Ok, so Romney, Gingrich and Santorum each have one win under their belts. Who do you like for Florida? After Florida comes Nevada, then Maine, Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota all the first week of February. Here is my guess: Romney takes Florida by 5 points, easily takes Nevada, Maine, Colorado. Has a fight in Missouri and Minnesota (could lose those to Gingrich or Santorum). Likely the only one to dropout during this period is Santorum. What do you think?

I finally had time to go over a link in a post by Matt (BCC) about George Albert Smith’s alleged mental illness to Mary Woodger’s paper, went back to put in my (further) two cents worth, only to find comments closed. Why do you guys do that?!–so rude. It’s like hanging up the phone on someone. Read more »

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed.

I, too, am America.

-Langston Hughes

The payment on a million dollar mortgage at 5% not including taxes (which in Texas could be as much as $3000 more a month) is about $5400 a month at 5% for 30 years. Lets call it $8000 for convenience. Should fast offerings be used to pay these types of mortgage payments? I bring this up because I was informed by a member of our stake presidency that this in fact is occurring in a neighboring stake.

So what is the consensus on this issue?

A friend on Facebook asked for movie recommendations for his Netflix account and my mind wandered to movies I’ve seen lately and then to movie lines. I recommended “Win-”Win”—I think there’s some language in it, but it was really a great show. Loved the ending. Read more »

Watching the debate on “Meet the Press” this morning. (aside: I LOVE David Gregory! I didn’t think anybody could replace Tim Russert, but he’s doing a magnificent job.) There was an interesting exchange between Romney and Newt. Romney gave a wonderful mini-speech about limiting government service and career politicians and lobbyists, making the point that he came in to serve and left. It was pretty cool. BUT Newt came right back and said something to the effect “Are you kidding me? You left politics because you LOST to Ted Kennedy and then you started campaigning for president!” Read more »

I have a LDS friend who has a boatload of kids under the age 6. She is a harried, busy mom. One of her boys was in my nursery class at church. One day her son, who is about 20 months old and a man of few words, was having a bad day. He didn’t want to stay in class, etc.

My friend took out her son’s “lovey” and handed it to him. It was a square of silky garment fabric with an edge of lace that is distinctive to women’s garment tops. He immediately calmed down, rubbing the fabric on his cheek and sucking his thumb.

It was quite magical. Instantaneous calm. And stunning. Since my kids are long grown up, I can act all appalled at using a sacred cloth as a soothing tool. In a million, zillion years I never would have thought to give my child a piece of garment to carry around in public.

But then again, I never had a kid attached Linus-style (1) to a security blanket. My kids preferred, in order of child:

1. A pacifier (that public/grandparent pressure squashed before I was ready to give it up.)
2. A thumb (which was awesome because I never had to crawl around in the dark under the crib to look for it.)
3. Nothing. Just screaming, non-stop for hours. I would have killed to have a piece of cloth that made that baby happy. Instead I was driven to become an alternative medicine guru just to get a decent night’s sleep.

I am not judging my friends parenting style. Some kids respond to a comfort item. As a mom, I did all kinds of things to keep the peace. It is just this nagging feeling I have that using garments for anything other than their intended use seems disrespectful in a major way.

Is it a big deal to use garment material in this way? (2) At least she cut it down into a discreet square, instead of letting the little tyke drag the whole shirt.
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1. You know, Linus from the comic strip Peanuts. Old school entertainment. I carried a Peanuts metal lunch box with matching Thermos to school from 3- 5th grade because I liked it that much. I only gave it up because 6th grade was at middle school with 7th and 8th graders and I knew I would get teased mercilessly for such a babyish lunchbox. I switched to paper bags with no Thermos. What a downer. I hated middle school.

2. I knew someone who used old garments as cleaning cloths. That seems 100% completely wrong to me.

One advantage of living in the UK is that I get to listen to the BBC. I really enjoy it, much more than listening to NPR for the most part. Today they were talking about a list of names that the New Zealand registrar has banned – basically you cannot name your child one of these names. Here are some of the names:
Lucifer
Duke
Messiah
89
Bishop
Baron
General
Judge
King
Knight
Mr.
C
D
I
T
any names with asterisks, commas, periods and other punctuation marks

I know people named some of these names – particularly Duke, Bishop, and Judge. I was thinking that the Church should ban certain names – what ones would you ban?

I love a new year as it is a chance to ponder the year past and consider the year ahead. This year could be particularly interesting given it is a Presidential Election. I have watched with fascination the machinations ongoing with the Republican candidates. Given tomorrow is the start of the process – any predictions for January outcomes and eventual nominee?

Here are mine:
Iowa – Ron Paul wins, Santorum in second, Romney third. Basically means everyone else is dead
NH – Romney wins, Paul second, Huntsman third
SC – Santorum wins, Romney second, Paul third
FL – Romney wins, Paul second, Santorum third

By this point, only Romney, Paul, Santorum are still in the mix. The party coalesces around Romney and he is the nominee given the party is scared to death of the other two…

What do you think?

Soooo…anyone else surprised to find out a LDS prophet was divorced? It’s not exactly the kind of information that makes it into a Sunday school lesson about church history or a Sacrament meeting talk about marriage or even a RS/Priesthood combined 5th Sunday lesson. Why not? Divorce happens. People suffer. Why pretend the truth of life didn’t happen to someone we in the church hold up as an example to follow? I believe there is more to learn from understand our church leaders are human with real life problems rather than the cute habit we have of sanitizing all the ‘icky’ stuff out of our collective history.

For those of you who don’t know/ weren’t taught/ didn’t know which non-church authorized books to read, here’s the straight poop:

Joseph F. Smith, at nineteen, married his sixteen year-old first cousin, Levira Annette Clark Smith. Joseph went on a three year mission after less than one year of marriage. He returned home to find Levira in a severe state. She had a lot of physical and emotional struggles. Levira was not a well person. Joseph couldn’t handle it. He wanted a wife who was healthy and able to support his efforts in the church. They were married eight years (during which time another wife was added to fulfill Joseph’s responsibility to plural marriage and also in the hopes that the new wife would be able to whip Levira into shape. It didn’t work.) Joseph and Levira had no children together.

“On June 10, 1867, they filed a legal separation that ended in a bitter divorce. This was perhaps the most painful period of Joseph F.’s life, for family was second only to God…and he knew his quick temper had played a part in the failure of his first marriage.” (1)

Levira died on December 18, 1888 at age 46.

Joseph felt badly about his relationship with Levira. He was shocked when he received notice of her death because he and other family members were convinced she was a hypochondriac. There are no medical records of her symptoms, just records stating her constant complaints of ill health.

Joseph F. Smith went on to marry in total 5 wives, had 43 biological children and adopted 5 others. He enjoyed an excellent reputation as a loving, attentive husband and father.

If Joseph F. was with us now, what do you think he would say he learned from his first marriage and why isn’t this part of his life acknowledged in any church lesson manuals?

______________________________________________________________________
1. The Story of Joseph F. Smith by Blaine M. Yorgason. Page 247.

I read a ton of online and book sources to prepare this post. I was gonna do it up right and site every fact, etc. But here is the deal: I am old, tired and not getting paid for this fun. If you want the info. on my sources, tell me that in the comments and I will email them to you. Maybe. When I get around to it. Or just do your own internet search. It isn’t rocket science anymore.

I’m not a big fan of Christmas. Not having much of a Christmas, mostly, as a kid made me indifferent to the holiday. I made sure my kids had “good” Christmases, with the requisite decorations, festive baking and nice (not lavish) gifts. They never woke up Christmas morning to a cold house and nothing under the tree, or no tree at all.

But I’m sick of Christmas. I hate Christmas now. I’ve been noticing all the advertising “you MUST buy this to have a happy Christmas!” crap—-even Lexus has an advertisement for Christmas! And how many of us can actually buy somebody a new car for a Christmas present. Companies make a mint off Christmas—-Betty Crocker, Norbest—Hershey!!! Read more »

As inspiration for you Christmas slackers, I am sharing our family’s way of keeping the gift-giving season sane. For the first 10 years of our kid’s lives, Christmas was an event. I strove to fill to overflowing the space under the tree. My husband had memories of mounds of presents from his childhood and I wanted to recreate that for our children. Before you are horrified at our decadence, you must know that until our kids hit double digits in age, they had no experience with store packaging for any gifts, including birthdays. I bought everything for them from garage sales, an easily accomplished feat outside of Utah. So we are not talking about cash value, we are discussing sheer volume.

How much is too much? Too much for us was the Christmas our children attacked the gifts, ripping the paper off, glancing at the present and tossing it aside looking for the next package. There was so much loot that in the end it cheapened all of it. I was horrified at the mini-monsters I created. It wasn’t they were selfish, materialistic kids whinnying about not getting a particular brand of something. It was just that Christmas was a game of excess.

I pondered our Christmas situation for few months, trying to figure out how to change the focus from piles of stuff to valuing the individual gifts. I don’t remember if someone gave me the idea or I read it somewhere. This was pre-internet years, so there wasn’t instant solutions to life’s problems at my fingertips. Since I can’t recall who/how I came up with the game-changing idea, I am giving myself full credit for this spark of brilliance.

Christmas is about Jesus. Jesus was given gifts to celebrate His birth. That is the why of gift-giving at Christmas. But how much was Christ given? The bible tells us that three wise men each gave Him a precious gift. Three gifts. Why would we expect to get more at Christmas than Jesus got? So, to my children’s dismay, we instituted the Jesus Three Gifts Rule. What changed was that I no longer wrapped socks, underwear and little trinkets as gifts. I made sure the three gifts were meaningful. The trinkets were put in their Christmas stockings, and they still got gifts from grandparents and others. It is just that Santa brought only three gifts per child and that was enough.

The change made the whole Christmas season less stressful for me. I could focus on buying things people really wanted, not just stuff that was at a good price and might do. I became excited at finding one awesome thing, instead of trying to fill a room.

I’m sure this is not a new idea. I am positive I stole it from someone else. But in terms of ideas that really work, I have to say this one is at the top of my list.

What has worked to keep your Christmas sane?

Holiday music doesn’t do a thing for me. I don’t listen to it on the car radio or play it on my CD player, even though I have several respectable holiday collections. I don’t hate it, I’m not a grinch. It just doesn’t excite or move me.

To be completely honest, I don’t like Christmas hymns, either.(1) As a teenager my adoptive parents tortured us kids by forcing us to attend a music concert of The Messiah. People all around me wiped tears away, feeling the Spirit from the choir’s soaring voices. I watched the clock, counting down the minutes until I was freed from the cacophony. That was the last time I attended a Messiah performance, which is a lot harder to avoid than you would think. I have lived in areas with church music leaders who esteemed themselves Mormon Tabernacle worthy, where The Messiah was a required yearly performance, which includes weeks of badgering to attend the aforementioned awesomeness.(2) Blech.
Read more »

“A ward member has had a bedbug infestation and bedbugs have been seen in the Chapel. We’ll try to get that taken care of this week. Please let me know if you see any elsewhere.”

This was an actual announcement at my ward today. Bummer.

What announcement would you most like NOT to hear?

I tape both morning news shows—-oh, poor Channel 2, they don’t even count—-and scan one later. Sometimes the (false?) cheer bothers me, and both seem biased against conservatives. I watch Good Morning, America more often because I think George Stephanopolous is more balanced. At least he manages not to look nauseous when reporting on Republican politics.

Several items caught my attention this morning. First, I betcha somebody got to Newt and Mitt and told them “play nice” because according to the news, they’d toned down at the latest debate. This means a deal has been reached and while we’ll watch and wonder for the next six months until the convention, the Republican machine has decided who the candidate is going to be. Will one be the vice-president? Hmmm……. Read more »

Dear Mr. Blagojevich,

I read in the newspaper that you recently got sentenced to fourteen years in prison for your acts of corruption while serving as governor of Illinois. No reason for me to list all your illegal activity here, it is recorded in the public records for posterity. It is a shame that the good people of Illinois have to suffer the humiliation and expense of two governors serving prison terms for corruption. Who knows, maybe you and your predecessor, George Ryan could end up as cellmates. You would have a lot to talk about.

I read with interest that at your sentencing hearing your lawyer pled on your behalf for a lesser prison term, not because you weren’t guilty, but because of your children. I thought that was a nice touch. “Please, think of the children!” Too bad you didn’t consider your children or anyone else’s children in the state while you were robbing the citizens of Illinois. Read more »

We had our Ward Primary Program a few weeks ago. We worked hard teaching our six year old the words to the songs. Our three year old also learned them since she would listen as we sang the songs together. I love how three year old minds work – since some of the words were new to her, she filled in the words that were either too complicated or unknown to her with words she knows. For example, “Praise to the Man”, is now “Praise to the Manatee … Kings shall tightrope and nations severe…” The other song that is just too cute is “I’m trying to be like Jesus”. When she sings the second verse it is “I watch for the day of breakfast, when Jesus will come again…” I must admit, I do like some of the primary songs – the messages are very simple and resonate with me.

Elder Busche has always been special to me because he was called as a general authority during my early “formative” years of activity and as I recall, he was the first general authority from outside the United States. He gave a talk at a singles conference in Vegas that I attended and became one of my favorites.

I think I might have known his story at one time, but I can’t remember anything anymore, so I’ve really enjoyed reading this book. I browse the non-fiction racks once in awhile and choose whatever looks interesting. Sometimes cookbooks, sometimes biographies, sometimes medical books…..anything’s possible.

He’s led a pretty fascinating life—a member of Hitler youth and then as part of the German army during WWII (at the age of 14, he was given a gun and sent to war). He suffered greatly as the war ended. He reports that he began smoking during the war—a very real struggle when he joined the church. Read more »

There is something happening in my ward that I can’t quite wrap my head around.  In fact, I can’t tell if it is past tense or not.

Like many (most?) wards, we have a crazy lady.  She is homeless (by choice, it seems), mentally ill, alcoholic (in recovery for many years), and excommunicated.  Read more »