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 …”

Frightful Films, a Nightmare

Has someone or something reminded you lately to write your personal history?  If you haven’t finished it (meaning you’re not walking dead yet), here’s an idea: make a list of Halloween/scary memories you can flesh-out later (oooh, gross!)  I find writing my history by topic works better than writing chronologically.  It’s like the “swiss-cheese method” that makes a project look like bites taken here and there; (think rats, not vampires.)  As I recall from reading the book many years ago, “swiss cheese” is my favorite part of How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, a little paperback book by Alan Lakein; (he deserves thumbs-up credit here.)  (OK, I’m trying to control myself.)

(A little chronology here:) <(No, MS-Word, I don’t want a smiley face!  Undo!)

My earliest scary memory is a nightmare – the worst ever.  A huge, menacing black bear in the stormy night sky was reaching down to grab me.  I barely escaped, in spite of my agonizing, slow-motion run across our big backyard on Second Avenue. (Why couldn't I move my legs faster?!  I tried so hard!  Aaaagh!!)  I may have had this dream more than once, never to be forgotten.

“1954 [attraction opened as] Spook House”  This must be the ride I remember at Lagoon (amusement park in Farmington, Utah) – very scary for me at the time!  A classic, shocking, jerky-ride spook alley, totally out of my control.  – lagoonpark.com/pdf/...  (page 8 of 42)

Late one night, three days ago, I heard a Halloween special broadcast of Exploring Music on Classical 89 (BYU) radio that told a story of a banshee.  "Demons, Spooks and Other Things That Go Bump In The Night” was presented by the host, Bill McGlaughlin.  This reminded me of a film I saw when I was young, that scared me so much when the banshee appeared, as my younger brother crawled under the theater seat, I wanted to go with him!  “Darby O'Gill and the Little People, a 1959 Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery and Jimmy O'Dea …”  – en.wikipedia.org

Google defines banshee: “(in Irish legend) a female spirit whose wailing warns of an impending death in a house.”  Urbandictionary.com morphs it eerily: “A mythological, female, magical creature that flies all night looking for prey. They feed on people's sadness. They kill by screaming in such a high …”  (Sorry -- this is too scary.)

Naturally (spookily), like everything now, you can watch the scariest part on YouTube:  “The Appearance of the Banshee” with Connery and the old man calling, looking for young Katie, and finally the banshee appearing as the elder found her fallen on the mountain.  “Keep away!  Keep away from her!!”  Imagine it using today’s computer graphics!  Old is “bad” (good and scary) here.  
– youtube.com/watch?v=rhxC_1wuo3E

Another movie, about a dark, scary mansion at night, makes me shudder to this day.  As a tender young boy, I walked with a friend to an old theater in downtown Salt Lake.  I distinctly remember entering late, just as a small box was opened ... with a human head inside!  I was ready to turn around and go home right then!  "House on Haunted Hill is a 1959 American horror film … and stars Vincent Price as eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren.  …"  – en.wikipedia.org

Get the picture?  Jot down some of yours on a scratch paper or whatever.  For fun! (I could insert a picture here, but it might frighten the little ones.)

Getting Better With Age

It seemed so far away … when I was young – getting old, that is.  Over the last 18 months it crept up on me sooner than I expected.  Twelve months ago, I never wanted to do yard work again, except to help elders (older folks, not the Church office) with their yard next door.  After last summer’s work, I’m convinced.

This month as I researched senior living, I realized something amazing: I have graduated to feeling “old at heart” and loving it.  The benefits are more than just discounts at movie theaters and my favorite all-you-care-to-eat buffets.  I am better able to empathize with elders who struggle with unemployment, loneliness, depression, physical aches and pains.  I am a better man for having newfound patience with young people who ignore us and misunderstand us.  I rejoice in being an empty nester with greater freedom and motivation to help others; (my wife Kay and I look forward to serving another mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)  The 55+ communities are looking better to us – maybe they have improved with age (jk). Facebook? – we can take it or leave it.  More time and freedom to travel; (and more ease with freestyle writing of incomplete sentences without a verb.)

First opened in 1911, the famous Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City began its expansion in 1974.  The publicity theme for the project was “Getting better with age."  In 1993 it was rechristened the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, “in honor of the Mormon church founder …”  -- deseretnews.com (June 7 2011, “100 years” article by Ray Boren)  It continues to get better with age; (check it out by Temple Square, next time you’re in town!)

This quote we’ve all read is one of my favorites: "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."  -- Mark Twain  (from brainyquote.com)

I missed my blog’s third anniversary a week ago – still pretty young (the blog, not I.) This post is done … for today; it will get better with age.  Expect expansion. And exciting discoveries in this new old world.  Any ideas?
Downsizing?  Lightening our load?  
Renting a cottage for next summer (three months) in the Isle of Man?  Now that's getting better!

Short (Quick) Anecdotes

Last Saturday I Googled (searched Internet): define anecdote

Result: “a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.”

(Google’s definition instantly appeared at the top of 1.1 million results!  Amazing.)  As examples, several stories quickly fit in here.

I have listened to KSL NewsRadio traffic reports since 2007, when I started a job that took me out on the road a lot.  Rikki Meece, a superb young reporter, has always made me smile with her crystal-ball traffic forecasts – typically, "the crash is GOING TO BE ..."; (makes me wonder WHEN.  Of course if I’m headed away from the predicted trouble site, the time doesn’t matter.)  To be fair, her fine reports have helped me avoid some bad traffic over the years, making KSL’s annoying background sound effect worth enduring; (mercy!)  I often hear similar predictions – without the ominous consequences – in retail stores, where a product I’m searching for “is GOING TO BE on aisle 9” or wherever; (without asking the worker "WHEN?", I trust that it WILL be there by the time I arrive.)  By the way, I predict many retailers are going to be disappointed at Christmas time, due to the US government shutdown; but we are going to enjoy the true holiday spirit regardless of the economy.

Part of my second post is worth repeating:

Fast Food, Coupon Drive                        October 22, 2010

When my wife and I had young children to feed, we had a favorite activity and fun family tradition called the "coupon drive".  We collected fast-food coupons, then drove around town ordering, dividing, and eating one or two of a single item at each drive-thru.  The workers often felt sorry for us buying so little to feed the six or seven of us.  After about eight stops, we were stuffed!  This enduring tradition would not be possible without fast food.  Our youngest actually wrote a report on it for school (using fast-food language, of course).  Since then, the words "coupon drive" always bring back fond memories.  I can hardly wait for the next one!

May you enjoy the drive, however you do it.

And a little healthy fast food.