My Grandfather's Clock

So my grandpa's grandpa Norman used to sing this song to him and he really loved it. We put a few verses on the back of his funeral program, and later we all sat in my grandma's living room and sung it in his honor. So here it goes!

My Grandfather's Clock
by Henry Clay Work

My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the whole man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
It was always his treasure and pride;

But it stopped short never to go again when the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short Never to go again, when the old man died.

In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know,
And share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride.

But it stopped short never to go again, when the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short never to go again when the old man died.

My grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time, and had but one desire,
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place, not a frown upon its face,
And its hands never hung by its side.

But it stopped short never to go again, when the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short never to go again when the old man died.

It rang an alarm in the dead of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was plumbing his flight,
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time, with a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side.

But it stopped short never to go again, when the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short never to go again when the old man died.

Bonding with the Candy Bomber

While I was home last week I got to hang out with Colonel Gail Seymore Halvorsen, or "Uncle Hal" as he told us to call him. He told us all about the story that made him famous.

So it all started on the beet farm. I just need to digress for a minute and mention how happy I am to be able to start a story with the phrase "so it all started on the beet farm". It makes me feel a special connection with Dwight Schrute. Especially since it was my grandpa that was working the next beet field over from Uncle Hal.

Young Hal and Bill used to work and play together, going hunting and fishing together, and swimming in the creek after a hard days work. Well, working on the farm with his head down all day, Hal used to look up when planes would fly overhead and wish he was flying with them. So he went and got his private pilots license. He came back and flew over the beet fields, doing a little loop-de-loop or something like that. When he landed and went home, his dad almost killed him for almost giving his mom a heart attack. They were ripping him up one side and down the other, when Bill came in saying how cool that was, and making Hal feel better about the whole thing. He promised his mom not to do any more flipping, that he'd just wiggle his wings a little bit as he flew over. She seemed to think this was a much safer option, so that's what he did. Soon after he joined the Army Air Corps ferrying transport planes around during WWII. He stayed in the military after the war, and got called up to fly transports in Germany.

So as Americans in Europe, the soldiers would frequently be followed by groups of children clamoring for candy and gum. So he saw some kids on the other side of the barbed-wire fence next to the air-field in Berlin one day and went to talk to them. These kids were different, quieter, more polite, and were asking that the Americans not abandon the airlift when the weather turned bad. They said that they could live without enough food, but "if we lose our freedom we may never get it back". This touched him so much that he fished around in his pockets, but all he had was two sticks of gum. He picked four kids out of the crowd and gave them each a half-stick of gum. He was a little afraid that the other kids would start fighting over the gum, but the other kids just passed the gum wrappers around so they could all get a little sniff.

He was so touched that he promised them that he would fly over the airfield where they were and throw out some candy. They asked how they would know it was him since planes flew over every few minutes, and they all looked pretty much the same. He told him he would wiggle his wings as he flew over so they would know it was him. So even though the soldiers had a pretty limited supply of candy and gum and whatnot, he and some of his fellow soldiers pooled their resources, and made a few little parachutes out of handkerchiefs with the candy at the bottom. So as Hal flew over the kids, he wiggled his wings and someone else dumped the parachutes out of a back window. He hadn't really asked permission to do this, and got in a little bit of trouble for doing it, but when the publicity it generated was so positive, he was allowed to continue. There was 850 lbs. of candy donated locally, and by the end of it, Uncle Hal and the other pilots that got involved ended up dropping 23 tons of candy over different parts of Berlin. And it helped with American-German relations after all of the nastiness that had gone down that was WWII.

So as we're sitting in my grandma's living room talking with Uncle Hal about all of this, he just kept telling us that we need to be grateful for what we have, and not to underestimate what great good little things can do. After all, look what he got started with just two sticks of gum!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Sunday we had a party for my grandma Mary Merrell's 79th Birthday. It was a come and go kind of a party, and so I wasn't there for all of it, so I'm sure I missed some people, but it was good to see the people I did. Molly and her 5 girls were there, Bart and Hiroko, Janis and Rich Hardy, John and Rhonda King, Verla Jackson and her Husband (whose name escapes me). I made Grandma's cake and she was sure excited to be able to claim a corner piece! It was fun. It's always fun to spend time with family!

Bye Gramps...

My other grandpa died just after midnight the morning of June 6, 2008.

I'll miss his laugh, hearing him say "Oh my gosh", giving him unshelled pecans at Christmas and receiving shelled pecans later in the year, hearing him buzz his lips as he was working on projects around the house, his crazy hat collection, watching him love his pets, the lively conversations between him and Nana, all of the fun things he picked up at garage sales, helping him figure out compuer stuff, and so much more.

He was a great man and a great example to me. Love you Gramps!

Peep Wars!

At long last, the peep wars finally went down. The teams were as follows:

Blue Warriors (blue): Brian
Purple Peeple Eaters (purple): Amy
Krustees (pink): Karen
Geepers Peepers (green): Brent
Smella Yella (yellow): Rhiannon

Each commander prepared their peep army for battle.

Two commanders each selected an opposing peep to face one of their own. Peeps were microwaved for 30 seconds. The peep that got speared first, or that rolled over first, or that blew up the most was considered the loser. The winning commander then selected which of the next two armies would face off.

Because the Krustees were tearing it up (so to speak), when we decided to do a full-on battle with all five teams at once, there were more toothpick lances pointed at my peep than at any other one peep. Which turned out to be a little overkill, since my peep was the first to roll over in this particular battle.




It was fun, but ultimately the Krustees (named because they were the most stale of the bunch) were the victors! We have another set of peeps that we've put in a gallon sized bag all together (to even levels of crustiness across all peeps for the next battle.)

There was a brother-on-brother battle that was pretty entertaining, so I'm including a video of that one too. It was really fun to see the peeps get all huge in the microwave and then deflate when we took them out. If anyone else would like to host their own peep wars, I would recommend using paper plates. The post-microwave peeps get pretty crusty, and I'd hate to have to wash them off of plates I wanted to use again.

Words of Widsom from Orson Scott Card

I haven't had anything really worth blogging about recently. I did come across some notes from a great seminar that Orson Scott Card gave at BYU in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the publication of "Ender's Game". The notes are a bit disjointed and incomplete, but I was writing as fast as I could. There's some great stuff, some great ideas. So I thought I'd share...

13 Sept 07

“I just make this stuff up”
-or-
How seriously should a SF author take his work?

Orson Scott Card

You never know what might matter. The surprise is that it matters to anyone at all. After all I just make this stuff up.

The thing about lies is that so many people give them away. It’s amazing that people will pay for them.

The invention of the telephone caused a huge drop in the # of letters, and thus the amount of historical artifacts about people.

The part of the biographies that is most important and often least available is the childhood…what made them who they are. As an adult we are already formed characters.

Every single person [in the grocery store] is the hero of their own story (the mentality of a novelist)

You need to have an interest in non-literary people. Books about writers are boring.

“Everything of value, every thing that makes me happy comes from the non-literary part of my life.” ~OSC~

Every one of us will have moments of tragedy and triumph that are worth knowing about.

Don’t lightly throw away the scraps of paper that chronicle the details of you life.

Fiction takes us into places that we have never been.

Whenever we are not forced to do something else, we tell stories.

There are different kind of stories.
-Stories about other people
-based on things you know or don’t know
-based on nuance & innuendo you know parts of the stories
-we have a set of assumptions we work off of

Science is also a storytelling field
-they are bout telling why things happen.
-at some time when someone has access to move information, the story can change

At some point all science is (tran-something-ent) all history, etc…

Except Fiction. We know going into it that it isn’t true. No one can supersede the facts the author. Even the works of fiction have facts that can’t be contradicted. Even by the author. To a degree, all fiction is culture talking to itself.

***Look up Alexander McCall Smith – Botswana series. White guy writing about Africans***

Authors already know
-What we already know
-What we expect
-What we needed
-The cultural norms and background

Most of the time this is unconscious on the authors part.

When you read a novel it tells you a lot about the culture surrounding.

Every story is the project of a unique mind.

Everyone is unknowable to us.

A novelist puts down not only parts of the culture, but unknown parts of themselves.

People can know themselves better by reading what they write.

Every work of fiction is accidental autobiography.

The value of fiction is that ~~ When you read someone’s novel (movie, etc) you are the joint collaborator because everything else is playing out in your mind. You allow the author to dictate what the operatives of the world is.

You allow the author to take part of their world and make it part of your own. You allow a little change.

In fiction you get final answers.

Any fiction writer that finds an audience that cares about and value their work has succeeded.
You see an authors world through their eyes, but also through your eyes.

Q&A
Q – Where do you get inspiration for your characters?
A – God has better things to do than tell fiction writers what lies to tell.
Inspiration is not just things you have strong feelings about. (What people in the church sometimes call inspiration)

“All my characters come from me. I’m the only person that I know.”

When we try to base something on someone else, we are basing that view, we are putting our view, our fictional opinion of what makes

When we say “I know” we really mean I am as sure of this as I am of anything else. My experience has led me to this point, and nothing yet has contradicted it.

Even inspiration directly from God is constrained to the limits of our ability to understand at the time we received the revelation.

There is nothing you know that cannot be contradicted.

Everything has gone through the filters of your own understanding. We understand it up to a certain point.
---
You cannot raise children w/out bias. We are biased people.

Which beliefs are we going to have enough faith in to live our lives as if they were true?

In Mormon culture we are very easily smug that we have the answer.

Its easy to feel you have an answer when everyone around you agrees with you.

You can’t have answers if you haven’t asked a question. And if you haven’t asked the question, you are just an echo.

Your characters don’t and shouldn’t be your own voice. They should be their own voices.

“It’s your responsibility to sort out what you believe. It’s my responsibility to present my characters as accurately and honestly as I can.” ~OSC~
---
You need to have a meal ticket. Have a day job. Something that will make you money. No art is worth devoting your entire life to. Your life shouldn’t be just art.

To be a writer of fiction (a good writer):
-Keep your roots in the real word – keep in contact with non-literary people (words are great for this) Have as few literary friends as possible
-Educate yourself about anything and everything. Even if its something that you didn’t think you like. Get to know all about it.

If you want to be a fiction writer, don’t major in English. There will be too many games that you will need to unlearn.
---
I don’t intentionally leave loose ends. In real life, life is going to go on. Real life is messy.

Q – What is the most important idea to keep in mind?
A – Faith, hope, & clarity, the greatest being clarity.
It doesn’t matter what your story, is, if people can’t understand what’s going on.
They only know what you tell them.

The purpose of fiction:

Fiction is not there to be decoded.

The best reaction to fiction is the excitement, the caring, & loving the characters.

The experience you should have while reading a book is open-mouthed, loving the characters, excitement about the world.

Any analysis, or work that happens after that is extra, but not what fiction is for.

If a book has influenced you, you ask…

If this is true in the real world, how dies this make us change in our lives?
---
Q – Do you regret not reading a book or an author that you’ve heard of?
A – Not a one. There isn’t a book I’ve heard of that I wanted to read that I haven’t read. “I have a lot of money, I can buy any book I want. 1000s of books come into my house each year, and I read the ones I like.

***”The 13th tale” by Diane Settersfield. A book you might not have come across.
---
To Mormons, Samwise Gamgee is the true hero of LOTR. He’s the one that gets his hands dirty.

He’s the only one that really willingly gave up the ring. He refers to Frodo as the ring bearer à

He was the Frodo bearer. He was the one that was ready to come home and get on with life and have babies.

***Dave Gimmel’s “Rigante” books***

Q – (Something having to do with children reading about death and tragedy)
A – It’s great for a child to read something and ball for days because a character dies. It’s good for them to have these kinds of tragedies so when it really happens they know how to deal with it.
-Let’s rehearse all our tragedies in fiction first.

***Google Dave Wolverton for the history of Ficiton***

Fantasy is the last place in fiction where you can find greatness in characters.

Useful literature teaches you how to live a life worth living, and what’s worth dying for.

The fiction we choose to absorb not only reflects who we are, but defines who we are.

The culture of 1955 is not the ones prized by the elite.

If you are writing traditional fiction today you are the rebel.

The perceived wisdom of today is against what I believe (OSC)

You’re only given credit for being edgy and dangerous when you conform to it perfectly.

Be a rebel by conforming to the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

You can call me Graceful…

So these last few days have been fun. Wednesday I went country dancing with a group of people. I grew up doing 4-H (showing sheep and the like) and there was a fair bit of country dancing involved in that. So I really like country dancing, but I haven’t really gone in quite some time. So I tagged along with a group that went, and we got there in time to learn some new country swing moves. We stayed there for a few hours and I got to dance with quite a few different people, some who were pretty new to the whole dancing thing, and some of whom were much better than me. There was one guy who was an absolute tank. That is to say, he was big and very muscley. He was a good dancer, but had a strong, almost forceful lead. Now, I’m not what you would call petite. I’m tallish, and not the stick I was when I was younger. I only bring this up because I’m not normally the kind of girl that gets to do lifts and the like. The fun thing about dancing with Tank was that even though I don’t have much experience with how to do the girls part of the lifts, he still threw me around a bit. He was fully capable of just bodily picking me up and flipping me over his arm and throwing me around. I’m actually not sure I had a whole lot of choice in the matter. You just had to go with the flow and just trust that if he was capable of just picking me up, he was able to set me back down in one piece. It was fun. I got to two step with a guy that I could tell had some ballroom experience and he complimented me on my pivot turns. So all in all, I'd say I had a pretty good night. Felt maybe even a little bit graceful. Then Thursday happened...

The next day I got to babysit my nephew for a few hours. It was fun to be able to see how simple things can make a two year old so happy. He was so dang cute! This part is not particularly relevant to me being graceful or not. Just a fun side note.

I also went to see the midnight showing of the new Narnia movie. There was a small group of us that went a few hours early and played cards and such until they let us into the theatre. It’s always fun to go to the first showing of movies like this… it brings out the hard-core fans. There were quite a few that were all dressed up in their medieval garb and who had been there for much longer than any of us. Some of them even had dates!

So they let us into the theatre at about 11:00. By the time our part of the line reached the theatre, there was limited seating for the six or so we had in our group. The entire back row was pretty much empty, so we started to hustle up the stairs. I was about ten stairs in when I totally biffed it and totally face planted. Well, I didn’t actually hit my face, but it must have been pretty funny to watch, because I heard quite a few sniggers coming from the theatre. I got up and tried to do a ‘ta-daa’ kind of a thing, but when I went to go up the stairs again, I just fell right back down again. This time there was outright laughter. And I’ll admit, it was probably pretty dang funny to watch from the other side of the theatre. People running up the stairs, and one just disappears below the seats, and then right after she pops back up, she’s gone again. Anyways, I decided to take it pretty easy after that, seeing as walking was something I suddenly forgot. I pretty much slid back down to the extremely un-graceful side of the scale. Well, I made it to my seat with only superficial wounds, some of which should be pretty colors in a few days. I hit the ground hard. I really go all the way with these kinds of things. People falling down once is funny. People falling down twice, even funnier. Falling down twice and having a bruised up shin to show for it?... Well, it made me laugh. A few minutes after sitting down, I discovered that my camera had somehow fallen out of my purse. I went and looked around a bit, but it was kind of dark and I couldn’t find it. *sigh* There went my pictures with the wannabe Narnians…

I have just learned to accept that things tend to go wrong with me, or end up taking more time than they should, or whatever, and so have just learned to accept that there are some things that I can’t change. For example, I went to have a picture framed. Pretty straightforward thing for most people. I took it into the framing shop, and picked out the mat, and frame and such. They said that it would be two weeks or so. So I went back into the shop, asking for my picture but the people there had not a clue what I was talking about. I reassured them that I had dropped a job off, so they went rooting around, looking for it. They did find the picture and the order after awhile, but seeing as they had lost it, they hadn’t actually ordered the stuff, so I had to wait another few weeks. When I went back this time, they had ordered the wrong stuff, so I had to wait again. I did eventually get it, and they did a really good job, but what should have taken two weeks, ended up taking closer to two months.

This experience, and many others like it, have taught me to just expect many things to go wrong, and for things to take at least double the time normally expected. And that I shouldn’t stress over it. So as far as my newly lost camera was concerned, I decided to relax. I had looked for it, and I figured that it would either turn up, or it wouldn’t. And that nothing I could do right then would change that fact. So I just relaxed and enjoyed the movie, and sure enough… after the movie one of my buddies found it in a shadow by the stairs where I had biffed it. To make a long story just a little bit longer, everything worked out for the best, just like it always seems to.