The Ghost of Birthday Past

Chris' fifth birthday. I can't remember all the kids. Jake W is the blond boy in the light blue shirt, and I think Schuyler is in the red stripes.

This photo (below) is of Chris and Teane at the family party. We always have had more than one!

The Ghost of Easter Past

I've been scanning photos from the paleolithic pre-digital era, and found these from the 1998 Easter egg hunt in our backyard at the Springville house. Chris would have been five years old right before or after Easter.

John Family History

John in cap.

John with Colin (and mama's shadow).

John with little Mary Ann, and aunties Ruth and Donna.

John and Mary Ann.

Hauling wood with Jody, I think 1982. Metamorphosis!

Dave Family History

I miss Dave and Devon. Here are pix that Cindy gave me at Christmas--from 27 years ago. He was (is) such a sweetie.

Fam. Hist.--Dave at Ethan's Age

I recognize the look on Ethan's face as one I've seen on Dave's (here with Auntie Cindy).

He put up with a lot of kissing etc.

And of course he had a very cute grin, like Ethan does (see post below).

Hi From 2001

I was looking up old photos for the UK blog and came across this clip:

For My John

..because he's such a hippie.

Blow my Mind

Blogging is such an interesting endeavor. I love the combination of media--written word, photo, video. I love how interactive it is (but people can lurk too, in comfort). I love the immediacy. I remember speculating with J.Lynn on what the world would be like after the turn of the Millenium. Individual jetpacks? Colonies on Mars? Did we ever not guess right. But what is, continues to blow my mind.

Halloween is Coming Soon

Evidence that vampirism is nothing new to John and me (Feb 1977): (Candy corn makes great fangs for a photo, but you do tend to lose them if you smile too hard.) (Or of course if you eat them.)

News of the Week 9/14/08

I love the fall. The excitement is remembered from childhood--getting new clothes and shoes, going back to school, the October deer hunt at Orderville and Bob Creek, then Halloween and the rest of the holidays. I don't go back to school anymore, or hunt deer, but the excitement is hardwired in.

What I appreciate more now about September is that things settle down after a chaotic summer. With John and Chris taking summers off, I don't have a regular routine until they're both back in school. I love mornings sitting in a clean, quiet kitchen with the cats, the sun edging in the south windows beneath the eaves, eating a ripe pear or a peach from our trees (my schedule allows about one day per week of doing that).

THS was out Friday, and Chris' band, Red and the Rovers (check out his Facebook and MySpace pages) played a house/pool party. He tells me that I have to sign onto Facebook and MySpace to see and hear his publicity, so I guess I will. He says a lot of kids at school recognize him from online, and some tell him he has a good voice because they've heard his samples or demos or whatever they're called.

The RS counselor over Sunday lessons came by today to give me feedback from sisters in the ward, saying that my lessons may be too challenging and leave some upset and worried about my testimony. I can see that, and I'll change what I can without saying things I don't believe or boring myself to death. It may be, however, that I'm more suited to playing the piano than giving lessons. And I haven't even mentioned the Heavenly Mother! I used to joke that if I was ever desperate to be released from a calling, I would just start an opening prayer like this, "Dear Father and Mother in Heaven." (In the end I just ask to be released, however, and then it's quite a long time before I get another calling.) This morning I felt like protesting that I would like more lessons like the ones I give, but as Julie said, this isn't actually only about me. It just seems a shame to have lessons (as is often the case) where it is more interesting to write out the weekly grocery shopping list than listen to what's going on in Sunday School.

We had our writing group up the canyon at Charlotte's cabin tonight, and read Charlotte's memories of life with Gene and their kids. Her submissions this month revolved around house keys and cars, and were very funny. We got on a roll of telling car stories, and laughed for about three straight hours. This was after an initial 30 minute moan session about the state of American politics, so we needed the laugh endorphins. John and I took some of the bottled white grape juice from last week to cut with tonic water, and it was a very good and elegant drink to go with whole wheat pasta and homemade tomato sauce.

My SFF writing group is evolving. Isaac got married this week and is taking some time off, and Brandon is swamped with his Robert Jordan finale and says he won't be back until after the New Year. Dan is going to take a break from writing after we're through with his serial killer story. So they've invited another group member and moved to Janci's house. I just realized I haven't sent my submission yet for group on Tuesday. I guess it's too late. My goal is to work up to three half-days per week to work on stories, but so far I haven't even made it to one.

Maybe with the settled, structured, September schedule...

Nostalgia, Again

Saturday morning we had some extra time and I made John, Chris, and Sergene drive around with me to visit old haunts (they made me go to DI and the dollar store, so we're even). Here is our old house in Cedar City, where we lived when I was in the 9th grade. Here's our house out in north Cedar Valley. Here's the Enoch Ward Church where I was Primary accompanist and played the pump organ in the basement, and then ward organist and played Bridge Over Troubled Water and Let It Be for prelude music. Nobody ever said anything. Here's Cedar High and the seminary building. I had a pretty good adolescence, all things considered, and I felt very nostalgic and happy on this trip.

August 7 More Nostalgia

We checked out of our hotel in Bloomsbury and took the Circle Line to Kensington High Street, with long delays at Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate. John and I looked at each other--what an odd, dislocated feeling, as if we were back in time ten years and would soon be climbing to our flat on the top floor at 27 Palace Court. We rolled our bags past Holland Park--another sharp dislocation, not turning in at the park gates and climbing the steep hill (steep with luggage anyway) to the Youth Hostel there. Instead, we walked on west down the High Street until it became Hammersmith, and half a block outside the congestion zone we picked up our snazzy little black car and headed north and east around London, just as it started to rain.

Nostalgia and Roses

We bought our play tickets at the half-price ticket booth at Leicester Square, had shamara (sp?) at a little Lebanese cafe between Leicester and Piccadilly, and took the Bakerloo line up to Regents Park to visit Queen Mary's rose garden. I took off my shoes and put on new sticking plaster (bandaids, in the British version of the common language which separates us--Mark Twain), and John had a nap on the grass. Many of the roses were still in bloom, and there was a whole new flush of late summer flowers that I've never seen there before. We walked by 221b Baker Street on our way back.

We saw the end of the run of Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Old Vic. It was a classic, well done, funny, and more similar to My Fair Lady than I remembered, except for the ambiguous ending, which I like better than the musical. Henry Higgins was great, as was Eliza Doolittle--and I’m cheering for her to marry Freddy, as soon as she is able to support him in the style to which he is accustomed.

Sitting behind us at the theatre, people with the classic toff accent complained about the Labour government, albeit from the other side (and then told silly jokes to each other as they got increasingly drunk after the interval).

August 6 At the British Library

I have never made it over to see the manuscripts at the British Library, so today while John went off to find the houses of Dickens and Johnson, I walked just up the street to see what was there. Imagine my thrill to read, in her own hand under the dim preservation light, Charlotte Bronte's final paragraphs, starting:

Reader--I married him. A quiet wedding we had, he and I, the parson and the clerk alone present.

I had a surge of fangirl insanity as strong as when Alan Rickman bumped me on the knee at the National Theatre (have I mentioned that before?)

I was paging through the leaves of a facsimile of the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels, when a large Anglo-Indian gentleman said from behind me, "That can't be the original manuscript!" I dropped the page guiltily and said, "no, it's for children to look at and people like, um, me." He sighed, and said, "Did you know the manuscript came from S_____?" (I did not understand the name.) "There is a movement in S_____ to get it back. It has traveled Europe for many years, but it properly belongs in S_____." "Do you live there?" I asked, still having no idea where he was talking about. "Yes," he said. "But we will never see the book in our town again."

We pondered that fact for a moment. "St. Cuthbert is buried at Durham," he commented. "Yes, I've visited his tomb, and that of the Venerable Bede." "You saw it? At the back of the little chapel?" We spent some minutes discussing the cathedral at Durham before he walked away, the only member (perhaps) of a popular movement to return the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels of St. Cuthbert back to the town of S_____.

August 4 Conversation On the Beach

So we made a late start from the B&B in Westham on this bright and breezy morning, and walked along to Brewers’ Quay, where we’ve never been before, on the west side of the harbor. The streets and the beach were nearly deserted last night, but not so this morning! We sat on a bench on the esplanade near the carnival and watched the world go by. This man--who said he was a ’Jordie’ come down with his Da to Nuneaton in the Midlands when the Pits in Scotland closed--wandered over to talk to us, commiserating on the cost of fuel and eventually telling stories from the Great Strike in the 20’s. “It was all the Landlord then, wasn’t it? He owned the land and he owned the mines, and the only way me Grandmum survived was credit from the shopkeepers and a little pilferin’. It’ll come to that again. These young lads can’t make enough for their families. It‘s as bad as when Thatcher broke the union. It was one of your laddies came over, helped her, wasn‘t it--McGregor? McReagan? Gave her a billion pounds?” His wife, a taxi driver, brought over his little granddaughter (to stop him talking to strangers, one suspects), and he asked if we have any grandchildren. “Two? And Granddad’s not ruinin’ them now, is he?” He was surprised that we knew where Nuneaton was, and had even been to Arbury Hall. “So you’re here from America studying?” he said. “Intellectuals.” It didn’t slow him down in the stories. “My uncle went to America--where was it?--to Orlando. Got married there and never came back.” I had taken the photo of the beach before he came to talk to us, but recognized him as I looked at the picture.

History

We walked by a monument “In memory of those who suffered in Dorset in the religious troubles of the 16th and 17th Centuries,” many of whom were hanged, drawn, and quartered on this site. I should imagine, but don‘t know for sure, that many were Catholic. Of course they could have been Protestant too, depending on whether it was Henry, Mary, Elizabeth, or the Stuarts on the throne. It was interesting that the monument didn’t say which side anybody was on. It did say this:

It also quoted Robert Southwell, priest, “put to the torture thirteen times and executed in Tyburn 21 February 1595”:
“Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live;
Not where I love, but where I am, I die;
The life I wish, must future glory give.
The deaths I feele in present daungers lye.”

Durnovaria was surrounded by a wall, some of which exists 2000 years later. Here is a piece on the west side near the Borough Gardens:It is just the core of the wall, as "the smoother facing was used by locals for building in the middle ages." What would it mean to live in a place this old, so soaked in human history? Near the South Train Station are the Maumbury Rings, fortifications first built during the Stone Age, then made into a Roman amphitheatre, then used as a fairgrounds and an animal pen, and now a sort of public picnic area. Our students played Frisbee on/in them three years ago.

July 27 Church

We were up early for the staggeringly--I don’t even know what to call it--various, nutritious, sustaining, and delicious, as cooked by our hosts--English breakfast, and then caught a ride with our housemate Linda (also here for the Hardy Conference) to St. George’s Church, Fordington, for Sunday morning service. It was interesting to attend a Church of England service in honor of the grumpy old agnostic. He apparently quit church in architectural offense over an addition to the bell tower, which he called the “pepper pot.” He probably would have objected to the lightning rod as well. This is a modern church, according to the pamphlet on its history, with the tower dating back only to the 1400’s, and most of the church 19th and 20th century, although built on Roman and Norman foundations. The windows were by William Morris and Edward Bourne-Jones.

In addition to the regular hymns and responses, this service included readings of Hardy prose and poetry about churches and church singing. The sermon was by an ecclesiastical woman from Canturbury who is a Hardy enthusiast here for the conference, who spoke with humor and sweetness. The priest also seemed funny and casual and sweet, while celebrating the high church rituals with reverence. Music was provided by the Beaminster Gallery Quire and players (viol, pipe, clarinet), in period costume. My favorite piece was a sped-up and lengthier version of the Old One Hundred, which I love anyway from childhood reading of “The Secret Garden” (the One Hundred refers to its number in the hymnbook, I realized today). The congregation, average age probably 67, stood and sang loudly and with vigor.

I made a video of the postlude music, which was a dance tune from the mid 19th century, hoping to upload it to the blog, but it looks like my little mini-computer can’t read my videos. Oh well, maybe when we get back.
I remember one of our Mormon acquaintances saying she envies the English their churches, and I know what she means. On a cold winter night, this church would have been foot-aching frigid, but on a hot summer morning, it was a cool oasis, a vaulted, echoing sanctuary from the world outside. I dumped all my change in the little bag they brought around during the collection, and now I don‘t have any money for the bus.

July 25-26 Travel

Traveling like this--yanked from one hemisphere and hurled across the ocean to another--does something very odd to my sense of person, place, and time. I am grateful for air travel. I would not look forward to floating for weeks or months in the lower decks of a small vessel, as the g-g-g-grandparents did, coming the other way, but I wonder if it was so very disorienting. We were silly in Houston, on our 4-hour layover, awake during the compressed night and morning in the air,and haggard by Victoria Station, waiting for our train to Dorchester.

Thirty hours after Betsy left us at the SL Airport, we were at our B&B in Poundbury, a mile out from Dorchester town centre. This is the view from our window. Somewhere just out of sight are the remains of Roman Poundbury Camp and aqueduct, which we will have to walk to and look at before we leave. Dorchester was Durnovaria two thousand years ago. I thought the streetlight was evocative of Narnia, except at night, when it is just another light in the eyes.

On a lighter (but still slightly melancholy) note

Here is one of my favorite Neil Young songs. John and I only recently discovered YouTube, and we each spend way too much time listening to bad video of old songs instead of doing our work.



I played a pump organ as Primary accompanist in the old Enoch Ward Church when I was 15 or 16 years old. I also played a pump organ during the summer I worked as a tour guide at Pipe Springs on the Arizona Strip. I remember playing and singing "A Mighty Fortress" with a crew of German tourists who didn't speak English.

Here is the Prelude cover of After the Gold Rush that J.Lynn will remember from Mrs. Roper's madrigal choir, many years ago. The graphics are so apropos to the 70s. And we were there.