Keeping One's Sanity

Our favorite beach town for a relaxing getaway is not a well-kept secret, though we wish it were.  So, to help keep the crowd down in the Northwest, we avoid revealing it, except to a few close family and friends who are not likely to travel that far anyway.  However, one young couple, close friends we’ve loved since nine years ago, developed a habit of vacationing there every year, and loving it.  Who knows how many people they’ve shared the secret with.  (I recently learned that what my English teacher taught me is a myth: avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.  

– quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar)

In 1982, I bought my first personal computer (a 28-lb Osborne “portable” with 64K memory, if my own memory serves me correctly; Google has sweet images!)  A wise young accountant friend of mine, Rich T., came out to East Mill Creek and helped me design a spreadsheet for our family budget.  I never forgot this secret of success he shared with me:

“Regularly budget money for entertainment … to help keep your sanity, because without sanity {repeated to avoid ambiguity}, everything else is in vain.”

Holding hands, quiet walks on (we think) the longest, most beautiful sandy beach in the NW, scenic surf, romantic night fire roasting hot dogs out there – alone under the bright stars, relatively few tourists, extraordinary food and fascinating shops in town (I love the used book store, which struggles to survive the digital age) … reading & sharing wisdom literature, little if any TV – delightful digital detox. It was all there again last week, and well worth the price!

For low-cost sanity preservation, we love the local white-sand beach on Antelope Island, and (at no cost) the 4,400-acre Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve with boardwalk, especially in summertime.  We thank God for providing such beauty in nature.  You, too, can sing your own “There’s a Place for Us”.

The Rich Trek

This week, Utahns celebrate Pioneer Day, since the first company of Mormon pioneers arrived around July 24th, 1847.  The “Days of ‘47” holiday includes parades, concerts, speeches, rodeos, and of course … fireworks!  Friday night, Kay and I with friends enjoyed the Tabernacle Choir and orchestra concert, featuring Broadway singer/actor, Santino Fontana (the bad guy in Frozen, as he described it.)  Inspiring!

To learn something new about the pioneer trek, I took an old book from the library here in our frontier house: Charles Coulson Rich / Pioneer Builder of the West by John Henry Evans, ©1936, The Macmillan Company, printed by Norwood Press Linotype Inc., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

My mother’s signature as owner of the book about her great grandfather, is dated 1941 Toronto, where she was serving a full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I found this little background history published by the State of Utah:

“After a mob murdered Joseph Smith in 1844, his followers started to think about moving somewhere where <[I'd edit] they could live peacefully. Enemies were still attacking Mormons in different ways. Because of this persecution, in the cold of February 1846 the Mormons began to leave Nauvoo. They journeyed to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and set up a temporary community.

... the people gathered in Winter Quarters got ready to move again. Where to? It seemed that the Great Basin would be a perfect place to go.

In April 1847 the first group of Mormon settlers left and headed west along the California Trail. Brigham Young led a group of two children, three women, and 143 men.  ...  Brigham Young himself arrived on July 24, 1847.”

http://ilovehistory.utah.gov/people/groups/immigrants/mormons/

The Riches and Cannons made the trek two months after that first group of pioneers.

“From Winter Quarters, now Omaha, Nebraska, to what was to become Salt Lake City, Utah, is approximately eleven hundred miles, as the pioneer companies went.  Leaving Elkhorn, the rendezvous for the trekkers a few miles out from the river, on the twenty-first of June, the Riches [and Cannons] arrived at their destination exactly one hundred and three days later, on October 2, 1847.  They had bettered the time made by the pioneer company by a full week.  The company in which the Rich family traveled to the West numbered about two thousand persons.”

(Charles Coulson Rich, p. 131)

“The situation in which this small colony of Mormons found themselves, from the autumn of 1847 to the summer of 1848, was extremely critical …  Perhaps no group of people in pioneer America was put so clearly and certainly on the spot.  …  that the colony here did not utterly perish was due more to the wisdom, the energy, and the forethought of Charles C. Rich than to any other human cause.”

(Charles Coulson Rich, pages 142-143)

No Place like Home

Several weeks of helping our daughter with her family in Arizona – not my wife’s original idea of summer vacation from school teaching – turned out to be a joy, hard work, and a hot time in the new town alright.  Although Anthem is often over 100 degrees during the summer, we were fortunate to see the beginning of the cloudy monsoon season, with daytime temperatures sometimes dipping below 100 – so cool (loved the cloud patterns.)

Getting better acquainted with four grandchildren (including a fun ten-year-old helper from SLC), being amazed by unstoppable-grandma Kay's taking care of every need, early-morning wake-up calls (my favorite time of day), quiet walks around the block with a happy baby boy, picnic in the duck park, family home evenings well organized by devoted young parents, word games I never win, great cooking, all-you-can-drink ice water, community pool, friendly neighbors, church meetings in a wonderful ward, a new temple soon to be open, freedom from yard work, and (last but not least:) lively, artistic, gorgeous little girls!

After all that, for which I am grateful, this thought came to me on the way back to Utah: there’s no place like home.

And hey! – summer is only half over!  More fun!

Part 2 – just for future reference to remind myself before traveling:

Without mentioning what's missing at my favorite old motel in Kanab, Redrock Country Inn, I can think of a few things about home that I appreciate more now:

Food in the fridge that I can heat in the microwave.

Vent fan in bathroom; 2nd bathroom for myself.

Quiet room away from noisy fridge.

VCR, VHS tapes, and old radio.

Secure WiFi network.

Care-free walking barefoot on carpet.

Plenty of electrical outlets with ground (3-prong).

My own kitchen cupboard for reusing items not ready for dishwasher or recycler.

An old-fashion way of turning off a noisy A/C (unlike the remote I discovered next morning on the motel desk.)

A place for everything, and everything in its place; no need to pack bags, load car, unload car, and unpack bags every day.