Grandpa Smith from the Belgian Front, World War 1

Elizabeth found a letter from Grandpa to his father in Mom's basement. When we think that we have it rough, it may be time to read through it again. This is one of Elizabeth's favorite parts of the letter:

I am happy to say that peace seems to have come. I was slightly wounded in the right arm in the offensive we took part in on the Belgian front. I felt happy to be alive and safe and I look forward to coming home.

My sympathy goes out to those who will never go home and for those who expect to see friends and relatives who will never come back. I have come to the conclusion that life is a precious gift and is worth living, no matter what the difficulty, but we are so helpless to save it or preserve it that it is not worth while to consider our health and happiness and comfort about that of others. It is worth while sometimes to die, if death will serve to help others. When we think too much of our comfort we expose ourselves to more danger by disintegration than we do when we make a brave fight and face every danger and exposure.

I hope I come home from this war more of a man then I went into it. If I don't I'll feel that I have not played my part.

-Calvin S. Smith, in a letter to his father written from the Belgian Front, late 1918

This letter does not come close to reflecting all the hardships he faced. I know that he was once shot in the back and bit into the bullet in his "bully beef", the corned beef strapped to his back in a little frying pan. He carried shrapnel in his body until he died.

Things are heating up now

We got a surprise VIP conference phone call a couple of days ago from Sacramento. It went much better than the more bureaucratic call we got on Monday. Not confident the bigwigs are really able to civilize their organization, though. Challenging illegal activities within a State agency can be a wild ride full of inanities. And it's a whole lot of work. But on to the rest of life.

The weather has turned hotter. Forecasts are for around 106 to 107 degrees for a few days. It only goes below room temperature for a few hours in the early morning. So that's the time you want to be up for baking, laundry, dishwashing, etc.

I've put up two recipes from my high school cooking teacher. Tomato Flowers (for all the tomatoes we have coming on right now). No cooking required. We also have fruit on the trees. So even though it requires heating up the oven, I've posted a recipe for Fruit Cobbler. Have to check the weather report before baking, then finish before about 6:30 a.m. with the windows open and the exhaust fans going. Then morning rounds to check on the garden and feed the critters before it gets too hot.

We've had lots of dog hair in the house with the hot weather. There was dog hair on the floor and a pile of paperwork on the table when we had an emergency overnight guest last night (locked out of her apartment). Embarrassing. Oh, well. I guess it's sort of embarrassing to be locked out of your apartment, too.

Interesting short history of imperialism in China linked here.

The Patience of Hope

The title of this post is from Charles Wesley's hymn, Come Let Us Anew. "The Patience of Hope and the Labor of Love" are both important for our success, I think. We've been grappling more with the "Patience of Hope" part of this phrase recently.

The health problems among family and friends are less dramatic now. Debbie's husband is out surgery but still at risk. Cousin Kim's son took a shower recently for the first time after nearly dying of swine flu. Things are looking up for the branch members who were recently so ill. We had a lot of people at the "Munch and Mingle" Sunday.

We've been dealing with maddening bureaucracy pretty steadily for the last couple of weeks. But we've also gotten some help from people who know what they're doing. The kinds of bureaucratic laziness, aggressiveness and arrogance we have encountered are predictable. Especially in California at this time. But things are looking somewhat more positive. The elders gave David a blessing not long ago, and he now seems to have an increased ability to bounce back after encounters with hostile bureaucracy. His brother has retired and is relieved to have largely put similar problems behind him. He's coming to the Valley to pick up some corn and watermelons.

In other family news, "the other Carolyn" has produced a wonderful (according to Mom) retrospective program on the history of Ogden and the old Fox Egyptian theater. I didn't know she was involved in that sort of thing. Our Swiss friends Yvonne and Attila have a new granddaughter.

A couple of weeks ago in church, while the Stake Presidenty was visiting, we heard a a message on hope which stuck with me. Neal A. Maxwell in 1994:

. . . In the geometry of restored theology, hope has a greater circumference than faith. If faith increases, the perimeter of hope stretches correspondingly.

Just as doubt, despair, and desensitization go together, so do faith, hope, and charity. The latter, however, must be carefully and constantly nurtured, whereas despair, like dandelions, needs so little encouragement to sprout and spread. Despair comes so naturally to the natural man!

And again in 1998, during the time he was undergoing treatments for cancer:

Life’s disappointments often represent the debris of our failed, proximate hopes. Instead, however, I speak of the crucial need for ultimate hope.

Ultimate hope is a different matter. It is tied to Jesus and the blessings of the great Atonement, blessings resulting in the universal Resurrection and the precious opportunity provided thereby for us to practice emancipating repentance, making possible what the scriptures call “a perfect brightness of hope”

This week, we heard a message from the scriptures reminding us that sometimes we must be willing to leave behind some material things (and by analogy, misplaced emotional attachments, assumptions about the future and false hopes) in order to save our emotional, temporal and/or spiritual lives, We also had a great reminder that sometimes we should try prayers during which we only express thanks. Gratitude may be the antidote to grumpiness.

Good things to remember right now - a correct perspective on hope, with an emphasis on patience, and gratitude.

The weather has been fairly moderate for July here. I'm putting up some new tomato information and recipes, some with short cooking lessons, here.

There are posts on the 4th of July plus a week here and the "Glorious Revolution" more than 300 years ago in England here, if you're interested.

I discovered today which dog had been chewing the cord to the vacuum cleaner into short chunks. It's Maggie. She was scolded, given a lecture by David, then re-directed. So far, no recividism. Old Dottie today got some extra love for being such a perfect embodiment of patient hope - sitting quietly, looking up into my eyes with a steady gaze, waiting to be petted. Endearing.

Happy Independence Day

The "safe and sane" fireworks sales have been going on for a few days. "Free vacation package with every $300 purchase". Wow. And people have also been getting some fireworks which are not so "safe and sane", as usual for our rural area. If you're going to have a party, might as well make some noise.

Our two biggest dogs, Sparky and Troy, are the most afraid of fireworks. But Sparky's starting to lose his hearing. He came in Thursday night but stayed out last night. He'll probably need to come in again tonight. Troy gets frantic at the first booms. He doesn't try to get in the bathtub like Sparky used to do, though.

We've been dealing with ennervating heat and even more ennervating bureaucracy this week. Independence starts to sound good.

And so many of our friends and family have had health and personal challenges in the last two or three of weeks. In our little church branch, we haven't really had enough people to rally 'round those with emergencies. But we've done a lot of tag-teaming. Time to take a break to observe the 4th of July.

I've put up a Fourth of July post on history (good links on Lincoln and the Founders), also touching on current political themes, here.

Recipes and garden updates are here. Lots of tomatoes and squash in the garden right now. We've got Santa Rosa and Burgundy plums, and the July Elberta peaches are coming on. Even with all the problems in life, there remain a lot of things to celebrate. Have a great Fourth.

Medical Miracles

One of our friends nearly died this week. Her mother, a nurse, did not expect her to survive her surgery at Stanford after a part of her intestines died. Sounds similar to something my grandmother and one of my uncles died from. But she pulled through. Techniques for this surgery may be getting better. She still has a blood clot in her lung.

She came home today (a painful trip) and looks pretty good, considering. We are so happy for her and for her family, especially her husband and her kids

We had some anxious times as David's dad recovered from
open heart surgery earlier this year. His recovery was a really long haul, and they say it will be a year before he's fully back to normal. He's doing much better now, and got through out-patient knee surgery pretty well recently. Interesting descriptions of open heart surgery and other medical miracles here.

Zen and the art of kitty (or doggie) maintenance

As noted in the post below, our friend Brandy (who has now identified herself in the comments) started something. She planned and successfully completed a "Silent Saturday" devotional exercise. After she announced her plan, I read, considered and eventually linked this moving post by Sissy Willis, who misses her treasured cat, Baby Face. Sissy does a lot of especially fine Cat Blogging, and she was also interested in certain philosophical aspects of Brandy's "Silent Saturday" exercise. She responded in the comments. One thing led to another, and she expressed interest in Brandy's account of her Silent Saturday which connected Zen and her experiences with her cats.

Now Brandy has posted on The Zen of Kitties. One thing she wrote about was how the routine of caring for her kitties kept her focused on the present. Her kitties really depend on her. A bond of love develops. When I lived alone in Southern California, I couldn't keep a pet in the house, but I cared for a partly-wild "outside kitty". I was surprised how hard I took it when she died quite suddenly. I felt sort of lost without that daily connection.

Of course, since then we've had other treasured cats and dogs. Plus a banty hen, Henrietta Heartley, once the fearless, bossy companion of big, intimidating Sparky, who is a Husky/Black Lab mix. He's the only one of our dogs whose breeding "pedigree" we know. He was abandoned by our neighbor, who was cruel to his children and his dogs, perhaps due to meth addiction. All of our other animals have just adopted us.

We don't have a chicken any more. The first cat who adopted us in town, Wild Panther Mama, is gone. She was truly wild. Her sweet babies, Cocoa and Chocolate, are gone. Fluffy, the sort of dim boy kitty we thought was a girl kitty, is gone. So is Speedy, who retrieved lifesavers. Peter seems to have chosen to live full-time with his second human family. Charlie and Cloudy were just too rough. Now we have Darla and Thomas, who are "people cats", and Charlie, Brewster and Cloudy, who each have their own stringent rules for human involvement. But they all still need us.

David still thinks about his little princess dog Sula all the time. The little stray puppy in our side yard right now reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Troy the Giant Dog reminds him of Sula and her big, brown eyes. Lucky reminds him of Sula and Snickers. Maggie reminds him of Snickers. Dottie reminds him of Snickers. And we still have Sparky, from the time when we had Sula and Snickers. But he's showing his age. Even though our first two special dogs are gone, they're really still sort of with us.

As with Brandy and her cats, the routine of caring for our animals often helps keep us going and focused on the present when things get tough. But, as with Brandy, cats and dogs help us in other ways, too. When we have more than one, they have their own little kittie and doggie dramas, reminding us not to take our own dramas so seriously. They're fun to play with, snuggle and just watch. We learn to love them all. Even the ones who don't really seem to like us very much are endearing. The ones who really show their love for us - all of the dogs and about half of the cats - are really special.

Brandy reminded us about the benefits of adopting a cat. I like to see people adopt two kitties if they're young, so they can learn to express their "cat nature" appropriately. Here's Ben Stein on dogs.

Silence or Sound

One of our friends decided to set aside a "Silent Saturday" as a devotional exercise aimed at helping her focus on God and on the present (rather than the past or future). She reported that it was a great success.

After she announced that she was preparing for this special day, I ran across a post by a Catholic blogger called, "The Sounds of Silence." This got me thinking about whether there were some types of music which had an effect on us which was similar in some respects to the effects of purposeful silence.

She wrote about, and linked, three pieces of music which broke her heart - good for times when we need a good cry. The first was Mozart's Ave verum corpus. The video follows the score. I was surprised that I could anticipate both the Soprano and Alto parts. Like I had sung it before. Maybe I have. But not in Latin. The second on her list is Ave Maria. This one is beautiful, but probably means more to the average observant Catholic than to me. The third I linked in an update to my Memorial Day post. There's another moving video at the end of this post. Can some music help us resolve our feelings about the past and help move us into the present with more awareness?

In addition to music which makes me weep, I have sometimes had a feeling of intense absorption in the present when practicing certain pieces by Beethoven and a few other composers. I imagine that someone practicing this Bach cello prelude could have a similar intense feeling of being involved in the music. But listening to it reminds me of math and logic somehow. In a very good way.

It has an entirely different effect on me than the achingly beautiful Arioso. I remember as a small child sitting under the piano and becoming absorbed in the music as my mother played this piece on the cello. I later accompanied her, and it continued to have the same effect on me. Another Bach piece which also sometimes brings me to tears (maybe of gratitude - certainly not of sadness) is Air on the G String. This piece has apparently had a lot of influence on other composers. But analysis takes away a little of its magic for me.

A lesser-known cello piece in which I became absorbed as a child is Nina, The melody is very old. We thought was written by Pergolesi, but it is now attributed to Ciampi. I didn't know when I was a little girl that originally, this was a song. The singer becomes a painter singing to his model, who has been sleeping, perhaps for 3 days.

There is other music which is wonderful, but which can have a more distracting quality. Like this interesting guitar/cello duo. It reminds me of many jazz violin pieces. Has its over-ambitious moments, but I think Jeanine would find it interesting. Probably one of the more unusual musical duos in Bozeman, Montana.

I think that there are times for silence, but also times when carefully selected music can help us focus on the present. And there are times when it's nice to have music which is a little more distracting. But most of us distract ourselves too much from the present moment with music, talk, etc.

I remember being surprised as a pre-teen at how much better I felt about housework when I was listening to the Norman Luboff Choir (men only) singing "Songs of the Sea" (sample !16, "Homeward Bound") and other work songs. But often we work to music or talk (on TV, radio, etc.) which was not invented as an accompaniment to work. It may tend to take us out of the present moment. And our friend reports that during her Silent Saturday, cleaning gave he a feeling of being closer to God. I don't think the Norman Luboff Choir did that for me. And some of the songs certainly didn't.

One person commenting on her post said that she had a hard time finding moments of silence even on the Sabbath. That reminded me of the careful preparations for the Sabbath in traditional Jewish communities. Dennis Prager has described feelings of being completely removed from the cares of the world during the Sabbath and focused on God and the people around him. Maybe we need to do more preparation for these special days.

I once read, then lost, a book by a man who went from being an agnostic academic type to being the president of the London Temple. Don't even remember his name. But he emphasized that we should strive to make our experiences in life genuine (and this was before video games became a big thing). He suggested that if we were listening to music, preferably live, we should give it our full attention. If we were eating, we should give that our full attention, etc. I believe that he connected this type of focus with gratitude. And with making the best choices about how to spend our time.

There are so many things in our world today which can absorb our attention. It's wonderful to remember to be silent from time to time so we can just experience life, observe and listen. And even to plan for times of silence, as our friend did. I'm also going to focus on "staying the present" more often. This may require a few adjustments in my thinking.