, the couples housing was torn down for renovations, so we had to stay in different dorms. His roommie was a crazy man (I don't mean strange, but really crazy) who babbled all night and then snored like a jet engine. I had no room mate, so I could run around naked, fart and snore to my heart's content. The bed was as hard as a slab of granite, but there were lots of drawers to hold my levi's and socks, and a sink to wash up in. The bathroom and showers were only two doors down. I left every morning with the top half of me smelling of Calgon's sweet Hawaiian Ginger lotion and the bottom half smelling like Dr. Woo's Chinese liniment for my bad back. (Of course, my previous dorm experience, fifty years ago, I only smelled of Ivory Soap and baby powder...). Oh, think of the estrogen and perfume smell we left in that bathroom!

Probably 70% of the participants zipping down the walks between classes were either white-haired or bald, pushing canes, walkers, or in wheelchairs, the other 30% were middle-aged women who left their working husbands home, or teenagers with flourescent red or purple streaks in their hair, their hard bodies tan and muscular and beautiful. Evenings in the dorm were interesting. There was a community room with a TV where we watched the Olympics; around the edges of the room several women pushed together card tables and chairs and played loud and raucous card games, or Monopoly. Some of the other women were giving foot massages, painting one another's toenails and giggling like little girls. There was a piano at one end where, one evening, one little old lady accompanied four other little old ladies with creaky little old voices who sang "I Am A Child Of God." It was sweet, but a little annoying to those of us who were watching Shawn Johnson get her Gold Medal.

And I found out something I have previously suspected: I am definitely a people person. I do not like to be alone. If I had to live alone for longer than a week I would be as crazy as my husband's room mate. Alone in my room, I munched, looked over my notes, I read, and I wrote a little --well, a long--poem for Rick Mobbs Storybook.

(Oh, and I forgot to mention that our dorm was a MEN'S dorm. There was a sign on the door that said NO WOMEN ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT!--and there were URINALS in the bathroom! How often do I see those? I can't begin to tell you how HARD it is to pee standing up at one of those! I should have got a picture.)

Education Week 2008

I'll be on a vacation this week--it's time for Education Week at BYU again! How time flies! (Be back Saturday.)

Tooting My Horn

Stellasue Lee, Editor Emeritus of Rattle, author of Crossing the Double Yellow Line,which, by the way, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize--and whose work is published in four other volumes of poetry as well as in numerous poetry journals--and whose name "means star and violet...", has written a wonderful review for my book, Pepek the Assassin.

She wrote to our mutual friend Bob, who sent her a copy: "Brilliant title. Beautifully put together, and talk about flow--this body of work holds together perfectly. The writing is strong, the voice so accessible that I feel as if I've lived next door to these people and know them in that special way that neighbors become family. It reads as a benediction on Pepek's soul. Thank you, Bob, for sharing this wonderful work with me. My husband and I have been reading it aloud each morning to one another. Both of us have been moved by this body of work."

Kindly, Ms. Lee also wrote a blurb and allowed me to put it on the back cover of the book. She is a terrific writer, whose poetry is said to "speak for and to all of us at a spiritual level..." and I just ordered a copy of Crossing the Double Yellow Line for myself.

Thank you so much, Stellasue Lee, for your kind words.

(And by the way, did I ever tell you that my book Chrysalis was up once for a Pulitzer Prize?--Didn't win, of course. That year John Updyke won for Rabbit Is Rich. It's a tough world out there.)

PROBLEMS!

There has been a problem with my URL address things getting switched. www.myunclepepeksjournal.blogspot.com no longer exists. You will need to physically change the address to www.followingthelittlegod.blogspot.com

Just remove your old link. Does this make sense? However, I think if you bookmark it, it should work ok now. I hope. This should get you from there to here. I have been wondering why nobody was talking to me any more. I thought you were all mad at me.... Please don't hate me for looking like Sophia and Kate! :(

Obama Art

Courtesy of Tiel Aisha Ansari.

SHAZAM!

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

On the other hand, I can morph into Sophia Loren. Watch this! SHAZAM!

Celeb Look-Alikes?

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph
Wendy, who is quiet about a lot of things, was not quiet about her own celebrity look-alikes, and she DARED us to try it, so, here you go. I was especially impressed that I look a lot like Manuel Noreiga (or I used to).

Actually, I look a lot more like Noreiga NOW than I did THEN!

Go ahead...I dare ya!

praise

and even if you haven't asked
the ferocity I see in your eyes is really praise

the left eye overflowing with a compassion of tears
the right eye damned where the Father stands archived and

disguised the promise is that the hand that gives
takes away nor bird nor snake nor fish can stay it

nor ringed fingers nor hard stones nor veils
nor things visible or invisible nor words

nor the blackened silences of things half-formed
nor oaths nor obligations of a thousand years

of clouded windows and passing lovers or strangers
it is there in the etcetera of praise in ruined newsprint

lifted by the wind and blown and dissolved in a sea
of rain water and even if you haven't looked

it is there in both the promise and the praise
it is there in all of these and none of these

it is Alpha and Omega it is the Beginning and the End
thank you thank you thank you oh thank you


Painting: Rick Mobbs, praise

%&**@$**!

It is said that originally, Chinese doctors were paid when the patient stayed well, not when he got sick. Which makes good sense to me.

Anyway. There is much to be said for Chinese medicine, acupuncture in particular. According to them, when our "chi" becomes unbalanced, we get sick, or experience pain. This can be visualized as rivers of energy (there are 2,000 acupuncture points on the body) that have become dammed up by the debris of stress, etc. Once this stuck debris is freed, the river becomes clear and moves easily through its channel. The pain decreases, or stops.

Acupuncture helps relax muscles and promotes blood circulation to areas where you feel pain, or tension and stress. It appears to work by stimulating the release of natural opiates in the body. My last visit, I walked through doors that said "Shanghai" and "Beijing." I counted 22 needles as they were put into my back--no pain, just a sort of mild pinch. When the needles are in place, the doctor brings out 2 electro-magnetic heat lamps that warm the area up nicely as they release 33 essential minerals which are vital to our cells and tissues. You lay there surrounded by pillows, Chinese flute music or the sound of bubbling brooks, ocean waves, etc, and you feel absolutely wonderful. This lasts for about 45 minutes. Then you are given a warming vial of Chinese magic oil (Wong To Yick Woodlock) to rub on the affected spot 3 or 4 times a day.

They say it's been used for 4,000 years, and they haven't lost a patient yet--at least none they could blame acupuncture as the cause of injury or death. My doctor, Doctor Ding Hai, is a graduate of Shanghai University of Chinese Medicine. His office (one of two--he has another office in Park City, where many of the biggest film stars have homes, where the Sundance Film Festival is held every year, an artsy little place full of art galleries and skiers) in Salt Lake is modest, tucked behind a small cafe called The Eggery. There is a large painting on one wall of a Chinese landscape, various pieces of Chinese sculpture, one with water flowing from Chinese mountains into Chinese valleys. There is also a small TV with a handwritten sign inviting you to watch a small collection of Chinese-American videos. The English is dubbed. One morning when I was there two children watched a western in which every other word was a swear-word. I don't think Dr Ding is aware that his videos sport all this profanity. %&!**$@&*!

Anyway. They didn't seem to notice it, and I was too blissed-out to care. I heartily recommend it! I'm going back in one month, and then seasonally for a "tune-up."

If you do this, make sure that your doctor is National Board Certified, is Licensed by your state to practice acupuncture, and uses disposable needles only.

Our Simon

Simon went to try out his bike on the sidewalks at his new "imaginary" house--one they should break ground on next week. Can you tell the sidewalk worked great for this boy and his bike?

Summer Camping

Starfish and Bookworm lookin' good in the Big Woods.

Photo by Shok

After A Summer Rain

Mist rising after a summer rainstorm, and K and I in a golden summer light....

Photos by Chris

Quote of the Day

"There are two ways to live: One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle."

--Albert Einstein

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A Work in Progress

NOTE: This is a quick view of Salt Lake City, currently a work in progress. Many of the downtown streets and buildings are blocked off in the process of becoming, therefore there are gaping holes and barricades and walls enclosing brigades of pile drivers and earth movers and cranes everywhere. I have used some pictures from the internet to show off our city. If you see your picture here and would like me to remove it from this slideshow, please tell me and I will remove it hastily. If not, then thanks to you all for sharing!

This Is The Place Monument is found at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, the spot where, after a long trek of more than a thousand miles, Brigham Young is said to have risen from his sickbed in one of the wagons, and, gazing off into the valley below, and having seen it before in a vision, uttered these words: This is the place. The first party rolled into the valley on this day in 1847, and included 143 men, 3 women, 2 boys, 72 wagons, 93 horses, 66 oxen, 52 mules, 19 cows, 17 dogs, and some chickens. The rest of the wagon train, 70,000 more tired people and worn wagons came a while later. It's said they didn't have a parade celebrating this event until two years later, because nobody wanted to walk. Heh.

They planted their first crops, and hoards of crickets descended upon them, devouring all they could. Those tired folks, after beating them off with their shovels and rakes into burning piles, thinking all was lost, dropped to their knees in prayer. When great dark clouds of seagulls came swooping in, they thought it was more clouds of crickets and despaired, but behold, those seagulls came in like gangbusters, ate crickets until they were stuffed, went off like the old Romans did after great feasting, to their vomitariums, spit them up, and went back time and again for more, and SAVED THE CROPS! Hence, the seagull is the Utah State Bird. We love seagulls, and have made a monument to them. This story is known in Utah as THE MIRACLE OF THE GULLS.

The Salt Lake Temple took them 40 years to build. They had built a couple of others earlier, in Ohio and Illinois, that were burned, or otherwise destroyed. They went up into the mountains (which are mostly solid granite) and quarried out the stones, and hauled them down into the valley. There are several other temples around the valley now. Worldwide, there are something like 112 temples altogether.

The Christus statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen is in the North Visitor's Center on Temple Square. It's placed before a painted backdrop of clouds, and stars and planets and galaxies of the cosmos. My daughter-in-law Grace, her mother, and Simon and Jacob in the picture give an idea of scale.

The Salt Palace was famous in its day. The first one was actually made of salt. They soaked the timbers, the chandelier wires, etc. in the Great Salt Lake until they were all covered with shiny thick salt crystals. That would've been something to see! They have conventions and things in the new (not made of salt) Palace. And the Utah Jazz plays next door in the New Solutions Arena. Go, Jazz! We also have a professional baseball team (the Bees) and a pro soccer team (the Reals--as in re-als).

The Gateway is a beautiful downtown outdoor Mall, which has shops, food courts, the Hansen Planetariam, fountains, flowers...a fun place to go. ZCMI Mall (one of the places being reconstructed)is also downtown. Southtown Mall is...well, south, and Fashion Place midtown. Valley Fair is west. Jordan Commons and Jordan Landing are two newer ones. All of them are full of people going to see The Dark Knight, or buy ice cream, or new shoes.

There is Lagoon, a fun park to the north, with roller coasters--a new one called WICKED, and lots of other stuff, water tubes, pools etc. I think one of the last times I was at Lagoon there were goats and a few sheep grazing under the roller coaster. That's how long it's been. Hogle Zoo is up toward the east mountains. There are Museums of Art and of Natural History, a huge genealogical library, and, of course, the University of Utah, my Alma Mater.

The Capitol Theater is home to the Utah Opera and Ballet West. Maurice Abravanel Hall houses the Utah Symphony. Trax will get you near to most places you want to go in the city, and the new Front Runner will take you up north to Odgen, and eventually down to Provo. There are four canyons nearby in the Wasatch for summer picnics and outings, and winter skiing and snowboarding. What more could you ask for?

I Adore This Video

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

--Bertrand Russell

Have a happy dancing day! (Click to view!)

...if you lived in Utah....

The time is 5:40 p.m., the temperature is 92 degrees, but cloudy. Tonight (as last night) there will be lightning storms, lots of thunder, but little rain. July in Utah is a time of picnics and parades and fireworks, rodeos, pageants...if you lived in Utah you'd get the day off work on the 24th. You could drive up into one of the canyons, take your fried chicken and potato salad and watermelon (cold from resting in a safe part of the creek full of snow melt) along for lunch, and cool off beside one of the lakes--Silver Lake, Mary's Lake, Bear Lake only a few of them. You could come back down in the evening for a backyard barbeque and fireworks.

The parades began on the Fourth, of course. There is always a Horse parade, where proud equestrians show off their washed and combed Appaloosa's and Arabian's, and Palamino's.... The Children's Parade is the day before the BIG Parade on the 24th, celebrating the day when the pioneers made it into the valley in 1847. Children dress up like pioneers in bonnets and cowboy hats, or as Indians, in feathers and face-paint. They pull their decorated wagons and ride their decorated bikes, and "end up sweaty and dragging their feet at Liberty Park for popsicles and cold drinks.

The Days of '47 Parade is a big one, with bands and police brigades on motorcycles and floats and fire trucks and clowns throwing out candy to the crowds, and Princesses of Whatever, and balloons--third largest parade in the nation, I think, second only to the Rose Parade and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Most of the month of July the churches dedicate their services to pioneer songs and stories of venerated ancestors. There are church-sponsored camp-outs, with dutch-oven cook-offs, campfire songs, weiner and marshmallow roasts, Father and Sons overnighters, girls camps, where everybody comes home smelling of woodsmoke and pine.

July is a busy month in Utah. Even the mailman gets the extra day-off.

If you had gone to church with me the last couple of Sundays and sat beside me, you'd have seen the old bishop's boy make a cootie-catcher out of the paper program and annoy his older brother with it. You'd have heard the new bishop's mentally handicapped son (no longer a boy, but a man in his thirties) bless the sacramental bread--no small triumph for him. He is well-loved in the ward, loves to tell jokes. Our ward is quite cosmopolitan. On the other side of me from where you are sitting, sits my Filipina daughter-in-law and my two grandsons. The little one notices the scar under the sleeve on my right shoulder, and asks what that is. That's where the crocodile bit me, I tell him. It's the scar left from my melanoma surgery years ago, but that's too long a story. They entertain themselves with paper and crayons.See, this is you, grandma. And this is me, and this is Grandpa and Simon. This is our house. A few benches up sits Lily with her family. Lily is from Brazil, and I love to look at her because she looks almost exactly like our own Poet Mom, January. Sometimes I imagine she IS January. It makes me smile. Our old bishop and his family sit in the same row. His wife, Bi'shya, is from Taiwan. The speaker talks about emergency preparedness. He talks about earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis and tomatoes. He tells us about the head of one of the big corporations who made his employees practice fire drills even tho' they hated him for it and considered the drills a waste of time. He tells how, on the morning of 9-11, most of the people who died in the buildings were frozen at their desks, not knowing what to do. The folks (like 1,700 of them) who had practiced knew what to do, and only 13 of them were lost. The CEO went back into the building to look for the last them, and they found his body on the 9th floor. It was a good talk, interesting, and inspired me to find out where to turn my gas off if there should be an earthquake. Six young women sing, unaccompanied. The song sounds more like an Anonymous Four song from the Middle Ages than a pioneer hymn. It is lovely. The second speaker talks about obedience. Then we all sing "They, the Builders of the Nation."

They, the builders of the nation, Blazing trails along the way,
Stepping stones for generations were their deeds of every day.
Building new and firm foundations, Pushing on the wild frontier,
Forging onward, ever onward, Blessed honored pioneer!
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UPDATE: July 24th--9:30 p.m. The parades are history. All the bronco's have been busted and the hogs tied. Fireworks are exploding all over the Valley. Mylie Cyrus, the Blue Man Group, and Glenn Beck are doing their stuff tonight in Provo, Kellie Pickler is at the Sandy Ampitheater (Sawyer Brown was there night before last), and the Osmonds (of course) will be joining the Mormon Tabernacle Choir tomorrow night in Temple Square...The Gallivan Center last night celebrated with an International Culture Fest featuring booths with Mexican, Greek, Asian and other cuisine showing off Utah's ethnic diversity. Am I going to any of these? No. I am staying home where it is cool and eat watermelon and watch TV.

Flaws in the Diamond

You can lie at a banquet, but you have to
be honest in the kitchen.

--William Stafford, "The Sparkle Depends on Flaws in the Diamond."
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Kay Ryan

The Library of Congress announced Thursday the name of the new US Poet Laureate for 2008-2009: Congratulations Kay Ryan!

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Holiness as rainwater, as roses

All Mormon temples have the inscription "Holiness To The Lord" somewhere on their exterior. This phrase is an allusion to Zechariah 14:20-21. "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS TO THE LORD....Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts."

I thought of Wendy, who is quiet about a lot of things, writing a post about finding God in her barn, in the manure pile, in laughter, and I was reminded of this poem by the mystical poet Rumi, the Persian, the Sufi, also known as Mohammed Jalaluddin Rumi:

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbeds.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them apart.

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No Bad Apples

For the last four months I have been limping around like the witch in Snow White. All I needed was a basket of poison apples. Day before yesterday, at the insistence of my sweet daughter-in-law, I went to have a massage. Yes, a m-a-s-s-a-g-e. A first. It was so wonderful, and worked so well to unkink all my jambed muscles and quiet the spasms, that I am going to go again! The lady was so gentle, and kind and concerned, and knowledgeable. She also recommended a doctor of acupuncture (Dr. Ding Hai --which translates into American as Hai Ding, so I'm hoping the law is not after him for impersonating a doctor!) and I have an appointment with him next week. I'm even looking forward to it!

If any of you have experienced acupuncture, I'd be interested to know what you think.... I have been taking so many pain pills that were not working too well anymore, and I have a very good friend (who now has a brand new blog) with a PhD in nutrition, etc., who recommended lots of natural painkillers I am going to try. You can check her out at www.healingbodyspirit.blogspot.com

SHe also has a new book out that I am going to buy next time we go to lunch.

There are no bad apples here!

Cosmic Fireworks

This is SN 1006 Supernova Remnant, the brightest in recorded human history. It lit up the sky in the year 1006 AD, and it still lights up the skies in a great cosmic light show! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, y'all! Hurray for the Red, White, and Blue!


Credit: X-ray--NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G,Cassam-Chenai/J. Hughes et al: Radio--NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical--Middlebury College/F. Winkler/NOAO/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS
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A Fatted Calf

Yesterday's post made me sound like an elitist jerk, something I never want to be. Again, quoting a little from Kim Stafford's book about his father: "That was it. There was an aristocracy of creation. Membership was absolute, but available. Forceful people were excluded, the proud, the pretenders, excluded because they declined "to be willingly fallible in order to find their way." But anyone who told their own puzzling story could be in the circle. Anyone who paid attention by writing or speaking their own truth could be Caesar of the vast, fragile empire of one life, and championed."

I believe that anyone "who pays attention by writing or speaking their own story" should be included and championed in whatever "circle" of aristocracy there might be. I know that here, in my town, and maybe in yours as well, there exists a chasm between the university poets, the educated, those who have a degree, and the ordinary town poets. Bill Stafford was always "an includer." Everybody was welcomed to the party, met with robes and rings and a fatted calf. That's the way it should be.

(painting: The Prodigal Son, by Gerrit van Honthosrt, 1622)
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Having a Good Summer, Or...

What I Am Reading Now. EARLY MORNING: Remembering My Father, William Stafford,by Kim Stafford.

I truly love this book. It melts me, it makes the inside of my head tingle and shine. Kim Stafford writes of his father, "One time, after my father had read a stunning poem to start a program, someone in the audience spoke up: 'Do you want us to applaud,' she said, 'after you read a poem like that?'

'Applaud?" my father said. 'I want you to get down on the floor and grovel.' Everyone laughed."

I laughed. But I also want to get down on the floor and grovel. I love this man. Having been lucky enough to have attended a poetry workshop offered several years ago at BYU, in which both William Stafford and Leslie Norris were presenters, I now have their marks of comment or approval on all of the poems I submitted.

In the last month of his life, in the early morning of August 6, 1993, which was the anniversary of the day the U.S. bombed Hiroshima, Stafford (the quiet peacemaker) wrote this:

November

From the sky in the form of snow
comes the great forgiveness.
Rain grown soft, the flakes descend
and rest; they nestle close, each one
arrived, welcomed, and then at home.

If the sky lets go some day and I'm
requested for such volunteering
toward so clean a message, I'll come.
The world goes on and while friends touch down
beside me, I too will come.

His son says that after one of his father's readings, someone in the audience shouted out, "I could have written that!"

"But you didn't." He replied, and waited for a beat of silence. "But you could write one of your own."

Well, not everybody could. But, you know, I think that writing poetry, understanding poetry, real poetry like Stafford wrote, is like writing in, and understanding another language. Either you can or you can't. Either you "get it" or you don't.

The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it's hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop times unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.
--William Stafford

There's a thread you follow. I don't want to ever let go of the thread.
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