The waiting may be almost over. Gratitude in order.

We just heard that David's Dad is awake and responding, with no breathing tube, after 10 days in which he was kept in a coma-like state most of the time. After prior complications like swelling in his throat, we were grateful to hear about the success tonight. We are also grateful for the ICU nurses and doctors.

The medical team had first tried to remove the tube for the ventilator while he was awake, then while he was asleep, This time, the medical team switched to a different tube which was not hooked to the ventilator, to allow him to start breathing on his own. He had previously become agitated and combative when he heard the voices of family members, so we were asked to stay away while they woke him up this time. He may have been reacting to difficulty breathing. We believe that we may get to see him tomorrow.

The music I linked when this wait began led to other videos suitable for a time of reflection. Here's another of those beautiful Respeghi "ancient airs and dances" and a piece by Gluck that my Mom plays on the cello. Sometimes I accompany her. I think it must be the "minuet" from Dance of the Blessed Spirits. And what do you know: here's an old recording of Rachmaninov playing another part of Gluck's work. My Dad once heard Rachmaninov in concert at the Salt Lake Tabernacle (renowned for its acoustics, but with uncomfortable seats). Rachmaninov's performance was very theatrical. He entered dramatically in a flowing cape. During one piece, a train could be heard from a few blocks away. Rachmaninov lifted his hands from the keyboard and waited for the train, then signaled the conductor to begin the piece again.

Each video seems to lead to another interesting one. I learned to play la fille aux cheveux de lin on the piano. Mrs. Hayes, my piano teacher, went to a great deal of trouble to track down the music. The sheet music came from France and the paper was very fragile. Here the piece is arranged for violin and piano, with some pretty amazing double stops at the end by Jascha Heifetz.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Hope your Martin Luther King Day is meaningful.

Beautiful music for a day of waiting

My father-in-law's open heart surgery is today. The surgery is expected to take six hours. He has had a blessing and is confident that whatever happens will be according to God's plan.

Here's some light and joyful music from a time when open-heart surgery was not possible, and when people were presented with frequent reminders of the fragility of life - even young life.

Update: The surgery went well - about 6 1/2 hours. David stayed at the hospital with his Mom and brother until the surgery was completed. We returned with his Mom in the evening, but the timing was not very good. Dad was agitated and when he heard his wife's voice. When a patient is just coming out of anesthesia in ICU and has a breathing tube, it is apparently sometimes preferable for him not to be presented with the possibility of trying to communicate with loved ones. It's time when he needs rest.

The nurse says Dad should be able to communicate tomorrow.

Some Progress in the New Year

It was great to see one of our favorite missionaries, back from Europe after plane delays, in church last week. It was also delightful to see members of his family whom we haven't seen for some time and to watch his nieces and nephews singing together in an extraordinarily harmonious group of 17 cousins.

This week, we saw several friends we had missed for a while at our Munch and Mingle after church. Three potluck items in chocolate this week. I was surprised at the popularity of our simple cheese and crackers, given the competition from other tempting offerings. We also took ham and marinated broccoli salad.

We heard great messages yesterday on coping with adversity and on the importance of testimony and consistency in study and prayer. For those thinking about a serious scripture study program this year, The Anchoress has reviewed an interesting aid to study of the New Testament.

In other "studying news", Keira has started listening to the audiobook I gave her for Christmas and remarked that it took her a while to figure out how to listen to it, because of its intellectual depth. David and I are having a somewhat similar experience.

After a difficult day in a trying week, David and I began listening to the unabridged audio of the "7 Habits" a week ago Saturday. We're still slogging toward something resembling New Years Resolutions.

Stephen R. Covey's reading voice is very engaging, and we enjoyed listening to an entire CD straight through. I got the feeling that he was speaking to me, personally. But the book is packed with meaty ideas, and sometimes I wanted to go back and think about some of these ideas before moving on. The unabridged audio would probably be more effective for most people along with, not instead of, the book. Our friend Elias seemed to do well last year studying the CDs alone, without ever having read the book. But he has far more background in theology and psychology than the average person.

Each CD has several clearly identifiable tracks so that you can skim a section of the book before listening (paying particular attention to illustrations, graphs and charts), mark the book while listening or study the book after listening. David and I have different learning styles, and we're going to have to experiment a little to find the best way to study the book together. The CDs provide a handy format for a regular study program lasting a few minutes each session - say, as part of family home evening for several weeks. The unabridged audio is also available as a download. Don't know how well the download would lend itself to group study.

For listening where you can't give your undivided attention or for group study which wouldn't require such a long-term commitment, I would recommend this 3-disc CD set. It was well-produced and personalizes some of the ideas in the book without following it particularly closely. It comes with a little study booklet. It places particular emphasis on issues of interpersonal trust. Part of it is in seminar format, and there are also comments from people other than Covey. There's an audio CD or download in Spanish of about the same length, but I don't know if the content is the same.

I accidentally ran into a couple of quotes from Stephen R. Covey while trying to look up a quote by a French intellectual of yesteryear. The first quote from Covey is directly relevant to the first audio CD we listened to last week, regarding our perceptions and the necessity of putting first things first:

"Until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective."

The second quote is easier to remember:

"Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb."

As this song reminds us, "love isn't someplace that we fall, it's something that we do." Not that the feeling of "falling in love" doesn't have it's place. But love you fall into may not be particularly deep or even healthy. Covey was talking about a different kind of "love - the feeling - ", I think.

My Culture and Politics Blog

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about positive changes I can make for the New Year. I decided that one improvement I could make would be to draw a clearer line between the personal and the cultural/ political - between "Micro" and "Macro". So I'm moving most of my "Macro" blogging thoughts and links to a new page.

I'll make brief comments and links on "Macro" topics on the site you are now looking at, but leave the snark and nitty-gritty details on the new site. My goal is to make the Cotton Corner a nice place for friends to visit. Those who are interested in the controversial stuff can click on the links to the culture and politics page. My first post there is about a new website, "Big Hollywood", which presents some opinions from and about Hollywood which are different from those we usually read about.

My Food Blog

I decided that it was going to become cumbersome to put recipes and such in this blog, so I started a new one just for food and gardening. Here's the recipe for yesterday's Blackeyed Pea Salad.

Happy New Year!

I didn't post anything for Christmas, so I'm going to work backward here.

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS?

Normally, I don't pay much attention to New Years Day, but this morning while David was working on our friends' fence, I heard part of the second hour of Dennis Prager's New Years program. He talked about the power of New Years Resolutions. I usually don't put much stock in typical New Years resolutions, and it was interesting to hear his ideas and those of listeners. He got a surprise call from his Mom, who slyly reinforced the typical stereotype of a Jewish Mother by suggesting that maybe he could resolve to call her more.

Dennis favors setting three resolutions - one each for:

Happiness
Health
Character

Speaking of character development, I sent Our Sacred Honor by William Bennett to Mom for Christmas. She was impressed by how often individuals in the founding generation of our country thought about improving their personal character. Our Country's Founders is an adaptation for young adults.

Back to the subject of New Years Resolutions: Dennis maintains that resolutions are useful even if you may not be able fully keep them. He suggested that all-or-nothing thinking is usually an excuse for doing "NOTHING". Maybe I need to re-assess the usefulness of New Years Resolutions. He and callers also discussed the advantages of keeping a diary or journal, even if all you record is events. I hope I can work the blogging thing in to the "journal-keeping" ideal somehow. Otherwise, I'm still stuck at the stage of notes jotted on calendars.

The audio of today's program isn't up at his website yet, but here's an interesting hour on gratitude in trying circumstances and on how to deal with problems or sadness during the holidays. I heard part of the hour while David was with his Dad at the hospital for an angiogram and found it touching.

Update: Hour One, Hour Two and Hour Three of the New Years broadcast have been posted. Sometimes the holiday broadcasts get repetitious (as they are for radio). I would probably choose Hour Two if I were just going to listen to one of them.

So far, David and I have not done well at establishing any New Years Day traditions, let alone making resolutions. I can't get into the California Okie tradition of blackeyed peas with ham on New Years day. So I'm making blackeyed pea salad with a pound of frozen blackeyed peas, cooked until tender but firm. If you'd like to try it, use a classic 3-bean salad recipe, replacing the sugar in the dressing recipe with honey (measuring a little less than sugar in the recipe, preferably in the cup you used to measure the oil). Replace the green bell peppers in the recipe with deep green, slightly spicy Pasilla (Ancho, Poblano, etc) chiles, and maybe some red bell pepper. It all works together and looks festive. I can't eat much of it, as blackeyed peas tend to give me migraines. I bet the Pasilla chiles, red bell peppers, onions, honey and cider vinegar would also work well with garbanzo beans or even with little canned white or pink beans.

Recipe here.

NEW YEARS EVE - Preoccupied with dogs

New Years Eve, for me, now involves a goal of smug satisfaction that I am not out with unpredictable revelers. But we also must think about the dogs on noisy holidays. We stayed in again for New Years Eve last night, taking care of dogs frightened by the (illegal) fireworks and smatterings of gunfire nearby. Surprisingly, Sparky stayed in the doghouse, even though he usually wants to get in the house and even in the bathtub during fireworks. Maybe that insulation David put in the doghouse makes him feel safe. Dottie was in the garage. Reverse of the last night of fireworks in town (the big championship football game). Sparky started in the garage and ended up in the house. Dottie seemed content when she was in the dog house.

Sparky's hearing isn't what it used to be now, which may make it easier for him to tolerate fireworks than in years past. He once bent the gate in a chain-link fence in order to get into the house during a thunderstorm. He's really showing his age in a lot of ways now. He went to visit Troy and Maggie yesterday, and it was sweet to watch clumsy Troy's delicacy around Sparky, who is not so steady on his feet. In close quarters, excited dogs sometimes knock him over accidentally.

I think that Sparky and Troy are probably about the same weight, but Troy looks bigger because he is a little taller and hold his head high. Sparky, who is part Husky, has a heavy, big-chested sled-pulling build with a furry hump on his back like a grizzly bear. Our neighbor Emma still calls him "bear". Troy's more elegant coat with flowing tail feathers and other fancy touches make him look bigger than Sparky, too. Troy is almost as scared of fireworks as Sparky used to be. Odd to have two big dogs with the same excessive fear. Both Sparky and Troy have very soft undercoats, but Sparky's guard hairs are more wolf-like. There's such a variation in breeds of dogs. Maggie's soft, wavy coat resembles a Cocker Spaniel's even though she looks like a small, black German Shepherd.

CHRISTMAS TO NEW YEARS

Our Christmas day wasn't typical. We took the neighbor's formerly neglected little Chihuahua over to David's parents as a playmate for their Boston Terrier. He immediately knew he was home. We took the little heated house we made for him, where he normally ate, so he would get the idea that he was not being abandoned again. He had his first meal there inside the familiar little house. Soon, David's Mom was talking baby talk to him and he was seeking love from David's Dad. Previously, it had taken him quite a while to warm up to men, probably due to abuse earlier in his life. He was promptly named "Radar" for his huge ears (relative to the tiny rest of him). We also saw Debbie, Judy, Dan and Aunt Helen and passed out pillows.

Radar makes their rambunctious little Boston Terrier, Prissy, look huge. Prissy showed him how to navigate the ramp into the garden. He and Prissy got along well until a couple of days ago when he scolded her for something, causing her to temporarily avoid him. It's probably a good thing that he has the spunk to hold his own with her. Reports are that they now get along pretty well, though Prissy wants to eat Radar's dinner and hers, too. He's gaining weight and doesn't look so much like a death-camp survivor. Our inexperienced neighbors were well-intentioned when they took him in but were only feeding him once a day and expressed their frustration at trying to take care of him. They were thinking about taking him to the ASPCA. He's reportedly up to three hefty meals a day now and looking much better.

The Elders spent much of the day with us on Christmas, getting calls from home at our house. We had Ken, Suzy and Berta over for lunch and Marcela and Pauline for dinner. Thank goodness for frozen roll dough. I even got in a short nap while the Elders were watching their yearly G-rated video with the others before dinner.

Paula got baptized Sunday. I hemmed up her dress, hanging a coople of David's fishing weights inside the hem at the side seams in little cloth packets (didn't have any drapery weights) so that the skirt wouldn't float up. David thoroughly cleaned the font Saturday, discovering years of dirt on top of the mirror hanging above the water. It was a nice baptism.