Thank-You Notes

Random thoughts on gratitude at Thanksgiving time:

A gratitude journal can be like thank-you notes to Heavenly Father.

[Copied from mine:] 1/1/2009  I expressed gratitude for Kay … two beautiful [daughters’] weddings in 2008.

11/11/2012  I'm thankful for my sweetheart Kay, our family, home …

5:35 AM 11/27/2012  Grateful for God's gift of life.

12/10/2012  Thankful for good music to soothe my soul.  Classical 89 radio (BYU): "Escape to a Place of Peace and Calm" CD, including Reid Nibley on piano.

7:38 PM 6/23/2013  I'm grateful for God's mercy in helping me retrieve a flash drive that fell out of my pocket this morning in [church] ...

11/28/2013  I am eternally thankful for my Savior, Jesus Christ.

I recall a favorite Old Testament scripture I see as giving thanks:

Psalms Chapter 23

“(A Psalm of David.) The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul ...

... thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me ... my cup runneth over.”

– KingJamesBibleOnline.org

“On a personal note: thank you

The who, what and when of expressing gratitude”

By Jeanne Field

“...  The hardest part ... is just starting it.”

– hallmark.com/thank-you/ideas

“The long-overdue thank-you

Reaching out to someone who made a difference in your life”

By Suzanne Heins

“You can’t beat expressing gratitude with a pen and paper.”  [handwritten notes – imagine that!]  – hallmark.com/thank-you/ideas

A feast of notes

Our Cannon family has a tradition of group singing after dinner at Thanksgiving gatherings; (so I take a break from eating, before going back for thirds – not a time for fast food, folks!)  Typically the traditional hymns, plus several sheet-music arrangements.

“A Song of Thanks”

“Thank thee for the world so sweet; Thank thee for the food we eat;

Thank thee for the birds that sing; Thank thee, God, for everything!”

– lds.org/music/index/childrens-songbook; words: Anon. 

Basement Libraries

The old Salt Lake public library on State Street, a classic Carnegie-style building, inspired me.  As a young boy I often paid a nickel to ride the bus downtown, all by myself, as I recall. (Little children must not travel alone nowadays, especially not to the inner city.)  The youth section was in the expansive basement, which had its own outside entrance on the south side.  Greek mythology was one of my favorite subjects for reading.  I was particularly enthralled by the Iliad and the Odyssey; (what I read, sometimes lying on our Second-Ave front lawn in the summer, must have been simplified prose for young people.)

"The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad being the oldest. It is believed to have been composed near the end of the 8th century BC ..."  – en.wikipedia.org

SLC Library History

The Ladies Literary Society persuaded the mining millionaire John Q. Packard to donate land and money for the library, which opened in 1905.  This was the main branch until a new library was constructed in 1964 on 500 South [which had the protected archival section in the basement I recall visiting.]  In 1965 the old library was transformed (including the addition of a large dome) into the Hansen Planetarium, Space Science Library and Museum.  When the planetarium moved to the new Gateway District in 2003 (Clark Planetarium), the building was restored and renovated (cost $24 million) into the O.C. Tanner Company Headquarters, which opened in 2009.  – en.wikipedia.org

Another bright memory is of Grandmother Cannon's basement library; (of course it was Grandfather's as well, but she was obviously the librarian, as she encouraged us kids to borrow the books – check them out for a time, like the public library.)  To me it was manna from heaven.

Great Grandfather Rich in east Ogden had a huge basement playroom.  In later decades it would be called a recreation room, or "rec" room; (back then, the only recreation in that room was the library with nothing in it except walls covered with books, and maybe two chairs on the smooth tile floor.)  The other attraction in his basement was a "tunnel" consisting of two adjoining closets with the shared wall removed, so we could run from one bedroom to the other, via the closets, then around through the outer doors for a circular chase.  Among the hundreds of homes we have visited, I have never seen another basement like the one in that wonderful red-brick home of "Poppy Rich".

Here in our frontier home, we lack bookshelves in the basement “library”, where I recently unpacked some boxes of books, sorting them into stacks by category.  A small stack is bound for Deseret Industries, one of the few remaining places where crowds of people are eagerly buying non-digital books; (B&N/Layton and Salvation Army Thrift in Ogden are also favorites of mine.)  Now, what to do with the rest?  Let our children truck them to DI when we die?  (A hint to our posterity:) Kay and I treasure the old books we inherited from her parents and mine; maybe our grandchildren would too, in their own basement library someday.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Wiki, Fast in Hawaii

Must be fast, as this one’s about wiki, which means “fast” or “quick” in Hawaiian.  That is according to Wikipedia, “The encyclopedia project, [which] is the most popular wiki on the public web in terms of page views.  …  A wiki is usually a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in a collaboration with others.”  
– en.wikipedia.org

The FamilySearch instructor in the Family History conference at Weber State University 9/14/2013, briefly mentioned the Hawaiian origin of “wiki”, so I Googled, found, and copied it:

History

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.  Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" bus that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web.”  
– en.wikipedia.org

The FamilySearch.org home page top menu: SEARCH gives you sub menu including WIKI.

“Get research advice, or learn where to find record collections in our 75,534 articles."  [This number is constantly increasing.]

"Search by place or topic (not individual)”: [type in search field.]  

– familysearch.org/learn/wiki/...

The FamilySearch expert told us at the WSU conference, "Never use [FS] Wiki to search individuals or families."

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Smart Gratitude

Suggested reading (as background for this) is my April 2012 post titled: EMC Pioneer “Blogger”.  “Our friend and neighbor for 15 years, Rowland Smart, was a legend in his own time, and we loved him dearly.  …  'Rowly' was nearly 90 years old, a WWII (Europe) and Korean War veteran, good Christian, never married ..."  In a heavy old envelope I had labeled “SMART PHILOSOPHY” was his monthly message for November 1988, teaching us and other friends to take the season seriously.  The two-page transcription of “Count Your Many Blessings One by One” is not a fast read.  So I share excerpts to set the table for this month, leaving the rest to your imagination.

“Because it is November, we all think of Thanksgiving and look forward to that feast we hope to have …  We all feel gratitude to God for the bountiful year He has made possible for us, and give thanks for our health and for life in this beautiful world He created for us.”

“I can’t help thinking of a poor old raggedy man I once saw who lived up Price Canyon just out of Castle Gate [a mining ghost town in eastern Utah].  I was patrolling one of the Utah Power & Light high-voltage transmission lines.  This line went through a dense thicket of willow brush.  …  I heard a man talking.  I looked up and saw this old, sad, downtrodden man.  He was using an explosive powder box for a chair, and had made himself a crude table … between two cottonwood trees.  There he had some garbage he had gathered during the night at Helper, Utah.  He had it set on this table on an old tin plate with a sheet of newspaper for a table cloth.  …  He had a bushy grey beard hanging down nearly to the table.  Then I stopped as I realized he was praying and thanking his Father in Heaven for this food he was about to eat.  I waited till he had finished his prayer.  I went back up the trail, then started to whistle a tune as I came back around the path, so as not to startle him.  He had merry twinkling eyes that showed thankfulness and contentment.  …  He said, “I ain’t got much, Son, but you’re welcome to share it with me.”  I thanked him and sat chatting with him for quite a while. [Rowly was always good at that.]  I know he was well educated, for he used better English and better manners than most of us do.  He was just down on his luck, an old man with no one wanting him around.  …  I told him I must go, for I was to meet the man who would be waiting for me where the line crossed the road.  He put out his big hard-working hand of yester years to say goodbye.  …  in his struggle for one more day as a free man …  He smiled …”

“It was then as I walked along that lonely trail that I felt gratitude for what an easy life God had made possible for me to have.  I thought as I walked along this stony rough mountain path that life is like a trail.  Some places along this trail are smooth; others are rough and steep, and hard to climb.  …  I guess it is God’s way to test us.  He loves us all and we are His children, and I know He expects us to be good to one another …”

“Remember this Thanksgiving how blessed and lucky you are; and when you pray to God over the feast you’re going to eat, pause for a moment and think of the people in the world …”