Happy Birthday, Joseph!

"[The Prophet Joseph Smith] loved learning. He loved knowledge for its righteous power. Through the tribulations which had surrounded him from the day when first he made known to a skeptical world his communion with the heavens, he had been ever advancing in the acquisition of intelligence. The Lord had commanded him to study, and he was obeying. … His mind, quickened by the Holy Spirit, grasped with readiness all true principles, and one by one he mastered these branches and became in them a teacher."

--George Q. Cannon

This inspired me Sunday. What knowledge am I pursuing? Do I love the getting of wisdom? There is more to learn than there is time to study, of this I am certain. Surely the Lord will guide our pursuits, if we seek his input.

So, resolved; I will seek more earnestly to know how I should spend my time in learning.

What Makes It Feel Like Christmas?

You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas!

I'm not sure where I come down on the epic question of holiday aesthetics. Which is more sublime, more wondrous? The Elvis version or the Porky Pig version? I guess you could say . . . I am of two minds about it!

The inestimable Mrs. L asked in Family Home Evening before December started, "What makes it feel like Christmas?" She wanted us to participate in making it feel more like the holiday, so the Spirit could surround us. The answers were enlightening.

Singing Christmas songs! Which we've been doing every night after reading a loop from Mrs. L's Christmas advent paper chain.

Going caroling! Which we are going to go do as soon as number one daughter gets home from BYU.

Making Cookies, decorating the tree. Snowy weather was one suggestion, but not one I have any control over. Putting up our outside lights. One thing that makes it feel like Christmas is the crush of events, concerts, and school functions that swamps our calendar, which while tiring, is very, very rewarding.

One thing I love is hearing Christmas songs. The sappy holiday favorites. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas". Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". The radio station that signal's a surrender to middle age, Lite-FM 101.9 , switches its programming to all holiday favorites after Thanksgiving. And I love it.

Well, in small doses anyway. I realized after hearing George Michael sing "Last Christmas" for the third time in one day that 101.9 only has about three or four hours of Christmas Songs, so the likelihood of repeats is depressingly high. So it doesn't take too long before I start to switch away from the station when one of the sappier repeats rolls by.

But not so for The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Versus the Red Baron". I could listen to that on a loop for at least two or three days. Add Thurl Ravenscroft's excellent baritone singing about bad bananas and arsenic sauce in "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch", that is holidays, baby! What can I say? I love cartoons.

Though I have noticed a distinct and disheartening lack of The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" on that station. Maybe it's just a little too alternative? Never fear, the internets holds everything in its infinite grasp, you can listen to it here!

But the thing that makes it feel the most like holidays? My family. I love having them around. Seeing them, talking to them, playing with them.

ahem


Kissing them!

Make the holidays happy!

The "Friend" fiend, and Come What May

First, a completely un-related aside, a warning to my daughter; avoid guys with this vibe like the plague!



I missed Elder Wirthlin's final talk, Come What May, and Love It. Ironically, I was at the emergency room, waiting for someone to stitch the gash in my youngest son's leg. My wife told me about the talk on the phone, and I wondered if now (well, I mean, then I was wondering), if now was really the time to encourage me to try to find the positive side of things...you know, in the middle of the blood, and the gauze, and the anti-biotics and stuff.

Annddd it turns out the answer is YES, that is exactly the time! There is always something to be grateful for. And finding a way to be grateful in a time of adversity, for me, means I can find a way to be happy. Instead of bitter, frustrated, angry. Happy is a good goal.

So it's winter, and lucky us, it snowed! I woke up this morning, and it was snowing! Not sticking to the road, but snowy, blowy, whirly snowing! The pre-dawn pinky orange on the horizon was amazing in the wispy snowy clouds. During the month of December, the Elders Quorum is in charge of clearing the sidewalks. So I left about 25 minutes early for my early meeting, so I could clear the walks.

Annddd about 100 yards shy of the top of that really high hill on Paradise Road...cough, sputter, wheeze, chug...my awesome 1983 classic car ran out of gas.

Out of gas!?! How is this possible? I drive it 3 miles a day, from home to seminary to the train station. Oh wait...I drove it to work a couple of weeks ago. And to harp lessons. Ah, 278 miles. Yeah, I'm out of gas.

Sigh.

So what did I love about that? I had put on a second coat this morning. I was only 1.5, maybe 2 miles from the church. It had stopped snowing. Because I left early, I knew I would still get there about in time for my meeting.

I called a friend that I knew would leaving about then for the meeting with me, and asked him if he had a gas can he could bring. He's the kind of friend who laughs at me when something funnily misfortunate happens, and said of course (snicker) I can bring some gas (giggle).

It is, I think, a good gift. The ability to instantly know exactly what to do next, and be able to just start slogging away at it. And away I slogged.

Good time to have a beard. Like a built-in scarf. The only things that got cold were my ears, my nose, and my bald spot.

I got to my meeting about six minutes late, but one of the other attendees drove out the last 200 yards to meet me. Everyone else was out shoveling the walks, and right as I arrived, my friend (and he didn't say, "HA-ha!" even once) drove me back to retrieve my classic ride.

It was definitely a "Come What May, and Love It" kind of morning.

What silver linings have you found? Do you ever look at a problem long enough, that you realize it's actually a mostly silver cloud, with just this little dark section here in the middle? I think most of our problems are like that. Not really mostly problems at all, but blessings disguised or clouded by irritation.

Two months ago, we got an audit letter from the IRS. That was definitely not a "Come What May and Love It" morning. Well, not at first. I did my slogging thing, dug out the records it asked for, began making a pile of what I would need to bring to the audit. Had I missed something? Were we in trouble?

And I found something that horrified me. Not about the audit year (2006), we were absolutely righteous about that. But in 2007, I participated in another NIH Vaccine Study (H5V1 Bird Flu), and had completely forgotten to claim the income on my taxes for that year. And the day I was doing my slogging? October 15th.

The absolute final deadline for filing a correction to 2007's income taxes. So. Completely unnecessary (and very stressful and time consuming) audit of 2006. But it pointed out to me, on the last day I could fix it without penalties, a stupid mistake I made months ago. We owed another couple of 100 bucks in taxes. I got that check out post-haste, and was grateful.

I am sure most troubles arrive with a not-so-clear indication of how they can also be blessings. But I am also sure that with the right frame of mind and heart, we can see them more clearly. Today, I am thankful for feet to walk, a coat to stay warm, friends to ferry me gas, who pitched in and helped shovel snow.

Love your Life!

Potato Corn Fritters!

What to do, two days after Thanksgiving? The awesome homemade rolls are gone. The super-yummy artichoke/mushroom stuffing is gone. Tons of potatoes, a whole bowl of corn...

Fritters!

Put a bunch of mashed potatoes and some corn in a bowl. Crack two or three raw eggs into it, and stir with a fork. You should have something that is the consistancy of ready-to-serve oatmeal.

Melt a pat (maybe 1/2 a tablespoon) of butter in a hot pan, and put forkfuls of fritter batter in the butter to fry.



Carefully flatten the forkfuls out with a spatula (so you don't scrape the pan!). Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. When they start to look brown at the edges, flip them.



I love my huge crepe-flipping spatula, but something smaller works better. Don't worry, the first several will get all scrunched up, and break when you flip them. It's not an art project, just frying potatoes; if one gets mangled, just cover it with more cheese.

Sprinkle with a little parmesan, a little cheddar.



What do you think kids?

Tam Sawyer Hucksterism or Entrepreneurial Spirit?

This is my middle daughter, industriously raking leaves.

No, seriously. Yesterday was our yard-work day, we wanted the leaves up so the City could take them all away today.

The Troop 922 Spaghetti Supper fundraiser was a week ago. With two sons in Scouts, I have a keen interest in the raising of funds; so this supper, the only fundraising the Troop does, lasts us all year. We have a service auction that raises about as much as the ticket sales. It was with great surprise I saw that my daughter had bid on one of the Scouts!

She spent her own money to secure the services of a hard-working young man for "leaf raking".

Genius! My little girl has learned how to sub-contract. She confided in me that her plan was to sit on the rocking chair, drink hot chocolate, and watch.

Our "guest worker" set a good pace. That's him in the blue hoody, helping our middle son.



The Landbecks present and "working" needed occasional goads to stay on task. You can hide, but you can't run!



Here, our oldest son used a leaf vacuum to get some of the leaves off of the bushes out front. As he empties the bag, you see our pile of full bags growing in the background.



Final tally was nearly 50 bags! I had no idea it would take so many. 3 hours of (mostly) hard work.

I'm just totally impressed with my daughter's entrepreneurial spirit. Good for her!

One True Sentence

Sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.
- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Since a teenager, I always loved to write. I loved doing many other things, also, (too often, perhaps, the doing of nothing...), but I relish the pure joy of creating with text.

Many years have passed since I was a teen. I am busy in ways I never imagined then.

Life is so busy.
Aw-full, dread-full, delight-full.
It's overflowing.

I have been working on one true sentence. I want to capture the thing I feel every morning when I wake up.

It is Thanksgiving! I wake up surrounded by beauty and love, a bounty of blessings. This is the life I want, have wanted since I began speculating about my future.

But with that recognition of bounty, comes great worry. The danger they face, from passing physical harm, the consequences of their own bad choices. Decades ago, I had an amazing intro to philosophy class at BYU, taught by Chauncey Riddle. It was a pleasure to listen to him talk about how we know things, why we do things. The same year I had his class, I caught a re-broadcast of his talk on fear, given as a BYU Devotional in July of 1986.

Hmm. I have been thinking often of my old BYU professors. Funny what having a daughter in college does.

But his talk on fear has informed my adult life. He talked of the two kinds of fear; fear that comes from ignorance (where we fear what is not dangerous because we do not understand it), and fear of consequence (which can motivate us to avoid danger or aggressively seek action). Go read it when you have time, it is very thought-provoking.

I am thinking of his talk today because of the swirl of emotions I feel whenever I ponder how fortunate I am.

I awake the same every day; grateful, and afraid.

Hope everyone has a a wonderful thanksgiving day, full of cheer as well as sober reflection.

There's This Thing...

...that we do as parents. We love to cheer our kids up. We love to suprise them, make them happy. We tickle them, we hug them, we compliment them, cheer them on, point out the silver lining, the bright side, the up side, the sun coming out tomorrow.

"You can do it!"

So with my kids, we have an arrangement. I will ask them, "Guess what?" and when they say, "What?" I say, "I love you!" Sometimes, they stretch out the pause before they say, "What?" but I am very patient, and very persistant. What's more annoying than a 4-year old asking, "Why?" over and over? Your Dad asking, "Guess what?" over and over. And over.

Sometimes, occasionally (usually when my wife, isn't listening), I'll mix it up with a "Chicken Butt!" answer. But the kids know the drill. I love them, and like to tell them.

Now, if they are super grumpy, and they test me, refusing to answer, refusing to make eye contact, I will envelope them in a big hug, and ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you?" Kids, ever given to their dramatic flair, insist they are only feeling zero, or maybe one. So I insist that I must hug them, with big Daddy squeezy hugs until they are happier. Often with sound effects, like how Nacho Libre signs off his letters.

Hug! Hug!

Leetle Hug!

Squeeze!

Beeg Hug!

"Now how happy are you?" Continue until their number goes up, or they laugh. Note, though; teenagers are very protective of their angst, and will refuse to admit they are happier, even once they are struggling not to laugh.

So a few weeks ago, my youngest was sad about something. I asked him, "Hey! Guess what?"

Sullenly, without meeting my eyes, he said, "What!?"

"I love you!"

He gave the best exasperated shrug. "That's not news!"

Hee!

Squeeze your kids today.