Happy Earth Day!

Jake and I were working in the back yard yesterday morning, and as the day warmed, the ants began to stir and climb out to let a little sun shine on their winter-stiffened legs and backs. I work a little, and rest my own winter-stiffened legs and back a little, and then work a little more. I was resting when Jacob ran to me with the news, "The ants are having a party!" He kneeled down for a closer look. "I wonder whose birthday it is?" He pointed to various ants in turn. "Is it yours? Is it yours? Is it yours? Look!" he said. "The ants are dancing!" And, in fact, they were.

We do not step on these remarkable little beings at our house. We figure that the earth is wide enough and room enough for all of us to live together peacefully. The Farmers' Almanac (where I found the picture) says if you want the ants to stay out of your house you can use a natural ant repellant, like catnip, mint, cucumber peel, or tansy. I have no idea what tansy is, but I intend to rub a little cucumber peel on my door frame if they decide to party in my house.

Happy Earthday to us all! Party on! And, may I have this dance?
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Winnowing the True

Spell for a Poet Getting On

May your hipbones never die.
May you hear the ruckus of mountains
in the Kansas of your age, and when
you go deaf, may you go wildly deaf.

May the neighbors arrive, bringing entire aviaries.
When the last of your hair is gone, may families
lovelier than you can guess colonize
the balds of your head.

May your thumbstick grow leaves.
May the nipples of your breasts drip wine.
And when, leaning into the grass, you watch
the inky sun vanish into the flat page

of the sea, may you join your lawn chair,
each of you content
that nothing is wise forever.

--Lola Haskins


I just spent a fun week-end with poet Lola Haskins, listening to readings, workshops, giving and receiving awards for local poets. Stayed for a night in the white, king-sized bed at the Airport Hilton, ate dinner and lunch, embraced a lot of old friends and made some new ones. I learned that not every line in every poem you write is from heaven, and that most poems start too soon and finish too late. Thanks, Lola, and the Utah State Poetry Society for a grand time! When I go deaf, may I go wildly deaf, content that nothing is wise forever.

Vertu Engendered...

Whan that April with his showeres soote
The drought of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every vein in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flower;
Whan Zephyrus, eek, with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sunne
Hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne,
And smalle fowles maken melodye
That sleepen all the night with open ye
(So pricketh hem Nature in his corages),
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. . .

--Geoffrey Chaucer

If You Could Hie to Kolob

My favorite Mormon hymn, all jazzed up! Text by W.W. Phelps (1792-1872), music by Ralph Vaughan, sung by Kirby Heyborne. Enjoy!

(Kolob, a word of Egyptian origin, is supposed, in Mormon theology, to be "the place where God dwells," mentioned in the Book of Abraham, possibly at the core of the Milky Way galaxy--a place of enormous energy, a high density concentration we now call a Black Hole. Sir Fred Hoyle and his associate Jayout Vishna Norlikar, have proposed... "the sheer amount of positrons [electrons with a positive charge, which occur in antimatter] observed toward the galactic center...[suggest] the existence there of some sort of exotic object." Kolob?

For you Battlestar Galactica fans, Kolob is also the inspiration for the planet Kobol, the distant motherworld of the human race, and the planet where life began. In Hebrew, Kokob = Star. W.W. Phelps grave marker is inscribed There is no end to matter/ There is no end to space/ ...etc.)

Who You Are

For all my family and friends: GOOD WISHES FOR A HAPPY EASTER! (Please click! Then choose Words and Music)

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and feet. (Luke 24:39-40)


Nelson Mandella, in his second inaugural address.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are more powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually who are you not to be? You are a Child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it's in everyone. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Thanks to Patty Butts at Healing Body and Spirit.

He's Here!

Meet Evan, my new grandson, looking sharp in his new hat! 7 lbs 15 ozs, 21 inches. (BTW, Evan, I don't like hats, either!).

Never Talk to Strangers!

My son Marc tells me that Jacob informed him, "Anyway, Dad, I just thought I would tell you that the Easter Bunny is made up." Marc said, "I asked him how the candies and eggs got hidden?" Jake said, "Some stranger in a bunny suit."

Some stranger in a bunny suit! Now that is really SCARY! :0

The Things That Matter Most

Taking the long view
This poorly titled but really worthwhile story at NPR discusses how the religiosity of Darwin's wife and the death of his youngest child may each have affected his great work.

Death Of Child May Have Influenced Darwin's Work
NPR by ROBERT KRULWICH

EXCERPT: In November 1859, Darwin finally published his revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species. Biographer Lyanda Haupt says you can see the influence of Annie's death in his shaping of that book. "He knew so deeply and so personally and viscerally what death was now after Annie's loss," Haupt says. And, yet, in his writing "you see him affirming over and over this circle, the endless unfolding of life."

In the last pages of On the Origin of Species, some say Darwin confronts the meaning of Annie's demise. Darwin takes his readers to a beautiful forest, rich with trees and birds singing everywhere, and reminds us of the beauty we see every day, in things like butterflies and flowers. And he demonstrates, especially, that humans, who can contemplate and love these things, are all products of millions of years of competition, struggle, famine and death — and that this struggle will continue. So, life will keep evolving new forms and new shapes.

Darwin is stating what "we now call the existential dilemma," says Gopnik in his biography. He is saying there are two things that are true: One is that everything dies, and things die for no reason and to no apparent end. And their death is painful. And, that process of living and dying produces something amazing and beautiful and astonishing.

And, Darwin himself writes, "There is grandeur in this view of life … from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

# # # #

From Sterling M. McMurrin's book The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion: "Religion is a matter of faith and hope, or perhaps of mystical experience. It is, to again borrow the words of one of my teachers, Professor Montague, the faith that 'what is highest in spirit is also deepest in nature,' the faith that the things that matter most are not ultimately at the mercy of the things that matter least. And he has said, it may be that there is no God, that 'the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective by-product of blindly swirling atoms,' that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain -- that we and they are here for a moment only, and are gone, and that eventually there will be no trace of us in the universe. 'A man may well believe that this dreadful thing is true. But only a fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true.'"

I, myself, choose to believe that there is meaning and purpose in all this grandeur, that there is an ultimate order behind a system that includes both the incredibly large and the unimaginably small. I choose to blow upon the spark that keeps "a perfect brightness of hope" burning in me. I choose to believe that 'the things that matter most' are forever.

(Thanks to my son Slick for posting the original review of Krulwich's thoughts on Haupt's book on his blog, KnownUnknowns.)

Subtraction

My husband says that mathematics is the language of the gods. My grandson Jake, always a little off center, is learning math in kindergarten, and has the concepts of addition and subtraction well under control. He told me yesterday: Hair minus hair equals bald!

:-P

I Signed

The Rules of Grammar

Abraham Kaplan, an exponent of Hassidic Judaism, in his analytic paper called "The Meaning of Ritual: Comparisons," published in Reflections on Mormonism, Judaeo-Christian Parallels quotes Edmund R. Leach, writing "In seeking to understand ritual we are, in effect, trying to discover the rules of grammar and syntax of an unknown language." Kaplan says that "Ritual can be regarded as a language, and I am using the word in its broadest sense as a symbol in action." (Italics mine) He continues, "But language is not constituted by a grammar and syntax alone; it must also have a semantics and be a carrier of meaning."

Interpretation of this symbolic language then becomes prime force behind understanding the actions performed. So, who is the interpreter of the Mormon Temple ritual as it is being performed tomorrow night in HBO's Big Love? We, as viewers? The writers? The producers? Can symbols that hold specific meaning as part of a foreign language, to be understood only in terms of the whole system, be communicated and understood in the short and fictitious context of an hour of TV?
Even if it is relevant to the story line? Will it lead too easily to distorted conceptions of Mormonism?

For us Mormons, temple symbolism is something which, in some way, really is what it signifies. No mystery here. No "secret." Just the symbol, rich in meaning, with levels of nuance, making something concrete that is abstract. If we then, privately choose to wear "magic" underwear that reminds us to eat healthily, to pray, to be honest--why should this become a public matter? Whose business should it be but ours, privately? Who gives HBO invasion of privacy rights concerning private temple rituals and sacraments (or their interpretations thereof)? Does your neighbor have the right to come into your house and then broadcast things he has found on your bookshelf, or in your fridge and cupboards to the whole neighborhood, because it is "relevant" to a funny story he is writing about you?

Just wondering. Next question: Does it matter? No. Should I care? Probably.

What I Learned in Church Today...

...and I should frame it and hang it on my wall: "Don't worry. Everything will be okay in the end. If it isn't okay, then it isn't the end."

;-D

BOP

CEREUS

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.
~ Michelle McGrane

Tomorrow is a very long time away.
Above you Cassiopeia boasts of her arrogant beauty.
Below you the dust of some night-blooming
flower clings to your feet as you walk among pedestrians
and bicycles across the Pont des Iles toward Ville-Marie.
This is how you come to the end.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

You may forever after lie awake
in the dark, hour after hour
as if you had died, and time
no longer matters, precise in its disbelief
that tomorrow will be better. Think of it
this way: pretend that you are walking
toward someone who waits for you
in fog, just across the bridge.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

When you come to the other side, and the fog lifts,
you find a tavern that sells Maranges,
and an old woman sells flowers that smell of some
night-blooming thing you can almost recall;
for that moment, standing on the edge
of memory: something that might really have happened.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

ReadWritePoem (Words)

Counting-Out Rhyme

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

(Read it out loud!)

Weathervanes

For a few weeks I have been at a loss for words. Taking myself too seriously, or something like that. Maybe it was viewing BodyWorlds. Or burying the sparrow with my grandson. Or my creaky back. Or whatever. But I've been feeling, um, unsettled. Doubting the status quo. A weathervane.

Yesterday Larry H Miller died in Salt Lake City, a man I didn't know, (and you've probably never heard of). But he was famous around here. He died of diabetes and kidney failure. There was a picture of him in today's newspaper, Larry as a teenager, looking young and fresh--even handsome--something I would never have imagined. He was a multi-millionaire and lived in a huge house not too far away...the sight of it would make you gasp, it was that big. He graduated from high school with a 1.77 GPA, and dropped out after six weeks at the University of Utah. He started out selling cars, and at the time of his death he owned 74 business enterprises--car dealerships, movie theaters, a shopping mall, a movie production company, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a professional baseball team, an NBA franchise (the Utah Jazz).... He was a creative genius.

Now he has gone "over the hill, as we all must," according to writer Jim Harrison, in his book Returning to Earth. Today I went alone to see The Reader. Since my movie-buddy Nila died last year, (and my husband chooses not to go to R-rated films) I have begun taking myself once in a while. Not often, but I decided that it's NOW or NEVER. I think The Reader was beautifully done, exceptionally performed. I loved it! But it didn't help this fluctuating, mutable, weathervane of stuff I have been experiencing lately. Maybe it's because this May I turn seventy. Seventy. Elizabeth Kubler Ross said it: If there are things you want to do, do them NOW. I can't say it any better than that.

Now I am going to finish my Pepsi, visit some blog-friends, listen to Garrison Keillor, and watch some TV. I'll feel better tomorrow.

image: archictecturaldepot.com

Elizabeth Gilbert ~ Worth Saving

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
*Thank you Poet Mom, January O'Neil

Broken Tea Bowls

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

--Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms

I learned something valuable yesterday. I learned about broken Japanese tea bowls, and about the Japanese Wabi aesthetic. According to Zen-cha Roku, Wabi means lacking something, having things run contrary to our desires, being frustrated in our wishes. Things imperfect, things irregular or damaged. Like me, and probably like you, too.

These irreplaceable antique porcelain Japanese tea bowls used in tea ceremonies sometimes become cracked or broken. They are not throwaways. The broken bowls are painstakingly repaired with a mixture of lacquer and gold, whereby they become more valuable, the repaired bowl worth more than the original. They say that the repairs lend character and beauty to the bowl, the repaired imperfections enhancing the design, and they are prized all the more.

Crystal, my teacher, said that once she and her mother were driving in the canyon, and they had just passed one of those signs that warn: WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS, when a landslide of boulders came crashing down on their car. One of her tires was ripped off its bent rim, the windows were broken out. Her injured mother stayed in the car, sitting in a sea of broken glass. Crystal got out, and began to pound on the dented hood. "Why ME?" she asked the mountain. "WHY ME?" I mean, how many times have you read that sign--and NEVER had any rocks fall on you? DO you know of ANYONE who ever had rocks fall on them? Why me, indeed. Crystal said when she was a child, and was faced with disappointments and hurts, her dad always told her to "Cowboy up!"

But, you know what? When I first learned about my melanoma, my first reaction was Why me? Then I thought, Because. Just because. A hundred 'why's'. A hundred 'becauses.' Why not me? Joseph Wirthlin, an LDS Apostle said last October, "The dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. No one is exempt." But you know what else? Nobody ever promised it was going to be roses all the way. The poet Theodore Roethke said it: "I learn by going where I have to go." Sometimes we just have to "Cowboy up."

A note I discovered once among some old papers: Adversity helps men to rise above themselves.

My husband said once, a long time ago, "When you think of the vastness and enormity of the universe, and of the billions and billions of planets and stars, doesn't it make you feel small and insignificant?" Then he added, "Me, neither!"

We are all like the precious flower vase made by Rikyo called Onjoji, and a beautiful tea bowl named Seppo, made by Koatsu--prized all the more because they were cracked, and have been fixed. We may be imperfect, but that's okay.

My favorite songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen wrote: Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in.

Is that true? I think so. :)

At Last!

Everything is Possible... Tout est Possible...

Share this image by photographer Karine Doche with your friends. Make it circulate!

NOTE, 1-27-09: A few nights ago on the news, they featured a Muslim Children's Choir here in SLC, singing with a Jewish Children's Choir. After singing songs from each culture, one of the many songs they sang was "We Are Family." Afterward, the people in the audience (mostly parents) cried and embraced one another. I was very touched. The children are performing again next week in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square.
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Monday and Me

This is an old snapshot of me and a house sparrow named Monday. I was 13 or so. Monday was blown out of her nest in our Chinese Elm tree when she was a baby, and she never really understood that she was a bird, and not a person. Neither did we. She was a loved member of the family, until the day she died.

We buried a sparrow the other day (my grandson Jacob and I) who somehow laid himself down to die on my doorstep--none the worse, for being dead. Jacob noticed the eyes, still dark and shiny, were open. Did he crash into the window? Was he attacked by bigger birds in an argument over seeds I threw out the night before? Or was he sick, or old? Jake helped me dig a hole where flowers will grow in spring. We covered him with a napkin, Jake said it would "be easy for him to fly out someday, when he comes alive again." I agreed. I said a few words about how Heavenly Father notices the fall of sparrows. I shed a few tears, (sentimental me!), and I thought about a book I am reading called Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison, which the back cover says is a "moving meditation on life and afterlife," with a "fierce gentle beauty." And I thought about this bird, and all of us. Harrison writes of a mine disaster where, over a period of 20 years, nearly 2,000 men had died: In the dream I finally understood that death and numbers don't cohere. Everyone is "one." An accident report might say that nine men died, four of them in their teens, but each death was "one." Each of six million Jews was "one." With death it is a series of "ones."

Last week we went to see Dr. Gunther von Hagens' BODYWORLDS at The Leonardo Museum downtown featuring "a unique collection of over 200 authentic human specimens, real people, "plastinated." Men, women, babies, a camel, a camel baby.... I am not going to discuss the ethics of the exhibition. It was awesome. It was even inspiring, as they promised it would be. People doing things in death I'm sure they never dreamed they would do, in life--skiing, ballet dancing, ice-skating, balancing beautifully and perfectly in aesthetic displays that invited all of us to contemplate and reflect on the unimaginable complexity and elegance of the human body. Each of the collection of "over 200" in the series was "one." As was the sparrow Jacob and I buried. As we all are.
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Happy New Year, Planet Earth!

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Earthrise: Credit Apollo 8, NASA
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...and to all, a good night!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a "Good night." God bless us, every one!

* I meant only to post the lovely video, but after you've seen that, take a minute to look around Anne's place for her other great posts!
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Melvin Clarence Davis (June 8, 1939-December 21, 2008)

My husband's brother Mel died early this morning of ALS. May flights of angels sing him to his rest. We love Mel and we shall miss him. Our condolences to his children Rhonda, Chris, Scott, Jeff, Kerri, Cindy, Jodi and their families, and to his brothers and sisters, Donna, Alyce, Jean, Richard, and Marv and their families. Mel leaves behind 20 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren.

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. 15:22)

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. (John 18:37)

Blessed be.

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Bearing Witness

Emily Dickinson had much to share with the world about life, and love, death and hope, and being human on a planet that has much to learn about compassion and forgiveness. Maybe most about hope. "Hope," she wrote, "is a thing with feathers That perches in the soul."

Here is one she wrote called: This Is My Letter To The World

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me
The simple news that Nature told
With tender Majesty

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see
For love of her,
Sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me.

--------------------------------------

And so, Christmastime is when hope perches in the soul of mankind perhaps more than at any other time of year, with its message of peace and goodwill. Here then is my Christmas message to all of you, my friends whose hands I cannot see, in the form of a question, many questions:

BETHLEHEM IN PLEIADES

Is there a Bethlehem
in Pleiades? --
A manger
made of stranger stuff
than hay
where a virgin,
silver-eyed and young
and far from home
laid another Babe
called Christ? --
Or is he called by different names
in Pleiades?
Was it a thousand
thousand years ago
or yesterday
he ran across the four-starred
square of Pegasus
and Lyrae
and Persei?
Is it, in all
the deep Manvantaras of space,
Christmas?
Is it winter on Arcturas?
Do angels carol and rejoice
in Andromeda
to an infant
born only NOW --
light years across the universe
among strange six-hoofed beasts
that stand and low and bray,
thunderstruck?
Do they see
just NOW
the star?


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Gloria (again)....

In case you missed her the first time around, I love this little Christmas angel that tops our tree every year....

ElfYourself!

(Click it!)
Recognize any of these elves? Sent by my sister-in-law: she and her husband, me and mine, and my mother-in-law.... O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Confessions

I am Confessions!
by Saint Augustine

You're a sinner, you're a saint, you do not feel ashamed of your past, but it did such a great job of teaching you what not to do. Now you've become a devout Christian and have spent more time ruminating on the world to come rather than worldly pleasures. Your realizations and ability to change will bring reverence upon you despite your hedonistic transgressions. Florida will honor you most in the end.

Thanks to my friend Nienke at The Writing Life for the Book Quiz. Try it! Find out what book you are! I still ruminate upon worldly pleasures a lot though...not to mention all my hedonistic transgressions. Nienke was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. (Let me know what book you are.)

But what is that stuff about Florida, anyway?
*

'Tis the Season!

Bookworm and Starfish, the day after Thanksgiving! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

The Way It Was....

THANKSGIVING 2008

A Birthday!

My grandson Isaac turned six-years-old the day before Thanksgiving. We are thankful to have him in the family circle. He is smart, and kind to others, and very, very handsome. We're proud you are ours, Isaac! May the Force be with you!

When I was one I had just begun.
When I was two I was nearly new!
When I was three I was hardly me.
When I was four I was not much more.
When I was five I was just alive!
But now I'm six, I'm as clever as clever,
and I think I'll be six forever and ever!

-A.A. Milne

Give Thanks!

Count your many blessings! Name them one by one....
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Family

Sign in the vet's office this morning: Acquiring a dog is the best chance a human has of choosing family.
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"We're going to bury you..."

It's a sad thing that people have singled out the "Mormon" Church as a scapegoat for the passing of Proposition 8, amending the California Constitution to define marriage as a heterosexual act, overriding a state Supreme Court ruling. The backlash against the passing of this proposition has been responsible for a lot of hateful targeting of the LDS Church for exercising its right to speak up for what it considers to be a moral issue in a free election. Let me say, up front, that I didn't agree with the Church's meddling in California politics. While I think concerned folks from Utah had no business contributing to a political campaign in another state, I believe the Church had every right to advise its members in that state concerning what they believe to be a critical issue concerning the ultimate nature of the traditional family.

In fact, we were not alone. Months before the first ads ran on Prop. 8, San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer reached out to Mormons (having been bishop of SLC for eleven years, he knows Mormons well) and asked for their help on Prop. 8--seeking the support of many other denominations as well to form "the core" of this volunteer operation. The money was grass-roots donated by concerned people of many conservative faiths. The Mormon Church did not contribute money to this fund. Nobody was coerced. Our young missionaries would never break into anyone's home and scatter decency to the wind as shown in that reprehensible TV ad.

It all seems a bit ridiculous to me, a simple matter of semantics. If the word "marriage" is the problem, then why not continue to call gay alliances "civil unions," or "gay inseparabilities," or whatever else they choose. Equality in every way except their use of the word. I think everyone agrees that giving everyone the same legal rights to make decisions for incapacitated loved ones, the same insurance coverage, and the same respect is the only decent way to go--which, by the way, the Mormon Church advocates, as evidenced by specifically pointed statements published in a Church News release concerning rights of hospitalization/medical care, fair housing, employment, probate/wrongful death rights and domestic partnership rights for gay couples, who have every right to live and love together in a state of gay bliss. Just not in marriage. The M-word.

LDS Temples across California (and in Utah) have been damaged, chapels have been vandalized. Facebook groups have formed telling people to boycott Utah in general (tourism, ski resorts, the Sundance Film Festival, etc.). Websites have formed calling for an end to the Church's tax-exempt status, saying things like: "We're going to bury you (shades of Nikita Kruschev!)," and "Destroy Utah--it is a Hate State," calling us a "religion of Bigots and Hate-Mongers!" We seem to have become a punching bag, and people feel free to shout profanities at us, spit on our cars, block access roads to our temples, shoot out the windows and glass doors of our chapels, and wield their cans of spray paint like weapons. This morning's news reports 2 more chapels in my neighborhood were vandalized overnight and two historic buildings were burned.

What I want to know is this: where are the protesters when other churches exercise their right to decry what they consider to be moral issues? Where are those others who also helped Yes on 8 and should be standing by us? Is Abortion a fair issue? How about pornography? Mormons don't like those things very much, either. Nor do I. Just call me old-fashioned. But please don't call me moron, or scum.

Well. Okay. I feel better now. Sort of. Thanks for letting me vent.

[UPDATE. Wednesday, Nov. 12th] The protests in California and Utah have spread to the East Coast. New Yorkers are now going at it, and protests against Mormons are planned in every state this Saturday: more harrassments and assaults, more horn-honking and spitting, more obscene gestures, hate-mail, and vandalism....

*Sigh*

UPDATING THE UPDATE- Friday-Nov 14, 2008, Deseret News: "Envelopes containing a suspicious white powder were mailed (from California) to two LDS Temples and a Catholic fraternity (Knights of Columbus), prompting a hazardous materials response and a federal investigation into who is behind it...." The FBI will probably discover it is cornstarch, but it might have been anthrax.

UPDATING THE UPDATED UPDATE! My good friend Orlan (see comments) suggests you take a look at this article for a well-balanced view of this issue.

. . . .

Also, on this Veteran's Day, when I saw on GMA a tearful mother in a cemetery embracing her son's tombstone, I cried with her, and remembered why I am glad to be movin' on from Bush to Obama....


Photo Credit: Beetle Blogger

Quote for the Day

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

--Thomas Jefferson

YES, WE DID!!!

Vote...

...but not for the turkey!

The time for change has come, and you know it,
and we've got a righteous wind at our back!"
--B Obama
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The Sun Who Calls the Earth Beloved

Credit: SST, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. LMSAL

A Dream Filled with Language

Last night the City Library offered a Dewey Lecture with poet and musician Joy Harjo, a multi-talented artist who is both an internationally known poet and a player of an Indian flute as well as the saxophone, which she said she learned to play at 40. She's played her original and native music around the world, and has been featured by Bill Moyers and Garrison Keillor. Her performance in Salt Lake last night was part of the award-winning PBS series American Experience called "We Shall Remain." We were privileged to see a film clip last night as part of the program. It will air in the spring of 2009. Be sure to watch for it!

Jo Harjo is a native American of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Her poetry (interlaced with lyrical Indian melodies) is both simple and eloquent and real. When someone asked her, during the short Q & A time at the end, what her imagery of horses, "means, exactly," Ms Harjo said you can never explain to someone what your imagery means, exactly. She told us not to look to hard for a meaning in poetic imagery (something akin to what Robert Frost said, that a poem should not mean, but be.) "Poetry," she said, "is a dream filled with language."

She said the image can be transformational. She spoke of the true power of the word, of the true danger of the word, and the true beauty of the word. And of what a journey poetry is. Here is one of her poems, from her book, How We Became Human:

IN PRAISE OF EARTH

We kept on dancing last summer though the dancing had been called subversive.
We weren't alone at the end of this particular world and knew
it wouldn't be the last world, though wars
had broken out on all sides.

We kept on dancing and with us were the insects who had gathered at the grounds
in the grasses and the trees. And with us were the stars and
a few lone planets who had been friends
with the earth for generations.

And with us were the spirits who wished to honor this beloved earth in any beautiful manner. And with us at dawn was the Sun who took the lead
and then we broke for camp, for stickball
and breakfast.

We all needed praise made of the heart's tattoo as it inspired our feet or wings, someone to admire us despite our tendency to war, to terrible
stumbles. So does the red cliff who is the heart
broken to the sky.

So do the stones who were the first to speak when we arrived. So does the flaming mountain who harbors the guardian spirits who refuse to abandon
us. And this Earth keeps faithfully to her journey, carrying us
around the Sun,

All of us in our rags and riches, our rages and promises, small talk and suffering. As we go to the store to buy our food and forget to plant, sing so
that we will be nourished in turn. As we walk out
into the dawn,

With our lists of desires that her gifts will fulfill, as she turns our tears
into rivers of sweet water, we spiral between dusking and
dawn, wake up and sleep in this lush palace of creation,
rooted by blood, dreams, and history.

We are linked by leaf, fin, and root. When we climb through the sky to each
new day our thoughts are clouds shifting weather within us.
When we step out of our minds into ceremonial
language we are humbled and amazed,

at the sacrifice. Those who forget become the people of stone who guard
the entrance to remembering. And the Earth keeps up her
dancing and she is neither perfect nor exactly in time.
She is one of us.

And she loves the dance for what it is. So does the Sun who calls the Earth
beloved. And praises her with light.
*

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

A Question....

Last week the Utah Opera opened its new season with Puccini's "Madame Butterfly," and we were there, five rows back, center right. Sure, it's a tearjerker, and I (along with most of the audience) shed some tears. Barbara Shivis was perfect as Butterfly; as the 15-year old in the first act, she was fragile and vulnerable, funny and trusting, and stubborn (as most 15-year-olds are!). She was magnificent as Butterfly three years later, her trust broken by that cad Pinkerton. Her performance was "stunning" as the review in the paper said--which brings to mind an ongoing argument (discussion?) I have with my husband concerning opera in general. He believes the voice rules. Physical appearance, not so much.

I remember when Martina Arroyo sang the role of Butterfly. She is a hefty Black woman, about 45 at the time. Well, that sort of thing doesn't work for me. The voice may be terrific, but Butterfly should look like an Asian teenager full of innocence and hope, like a butterfly, if you will. I have nothing against Ms. Arroyo, who has a splendid operatic voice and is a lovely lady in her own right.

So, what do you think? Does appearance matter, or does the voice overcome questionable casting??? Should an opera singer also be able to act?

Sitting next to us, as they have for many seasons, was a nice lady lawyer and her elderly father, who recently returned from a visit to New Zealand--Queenstown and Hamilton. They took harbor cruises and visited the LDS Temple and College in Hamilton. They LOVED New Zealand, and it was fun to hear their stories. And it turns out, their guide was an old friend of my husband's! Small world.
.

OMG AGAIN

Massive stars in Open Cluster Pismis ~ toward the bottom of this image, diapered in clouds of hot gas, infant stars are still forming, including several that seem to be breaking away from the nursery!

Photo: NASA, ESA, and J.M.Apellaniz (IAA, Spain).

OMG

NGC 602 is just too plain a name for this spectacular star formation happening in the Small Magellanic Cloud ~ Notice all the background galaxies hundreds of millions of light years or more beyond NGC 602. Please, guys, don't let Hubble die!

Have you ever seen ANYTHING more MAGNIFICENT??? Click it!

(Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

Will We Never Learn?

*Paintings by Rick Mobbs and his son, Broadus.

A Story for Broadus

WAR TOYS

In the beginning, so many circles of earth spinning around the sun ago, before clocks, before hours or minutes or even seconds were counted, in another garden outside Eden there were dragons. These dragons were simple water creatures whose feet were smallish and not made for walking on dry land. You might call these creatures monsters, really, because they were very large and scaley, toothy, four-mouthed beasts with tiny fins good for swimming. But because their fins were small and weak, they moved through the deep waters of the garden slowly, so slowly in fact, that the youngest sons of Cain (who had been cast out of Eden for slaying his brother) climbed up on their backs for rides across the river. Sometimes they brought their toy cannons and pop-guns and carved shields, and shouted, Ho, Away! and with the heels of their hard boots they goaded the poor things to go faster, and faster still, faster than their God made them to go. First the children of Cain shot their wooden arrows to frighten birds away, and then they fired their tin cannons at one another, and played dead, and rose, and fired again. Finally they kicked their sharp heels into the dragons ribs until their poor tongues hung out of their mouths like sausages, and their loud bellows frightened away all the rest of the birds. And how long they did this no one could say because there were no clocks to tell the time.

One day the boys began to make bullets of the dragons teeth, and they mended their worn and shabby shields with the dragons scales. Another day they forgot it was only a game they played, and they called it WAR. Many died. The dragons grew old, and their great hearts began to burst, their brains turned to smoke, their bones broke and they sank to the river bottoms like torpedoed ships, and they drowned and their flesh was soon eaten by the many big razor-jawed fish who now sweetened the waters. Their teeth became opals, their eyes became diamonds, and their bones turned into black gold.

Now they say there was an angel who stood guard with a sword of flame at the Gates of Eden, letting no one in, and very few out. The keeper of the garden's name was Adam. One night while sleeping, Adam dreamed of a great white horse who carried him out of Eden on its back. And Adam dreamed he saw the holy spirits of a hundred dragons rising from the water, their tiny fins having become wings. And Adam dreamed he called them by name (for he knew all their names). Elon, Kimani, Adara, Isabelle, Takoda, Dak-Ho, Izyan, Christopher, Jack....

Then, two of the hundreds of spirits of dragons came and sat at Adam's feet. To the first, Adam said I shall call you Alligator, and to the second, he said You shall be named Crocodile. And it was good. And Adam sent the two spirits back down into the ebbing and flowing waters of the garden outside of Eden.

. . . . . . . . .


When he woke from his dream, Adam found himself still in the garden outside of Eden. He marveled when he found those very dragons he had named Alligator and Crocodile swimming in the river, and he said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply. And they did.

But Adam grieved sorely for his wife, and for his children. He returned to the Gates of Eden, but the angel guarding the gate waved the sword of flames under Adam's nose and would not let him pass back into Eden, and Adam wept loudly and called out to his wife and children, Come here! Cross over, and I will show you these new creatures I have named Alligator and Crocodile! They are as sweet and tame and timid as rabbits! So his wife and their children packed up their tents and binoculars and sleeping bags. They filled their backpacks with flashlights and compasses, and they set up their camp in the garden on the other side of Eden. When they were done, and the others sang and told stories around the campfire, one of the children went off by himself and made a sundial of stones, with an arrow that cast a shadow on the edge, and when the sun rose, the arrow marked the sun's passage across the sky, dividing daylight into many parts, bringing TIME to the garden on the other side of Eden.

Before noon, the children, some of them, found these wonderful new creatures Alligator and Crocodile. They played tag and hide and seek among them, made them necklaces of flowers and fed them figs and apples. Some of them climbed upon their backs, and by and by began again to play the game WAR. Many of them died. And it came to pass that both TIME and WAR spread both East and West, North and South. The birds, which Adam had named the Doves of Peace returned, but could find no place to rest their wings and build their nests, and so flew far away.

And it came to pass that Adam wept in despair, and said, Will we never learn?

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