Makes Me Happy

Some victims of the conflict in Syria are getting medical treatment in Israel.

I want to say of the people involved: now there are some manly men. But, of course, they aren't all men. At any rate, they are all magnificent, at least as far as their participation in this phenomenon is concerned, and deserve our quiet admiration (loudness would not serve their cause well) and emulation.

Seasonally Appropriate

I took the pictures today-- I'm uploading them today-- cool, no?

And, as always, a shot of what I see when I crane my neck upwards.

Smarmy? Yes.

It isn't smarmy until the end. But it's the best kind of smarmy! (FYI: John Lewis is a company in England.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o

Interesting.

As is so often the case, a couple of these are from the BBC online-- the last is from NPR.

A Somali man takes his culturally-Norwegian children "home" (to Somalia) for a visit (this is in comic form)

The U.S. National Archives, involved in saving Iraqi-Jewish records

"Always Go to the Funeral"-- I always do, which means that I've been to more than a lot of other people my age-- this seems to do a reasonable job of explaining why such a practice is a good idea.

Pictures, as promised.

Prettyboy Reservoir had some gorgeous ferns.

Lizard!

As my sister and I were driving to Prettyboy Reservoir, we were discussing the fact that when we were children, growing up in Utah and Idaho, we would sometimes read books that seemed a little silly to us. "You don't have to say that you run into a fox AND a lizard AND an owl all in one walk, you know; you don't have to lie to make the story interesting," we would say in our heads to the book. But after you've lived here for a while, you realize: maybe they really weren't making things up. It's a funny realization, to suddenly notice that something you thought was fictionalized wasn't quite as fictionalized as you had thought. But it's also nice to be around so much nature, which is why I whip out my camera when I see a lizard, or a chipmunk, or even lots of turtles in the same spot. They're still kind of amazing to me.

My chapel (i.e. the one I attend) is Quite Beautiful, as well as a little older than many I've worshipped at.

And, as promised, yet another picture of the Temple. I discovered that on the temple grounds, in the woods surrounding the formal gardens, is a nature trail; this was the one good shot I got from there.

I Support This

Sister Mary Martha (check out her blog, to the left) mentioned that Pope Francis has called for a day of fasting and prayer for Syria. It's on Saturday, the 7th, if you feel so inclined and read this in time. (If you feel inclined but don't read it in time, I hereby speculate that such late prayers may be like unto when I arrived late at Stake Conference* when we had ours last Spring: both more and better company than I'd expected.)

Last summer, I ran into a guy who had studied Arabic at the same time as me, just a couple of years before 9/11, and we both happened to mention that our one regret from that time of our lives is that we didn't go to Syria when the group that went from our University did their study abroad there.

I feel like weeping every time I read news of new atrocities. I'm not utterly convinced that dropping more bombs on them is going to help the situation. There really do appear to be creepy-bad people on both sides of this conflict. Do we just drop bombs on both sides until yet another faction emerges, one that we feel we can support?

But praying, you know, that I can support.

Anyway. Pictures soon (the temple yet AGAIN, and a cool lizard, and a little bit from Prettyboy reservoir, which is kind of a weird name but really gorgeous place). Also, I'm not sure whether I'm hopeful or hopeless, but I'm starting a new blog, with neeflings. Stay tuned, as it were.

*I tried to find a succinct, accurate explanation of Stake Conference, but was unable to without more searching than I'm up for, so here it is: Mormons are assigned to smaller congregations, (usually) called wards (300-500 people, normally, I think), and then wards in turn are grouped into larger units called Stakes-- often compared to a Catholic Diocese**. Most Sunday meetings and other church activities are held at a ward level, but every six months or so, the entire stake gets together for a Stake Conference, often with meetings held on a Saturday night and a Sunday morning. When I arrived late at the Sunday morning meeting feeling all ashamed for not being together enough to be on time, I found that lo and behold! I was in, as mentioned, excellent (friends... leaders of the ward... ) as well as numerous company.

**Catholic Dioceses, which I know of almost exclusively for purposes of comparing them with Mormon Stakes; I tend to think of them as "the Catholic version of a Stake." It's all about perspective.

When you are accidentally funny, you do not complain

Or, at least I don't. I view it as a stroke of luck, if not actual genius.

The context: my current calling (job, unpaid-- most active Mormons have 'em) at church-- well, one of them-- is to first assemble, and then copy off the paper program each week. The other week, however, I was sick; below is the only-slightly-edited email that I sent out. After two different people told me, unprompted, how funny they thought the email was, I realized I should just go with the flow and recognize the gift of an already-written blog post when I see one.

... I am sick, so someone else will need to copy [the program] off. Don't you feel lucky that we got it done early this week?

To whomever copies it off, this is how I outsmarted the copy machine last week: I used the regular tray instead of the bypass tray for the 8 1/2 x 14 paper.

And now for the rest of the instructions:

First: I am sick and tired and not editing as I normally would, so seriously, read everything because I may have hidden some important detail in the middle of an unimportant paragraph. Also, my deepest apologies.

You can either get the paper from the shelf highest, to the left, and closest to the window (as you are facing the window); or, you can just get some more from the clerks' office (under the counter that faces you as you walk in).

You access the regular tray by, as you are facing the copier, reaching down to the lowest tray and pulling it out. It should have at least some 8 1/2 x 11 paper in it; take that out, then adjust the paper-holder-thingy (you have to push the tab on one side while sliding it in the other direction; slightly complicated, but you'll get the hang of it) until it is ALL the way out, and it should be ready to accept the 8 1/2 x 14 paper. After you push the tray back, the copier will give you a pop-up window that will say something like, "Wait... did you just put 8 1/2 x 14 paper in my tray 1?" and you will say "Confirm," and hopefully you will be good to go. When you are done, of course, you will need to reverse this process.

I normally make about 85 copies. I also normally make at least one copy first to make sure that it isn't doing anything funky. If it starts doing funky stuff after the 85 copies have started, you 1) yell at the copy machine (HIGHLY effective, I assure you), then 2) push the red "stop" button, to the right of the main screen and 3) look at the three buttons on the left side of the main screen; the middle one should be lableled "job status;" if you push that, then select your job, then say "delete," that should finally make it stop.

Our copier is also highly enthusiastic once it gets going, so you will want to pull out the thingy that prevents every third copy from [going] spat on to the floor. There's a little hole you can see, on the end of the place where the copies come out (sorry about all this technical jargon), and if you stick your finger in it and pull, the thingy should come out and pop up so that you don't have to mess with babysitting the copier while the copies come out.

Don't forget to trade the paper out again. Besides the fact that forgetting to trade the paper out will waste perfectly good legal-sized paper, other folks making copies will probably be interested in having their copies coming out normal-sized. So don't forget.

Clear as mud? Excellent. If you get stuck, you can ask [Ward Clerk] (what I usually do); or, if you really want, you can call me ([555-555-5555]). I warn you, though, that my definite plan at this point is to still be sleeping off The Cold Of Death, so I may be a little groggy. No guilt, though.

Also, you could just go to Staples. It should cost under $20 if you do the copies yourself, and you can print out from the internet there (I think...), and there will be a helpful employee there in case you get stuck. Just bring the receipt to the clerks' office and you can get reimbursed.

Afternote: now that I re-read this, I can see that there really are funny bits. I think that what happened was that I was feeling terrible about having to pawn this whole process off on someone who had not done battle with the copier before (I'd lost a 20-minute fight with it sometime in the three weeks before this email got sent) and so I was trying to lighten the load with a little humor. Either that, or writing about a non-cooperative copier just brings out my funny side. You pick.