Okay, so more bullets

• I have just now come back from a walk. I knew it was cold when I went out. But tell me how it is possible for the wind to blow in my face no matter which direction I walked.

• I have looked at about a dozen pictures of the devastated city of Christchurch in New Zealand. As the Prime Minister said, it is heartbreaking. Thank goodness for people who step up and search for those trapped in the rubble of fallen buildings.

• Did that woman fly on my Delta flight from Salt Lake holding her dog on her lap? I can't tell because she was carrying it through the double doors and down the escalator at the Boise airport, but here's the thing: I didn't hear a peep out of it. This is not an argument for dogs as people now consider them. That is, their children.

• Pennsylvania is just not a bad place to live. I should know. I visited there last week. Trees, hills, history, a great university, and some wonderful people.

I Love My Country

Freedom. That's what they want. It's what everyone wants.

Today I heard a man speaking via skype to Lisa Mullens of NPR's The World. He is Iranian, opposes his country's oppressive government, and says America needs to know that not all Iranians hate America.

Yes, that is what his government wants people to think, whether they're in Iran or the US or Egypt or wherever. But those news pictures we see of masses of people holding hate America signs--they do not represent all the people in Iran, he says.

I am glad to know it. Very glad.

Iran's government called today's events in Egypt (Mubarak finally stepped down) a victory for Islam, a blow against America and its Satanic . . . whatever, the beginnings of another Islamic republic.

The man I heard on the radio says that is not how the people of Iran feel. They know better. They see it as the Egyptian people doing whatever they must to make their voices heard.

He will go out Monday to demonstrate against the government in Iran, although he knows he could be beaten (again) or put in jail or shot. He says he must put down his fears and go out because he wants freedom, for himself and for his country. I doubt the demonstration will be as large or as long as the one in Egypt. But I hope for him, for the others like him.

Even talking on skype was risky for him. He used a false name and could not speak very long. But the people of Iran have been inspired by Egypt and Tunisia, and they want freedom. So they will take the risks.

Do I need to say how thankful I am for freedom? for America?

This Is About My Friend Merrilyn . . . and something about her dad, too

Merrilyn Green was my first student when I taught voice and vocal technique. She was a high school kid, Middleton High, and she worked for the kitchen and dining service at Caldwell Memorial Hospital.

One day a week she would drive the few blocks from the hospital to my house on West Hazel and we'd work on music. She had a good voice, just needed to learn how to use it--and to trust me that I knew what she needed to do.

Merrilyn grew up, went to Ricks College, got her RN, and invited me to come over to Rexburg for her graduation. I went.

When she married Mike Jefferies, I sang at the reception.

Mike was in the military, so they traveled, lived in NY and Alaska, and I don't know where else, eventually coming back to Middleton, where they built themselves a lovely home.

I attended the reception of their oldest son, Jeff there. (I know. That means he's Jeff Jefferies.) That's quite several years ago.

Soon after Wayne died, Merrilyn came and got me and we went down to Women's Conference 2003.

Last year I went out to Middleton to the reception of her daughter . . . name has slipped my mind. And also last year I went down to bountiful to the wedding of her daughter, Sarah.

In between, I helped Merrilyn (only a little) raise money so she could go to Zambia and work with Mothers Without Borders. I have worked with Mike and Merrilyn on their stake musical productions, have met most of her children, got to know her daughter Jenny quite well by working with her on her singing parts on the musicals.

I have had dinner at their house, attended their ward a time or two, got to know Mike's Mom while she lived there with her ever-progressing Alzheimer's disease. Merrilyn was always very good and kind to her. For me it was inspiring to see how she cared for "Mom."

Beyond that, I have somehow managed never to go on the motorcycle ride Merrilyn has wanted to take me on for about four years now. Actually, I sort of have wanted to go. Sort of.

Yes, she has a motorcycle. A few years ago she and Mike and a couple of friends took a motorcycle tour of the western part of the US, stopping at several LDS temples, which was their plan.

I don't know where all she has worked as a nurse, but for the last many years she has been the school nurse in the Middleton School District. She just retired last year. She'll be 60 December of this year but looks 40. Mike is probably 63 or 65 and looks 62. It's true.

So now she and Mike are going on a mission to Zimbabwe. They leave in less than two weeks. I saw her last week and told her I was happy for them but that I would miss her. She and Mike both told me to come with them. This was actually before I said I would miss her.

I also told her I had recently seen her mom and dad.

This is the part about her dad.

I told Merrilyn her folks looked good. She agreed, then told me her dad, at 91, has a job. I said Wow, what is it? She said, "He's a driver for Hertz rental cars." I think I said Wow again. And I meant it. She said, "Last week he went up to Hailey and drove a car down for them. That's what he does."

I think Merrilyn's like that. She'll probably have a job when she's 91.

February Bullets - Random

• My poinsettia is looking sparser and sparser. I believe death is near. Makes sense, I guess. I've had it, loved it, cared for it since early December. The diefenbachus plant Jan gave me is long gone. That one I killed or at least let die. I warned her.
  
• Sometimes I want a dog. Not enough to get one.
  
• Egypt: the whole thing frightens me. If Mubarak goes will all be well? My sense is that it will never be all well again. Who knows?
• This from Stephen King: "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
• Speaking of dogs, Steph's poodle, Rose, is now Lowell Elementary's reading dog. Go here: stephprojectdog.blogspot.com
  
• I said this was random.

Longfellow

1. You can find anything on line, even Longfellow's poems
2. You, my reader, do not have to read the poem, but you knew that
3. You don't have to read this post, either, and you knew that
4. When I was in England with my sister Janeen--tour bus, I don't recommend it--we came to the birthplace of William Wordsworth. Some in the tour group--yes, they were American--believed we were visiting Longfellow's birthplace, kept calling him Wordsworth Longfellow. What do you think of that?
5. There's a story behind my posting the poem
6. Here it is

I've been puttering about the house this morning, repeating in my head what I remember of this poem.

When I was very young, maybe eight or nine, my mother handed me her book of Longfellow poems and pointed to the Psalm of Life. "Memorize that," she said. Truthfully, I can't remember why or what she said exactly, but that is the poem she challenged me to memorize.

Something sticks in my head about me saying something sort of deep and heavy (theologically or philosophically; deep and heavy for a child), so she handed me the poem.

It may be she just wanted to keep me busy for a while.

Of course, I memorized it.

I remember reciting it at school in front of the class. I may have thought it was great poetry then. Now I don't (but just you try to write one like it, adhering to the meter and the rhyme scheme, I hear a small voice saying). The ideas? Well, set to rhyming poetry they seem a bit trite. But it's a psalm, expressing his sentiments. Perhaps not yours.

Frankly, I find them sound enough.


Psalm of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

January

is the longest month. And you know that's true. Just keeps on being itself until we're sick of it, until we think we'll never get through it.

But today is its end.

And tomorrow we're through it and through with it.

Hallelujah! and hooray for February.

Here You Have It

A day or so ago was the birthday of the very prolific French novelist Colette, who lived a scandalous life. That is, after she escaped from her husband. He daily locked her in a room until she wrote a certain number of pages, all of which he took credit for.

Just a little background for you.

Here's what she said, as I remember it, although I will not be able to use her exact words.

If you write down your thoughts and ideas and feelings every day, you are a writer. But to be an author you must scrutinize and criticize and pare down what you write and may end up throwing out most of it.

Get it?