greaterthansparrows

(This was my column for the Nauvoo Times this morning...) Our bishop is not your ordinary person serving in that calling.   This is his third stint; he was  bishop to a Young Single Adults Ward way back when, and then he served as bishop in the ward next to ours in the mid-90’s.   That wasn’t our ward then because of an earlier ward division, and he’s in our ward now because of later boundary changes—he never moved.   So some of the people in the ward have had him as bishop before, most haven’t.   But he’s been known to pretty much everyone for years. That’s because of who he is.   He’s the one who always led the fifty-milers, even when he wasn’t serving in the scouts.   If someone starts a story with, “I was on a Luther hike…,” smiles will start all around and heads will nod.   He has retired twice, once as a sergeant major after twenty years in the army (Special Forces) and then again from teaching second grade at Fort Lewis. ...

This is the place where we belong, but it's cold here.  Winter isn't even at its worst. This is an old house.  We're trying to figure out how to cut down the heat loss.  We bought draft stops for the front and back door, and put weatherstripping on the vertical line of the back door.  We knew we would have to deal with that, as we could see daylight under and up and down it in summertime.  The draft there is solved. We've put plastic film in the windows of our bedroom and the entry vestibule.  I don't think it helps a whole lot, but it helps a little.  The study will be done too, and the window behind the fridge in the corner of the nook is cold, but that's the least accessible piece of glass in the house right now, so I don't know if we'll attack it or not. The big, long windows in the living room (116 inches) and the kitchen (54 inches) are newer vinyl slider windows, and triple paned.  (They're also the only one with screens.)  There...

Our lesson this week was on the book of Psalms.  That's huge enough by itself, if you don't assume that the next lesson after 2 Samuel is 1 Kings, like I did, and only get out the teacher materials on Sunday because I was busy on Thursday and Friday.  The lesson does not try to cover all the Psalms, but the manual suggests that each student browse and choose fifteen (why that number? don't know), including at least some of the following: 22 ,  51 , 119 , 122 , or 137 .  It was kind of intimidating. There is a supplemental section about the differences between our cultural patterns.  "The Oriental paints a scene whose total effect is true, but the details may be inaccurate; the Occidental tends to draw diagrams accurate in detail."  It uses the example of the parable of the mustard seed--it is not actually the very tiniest seed on earth, nor is the plant the very greatest.  Yet, speaking of imagery rather than concrete botany, the contrast is astonish...

When we left for Utah, our Christmas cactus was budding, for the first time in a few years, and we hoped that we wouldn't miss the blooms.  No fear, they were just ready to open when we walked back into our home several days later.  Most of the blossoms were facing into the light of the window, so we rotated it out. We had left a paper bag with some last pears in it on the porch to be picked up by a friend, who completely forgot.  They were still there, patiently waiting, when we came home.  A few last windfalls were inside, carefully set out, that I judged would ripen and still be good in the amount of time we would be gone. So we had cactus blooms and pears to enjoy. Oh, those pears are good!  When they're ripe, the flavor is so intense that I understand why my father disdains Bartletts.  But when conditions aren't right ( here ) and you don't know better, you can be disappointed in the result.  Next year, I will know a little better how lo...

[I found that this had not been finished and posted when I changed my pic.  Woops; done now.] There's a new picture on my page, the old one was out in front of a house where I don't live anymore.  It seemed like a good time to put a new me up before the world. I had a birthday, and it didn't just make a year older, it put me in a new decade.  I asked a dear friend of mine to use my camera and take a photo after class that day--so this is me at exactly 60 years of age. We went out for dinner on the actual day, and did the second half of our plans on the following day:  we went to see The Wizard of Oz in its new release, and we saw it in IMAX 3-D.  It was quite an adventure to watch that beloved classic in that format, the detail is gorgeous.  The lollipop shrubs in Munchkinland, for example, and the poppy field.  You know the scene where Dorothy and the Scarecrow come to the orchard where the trees are angry at them for picking their apples? ...

We got home Sunday night, with a two-hour adjustment, with Daylight Savings Time going off and coming back from the mountain time zone.  In spring, those two would cancel out.  In fall, it meant that the clock said ten p.m. and it felt like midnight. We were utterly happy, though, it was a wonderful trip.  We missed a big wind storm on Saturday, where 140, 000 people were without power, but mostly north.  Very few lost their power in Tacoma, and all was well when we arrived home.  The last leaves are gone on the huge front tree, and I suspect the fellow over the fence came and raked one more time, because it's hard to believe that all the leaves inside the front hedge-and-fence boundary were whisked away by the winds.  Just before we left, the man who lives in his van in the vacant lot next door--by permission as security presence--mowed our grass when he was mowing over there.  (I started to say, our lawn, then realized that overstates the state of ...