Oh brother, where art thou?

After my dad had a stroke, he had trouble remembering. I was the only still single and at home child during the early years of his stroke, so Mom and I did a variety of activities with Dad to help him with remembering. One thing I did was to buy a playing-card size stack of the latter day prophets and apostles, and we would play a game with the cards to help him remember which name went with which face. 

For some reason, Elder Scott always stumped him, and he would say, "Oh, brother..." every time. This is what Elder Scott would have looked like in those pictures:
So in our family ever since--for decades now--we have called Elder Scott "Oh Brother." Well, at least I have called him that; because really I guess it was mostly an inside joke between my dad, my mom and me. But some of my children have picked up the habit too, though they might not realize why. They have just been conditioned to see his face and say, "Oh Brother" like some kind of honorary title. Only his face has gotten older than the one on the card!
 
So today, with the news that he had left this mortal existence, I find myself thinking, "Oh Brother, where art thou?" and the answer is in a good, well-deserved place of rest.

Question 21: What were some of the challenges you have had to deal with in your life?

After thinking about this question for quite some time, I decided to focus on physical challenges. Because I was not born with a fabulous supply of coordination: quite the reverse!

Skating! As the youngest child, I would watch my three older siblings get bundled up and head out to the pond to skate. We were lucky to have our own skating rink right there on our farm, just a few hundred feet away from our house. There was a fence, and cows milling around, but I could see that my siblings really enjoyed skating. My dad would take them out, and they would have fun and come back inside with rosy cheeks and smiling widely. How I longed to be a part of that!

I don't know how my parents decided that children were the right age to learn to skate--maybe our feet just needed to fit the smallest skates we owned.  I am not sure what age I was when that happened for me. We had small wooden chairs that went with our child-size table (technically, I think these belonged to Colleen; they had been a Christmas present for her as a tiny girl) and one of these was taken to the pond along with me, so that once I was on my feet, I could push the chair around the pond until I got the hang of it, and then I could let go and soar across the ice with the rest of them.

But for me, that never happened. I never did get the hang of it. I always needed the chair. If I let go, I would fall. Falling hurt. Falling was embarrassing. And then it got so that pushing the chair was embarrassing. My cousins who lived close by would come over to skate with my siblings, or we would go over there to skate with them. Sometimes people would go into town to skate on the actual skating rink. But I was tied to the chair so going to skate anywhere else was just too embarrassing or impossible.

I finally started skating(ish) when Patrick learned to skate. He was five and a half when we moved from Port Coquitlam to Calgary. In PoCo, I had put him in skating lessons as I had done with any of my kids who needed lessons (most of them had just taken to skating easily without needing lessons) but he would not skate. He would just sit on the ice. So that didn't work. I was afraid he would end up a non-skater like me. But when we moved to Calgary, there was an outdoor rink at the elementary (Deer Run Elementary) and all the kids were using it, and he came home from kindergarten one day and said, "I have to learn to skate!" The only skates that would fit him were Nancy's old skates, which were very girly. I am talking pink and baby blue. He did not care. He wanted to learn TODAY. So we bundled baby Josie in the stroller, and headed to the rink, and he was off. He was determined to learn, and he did it.  I would go with him and put my own skates on and push the stroller with the sleeping Josie around (so still basically skating with a chair!) while Patrick did lap after lap. By the time Josie was bigger and wearing those girly skates of Nancy's, Patrick was a veteran skater, and I could stand up and sort of move awkwardly on the ice, almost keeping up to little Josie on her skates.  But once all my kids grew up and I didn't need to skate for any reason, I have not kept it up. It was super hard for me and I never learned to love doing it. Also, ice is cold. So...not my favorite activity.

Riding a bike! This was another activity that I watched my siblings do with apparent ease, and that I could not wait to be a part of.  Arlene had a tricycle and I would watch her ride it, anticipating my turn when she outgrew it. She began to ride the small blue bike that we had by probably age 6 or 7 or 8. Something like that. And so I got to ride the tricycle. But tricycles are not fast like bikes are! My siblings could ride their bikes on the highway to our cousins' house. Sometimes I rode the trike around on the field road (as we called it), which also led to my cousins' house, but via the fields. It took longer to get there, and the road was a dirt road, not paved like the highway.  When I got to be about 8 years old, I was just too big for the trike, so I began trying to ride the bike in earnest. All I got for my efforts was falling and falling and falling. I just could not grasp the concept. Every year it would be the same: after all the snow melted and it was bicycle season, I would try to learn. And fail. My dad even promised me a new bike if I would learn to ride--and remember, I was the girl who could recover magically from an illness for the bribe of a quarter, so I was easy to incentive-ize. But no amount of trying worked.  It was beyond embarrassing. What kid who is 10 or 11 in a small prairie town can't ride a bike? (This kid!) Finally, the summer after Grade Six, at age eleven and a half, and with horrible scars on my knees that are still visible today, I learned to ride! My dad took me to Lethbridge to Bert and Mac's Cycle, and I chose a gold bike with a banana seat. He stopped along the highway about a quarter of a mile from home and took the bike out so I could ride it the rest of the way home.

I loved that bike and I loved riding it! I would ride every day after school, and spend many hours riding during the summer. It was so intoxicating--the freedom of riding that bike, the breeze in my face. Once, Margaret and I even rode our bikes to town (7.5 miles) on a Saturday to buy Mother's Day gifts for our mothers. (That was a once in a lifetime experience--a very long ride!) Unfortunately, when I got to Utah at age 17 to attend BYU, the bike troubles hit me again. I had been biking happily for six years, and I thought I was pretty good at it. So I registered for the bicycling class at BYU--and if you read this blog, you know that I just sucked at that class! The motion sickness was TERRIBLE. I could not understand it then, but I am sure now that it was altitude sickness. Taber is at about 3, 047 ft while Provo is at 4,549 feet above sea level. Now I am not interested in riding a bike because the traffic is so crazy! But if I lived in a small town again, I might want to take it up.

Swimming! I have already written about my struggles with swimming in school, so you know that this was another thing that was a challenge for me. People would say "Everyone can float!" But I COULD NOT float. So when they would say that I was too tense or whatever, like not being able to float was something I should be able to fix, I believed them, and was upset with myself. Years into trying and failing to learn to swim, my cousin Harold said, "That's not true. Not everyone can float. I have never been able to float--but I can swim!"

Turns out Harold was right. Here is what I found on a swimming website, after it first explained why most people SHOULD be able to float: "That said, your body composition can affect your natural ability to float. Very generally speaking, men tend to have greater muscle density than women. People with greater muscle density, or very lean muscle (a very low ratio of fat to muscle fiber), will have a greater tendency to sink." Well, Harold and I were sinkers. For Harold, that was a challenge, but not a roadblock. He was happy to swim underwater, and he could swim like a fish, almost literally, since he was completely submerged at all times while swimming. For me, the problem was complicated by my increasing fear of the water after a few boating accidents (that while they may seem silly now were super scary to me at the time) and compounded by my vision problems. I was so blind. If I took off my glasses in the water, which I would have to do if I wanted to swim underwater as Harold did, then I could not see. And swimming without being able to see just was too scary.

So I have never learned to swim. When my kids were swimming, I set out to try. I signed myself up for private lessons a couple of times, and even did some group lessons with other reluctant swimmers. I would take my kids to swim at BYU and I would use a flutter board to keep myself afloat while learning to do my leg strokes, and that worked pretty well, and was actually pretty fun. But I never learned to swim without some kind of swim aid. And now that my kids are not around begging me to take them swimming, so there is nobody to swim with, I have not kept up my trying to learn.

So, all three of those challenges--I can't say that I ever completely beat all of them. I came the closest with riding a bike. But from these challenges I learned that my children needed to have all of these skills! Because what sucked the most for me was that I was NO FUN. People would have birthday parties or no-reason parties that involved skating or biking or swimming and I could not participate. Skating parties, especially, were super popular in Canada, because who there CAN'T SKATE? Oh, that's right...Me. I could not. My inability to do these things really got in the way of my social life. So I was determined that my children would not be as pathetic as I was. And I think I succeeded with them. They can all skate; they can all ride bikes; they can all swim. Success.

That said, your body composition can affect your natural ability to float. Very generally speaking, men tend to have greater muscle density than women. People with greater muscle density, or very lean muscle (a very low ratio of fat to muscle fiber), will have a greater tendency to sink. So, if you are young, a man, or a very athletic woman, good mechanics and technique will help you a lot. Nevertheless, your body still wants to float more than it wants to sink.

Read more at: http://www.swimoutlet.com/guides/how-to-float-for-swimming/

Your Body’s Floatation Features Let’s start with a basic principle of physics: anything with a higher density than water will sink in water. The human body is, by weight, roughly two-thirds water. This means your density is similar to that of water. Thus, you shouldn’t have to do much, if any, work to float on top of the water. That said, your body composition can affect your natural ability to float. Very generally speaking, men tend to have greater muscle density than women. People with greater muscle density, or very lean muscle (a very low ratio of fat to muscle fiber), will have a greater tendency to sink. So, if you are young, a man, or a very athletic woman, good mechanics and technique will help you a lot. Nevertheless, your body still wants to float more than it wants to sink.

Read more at: http://www.swimoutlet.com/guides/how-to-float-for-swimming/

Your Body’s Floatation Features Let’s start with a basic principle of physics: anything with a higher density than water will sink in water. The human body is, by weight, roughly two-thirds water. This means your density is similar to that of water. Thus, you shouldn’t have to do much, if any, work to float on top of the water. That said, your body composition can affect your natural ability to float. Very generally speaking, men tend to have greater muscle density than women. People with greater muscle density, or very lean muscle (a very low ratio of fat to muscle fiber), will have a greater tendency to sink. So, if you are young, a man, or a very athletic woman, good mechanics and technique will help you a lot. Nevertheless, your body still wants to float more than it wants to sink.

Read more at: http://www.swimoutlet.com/guides/how-to-float-for-swimming/

Your Body’s Floatation Features Let’s start with a basic principle of physics: anything with a higher density than water will sink in water. The human body is, by weight, roughly two-thirds water. This means your density is similar to that of water. Thus, you shouldn’t have to do much, if any, work to float on top of the water. That said, your body composition can affect your natural ability to float. Very generally speaking, men tend to have greater muscle density than women. People with greater muscle density, or very lean muscle (a very low ratio of fat to muscle fiber), will have a greater tendency to sink. So, if you are young, a man, or a very athletic woman, good mechanics and technique will help you a lot. Nevertheless, your body still wants to float more than it wants to sink.

Read more at: http://www.swimoutlet.com/guides/how-to-float-for-swimming/

Random Thoughts

So, my mind is full of random thoughts looking for an outlet! So here goes:

1. At work, they have moved the music cataloguers up to the sixth floor. I think this is actually good for the students--they are all in one place, and it is easier to see who is there and for people to work together. But for me, as a non-cataloguer, it has been hard to see my colleagues go. And then there were the things that were not considered before the move. Like, I caught them taking the printer away! This happened on the Thursday morning of the day Bruce and I were leaving for Canada--and I had to attend the faculty meetings in both Music and Dance that day, so was in the middle of printing notes and handouts and things. AARGH! I had to quickly demand they leave it--they had already made it go offline, so I had to insist they put it back on. Now it is in my office, but it was dicey. They just had not considered that half the people on that floor use the printer, not just the cataloguers. Well, there was also a scanner in that room by the printer. And I used that scanner a lot, for work and also to scan the photos that I post on this blog. So I asked if I could please have the scanner.
Oh, this scanner doesn't work--the computer support guy told me.
Yes it does, I insisted.
No, it doesn't, he calmly stated, We have not supported this kind of scanner for years. It is old, and it doesn't work.
Well, that is really interesting, I said, Because I last used it on Monday to scan 24 things. And it certainly worked then.
His eyes about popped out of his head.  So, later, before they could make it disappear, I just took that scanner and put it in my office, but I have not been able to hook it up to my computer, so he is probably right about it not working on newer computers, which mine is. Long story short, I don't have a ready way to scan pictures for this blog anymore.  There is another scanner I can use for work, but as far as I know it only scans to PDF, not to JPEG.

2. When Arlene went to mutual when she started Grade Seven (because we did it by grades, not ages back in the day) that left me home with Dad while everyone else went off to have fun on Tuesday nights. Not that I did not have fun at home--I did! My dad was way more chill than my mom was. So we watched a lot of TV (he did not mind if I did homework while watching TV whereas Mom felt the two should be kept separate) especially The Red Skelton Show, which was a very fun and funny variety/comedy show. Red Skelton was a very funny man whose life was actually really hard and full of tragedy. And we also ate a lot of treats. So it was good. BUT before, while everyone was getting ready to go, it became my responsibility to cook dinner. And I loved to cook, so I thought it was great. And nobody was in the kitchen with me to stop me from experimenting, which I also loved to do. So one day, I was experimenting with making macaroni and tomatoes.  We did not eat a lot of Italian food back then--there were no pizza restaurants; our only pizza came out of a box like Kraft dinner. So our macaroni and tomatoes was just that. It may sound plain to you, but it was one of my favorite foods, with cheese melted under it. Because I would put the cheese on my plate, and then the hot macaroni and tomatoes on top, and the cheese would melt. Well, I decided to play around with spices in the macaroni and tomatoes, and sometimes my playing ended up in a tasty product. But on the day that I am talking about, I decided to include spices like nutmeg and cinnamon, and let me tell you, that meal was not a hit. I made this great big pot of it, and people could hardly choke it down. And my mother gave me quite the tongue-lashing about using a recipe, or at least ASKING if a certain spice would be compatible with the rest of the ingredients.  What made me think of this today? Well, Bruce and I went to the Spaghetti Factory last night. Bruce said he had forgotten his glasses, so he would just order lasagne. But they had an advertisement card on the table for their newest specialty, and it was lasagne-esque. It sounded good. Layers of noodles and meet and cheese and a sauce and some kind of marinara on top. So we didn't even ask about it; we both just ordered THAT. And it came. And we didn't much care for it. I was trying to identify the flavours but not having much success, when we heard people at a nearby table ask about it, like what was in it flavour-wise, and that is how we learned that cinnamon and nutmeg were in it. Oh. That is why it tastes this way--reminding me of my failed cooking experiment at age 10 or 11.

3. I just love teaching. I am in the fourth semester of teaching a section of Music 210R. I only have seven students this semester--the same number I had last winter semester. I had 13, then 10, then 7 and now 7 again. BUT despite the drop in enrollment, this semester I had NO people in the class because I twisted their arm. They are all there because they want to be there! And three are music majors, which makes the School of Music happy, since they sponsor the class. So yesterday we were working in the MDML and the kids had a bunch of things to find in the subject and course guides. One of the students, Catherine, a vocal performance major, was looking at the copyright stuff, where I had put a link to Eric Whitacre talking about his copyright experience with the Robert Frost estate. And then Catherine said:
Eric Whitacre had a copyright problem?
M: Yes, I said, it had to do with using a Robert Frost poem. It is really interesting. You should read it some time.
C: I used to babysit for him.
M: What? Seriously? You babysat for Eric Whitacre?
C: Yes, when I was in high school. He was our neighbor. I didn't know who he WAS--well, I knew he was Eric Whitacre, but just this man, my neighbor. I didn't know what he DID.
We were all amazed at this, and then she continued:
C: They didn't have a TV, and only this one really old computer. And when I would put their son to bed, he would ask me to sing to him, and I would sing and he would say, "You sound just like Mommy!" and I would think--that's nice. And now I think, WOW, that is the best compliment I have ever had! I mean, he was only five, but still--his mom is Hila Plitmann! I didn't realize who SHE was, either.
So, when I got accepted to BYU, I told Mr. Whitacre, and he said, "BYU! And you are a singer!" and I said, "Yes, and I am going to audition for University Singers."  "Oh, that's great!" he said, "Tell Ron Staheli hello for me!"
Still C: So I came to BYU, and I went to my audition, and I bombed it, and Ron Staheli thanked me and said that they would probably not be calling me back, but to try again in the future, and then I said, "Oh, by the way, my neighbor says to say hello to you for him..." and Ron Staheli said, "Oh, who is your neighbor?" and I said, all hesitantly because here I was talking to this important man, and my neighbor was just my neighbor, and I said, "Eric Whitacre?" and Ron Staheli said, "YOU know ERIC WHITACRE?"
So, it is very funny to Catherine now. I am sure that the Whitacres enjoyed having her as a neighbor because to her they were just NORMAL PEOPLE.

4. I am taking Music 259, which is The Psychology of Performance, and I have only been to one class because the first one happened while I was in Canada, and the second Monday, which is the day of the class, fell on Labour Day, so this week was the first time I went. It is going to be a great class, I can tell. So the first two assignments are writing about my worst and best performances ever. So I might as well write about them here.

My worst performance I have already written about somewhere on this blog that I have unfortunately not indexed very well. So I will tell it again specifically for this assignment.

I grew up singing in public with my sisters and/or cousins. One year, we had been asked to sing for my cousin Lori's wedding reception. (Programs at wedding receptions were a thing when I was growing up in Canada.) My sister Arlene and I were seasoned performers, but my sister Colleen and sister-in-law Marie-Christine, who would be joining us for this performance, were less used to it. We chose to sing a song called Fabulous, which had been recorded by Charlie Gracie in 1957. We didn't have the score for it, so we did a transcription from the 45 rpm record. There is a part that goes:
I read in a book/ About love and its charms / But I, I never knew / Till I held you in my arms!
and on the recording, there is an echo of "my arms."

Arlene and I thought we should have that echo in our performance, and we asked Marie-Christine to do it. She had a lovely, deep mezzo voice, and we thought it would be good in her range. But she was not used to singing in public, and having even a short solo seemed daunting to her, so she said no. So we were not going to have the echo.And we didn't ever seriously practice the song with the echo, although we sometimes did so in jest when we were just fooling around.

Well, unknown to Colleen and I, Arlene really wanted that echo, so she went to Marie-Christine privately and made a bet with her. She bet M-C that she would be too chicken to do it. Now, Arlene was quite the manipulator, and I don't know what she said, but she definitely found M-C's competitive spirit somehow, leaving M-C determined that she WOULD do it.  But Colleen and I knew nothing about it.

So, we are all dressed up and on stage--with M-C and Arlene cross-dressing as guys in white pants and red sweaters with white straw boater hats with red and white ribbons, and Colleen and I singing the role of the girls in our nice dresses--and we started to sing. We got to the part with the echo, and M-C stepped forward and belted out the echo "IN MY ARMS" in her lovely voice, and all three of us forgot to sing, our mouths dropping open in shock--even Arlene, who thought that despite the bet, there was no way M-C would actually DO IT. And then Colleen started to giggle, just quietly. And I have always had a hard time NOT LAUGHING if someone else is, so I started to laugh, too, and then Arlene and then M-C, so we were all four just standing on stage laughing and laughing, and pretty soon the whole audience of about 300 people were laughing too. And we all laughed and laughed for what felt like a long time but was probably only a couple of minutes. And then we started up again and finished the song.

So, it ended up okay--we still got lots of compliments, including people saying that they didn't even know why they were laughing, but they laughed right along with everyone else--and it makes a good story today. But I was MORTIFIED at my loss of control at the time.

My best performance was probably the one that I sang in Grade Three when I was chosen as the best female singer in the province and then went on to stubbornly refuse to sing on national television because I did not want to sing Hi-Lili Hi-Lili-Hi-Lo because I thought it was a baby song, which it totally is NOT. (Dinah Shore recorded it in 1952, and she was no baby.) I don't even remember what I sang at the performance, because all I can remember is feeling mortified about what they wanted me to sing next.  So if I had to choose a performance that I remember well and at which I felt I performed well, I would choose the time that I sang Who can find a virtuous woman? by Wanda West Palmer. I really wanted to sing A Woman of Valour by Darius Milhaud, but I could not find the music in Lethbridge (which was my only choice at the time). The Palmer song that I sang is based upon the same scriptures (Proverbs 31), so same idea, and I was singing it for a sacrament meeting, so it worked. I had several years (probably four) of voice lessons at BYU under my belt, and I was a much more confident singer. I had developed my upper range (since I really am a soprano but had habitually sung alto because I like to sing harmony) and this song made use of it. It was actually really good for my range, and I knew it really well. I had confidence in myself, in my voice, in my pianist, I knew that I was well-prepared with all the words memorized, and the ideas I wanted to put across realized, and I was not at all afraid. And it went really well. I felt good about it, I could feel that audience reception was good.

But with all those things going right, it sure doesn't make for a really good story!

Question 20: What do you see as your greatest strengths?

Wow, it is hard to answer questions like this. I mean, we kind of have a job interview set of greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses that we practice and then parade out in that situation, but I think I was raised not to "blow my own horn" and I actually can feel my cheeks start to turn red when asked this question in a setting that is not a job interview. Yet, I also think that it is good to acknowledge what we are good at. There is nothing wrong with that. But, for me, it is hard.

One of my greatest strengths is, apparently, laundry. I have seen my daughters bested by their laundry in a way that is bewildering to me. And I see lots of Facebook posts by their friends who cannot tame the laundry beast. And I am like...what? Really? Because even though I have mostly worked full time and have what is today considered to be a lot of children, I always just did the laundry. And then I folded it. And then I put it away. And sometimes I asked for some help from my kids, but not because the work was overwhelming, but because they needed some responsibility. And I probably did not require them to do enough. But I just don't understand piles of dirty laundry, and piles of clean laundry. My own mother had to use a wringer washer most of my growing up years, and could only do laundry one day a week because we had to haul water. And she did not have a laundry problem. She sometimes had an IRONING problem! We had a whole closet full of clothes that needed to be ironed! My solution to that was not solved by me: it was solved by polyester/cotton blends and a general improvement in fabric. That plus advice I got from my friend Maria: if you are thinking of buying something, wad it up. If it stays wrinkled after you let it go, it will need to be ironed, so don't buy it. Ironing problem solved. Laundry problem? Just do the laundry. Problem solved.

I have an iron will. This meant that I could be a stubborn little brat as a child, but it works really well for me in many situations now. Like, when I quit eating chocolate about 33 years ago. I just decided, and that was it. End of story. Now I have quit sugar, and I will cheat when I am in a social situation that calls for it, but only a little. Other than that, I just won't eat it, because I tell myself no. And if I decide to exercise, then I just do it. I see so much strength in the ability to just decide and then do something. Now...I am not saying that I am good at making all decisions, like which restaurant to go to, or do I want this color or that one? Those kinds of things I am very dithery about. But things like, I need to cut back on the amount I eat so I can lose five pounds--things like that, I just decide and then let my iron will carry me through.

I think that I am a nice person. I am kind and respectful and try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I am not perfect at this, but I think that I do pretty good. This is the thing that I wish I could say was my BEST quality, because I think it is so important to love your neighbor as yourself, and to always see the good in others. I am still working on it, and I think I am getting better at it all the time.

Question 19: If you went to college or a vocational school, what school did you attend? (Part Four: BYU year four)

After eight months at home, I made a late decision to return to BYU. I think that I could miss one semester without doing a formal deferral, so I decided to head back. My dad had bought a little red Datsun pickup -- a King Cab with space behind the seats for things, but no jump seats-- and I filled it with so much less than I used to take to BYU, and drove down with Marie and Margaret. They were in Margaret's car; I was alone in my little truck, but we stayed together on the road.

Margaret had returned from serving a mission--England Bristol Mission, which included Wales--and was heading to BYU for the first time. She had done nurses' aid training in Alberta before her mission, and she really wasn't a big fan of "school" but she felt like going was a good decision for her. Marie and Margaret both had places to go--Marie lived in Park Plaza, I think, and Margaret in Monticello. So they both had places really close to campus. Since I had been procrastinating my decision about going back to BYU, I didn't have a place to go. So I would just be winging it.

I found a place!  This is written in my photo album: "From Sept. 1978 to April 1979 I lived in Armstrong Manor in Provo, Utah. My roommates were Laura Clegg and Gayline Hone." That doesn't tell much of the story. I found an ad for this place--which now seems more like it is in Orem, to me, but I guess the border between Provo and Orem is kind of zig-zaggy--but it was pretty far from campus, so I would have to drive.  It was a two-bedroom, and one of the girls wanted her own room (Gayline) while the other one needed help with the rent so she wanted to split her share with someone else (Laura). So I moved in.

It was awkward at first. They were both local girls, from Orem, on Grandview Hill. I was an outsider. But Laura and I soon became good friends. Gayline was one of those girls who always has a boyfriend or two or three, so she was always, always going out. Laura and I did a lot of things together because we were NOT one of those girls!

I have one picture of Laura, and this is it:

In my photo album, I wrote: "Here is Laura on her birthday, Feb. 4 1979, hiding behind a banana our F.H.E. brothers gave her for a birthday present! They had all signed their names and drawn pictures on it."

And one more picture from that year:

In my photo album I wrote this: "Arlene, Michael and Jennifer Lund moved from Taber back to San Diego in Feb. 1979. They stopped in to see me, so, in our livingroom, there's Marie, Margaret, Michael, Arlene and little J."

Arlene and Michael had been living in Taber, Michael working at the Sugar Factory, because Arlene was expecting Jennifer, and it seemed the better part of wisdom to take advantage of Alberta Health Care. So Jennifer was born in Lethbridge in January 1979. But once Arlene and Jennifer were well enough to make the long trek to San Diego, Michael was ready to GO. Alberta had been kind enough to want to show Michael "This is how bad the weather can get" rather than to fool him with gentleness. It had been a terrible, early, super-cold winter. It was so bad that literally, the vinyl on the roof of Arlene's little red car had completely cracked like broken glass overnight one night. Michael grew a big beard to protect his California skin from the biting cold, and I am sure he thought that the people were INSANE to live in that crazy cold place! So, by the end of February, they were on their way to the nice, warm San Diego climate.

Since I had given up my Key Office job when I left BYU to go home at Christmas in 1977, I needed to find a new job. I actually found two. After I had left BYU the year before, Arlene had started cleaning houses for people. I was simpkly aghast at the idea--I was way too much of a snob for that! But she had one client, Uarda Hodges, who she just loved. She begged me to please take that job for her, because Sister Hodges was just so sweet. So I reluctantly agreed. And Arlene was right; Sister Hodges was awesome. She was a clean freak, so her house was always spotless. So when you went to clean it, there was actually nothing to do. You actually were just preventing the house from any possibility of getting dirty, which it never did. She paid well and you just dusted the dust-free surfaces and vacuumed the clean furniture and carpets, and mopped the sparkling floors.

But the best thing was, the part Arlene had not told me, was that in the basement of the house was Sister Hodges' business that she ran with her son, Kenny. Kenny was a percussionist--before I knew Kenny I didn't even know that people MAJORED in percussion--and he had purchased Dayman Music Reproduction from two BYU professors, Newell Dayley and Robert Manookin.  So, me being there every week, Sister Hodges let me try out working as a music copyist, and I was actually GOOD at it. Seriously! I found something I was good at!!! Since I was afraid to join the musicians' union, I could not work on the Donny and Marie Show, the Donna Fargo Show, or work on Bee Gees albums like my coworkers could and did. (One David Day among them.)

Since I couldn't do that, I worked on classical music. Like music by Crawford Gates, and things for the London Symphony Orchestra. Stuff like that. We would get the score, with the jotted notes in various stages of neatness that the composer or arranger had sketched out. Our job was to break out the parts, so that there was music for each player. Often, we had to transpose for the tuning of various instruments. We had to be very neat and accurate, because orchestras do not do a ton of rehearsing, and they want to be able to sight read quickly. This was even more true for the musicians' union work, since studio orchestras for TV shows really did not rehearse much at all since they were doing a show every week.

I LOVED LOVED that job. Loved it. It paid 22 cents per line, so you had to be fast and you had to write a bunch of notes on paper to earn your keep. Fred, my coworker, was the one who did any music typesetting that happened. He had a machine like a typewriter, only with music notes instead of letters on the typebars. That was really painstaking work. It gave me a real appreciation for printed music--I had no idea it was so much WORK. The parts that I worked on, which I did with fountain pen--that was the way it was done--we copied on the ozalid machine. Here is a picture of what that machine looked like. Sister Hodges kept theirs in the garage, which was turned into the storage room for all the music materials needed for the business.


My other job, at BYU, was for what was called the "Admissions Staff." That sounds like it had something to do with admitting people to BYU, but actually we were the people who admitted students to BYU events, like concerts and the weekend movie, events held in the Wilkinson Student Center, the MARB, the JSB. Not fine arts events in the HFAC or sports events in the Marriott Center or the Smith Fieldhouse, but pretty much if there was an event anywhere else on campus, we would be scheduled to work it. This included selling tickets for things like preference dances, which is how I came to meet my second cousin Deanna Conrad. She came to buy preference tickets; I was the clerk; I commented on her name; we discovered that she was the daughter of Clarence and I was the daughter of Arnold--we both knew each other's fathers, at least by name and reputation--and we have been friends ever since. She married her preference date, Rory Scanlon, who is now a BYU TMA professor.

So, my work at BYU was mostly evening work. We would be at an event, take the tickets, collect money, stamp people's hands, do ingress and exit control, sometimes get to enjoy the event for free, and then count the money and balance it ready for deposit. I liked that job, too. It was interesting--lots of variety, and I was very good at balancing my till, a skill learned, I am sure, through watching my father balance the tithing receipts, down to the penny, for years, since he was financial clerk in our ward through most of my teen years.

Typical for me, I don't remember my classes very well. I was a music major, but I remember that my Shakespeare teacher (English) told me I should be an English major because I wrote well. And that was a prophecy, since later in life I would change to English because it would be easier to graduate from a distance with an English major than a music major.

I should mention Margaret and Clarence. So, when Margaret began attending her new student ward, who should be in her ward but Elder Kemp from her mission. She had not much cared for Elder Kemp. She had met him on the train to Cardiff, something about he and his companion taking off their name tags and then totally chatting up the two sister missionaries they had spied on the train, one of whom was Margaret, and being super flirty and making the sisters pretty uncomfortable. He was younger and sillier and Margaret had not been a fan. So here he was in her ward.

They started playing practical jokes on each other, like cayenne pepper in cookies and such things. But she would say to me,
--Myrna, I want to set you up with this elder from my mission. He is really cute and I think you would like him.
--Well, why don't you date him?
--Oh, he is too young for me, but he is your age, so I think you should date him. He is a lot of fun.
--What is his name?
 --Clarence Kemp.
--EWW. That sounds like an old man's name. No thanks. (I was a name snob.)

So then, one time I went to the weekend movie with her, and we ran into Clarence and his roommates, and I thought he really WAS cute. But by then she liked him, and a year later, she married him.

Good thing she did--my mom often told me that my husband Bruce was bad enough, but she did not think she could STAND Clarence. (Bruce and Clarence were both way too jokey for my mother's taste, and Clarence was much more so than Bruce!) Clarence was the grandson of Belle S. Spafford, long time General Relief Society president. He often said that he learned from being her grandson to always goof off just enough so that no one ever seriously considered you for a leadership position.

So, after that year at BYU, I was still nowhere close to graduating. I still did not like school much. And you can tell from my posts about school that roommates and boys and activities and work occupied much more of my attention than classes actually did. So I went home at the end of the year prepared not to go back again. I really liked working, so when I went looking for a job that summer, I looked for a regular fulltime job, not one that would end with the summer.

Question 19: If you went to college or a vocational school, what school did you attend? (Part Three: BYU year three)

Ahhh. BYU year three. So much happened, but I have absolutely NO pictures from this year. Zero. So this will be words and words.

This was the year that Arlene, Marie and I all lived together. My friend Renée was planning to come back to BYU this year, so we were going to live together, the four of us. Renée had a friend, another Provo City Schools bus driver, whose first name escapes me, but last name Johnson. He and his family had just bought a new home, and wanted to rent their old house, which was just across the street south from Joaquin Elementary School in Provo, a nice walk to campus. When Renée decided against coming back to school, I was the in-charge person, to find room-mates and gather rent money, etc.

The house was blue. It had a huge living room, a tiny kitchen, two small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs were two more small bedrooms, a laundry room, a big bedroom and when we moved in, he was in the process of building a huge second bathroom downstairs.

I can't remember what the full rent on the property was, but it was too much for three of us, so we advertised for room-mates. We got two California girls, one from Lake Arrowhead, and one from the LA area. Jody and Jeni respectively.

We saw Jeni and her fiance Richard briefly at move-in, then she flew back to California for the weekend. Therefore, when we had our branch opening social (they were considered branches and not wards in those days) four of us went. Everyone was supposed to invent a song to introduce themselves.  This was our song, and I am sure that from the words you can guess the tune:

I'm Jody Ann Goodwin from California
And Jeni's on the beach.
We're the girls from Canada: Arlene, Myrna, Marie.
We live in the blue house,
It's the one called CANAFORNIA
We came here to BYU,
And all the guys ask:
Can I phone ya?
They wish all girls were from CANAFORNIA,
They wish all girls were from CANAFORNIA house.

There was another verse, but it is not coming to me at the moment.

Jody had a boyfriend named Victor. He was dark and intense and an actor. He acted in pretty racy movies. He would act in any gig that paid, basically. He was not a BYU student. Jody was pretty and sweet and funny and we loved her. Victor, not so much.

Jeni was sweet and cute and blonde and rich. We did not realize this. Until some of the boys pointed out that A) she was always gone because she FLEW somewhere and B) that's a BMW, didn't you notice? Umm, nope. It just looked like a car to us. (Jeni was the daughter of the JB of JB Big Boy Restaurant. Also VIP's and also a seafood chain back east.) Jeni had a fiance, as I mentioned, but HE had a slew of friends. And they were always at our house because--huge living room!

The first semester was really hard for me, not because of classes but personally. Because I had CUT MY HAIR. I am like Samson, and I really need a certain amount of the hairy stuff, or I lose my strength. Which means my confidence. I do not have much of that when my hair is short. That may also explain no pictures. Or maybe I broke my camera, which would not be much of a surprise.  Also, that semester I learned about some issues my sister Arlene was working through, really hard things, and that was very saddening for me. I did blow a few classes because of the second thing, because sometimes I missed classes a lot to be with my sister.

I was still working, though, at the Key Office, so that was good! This was also the semester that my Uncle George let me drive his car in exchange for visiting them. Arlene was driving her little red car.

Jeni's Richard had a couple of best friends, Rooter and Miles. (Rooter was really named David, but we only called him Rooter.) Marie sort of started dating Rooter. And Richard got it into his head that I should be dating Miles. Now, truthfully, Miles WAS attractive to me. But...he wore a WEDDING BAND on his left hand.  What was up with that? "Oh," Richard said, "Well, he IS married, but he and his wife (Jill) have been separated for a year. They are getting divorced. It is just a matter of time." I argued that married is married is married. So I refused to "date" Miles.

But that didn't stop Richard from putting us together ALL THE TIME. Like, they would be going to a movie, and they would say, "Myrna, come with us!" So I would go...and Miles would meet us there, and Richard would engineer it so we were sitting by each other. It drove me nuts! It got so if Jeni or Richard or Rooter ever asked me to do ANYTHING, I would look at them skeptically and say, "Is Miles going to be there?" I just felt so awkward getting shoved together with him when he was married.

Once at the movie theatre when I had totally believed that Miles was not coming, but there he was, I was so mad I wouldn't even sit with everyone else. I went to a completely different part of the theatre and sat alone. Jeni, who also thought that this was not another Richard-setting-up-Miles-and-Myrna situation, was mad at Richard, so she came and sat with me, telling Richard that if he invited Miles HE could sit with him.

And then, one Sunday, Arlene, Marie and I drove up to Salt Lake for the missionary homecoming of JS, the boy I had the crush on a few years before. When we got home, there were a TON of cars around our house. We went inside and there was Miles, among a gazillion other people, and a dark-haired girl I had never seen before was all cuddled up against him, practically laying in his lap, behaving very possessively. It was Jill. His wife. She had decided the whole divorce idea was too expensive and too much of a hassle, so she was back.

Between my short hair and worry about my sister and the Miles situation, I was just done. I went home at Christmas time and did not go back for the rest of that school year. Arlene took over managing the house--she brought the room-mate total to six, because I had seriously been eating a lot of the expenses, which may have been generous but was silly of me, and she was much too practical to make the same mistake.

Arlene had a life-changing year. She met the really tall guy from San Diego who lived two houses west of us. That house belonged to the Jespersons, from El Cajon, who we would later know very well when we lived in their ward. Michael Lund was living in the Jesperson house, but then one more son from the owning family was going back to BYU, so Michael was going to lose his spot in the house. So he asked for permission to build a room for himself in the basement, and since the Jespersons were family friends of the Lunds, they said sure. So he built the room. But remember the short basement I had the year before? That was how the basement was in that house, too! So Michael, at six and a half feet tall, had this little short-ceilinged room! Pretty comical! But at least he got to live close to the girl he began to date and married the next July, my sister Arlene.

I am not sure exactly how I spent my time at home the second semester that year...but I did spend a lot of time with my cousin Harold. Who ever thought that I would hang out with Harold? But we were both home and single, so we did. He was in the Sunday School presidency, and inevitably a person assigned to give a talk, or prayer, or the sacrament gem, would call him to say they couldn't be there, so he would call me and I would do something. That was fun. (I liked giving talks.) Sometimes I would be over at his house till all hours of the night playing computer games with him. Mom would call all frustrated because it was two in the morning and I wasn't home yet--but at Uncle Clyde's house, he was still up, and we were all still doing things (Auntie Beulah being the exception--she would go to bed with a book earlier) so we weren't even aware of the passing of time. Harold and I also went to all the young adult activities together. That was where and when I got to be good friends with Melanie Gough Hansen. She was two years younger than me, and we had not ever really been friends, but that winter of 1978, we hung out together a lot. We put on a bridal shower for our mutual friend Barbara when she married the wrong guy--later she married the right one! It was actually a great winter at home. And being there before many of the college students, I got a jump on the summer jobs, and so I spent April through August in a summer works project working for the school division, teaching remedial math and reading and spelling during the summer. There I made a couple more good friends--Janet Inaba, who was our project coordinator and who worked at the Vauxhall School, and Colleen Francom, who worked at the school in Grassy Lake. I was assigned to Dr. Hamman, my former elementary school, and the school near where Abra lives now. So it ended up that going home was a really good experience. I know that I took pictures of Colleen and Janet...but I have no clue where they might be!

PS. The Miles story is so much better when you know who Richard and Rooter are! Like, seriously, they were not just encouraging but actively setting up opportunities for their married friend to date someone not his wife! Mind-blowing if you know that today they are both BYU religion professors. Even then, they were (all three were) religion TAs. They totally should have known better.

So, the next year, I signed up for a religion class taught by one of the professors they had TA'd for, mainly because they had talked up what a good teacher this man was. I go to class the first day, and there is Miles. I nodded at him. The second day, I got to class before him, and he came and sat beside me. I was just like, "I am not doing this." So I dropped the class. Months later, I happened to run into Miles on campus, and he was like, "Why did you drop XXX class? You dropped it because I was in it, didn't you?" Well, yes, I did, but I was not about to tell HIM that. Seriously, YOU ARE MARRIED. You shouldn't CARE what classes I take!!!! I often wonder...is Miles still married to Jill? One day, maybe I will just shoot Richard or Rooter an e-mail and ask that question. (At least Richard apologized to me that next year, saying that was way out of line and he should not have done that, setting me up with Miles.)

Well, it's a good day...

...a good day from morning till night.

 

It really was a good day from morning till night today!

I had a good sleep last night because I went to bed early--having stayed up until 1:00 AM the morning before sewing, sewing, sewing. I had decided to go to the temple this morning, and it was a good day for that. Sometimes, when I go to the temple, when I am in my little changing stall, I have a race with the person in the next stall. Of course, the other person doesn't know we are racing! But, I do. Today, I won the race. That put me in the initiatory room in front of her, whoever she was...and that one thing made all the difference.

First of all, the smiling face of the lady who greeted me was Judy Broadhead! (Clark, now.) She lived across the street from us in North Orem, in the house the Osmonds later lived in. I was the one she would ask to substitute on the organ for her. She was sweet and I liked her a lot, and it was so nice to see her again after about ten years.  And then, in my initiatory booth, there was Alice Jessop. She is a dear, sweet friend, also from North Orem. (They bought the Shearer house.) After spending several years teaaching English in China, Alice and her husband came home for good, and no sooner did they do that than she was put in as Primary president. Bruce and I taught Primary and I was chorister under her. It was so lovely to see her. And seeing me actually brought her to tears. We had a good talk and she had a nice cry, and we shared a heart-felt hug.

Work was good--I have been checking the AVS website every day to see if John C. Leavitt's viola concerto Icarus was up, and today it WAS! YEAH! I am 3 for 3. I have been agenting composer boys. First, Michael Biancardi's Strata, which I really like alot. Then Leon Haxby's Variations, and now John's piece. All published! Michael's piece we know is already being played--a studio in Mexico at least has given it a whirl! Maybe I should be a fulltime agent--once I figure out how to earn money doing that! (Go to the links, and give those boys a listen! Michael's and Leon's are on the same page, since they are works for multiple violas. John's is on the viola and orchestra page.)

It was the first day of my class for the semester. Six girls I do not know are enrolled. They loved class today--(I gave them maple cookies, having just returned from the Land of the Tastiest Junk Food)--and they all left with fliers for my class and hopes of recruiting more students. I hope they can! Six is okay, but ten or twelve would be better.

There was a surprise visit to campus by Kaskade. Janet and I went. We sat with Richard (the R in TREN) and Richard and I had a good visit, learning about their projects and what he is doing with his life post-BYU. Janet and I should have stuck around for a photo opportunity with KASKADE, but here he is with Jeremy Grimshaw.

When I got the news about the Q & A, I messaged Jeremy and said, "Gamelan? Kaskade? I don't know what to do." He messaged me back and said, "I don't think the Q & A will last very long..." and I said "Okay, I will go to both." So I missed the first hour and a quarter of gamelan--as did Jeremy, and as did our TA Stewart--but it was worth it. What a really nice, down to earth guy he (Kaskade) is. He talked about how really, really hard it is to get to the top. He and his wife were both really committed, giving up both time and money so he could pursue his dream. He said that he learned you have to be willing to perform for anyone at any price, "Someone would say, hey if you do this gig, I'll give you a cheeseburger, and I would say, Okay! Ten hours of music? Okay!"  Good man, no ostentatious-ness (not a word, but whatever); very genuine. Gave MUCH credit to his wife Naomi, who was there in the back. Very interesting!

Gamelan rehearsal was good. We are learning a new piece by an old friend, Curtis Smith, which was commissioned by our carilloner at BYU, Neil Thornock. I am on kantilan, and was pleased to have learned most of the piece in the 45 minutes that I was at gamelan today.

Then I came home and began sewing. AGAIN. I started sewing Miriam a Snow White costume, and the project kept growing. Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Batman are now all sewn and will soon be on their way to Miriam, Rachel and Benjamin respectively. I am not 100% happy with any of them, but they are finished, and they are COSTUMES. So it doesn't matter if they are perfect specimens, am I right? The idea is that they will be fun to dress up in. No perfection needed. I hope they like them.

The things I will do to use up a yellow skirt! This is for Miriam.

Batman cape for Benjamin--not sure a BAT cape is a good idea for a BITER....

I hope Red Riding Hood is not too girly for Rachel...but she is one tough cookie. Nancy and Andrew can have her watch HOODWINKED and then it should be fine.

 Like I said, a good day from morning till night!

Question 19: If you went to college or a vocational school, what school did you attend? (Part Two: BYU year 2)

There was nothing like a summer at home working on the farm--which for me meant hoeing sugar beets and not much else since I was terrible at moving sprinkler pipes and could not drive a tractor--to remind me that going to university was actually a really good idea. So I happily returned to BYU for the 1976-1977 school year, considerably less boy crazy and ready to settle down and get some better grades. And also under the gun to do so, since I had to get off Academic Probation.

I went back to Provo a bit early because this was also going to be my cousin Marie's freshman year at BYU, so I traveled down with their family sometime in August before my first nephew Michael was born. I had put my guess date for his arrival in, though--August 17. I figured that since my cousin Ruth had given birth to her first baby, Shauna, on Colleen's birthday (March 9) that of course Colleen would reciprocate and have her first baby on Ruth's birthday. And I was right! Michael was born that day. Colleen and LeRon were also heading to Provo for school, because LeRon needed to finish up his degree in agriculture. I would not have wanted to stay in Alberta while that darling baby was living in Provo!

I returned to the same building at Pinegar Apartments that I had lived in the year before, only I was upstairs with Vicki and Bonnie. And probably at least one other person, but I don't remember who! Colleen and LeRon lived in Yview Park, which was a trailer park sitting where there is now student housing buildings on the west side of University Avenue. At the time, they were right by the BYU barns and cows and such, and it was pretty rural. Their trailer had a kitchen and living room in the middle, with a bedroom and bathroom at one end, and another bedroom at the other end. In the picture below, they are standing in their living area, in front of their kitchen.

Colleen, LeRon and Michael at seven weeks old in October 1976

Wasn't baby Michael adorable? He was so cute!! Instead of having crushes on boys that year, I just had a crush on my cute nephew, and wanted to spend all my free time holding and cuddling and playing with him.

I also went to Colleen's and LeRon's house to use their typewriter to type up papers for my classes. I remember typing literally all night to finish a paper for my Communications Law class, which I was repeating because it was one of my Fs from the year before. I worked really hard on that class, but only got a D. What kind of idiot thinks they should take a 300 level communications class as a freshman? Apparently, this kind right here! (I did eventually get a C in that class, third time around.)

Once I went to their house on a Saturday morning to type and I typed all day and was still there when they were getting ready to go to a ward activity. But the activity was on campus and I was in BLUE JEANS. So I could not go with them. But they said "Oh, come!" Colleen was in charge of something and wanted me to see what she had planned. So she pulled out some of her clothes for me to wear.

I was standing at the activity holding baby Michael when I felt this arm snake around me and give me a rather over-friendly squeeze. Shocked, I turned to see who it was! LeRon looked back at me equally shocked and said, "Oh, my! Wrong sister!" Me wearing her clothes and holding her baby--kind of threw him!

I wish I had a picture of Vicki. I know I had at least one, but I can't find it anymore. She was a lovely redhead. When we had met and disliked each other the year before, part of the dislike had to do with singing. She thought she was a good singer, and I thought I was a good singer, but I did better at auditions to groups than she did. She had come from a small high school and perhaps had been allowed to think she was more awesome than she actually was. Which was also true of me. Anyways, when we finally were friends, we talked about this and other issues and laughed about them, and realized we both still had a lot of growing up to do.

Bonnie, the other room-mate was engaged to Gordie Oles. Gordie was part native American and had grown up with about ten sisters and no brothers. Bonnie was PARANOID about what we threw away in the bathroom because what if Gordie used our bathrooms and saw something too...you know!!!! Vicki and I said, "He has a gazillion sisters!!!!" We liked Gordie, though, and we liked Bonnie, so we were careful to empty the bathroom trash frequently, so as to keep Gordie from finding out that we were regular girls just like his sisters.

I don't remember why Vicki and I decided to move during the second semester....but we did. We found a basement apartment, and we just loved the landlords, the Bledsoes. Charlie and Dorothy Bledsoe. They were so cool! Only...once we moved in, they went away to be snowbirds in Arizona or California, leaving their son and daughter-in-law upstairs in their house, and they were so stingy with the heat! So we often turned our gas oven on and opened it to heat our little apartment. I am not sure if that was a very good idea, but we did live through it. Here is a terrible picture of me standing in the kitchen. Unfortunately, it shows me much better than the kitchen. But it is all that I have.

What I am hoping you will notice is how little space there is between the top of my 5 foot 5.5 inch head and the ceiling. Hardly any space! Yes, folks, we lived in an apartment with clearance that anyone over about 5 foot 10 inches could not stand up straight in.

It was just Vicki and I and Marianne Hill. There was also a friend of Marianne's who was, like her, from California, but I am telling you seriously that she was never there. Like maybe once a month, she actually was there and slept in her bed. Usually not. I can't even remember what she looked like. Since I did write some things down, I know that her name was Barbara Smith. There are a gazillion Barbara Smiths, and I have no clue which one she is!!

Marianne had a boyfriend named Gary Crandall. He and his brother Roger, both sons of a BYU engineering professor, were in a band called Malibu Revue, so we three girls were their groupies. They played Beach Boys covers and things like that, and also fifties music. Here they are in a publicity shot.

Vern Woodbury, Animal, Byron in back; Roger and Gary Crandall in front. (And no--I have no clue what names to use to flesh out "Animal" or "Byron")

I had a bit of a crush on Roger--nothing like my 1975/6 crushes--but just wow, he could play the guitar! AND he could also play it while sinking onto his knees then bending backwards to touch his head on the floor and play while he did that and then come up again, playing all the while. Very elegantly. That was cool. I had been doing the same sort of a bending thing as an exercise ever since junior high, but I could not do it while playing an instrument or even elegantly. Roger could. He had my admiration for that.

Luckily, most of the guys in Malibu Revue were short, so they could fit in our apartment. Vern was tall, so he had some difficulties with our ceiling. He liked to come in and sit down right away because standing was uncomfortable for him. It was mostly the three of them--Vern, Roger and Gary--who spent time with us except at shows when obviously all the guys were there.

Apparently I was doing some artsy wheeling and dealing, because that was pretty normal for me--the year before, I had managed to get a tape of my cousin Marie singing her original songs and playing the piano all the way to the agent for the Osmond Brothers, so I was learning how to make and use connections. Something I still do, even more because of my job! But the summer of 1977, I got this postcard from Gary, and I don't even remember what I was trying to get them to do, but he sent me a polite no.

My friend Renée did not return to BYU for this school year. She went home to California and got a job in the computer field, and did not ever come back to school. But she did come for a visit. Here she is, with her short hair that was such a surprise to me, visiting with my mom and my cute little nephew Michael when they both happened to arrive for a visit at the same time. I am pretty sure that it was around April conference time in 1977.

Mom holding Michael, Renée holding Michael's toys sitting in the living room of my apartment

 The best thing about the 1976/77 school year was that I got a job! At the time, BYU freshmen were not allowed to have jobs so they could concentrate on school. You saw how well that worked for me!! So, this year, even being on Academic Probation, I got to have a job. I was hired to work at the BYU Key Office. Really, it was Keys and Custodial. We also had the locksmiths and the moving crew. The girls in the office handled time cards for all the custodial students on campus as well as the people mentioned above, and we also rented out all the lockers and checked out all the keys to rooms and buildings and furniture. I loved my job. I think I earned $2 or $3 per hour. Must have been $3 because I think I earned $60 per week.

Our boss was a funny Scotsman named Ed Terris, and his secretary was Betty Tippetts. Ed had a son named Will who would marry my future roommate Gayline, but that is a story for another day.  Ed told jokes all the time. I told him my duck joke, which I can no longer remember, but which I thought was hilarious. I told it to him, and he just looked at me blankly, nodded and walked away. A few days later, I heard him tell MY JOKE to someone else, and both he and the person he told the joke to were cracking up. I said, "Hey! I told you that joke, and you didn't even laugh." "Myrna," Ed said, "Some can tell them, and some can't."

The other girls I worked with were Ann Hughes, Anita Schwabadissen, and Martha Gourley. Martha left to take a job in university athletics, and was replaced by Roberta Griesmyer Hathaway. We had a lot of fun talking and working and staying busy together. Once again, I am sorry that my pictures are so awful. Blurry and faded and just awful. But still, all that I have.

Ann, Anita and Roberta

I know that I had a great year in Women's Chorus, wearing my pretty blue dress and learning to love music that I started out disliking, like "Beautiful Soup" by Irving Fine; and also "A woman of valour, who can find! For her price is far above rubies" based on Proverbs 31 which I think is by Darius Milhaud but I can't swear to it. Different harmonies than I was used to, these pieces had to grow on me. I still know pretty much all the parts to those pieces, while the others, which were more instantly likeable to me at the time, I have completely forgotten. Definitely Brother Downs, my Women's Chorus director, was an important person in my life. He just died this year; here is his obituary. The other teacher I remember the most from this year was my music history teacher, William Foxley. I liked him so much and learned a great deal from him. Then he died in 1978, so I am glad that I had a class from him while I still could. I am reminded of him frequently because his wife Norma donated a lot of his music to BYU and so I see it in the catalog "Gift of Norma Foxley' and remember her husband.

I also changed voice teachers. My freshman year, I had Lois Johnson, and she was probably great--she had been my room-mate Janet's teacher, but I had SUCH a bad attitude. I did not want to sing operatically, but that was how she taught, and she believed that you needed to be trained classically, and then you could sing anything. I just wanted to sing popular music. What a trial I must have been to her! Luckily, my new teacher, Debra Bennett Mitchell, was pretty free-spirit, and though she made me sing classically, too, she was able to make me think it was cool. So I loved voice lessons this year, too.

Well, that was pretty much what that year was like! So much better than the year before. I got off Academic Probation. I did well in my classes because I worked mornings, and while I could make myself get up to go to work at 8 AM, I could not get up for an 8 AM class. Or a 10 AM class. So, having a job first, getting to campus early and then going to class, worked really well for me.

And of course, there was my nephew Michael! I got to see him almost every day! With my baby hunger satisfied by holding and playing with my sister's baby, I didn't even make a fool of myself having mad crushes on every boy I met, And I was happy to just hang out with our boy band friends.  So, to end up, here is a picture of baby Michael on my front lawn, also in April 1977.