We seem to have stumbled into one of those patches of smooth water and sunlit sailing.
We are a very happy family right now. Absit omen, it is very good while it lasts. it is odd to say that we are happier now given the world falling apart around us. But so it is.
The kids sang the Caisson song this morning while hanging bunting, the fries are frying, the flag is waving, the ice cream is churning, the sun is blazing, Washington is still my president. For today, all is right with the world.
Reading posts and comments at Jr. Ganymede this week led again to thoughts of the Studio Ghibli animated film “From Up on Poppy Hill.” That one has lodged in my heart, and various expressions left here by many of a yearning for honorable family life that creates whole children who are becoming capable manly men and womanly women keep bumping against “Poppy Hill.” So, I watched it again tonight.
The setting is Yokohama 1963, and the central character is the 16-year-old daughter of a sea captain, who was lost when his cargo ship hit a mine during the Korean War. (more…)
Everyone small and large picked a scripture to present or music to play or sing.
For various reasons we had to do it outside on our front lawn. The only barrier between us and the autos whizzing by was our trees and a couple of parked vehicles. Reverence can make any setting spiritual.
As far as I know there are no LDS Christians living an Amish lifestyle out there. That reflects badly on us.
Here is a book review of a secularish man who decided to try it, and succeeded.
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The Prosperous Homesteader, Gregory Jeffers
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I went to G.’s essay from last month on “How to Survive a Disaster” to leave a comment, but no more comments can be added there, so this addendum is here, a link to a Washington Post article by Meagan Flynn about a factory in Pennsylvania manufacturing polypropylene to send down the supply chain to manufacturers of face masks and surgical gowns. “For 28 days, they lived on a calling in a factory.”
Writer Harrison Smith of the Washington Post has crafted an excellent obituary for an 100-year-old World War II ace, Edward Feightner. I recommend you read it all.
“By the time he graduated in 1941, he had compiled some 250 hours in the cockpit and wanted only to keep flying. The Army seemed a good opportunity but had a long wait list for aviators. And while hanging around the airport one day with his future still undecided, Adm. Feightner watched a Navy pilot land his plane, stride through the hangar in a gleaming white uniform and step inside a yellow convertible, where he gave a ‘big smooch’ to the blonde behind the wheel and sped off down the road.
“Adm. Feightner flew to a Navy recruiting station in Michigan and enlisted that same day.”
“He was a very aggressive fighter pilot, and he was still driving that way at 93.”
“Adm. Feightner often attributed his survival in World War II to luck, noting that while he was sometimes shot up he was never shot down.”
I was advised that Metropolitan Opera is making recordings of their productions available during this time of at-home confinement, a different one free each day. My young daughter dislikes when I play radio opera on Saturday afternoons, which I do because there is no fuller use of the human voice, but she found herself drawn into the video streaming’s excellent reproduction of one of the comedies.
One thing I didn’t know when I began viewing Parsifal Thursday night is that it is four and a half hours long. Past midnight I felt tired, but I was not tired of watching it. In fact, I arrived at Good Friday about when the opera did; Act III transpires on Good Friday, so that felt appropriate. Sacramental communion and a people who are cut off from it, and the mercy of Christ’s atonement, is the central matter in the story. I was very glad to have taken it in before Easter. Those inclined could draw parallels between the fool/hero Parsifal who restores administration of the sacrament and Joseph Smith, prophet of the restoration of the fulness of the gospel. (more…)
Has the coronavirus infected you? Probably not. Can you name anyone you have been with last month or the month before who is infected? Probably not. (more…)
There was one suspected coronavirus infection of someone who works in a different building of my facility, but that person tested negative. It is a funny kind of epidemic that so far is not known to have infected any of the 2,000 people where I work, and we have each been asked to report in if we become sick or possibly infected. I searched for a “list of famous people infected by coronavirus,” and the list compilers had to dig pretty deep in coming up with “famous” people. Besides Tom Hanks, Idris Elba, Placido Domingo, Rand Paul, and a couple basketball players, I’d never heard of any of those people. Most of them are like Olga Kurylenko, best known (if known) for a role in a James Bond movie a dozen years ago. Does anyone reading this personally know someone who has tested positive for coronavirus infection? (more…)
The day after the bishop authorized and requested that men and youth of the priesthood provide the sacrament of the holy meal to their own families there was another e-mail. The second was from the elders’ quorum president reminding his quorum where in the scriptures we will find the prayers. That was all the prompting I needed.
How He made you-
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Every man a holy pirate king.
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Every woman a necessity and a luxury.
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(from Admin:) two related posts–
We somehow managed to keep a few of our last harvest of tomatoes for the two months until Christmas.
Very wrinkled, very delicious.
A website by a temple fan gives a chronology of the initial dedications of the 167 current temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, plus the Kirtland temple and the first Nauvoo temple. Twelve of those were carried out by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles instead of a member of the quorum of the First Presidency:
Nauvoo by Orson Hyde (1846)
Manti by Lorenzo Snow (1888)
Regina by Boyd Packer (1999)
Brigham City by Boyd Packer (2012)
Sapporo by Russell Nelson (2016)
Provo City Center by Dallin Oaks (2016)
Star Valley by David Bednar (2016)
Kinshasa by Dale Renlund (2019)
Fortaleza by Ulisses Soares (2019)
Port-au-Prince by David Bednar (2019)
Lisbon by Neil Anderson (2019)
Arequipa by Ulisses Soares (2019)
It’s a curious pattern. (more…)
Christmas starts next week. Merry Christmas, friends. I haven’t met you all, but all of you make me laugh and feel tender at the same time, and if that isn’t the true meaning of being merry I don’t know what it is.
Enjoy the season, enjoy your families, enjoy celebrating his birth as we loo forward to seeing him again.
For those who like that sort of thing, we have some excellent Christmas writing from over the years. We’ve made it into a page that you can get to from the top of the blog.