It's a puzzlement

Nancy gave her dad a puzzle for his birthday. She remembered that, once upon a time, he really liked doing puzzles. He had done a bunch of 3D puzzles about 20 years ago. I had forgotten about that. He had really enjoyed those puzzles--the only down side had been that he kept buying more and wanted to have them displayed all over the place, but there is only so much space, and eventually we had to take some down, and then all of them down.

The puzzle she got him was this one:

1000 pieces. This puzzle, made in Holland, is one of a series of puzzles in which the puzzle in the box is NOT the picture on the box--it is what happened next. So the picture on the box is only an example of where things might be, not where they are! So putting it together is quite the adventure.

I set up the round table in the living room, because I did not want to worry about food on one end of the kitchen table being tempted to spill itself all over the puzzle.The round table is old and prone to giving people slivers, so I couldn't leave it without a cover.  I just wish I had chosen a better table covering for it. I chose a jagged grey and white cover, so the puzzle doesn't "pop" on the table. A black cover on the table would have made a much better background.

Nancy held the gathering in honor of her dad's birthday on Dec. 15, which was the day he received the puzzle.  I am not sure exactly which day he started working on it--maybe on Monday, the 17th? His goal was to finish it before New Year's Day.

I took this picture of his progress on December 21. It shows that he had completed the frame, and then had begun to make some progress with the interior of the puzzle.

 I had thought the green part would be the easiest, since it is in pretty isolated areas. Bruce thought the water would be the easiest, because it was also a pretty isolated area. So that is why the water parts and the green parts and separated on the table.

By Christmas morning at 11:37 AM he had completed this much of the puzzle--the left side is shaping up nicely, and the rigth side is coming along.

I added two or five pieces every once in awhile; Josie stuck one or two pieces in place a couple of times. But Bruce did most of the work.  He finished the puzzle last night, Dec. 27. I confess to have spent about an hour working on it while he was sleeping. When I got home, so much was done. There were just a few brown pieces left, so I wanted to do all of them. When I had done them, there was just the water left to finish, and not much of that, so I just finished the water. One of the pieces that we thought was water was actually sky from the right hand corner, so I finished that. When Bruce woke up, he and I finished the green of the tree branches. The part that I had initially thought would be the easiest, but was actually the hardest. Bruce put the last piece in place at about 7:10 PM. Here he is with his masterpiece!

And here is a close-up of the finished puzzle:

When Bruce was a young boy, his family got a big puzzle like this every Christmas. They would set it up on a card table, and whoever wanted to could stop and work on it until it was finished. Bruce had been the family puzzle master. I did not know this. So, a thousand piece puzzle was a really good choice for a gift for him. Thanks, Nancy!

First Dates

I have been thinking about awkward first dates, and what happens after them. Do you give the person another shot at doing better? Do you just say "forget you" and go on with your life, ghosting the other person?

I sort of think that sometimes people don't give the other person another chance. But we all have bad days and good days, so if we are caught on a bad day, it is going to probably be an awkward date. A better day might equal a better date.

I was fortunate because my first date with my husband was actually quite wonderful, and I would call it a success. Even though it involved a really stupid movie. But some very good milkshakes--my first time at the Iceberg--and some good conversation. I was such a snob that if it had been a bad date, I would probably have been one of those people who would not have given him a second chance. So I guess I was lucky.

I remember reading a blog post a long time ago by a girl who had a terrible first date with the guy she later married. I am pretty sure it involved her vomiting in his car. In his really very nice, very new car. That was the last thing she did, after a series of unfortunate dating events that preceded the vomiting on that night of nights. She thought she would never hear from or see him again, but he cleaned his car and gave her a second chance, and she later married him.

I tried to find that story, because I remember it being laugh-aloud funny and so I wanted to read it again, but I couldn't find it. However, I did find another one that was cute. This woman went to a movie with a guy she knew from the gym. He had really wanted to ask her out for months, but it took time for him to get the courage, and when he finally did ask her out, he was so afraid of blowing it that of course that was what he did. He asked her to a movie, and they just sat there awkwardly watching the movie, like they were each alone but together, and then after it, he asked if she wanted him to walk her to her car (because they met at the theatre) and she did, because it was dark. And then she drove him to the other side of the parking lot to where his car was parked. All this in utter silence. When he asked her out again (which kind of shocked her since it had been a bad date) she went more out of pity than anything else. However, that date was better--and ten years later, they were a married couple with three children. And she likes to tease him sometimes about how bad that first date was.

My piano teacher, Gail, was not particularly thrilled when Jerry asked her out, but she had been taught to say yes when asked out, even if you are not particularly interested. Jerry took Gail to a drive-in movie. She sat on her side of the car, as far away from Jerry as she could get. The movie was boring, she was tired, she fell asleep against the window. Jerry didn't know what to do when the movie ended--so he drove her home, then woke her up--she was disoriented and embarrassed and quickly left the car and ran inside. Jerry drove home, pretty unhappy about how that date went. I never asked Jerry why he asked Gail out again, but I do know that Gail went because she was embarrassed that she had really dropped the dating ball on that first date, and felt sorry for Jerry that she had been such bad company. The second date went better, and even though Gail's parents were not totally on board about Jerry (because he was a FARMER--how would their city-bred daughter ever be comfortable living on a FARM?) they got married, still are married, and have six children and by now, lots of grandchildren.

Jerry's brother, Richard, went on his first date with his wife, Darlene, because he was dared to go. There was a bet and some money involved. Darlene was a pretty intimidating person, and none of the guys in their group of friends could imagine anybody dating, let alone marrying, Darlene. A dare was given, and a kitty of money collected, and Richard accepted the dare. "She wasn't that bad," I remember Richard telling me--in front of Darlene--and both of them laughed about it! I am not sure if Darlene was very happy when she first learned the circumstances of their first date, but by the time they told me about it they had been married probably 20 years and had at least four kids by then, maybe five.

When I set up Josie's friend LN with our cousin SN, I made it conditional that she had to go on three dates with him, because that way if the first date was bad, there would be another chance for both of them. But she only went on one, and it was a bad date--like not vomit bad, but awkward bad. But she would not follow up and go out with him three times! He was fine with trying again--it had been awkward from his point of view, too--but she was done. She said it was because he was studying to be a doctor, and her father and all her brothers were tradesmen, so she didn't think he would fit in her family. What a ridiculous thing to decide after one date! HIS father and all his brothers were tradesmen, too! Just because he wanted to be a doctor instead of an electrician or a plumber did not mean he didn't like tradesmen, because clearly HE DOES. Well, he is happily married to someone else now, so it worked out fine for him.

Nancy's first date with Andrew--well, not counting him inviting her to prom or whatever it was with a TOILET--was probably not the best, since she didn't realize it was even supposed to be a date, and so she asked if her brother could come too. And that was AFTER Andrew had dropped her while dancing in an assembly, in front of the whole school. I would say that their early relationship was a perfect storm of not-the-best, yet here they are, 13 years into married life and with five children

I think that, for me, every first date EXCEPT my first date with my husband was awkward--usually because of me. I was terrible at dating. I was so nervous! And most of the time, the people who asked me out were not the people I hoped would ask me out. But once in awhile, someone I was actually interested in would ask me out. I will tell two embarrassing stories on myself...

One was during my second year at BYU. I had developed a serious crush on my cousin's cousin BW. I had known him for much of my life--at least since the Conrads (as we called our cousins, even though we were Conrads, too) had moved out to the farm across the highway from our farm. So I had been nursing this crush for many years. But BW was quite a few years older than me, and seemed like impossible territory. Well, we were both at BYU--I think BW was probably working on a master's degree by then--and sometimes Marie and I would run into BW on campus and talk to him, and one day he called and asked me out to a concert. Was it the Carpenters? I think it was! (The days of BYU having concerts with big name groups are long since over, but back then it happened.) I loved the Carpenters! I really liked BW! Can you imagine a more perfect date possibility?

So of course, what did I do? I got so scared, so petrified, that I called him back and told him that I couldn't go--I had to work. Now, Marie and I were on the admissions staff for the School of Music. This meant we ushered for events in the De Jong Concert Hall. And honestly, so many staff members were planning to go to the Carpenters concert in the Marriott Center that really not very many people wanted to work whatever classical music event was going on that night--but seriously, I COULD have gotten off! I even think that I might not have been scheduled, but agreed to work for someone else just so I wouldn't have to go on that date. ON THAT DATE THAT I REALLY, REALLY WANTED TO GO ON BUT WAS TOO TERRIFIED. Can you even believe I did that? Things were awkward with BW for YEARS after that disaster of a non-date.

The second most horrible dating decision I ever made involved my brother-in-law's brother RT. RT was another person I had known for many, many years and had a crush on. Like, I destroyed my diary from my early teen years specifically because all I wrote about in it was about RT and my crush on him. It was so embarrassing that I could not stand it, so I threw it in the burning barrel and watched it burn when I was in my older teens. Many years later, after RT had returned from his mission and was attending BYU, we were both home for Christmas, and RT asked me out to the New Year's Dance.

Taber Stake held a New Year's Dance every year when I was young--like my whole life--I don't know if they still do. But it was a very big deal, with decorations, and food, and a live band. It was totally fun. I had looked forward to turning 14 so I could go to that dance with much anticipation. (It was never as fun as I had imagined it would be, mostly because I would spend the time hiding in the bathroom so I didn't have to dance with RP, who always pursued me, and with whom I had no desire to dance. I probably should have been nicer about that. However, THAT is another story.) But this time, THIS TIME, it was going to be great! And it was. It was fun to be at a dance and not have to worry about who I was going to dance with. I loved dancing. RT loved dancing. RT was easy to talk to, and we had lots in common, including C and L and probably their one child at that point.

So we were having this great date, talking and laughing and dancing--and all of a sudden it hit me. At midnight, we would be singing Auld Lang Syne, and then there would be the countdown to the New Year 10-9-8-7-6-etc. And when we got to the HAPPY NEW YEAR part at zero, then all the couples KISS. This happened. I had watched it happen many times over the years when I was there, and would come out of hiding in the bathroom to peak in the door. And I was hit with a wave of panic, because I was going to have to kiss RT!!! Like, in the decorated gym, in front of everyone! And did I really want to kiss RT? Because he was from Grassy Lake, and he was probably going to end up farming, and if I kissed him, he might ask me out again (which he probably would have because up to this point it had been a good date) and then what if we fell in love and I had to be a farmer's wife in Grassy Lake?

So I did the only reasonable thing I could think of. I told him that I was feeling sick and I needed to go home. And I was so upset at myself for taking a perfectly good date and ruining it, that I did indeed begin to feel sick. We drove home the 7.5 miles (probably 8 from the stake center) in absolute silence, and when we stopped and he was going to be a gentleman and get out and open my door for me, I told him not to bother, and I hopped out and ran in the house. So I never had to kiss RT, and he never asked  me out again (because what the heck just happened?) and I never had to worry about marrying a farmer and living in Grassy Lake (and RT never became a farmer, and he never lived in Grassy Lake. Instead he became a millionaire and lived in Texas and Oklahoma. Lucky I missed out on THAT!)

I was very happy for my friend Sylvia who married RT. I do not think I have spoken much to RT in the 40 years since I embarrassed myself and probably him so badly. When I have seen them, I always talk to Sylvia instead. I hope he has never told her about that terrible date, because if he did, I probably would be almost too embarrassed to talk to her as well. I think that my face is turning red just writing about it.

So, apparently I am the queen of awkward first dates and awkward first dates that never got off the ground, and maybe that is why I have such compassion for people who have awkward dates, and I always hope that people will give each other another chance to do better and be better. Because I know how it feels to be just really awkward!

Christmas Eve Service at St. Mary's

Some of my children and I have been attending either midnight mass at St. Joseph's, the Catholic Church in Orem, or the 11 pm service at St. Mary's the Episcopalian Church in Provo, since 2012. So this is now a seven year old tradition for us. It has been me and Josie and/or Patrick and/or David and/or Rosie in 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, but this year it was going to be down to just Josie and I. Since the Heiss family will be moving to Georgia next summer, Josie and I thought we would invite Rachel and Miriam to go with us.

I asked them which service they would prefer to go to, and since Miriam wanted to attend the service that had an organ involved, and Rachel was happy to go to either, we elected to go to St. Mary's. This was probably a better choice--less driving, earlier start and therefore earlier finish, both for two young girls, and for the old lady doing the driving.

This was our first of seven trips to mass where the weather was delightful! Every other year, it has been either snowy or downright frightful! So that was a happy happenstance.

We arrived early so we could sit near the front, hoping that Miriam could watch the organist, who happened to be my friend Dallin. (You can see him in a picture at this earlier post, playing the organ that we used to have in the library.) Dallin took my music 210R class a couple of years ago, and we have been friends ever since. Dallin invited us to stay after the service so we could get up close and personal with the organ.

The choir was very small for the 15 minute prelude of choir music--one man and five women. Usually my friend Steve sings in the St. Mary's choir, but he had told me earlier in the day that he was attending the earlier service, and probably not the late service. Two of the women in the choir were Dallin's sister Nancy and his wife Carlie. Dallin, Carlie and Nancy are all LDS, but this is not a problem at St. Mary's, where all are welcome. I have had several different friends who have been the regular or substitute organist at St. Mary's and who have participated with the choir as well. Actually, St. Mary's works pretty closely with the School of Music at BYU, stepping up to be a community venue for performances, filling in a small way the niche left unfilled by the loss of the Provo Tabernacle for that purpose. (Small way only because their sanctuary is literally small. But they do their small thing in a big, open-hearted way.)

Josie took a short video of the choir--they were good. They were small in numbers but big in voice, singing out powerfully the way people are meant to sing.  She also snuck a picture of  R, M and I. Which is very confusing to me--because it seems backwards to me? Like, I feel like it should be the other direction. It looks like Rachel was on Josie's right, but actually she was on Josie's left. I was sitting against the left wall. Weird. I know that we all look less than enthusiastic! But really we all enjoyed it! Trust me.

The man who we usually see conducting services at St. Mary's, Peter Van Hook, unfortunately died of cancer on December 16. (At least he is over 70 years old, so that is better than 60 or less, right?) He was a very warm, welcoming man. I wondered who it would be in his place. It was Timothy Yanni, who is usually the chaplain at St. Mark's Hospital. I felt like he did more cantoring of his readings than Peter V-H did. So that was interesting. I liked his sermon. What stuck with me was when he said that, as a hospital chaplain, a common question people ask is "What did I do to deserve this ____?" Fill in the blank with a disease, the death of a loved one, a procedure that went wrong, etc. And the answer, he said, is nothing. You did nothing to deserve this. Yes, there are some things that go wrong because of choices you made, lifestyle decisions that were unhealthy, driving carelessly--things like that. But for most people, absolutely nothing you did caused an illness or accident, or death of a loved one. Only the human condition. He talked about how Christ also took on the human condition, and therefore he understands and can save us from the human condition through his atonement. Only he probably did not use that word. But, you know, that is what my LDS spin on what he said gave me. Alma 7: 11-12 would have fit nicely into his sermon.

One think Rev. Yanni did differently than I remember Rev. Van Hook doing was to explain that at communion, people could come and either take communion or recieve a blessing instead. I don't remember how he said to position the self for communion (besides kneeling) but if you instead wanted a blessing, you were to cross your arms over your chest. So that was interesting to watch, because I don't remember that happening before.

Another new thing for us was the candles! They passed out a circular disc for catching the wax and a candle to every person in the audience. Except on our row, she (a lady named Serena who is in charge of the Community Outreach Music Program at St. Mary's) miscounted and only passed out five candles on our row. So I went without. I noticed that the man who was sitting directly behind me, but who was acting as an usher also, never returned to his seat after helping with something, so I ALMOST reached back and took his candle, but then I didn't. It would probably have been fine for me to do that. Josie took this video and picture of the candles.

I look so awkwardly bowed down because I WAS awkwardly bowed down. Some of the music was printed in the program, and some in the hymnal, but I forgot to take my reading glasses, and so I had to look over the top of my glasses to read, only I need to be really close to the paper when I do that, but I was sharing with Miriam, so I had to hold it low enough for her to see, but high enough that if I slouched awkwardly I could still see. However, that particular posture is not conducive to a good singing voice!!

After the service, we went to the front to see the organ as planned. This organ is different from the organs Miriam is used to because it only has one manual. And the stops are different, because there are three on the left for the left side of the manual, and three on the right for the right side. Dallin demonstrated to Miriam how if you only pulled one on the left, you got no sound at all if you played on the right side of the manual keyboard. And then he invited Miriam to play the organ, but she wouldn't do it! Josie even maybe have offered a bribe, but Miriam was not taking. She stood firmly upon her no. She did consent to having a picture taken at the organ with Dallin.

And that was our Christmas Eve--that turned into Christmas Day since we left somewhat later than midnight--at St. Mary's for 2018.

Christmas Gifties

This year, having thought ahead about what I could give my co-workers for little Christmas Gifties (small but cute or yummy or practical gifts) I bought a box of 12 guitar-shaped pens. (There was a forshadowing of this in an earlier post.) Since my areas of responsibility are music, dance and theatre, I wanted the gift to go along with that. Then I wanted to come up with a poem to go with the pen. In the post I just referred to, I recorded the test version, and then, in yet another post, I gave the final version that I actually used.  Here is the pen. (Only I think they might actually be pencils?):

Only trouble was, I only bought 12, and I ran out with just people at work. I still had people in my neighborhood and church community to give to. So I tried to order more of them online, but the free shipping (from Oriental Trading) would mean I would receive them after Christmas, and I wanted them before. And the shipping charges were enough that I didn't want to pay that much! What to do?

When I bought the pens, I also bought these cute little musical snowmen, planning ahead for next Christmas. They were inexpensive, and I wanted to see them, to see if they were worth giving, which they are.

So, I got the idea to give my neighbors the snowmen, and then buy more of BOTH, and next year use the snowmen for my coworkers, and the guitars for my neighbors. So that is the plan.

However, I put the snowmen into a baggie with a Christmas card, and a little craft kit for making a nativity scene, and a few treats.  So I had to write another poem to go with it, because the other one clearly would not fit.  So here is the poem to go with the snowman etc.:

A snowman (fake),
Some treats to eat,
A craft to make--
'Cause you're so sweet!

After Christmas, I am going to order more of both the guitars and the snowmen so I can use them next year. Hopefully, having written them down will help me to remember!!!!

Because, wow, am I ever getting good at forgetting! I am a boss at it! For example, every year I give Kelli's children money because otherwise, I am just wasting money buying something they do not want or need. So one year, who knows when, I bought a box of Christmas cards, so that I could put their money in a card to give to them. And I was so organized that I was writing down who got which card, on the inside of the box, so that I could keep using those same cards until they were all used.  I had notes like: Three Dogs - Amy - Sabrina. So one year, Amy got the three dogs, and the next year, Sabrina did. It was a good system that apparently worked for two years.

And then I forgot about them.

So, yesterday, when I was getting the snowmen ready to deliver to people, I thought "I really need a card or something to write this poem on." I "knew" I didn't have any Christmas cards, but thought I had some colored index cards. I went to look for them in the cupboard (which, incidentally, is NOT where the colored index cards actually are) and found--a box of Christmas cards!! Surprise!! And opened the lid and saw written my list of grandchildren and who had received which card--Surprise the second! Because this year, I bought new 50 cent cards for each grandchild at the dollar store. Because I had forgotten all about my system of card-giving. 

My favorite toy

Of all the things I ever played with in my childhood, I have come to the conclusion that my favorite toy was...the catalogue! Or, multiple versions of the catalogue as it came and went from our house.

"The" catalogue, for us, meant actually two catalogues, because Canada had two major department stores that issued catalogues three times a year. So we actually got six catalogues every year. And they were amazing! The Fall/Winter catalogues were the thickest, hundreds of pages long. Like a good thick book to read cover to cover. They were divided into sections--usually clothing first, then shoes, then housewares, then furniture, then outdoor equipment and auto parts and things like that.

Canada had the T. Eaton Company and the Simpsons-Sears Company. Eaton's started in Toronto in 1869, as a single dry goods store. It eventually spread itself from sea to shining sea. The catalogue was first published in 1884, and ran until 1976. There was an Eaton's Store in Lethbridge, and when we made our twice annual trip to the dentist (Dr. Lamb, a very aptly named individual) we also did "clothes shopping" at Eaton's. Lethbridge Eaton's was very large--it took up an entire city block. It was magical to shop there--we had nothing like that in Taber! However, I liked the catalogue better.

The other catalogue--we called it simply Simpsons. And that was how it started--as simply Simpsons-- if you look at its history. Robert Simpson also started his dry goods store in Toronto, but a few years after Timothy Eaton, in 1872. He liked to stay small, and only reluctantly grew into a department store. He started his catalogue operation in 1894, just a few years before his death, at which time his store was run by financiers, who sold the catalogue operation to Sears, and eventually all of the stores to the Hudson's Bay Company--now known simply as The Bay. Sears was an American Company, known during my lifetime as Sears & Roebuck, and they acquired and named their catalogue Simpson-Sears in 1953. Just in time for my lifetime. We eventually got a Sears store in Lethbridge, but not until the mall concept came to Canada.

Here are some pictorial samples of the covers of the Fall/Winter catalogue. Eaton's on the left, and Simpsons-Sears on the right. I actually remember both of these covers, so seeing them again is a fun walk down memory lane for me! This Eaton's catalogue would have arrived in our mailbox in early September of 1972. I would have been 14, almost 15, when it arrived. The Simpsons' catalogue below would have arrived in early September 1967, when I was 9 going on 10.


What would I (we) do with these catalogues? Well first of all, we would read them. And study them. From cover to cover. Once we were old enough to have opinions of what we wanted to wear, we would make lists for our mom of the clothes and shoes we wanted to buy. She would look at our lists and decide if or when to order anything we asked for. If she ordered anything we wanted, she would write out the order on one of the forms included in the catalogues--there was a section of forms about in the middle, or sometimes at the end--and then take that order to the store-front offices that each company had in Taber. When our order arrived, the store would call us, and the next time we went to town, we would pick it up.  We would bring the box home and open it. If our mom had ordered any clothes or shoes for us, we would try them on. If they fit and the clothes passed muster--good enough quality, they met care concerns (did they require ironing, for example)--then we would keep them. If they didn't fit, or they were ugly in real life, or we hated them after all, then we would return them to the store-front office.

Another thing we would do, Arlene and I mostly, but sometimes Colleen, would be to play "which do you like the best." We could do this on any page--dishes, sheets, towels--but of course also clothes and furniture. I loved playing "which do you like the best!" I can remember saying to one sister or the other, "Will you please play 'which do you like the best' with me?"

So, if for example, we were looking at this page (from S-S Spring/Summer 1967)


we would each have to choose the outfit we liked best, and the other person would have to guess which one we chose. Then we would say if the person was right or not, and sometimes explain our choice. So, maybe I would choose the girl numbered with (5) and (6), but Arlene would have thought I liked (3) and (4) best, then I would have explained that I really liked the striped pants, but I didn't like the sleeveless top, so I liked the top numbered (1) better, only I would want it in yellow.

Doesn't that sound like fun? We spent hours doing that! If nobody would "play" with me, I would play it with myself. This was no coveting of merchandise--it was simply, of the selections on a page, thinking about what I liked better and why I liked it.

The Spring/Summer catalogues arrived in probably March, about six months after the Fall/Winter catalogues. They were about half the thickness, because they mostly featured summer clothing and footware, as well as things you would use only in the summer--items to support outdoor activities, gardening activities, that kind of thing. Here you can see examples of the 1968 Simpsons' and 1974 Eaton's catalogues respectively.


The Spring/Summer issues were less entertaining for "which do you like the best" but only because they were thinner. There were still great things to look at and think about what you liked or what you didn't like. But it was okay, because the weather was good, and we had lots of play and lots of work to do outside, so we didn't need to spend as much time playing "which do you like the best."

The BEST catalogues for "which do you like the best" were the CHRISTMAS ONES. Oh my! In the late fall, how we anticipated the arrival of those catalogues! Arlene and I would each look at one, and then trade, when they first arrived. Hours of entertainment just looking at the catalogues!

The Christmas catalogues were thin like the the Spring/Summer ones, but packed with lots of toys for girls and boys, and so entirely entertaining. I think our obsession with looking at the catalogues really helped our parents to zero in on what Santa Claus should bring to our house--although at least one of us believed in Santa Claus enough to think that changing one's mind on December 24 would result in Santa bringing the LATEST wish, and then be upset all day on Christmas when he got it wrong. I wonder which one of us that might me--oops be--haha! Me is right!

Here are some samples of Christmas catalogues from my childhood. What a fun cover on the Eaton's Christmas catalogue of 1959! I would have been turning two, so I don't remember that one, but I bet I loved looking at it--if they would let me! At two, I might not have been gentle enough with it to be allowed the privilege!  But I would have been turning eight when we got that 1965 Simpsons catalogue.




Once the catalogues had passed their expiry date--you could no longer order from them--then Mom would give us the old catalogues for making paper dolls. Only we called them "cut-outs." Always. "Do you want to play cut-outs with me?" Some people made cut-outs by cutting out the whole bodies of the "people" in the catalogue, but our way was different (which irritated our cousins a whole lot, because they didn't do it our way at all) because we cut out heads. We would create a family, choosing the head that we wanted for the father, the mother, the children, the extended family if we wished. We would cut out the head and shoulders of the person, about like this, only actually cutting the head and shoulders out of the paper.

It was sometimes hard to choose, because you had to choose a head that you were willing to sacrifice the clothes of. Because the way we made our cut-outs, we could then have a wardrobe for the cut-outs we chose, by cutting out clothes and making tabs on then that would fit over the shoulders of our chosen head. So, in this example, and please forgive my terrible drawing of what the tabs would look like, I would cut out this outfit along all the edges, but including the tabs. Then the tabs on this outfit would go over the shoulders of the head I chose for a young boy, and I would bend them so the outfit would stay on him, and he would wear this outfit, or any of the others I chose to make for him in the same way.

We also cut out all the things our paper people might need or want. We chose furniture for them. And with our head arrangement, we could choose a bed, and then cut a slit along the pillow line, so that at bed time, we could insert the heads into the beds, so it looked like our paper people were sleeping in the beds. So, if this were my chosen bed, I would cut along the faint red line, including up and around the pole, and then a head or heads could be inserted there to give my cut-outs a good night's rest.

We could play cut-outs anywhere. Sometimes we drew houses for them directly on the basement floor, when it was still cement, and as long as we cleaned our lines off when Mom told us to. When we got flooring in the family room, we couldn't do that anymore, but we could draw houses on the blackboard, which was just a piece of masonite painted with blackboard paint, although was it black? I think it was actually black. That was portable, so we could take it upstairs or down.

If we played in the living room, one of us might get to use the entire couch to turn into a "house" for our cut-out family, while the other one would get the big chair, the rocking chair and the stereo. About equal space.

If we played in the bedroom, we used the areas created by the chenille bedspreads, which made "rooms" for us to use. Here is a sample--you can see how each section is kind of a "room" to a person with sufficient imagination.


We could give our cut-out children so many toys once we had the Christmas catalogues! So, from this page of dolls (Eaton's 1962--I was 5) I could cut out dolls for my cut-outs to have and play with!

I honestly think that I personally derived more satisfaction cutting out toys to give to my cut-outs than I ever received playing with an actual toy that I got for Christmas myself. I would play with my toys sometimes, but I played with my cut-outs constantly, so in balance, the catalogues were my favorite toy. (Even if I did once in a lifetime accidentally eat the head of my favorite little red-head girl cut-out.)

Girder and Panel Play

Writing about playing with Zoë yesterday made me think about playing, and about specifically how I personally play. Or played. I do not remember many specifics of playing as a child.

I know that I liked to play at the tiny tables and chair set (technically Colleen's) and set the table with play dishes, and feed pretend food to dolls and teddy bears at the table. And I liked to rock in the little rocking chair (also technically not mine--I think it ended up at Arlene's house but I don't know who it belonged to originally.) I really liked to color. And I really liked paper dolls. Both the kind you had to buy and the kind made from the catalog. But mostly I just changed their clothes. Put them to bed, got them up and dressed, they went somewhere for two seconds, and then home to change their clothes again. Which was why I liked to play with Arlene. Paper dolls or Barbie dolls, Arlene had adventures for them to do after they changed their clothes. Whereas changing their clothes was pretty much all I had.

I also liked to play Primary Music Leader. I would line the dolls and teddy bears up on the couch, and set up the music stand with the Primary book on it, and lead the singing. That is something I still like to do, only with real children, and I don't need the music stand mostly, because I pretty much have all the songs memorized by now!

But I spent a good deal of time as a child wanting to play with other people's toys while being unhappy with my own. What a blessing that I had kind siblings who were willing to share!

One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things was my brother Bruce's construction set. I did not know what it was called, so today I googled something like "red bars that connect used to construct buildings with panels" or some such thing, and honestly, it worked! It led me straight to the Wikipedia entry for Girder and Panel Building Sets. Which is, apparently, exactly what they were called! No cutesy advertising gimmicky name! I think that happened a bit later, but when they were first invented, in 1957, they were just plain old Girder and Panel Building Sets.  Here is a picture of the "red bars that connect."

By RussNelson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53403845

Oh my goodness! I loved playing with these! Unlike regular blocks, or legos, I could build with these and feel like I actually built something cool! There was no prescribed "this is how to do it" about it, or maybe I started learning to build with them from my brother, long before I could read instructions, so that I had the confidence to just go for it. 

This is what the set my Brother had looked like, more or less, with solid panels and window panels, and you could just build them however you wanted to. 

And guess what? YOU CAN STILL BUY SOMETHING LIKE THEM TODAY. And I am going to buy some. Only, sad to say, now they only come in a set, like "Girder and Panel Children's Museum" or "Girder and Panel School Building." And the girders are black, and the panels are "this is a window and it goes here" and "this is a door and it goes here" so not quite the same freedom of expression. But still. The company has gone out of business, so the sets are not widely available, and some sellers are asking for astronomical prices for them. This morning Amazon only had 18 "Girder and Panel School Building" sets left; this evening, there are only 16. I have put one in my shopping cart, so I will need to buy it soon if I am going to. 

So this--this I can play with! I know how! (I might add a cautionary note: not all the buyers were happy with it. The quality might not be quite the same as in 1957...)

Adventures with Jo and Zo

Josie and I took this afternoon off for a play date with Zoë. We hoped that we might become more acceptable to her if we spent some time just with her, doing something fun. I don't know if it worked--I kind of bombed it at the end when I left her in the garage (asleep (for two seconds)) to find someone she likes better to wake her up, but then she woke up alone in the garage and it was dark and was already crying before someone she likes better (Rachel) got to her.

But BEFORE that, I think it went pretty well. When we arrived at about 1 PM, she was watching a movie, and didn't even want to come with us. Josie bribed her with a visit to McDonald's, and she was okay with that, so we set off on our merry way. Driving her very own car with her very own car seat, so that was nice for her. (By which I mean that I was driving their family car so we didn't have to move the car seat.)

At McDonald's in Springville, Zoë wanted a Happy Meal. She wanted to drink Sprite, but guess what is cool? That McD's has an array of Sprites to choose from, so Zoë wanted a pink one--strawberry! She ate about half of one chicken nugget and some French Fries, but oh, she loved her Sprite.  The toy that came with her Happy Meal was a batman, plain of face, plain of everything, that came with stickers to create your own customized version of Batman. After eating, Josie and Zoë spent some time trying out several personas before settling on the design that Zoë wanted on her bat person.

Then we went into the Playroom to play. Since Josie and I were too old and tall to meet the criteria for playing, Zoë had to play by herself. "Is it even fun to play by yourself?" Josie wondered aloud. The answer: Yes, yes it can be. Zoë was very happy.

 In fact, she was so happy in her play that I had a difficult time to take a picture because she was so busy going from place to place. She did not even play on everything--I think the way to climb to the tall slide was too intimidating for her to do on her own, but she found plenty of other fun things to do.

When she was ready to go, we went to our next destination, the Dinosaur Museum at BYU. This is a very low-key museum, but since Zoë had been talking about her favorite dinosaur, Triceratops, it seemed like something she would like to do. She was a little bit afraid. And also kind of weird-ed out because the dinosaurs seemed to be all bones and no skin.

 Zoë enjoyed some of the hands-on displays, illustrated with a pair of hands so guests would know they were allowed to touch. She showed off her brilliant vocabulary, noticing when rocks contained crystals, and pointing them out to us.

 Every display told the name of the dinosaur (or bone or what have you) and then its pronunciation underneath it. So Josie and I got a kick out of this one "Not Yet Named" with its pronunciation also carefully spelled out for us.

 We stopped at the window to watch the one and only paleontologist at work in the lab. Zoë wondered why she was all alone, and why was there nobody sitting in the other chairs? We figure it is because it is finals week at BYU and so the schedule is not as usual. We must have stared and stared at that paleontologist, because eventually she started showing awareness of being watched, and soon turned to look at us. She waved at Zoë, but Zoë did not wave back.

 In the second to last room, we found an almost triceratops for Zoë. Or at least, part of one. She was quite fond of it. Maybe too fond. I do not think the only worker in the place would have been happy with how up close and personal Zoë was willing to get to her favorite dinosaur (fragment.)

There was a big toothy mouth there. And Zoë had become brave enough to stand quite close to it--

but she was not willing to put her head inside its mouth. So I had to demonstrate that the dinosaur head-of-bones was pretty safe.

There was one more room, but Zoë announced that she was done. Ready to go to the next place. So we hopped in the car and drove up the hill to the Bean Museum.

I was hoping they would have a nativity like they used to have before they expanded the museum. But no. They don't. (Personal beef: I like the new museum BUT there were some elements of the old museum that were better. That part with lots of vegetation and the nativity at Christmas time--I miss that.)

Josie and I let Zoë be the tour guide--we went where she wanted to go. We did spend some time in the play area. She had it entirely to herself. I have never seen the museum as deserted as it was today. Which was nice, if you wanted to be able to do what you wanted to do, and Zoë took advantage of that to go down the slide a billion times.

 We walked over to the "underwater" exhibit, and the river water exhibit beside it. Zoë wondered how to get inside it, and we had to explain that the barrier is there because they don't WANT you to go inside. They want you to look at it from outside. That did not impress her. When we saw the otters on the river, Zoë said, "I don't like otters." I said, "But your mom was an otter!" After some prompting from Josie, I got it right--Nancy (and her siblings) had been both Marlins (in PoCo) and Otters (in High River) when they were in swim club.  Zoë announced solemnly, "My mom was not an otter. My mom was a person, and then she was a mom, but not an otter."

There is a new improved ant underground to play with, although 4 of the six long magnet wands were missing, so the three of us had to take turns with 2 wands. Zoë did a good job, even (with Josie's help) getting one ant all the way out of the tunnels and above ground.

We went upstairs, and when we had gotten to the arctic exhibit, counting the musk oxen and such activities (deciding who were girls and who were boys) Zoë spied the elevator. She really wanted to get on it. Josie said, "When we are done, we will go down on the elevator." "I AM done," Zoë announced. And so we said, Okay, then let's go. We walked to the elevator, only to be waylaid by a two-year old who was over the moon because Zoë was wearing an Ariel shirt.

We took the elevator down, left the building, and Zoë promptly fell asleep in the car seat. Taking us back to the beginning of the story, which I started at the end.  And then, as if it wasn't enough to upset Zoë, I had to go and upset Benjamin, too. He wanted me to play with him. I went downstairs with him, where he showed me and told me all kinds of things about the doll houses he wanted us to play with. And then he took a bathroom break, so I made a break-away. I was so tired, and I needed to drive home while I still had my wits about me. I hope that I have not wounded his little heart forever. But honestly, I have never been very good at playing. Even as a child, I needed Arlene to play with because she had much more imagination than I did. Color, yes. Change the clothes on paper dolls, yes. But play? Or even build things? A-ha-ha.

Still, it was a fun afternoon. Josie and I had fun. I hope Zoë did, too, despite the unpleasant ending, being left in the car for two seconds and all. And I hope Benjamin had fun with Zoë after I went home!

Christmas Poem Final Edition

Hark, the country angels sang,

(Beautifully, but with a twang)

“Peace on earth,” and music sweet

With guitar and banjo beat.

Joyful, let the music swell,

For the Christ on earth did dwell.

Listen to those angels sing:

“Glory to the newborn king.”

Merry Christmas from Myrna

Changes at Church

Yesterday morning I posted on Facebook this perfectly wonderful article about choral singing that I hoped many people would read, and then I got completely upstaged on my usual feed by an announcement from the church about changes to the ages at which children leave Primary. They are very practical changes, in my opinion, but as the chatter turned to that topic, only four people seem to have noticed the cool news about how choral singing can teach us about leadership.

Oh well! Be that as it may, the changes at church made me reflect on the last time there were big changes, and that was 1980. The changes took effect on March 2, 1980. I was living in Salt Lake City, having moved there, living with my cousin Mary and her family, because I was dating Bruce and it was a long commute from Alberta to Utah.

Before the changes made to the functioning of the church auxiliary organizations (the not Sacrament meeting stuff) most wards had Sunday School and Priesthood Meeting on Sunday mornings, Sacrament Meeting on Sunday evenings, and Primary, Relief Society and Mutual (YW and YM) during the week. The way the ages of the children worked was based, for school-aged children, on the school year. So, we changed classes in September, which was when we changed classes at school. Generally, children went to Primary with the same group of children they went to school with, although sometimes if children had to repeat a grade in school, they might move up at church with their original group. I feel like there was no hard and fast rule, but that the local leaders allowed the child to be with the group s/he felt the most comfortable with.

Honestly, the change that was made in 1980 to base movement on the child's birthday seemed misguided to me. I was incredibly thankful they did not structure things that way when I was young--it would have really messed me up. I would have had to stay in Primary right through December of the year I was in Grade Seven. Since I graduated from High School a month after I turned 17, what would they have even done with me? It was messed up. Is my opinion.

I think they changed the girls that way, because they realized that they were messing up the boys, and so they wanted to be fair and mess up the girls, too. So, before 1980, a boy would go to Primary during the week, following the same timeline exactly that the girls followed. Because Priesthood was entirely separate, an extra meeting on Sunday morning, it had nothing to do with leaving Primary. So all children, when they finished elementary school also finished Primary. Primary only ran for ten or eleven months, with a summer break. Then when school started in the fall, Primary also started, and all the children moved up to the next class. I think it was a good system.

But when they eliminated the weekday Primary meeting, and amalgamated it with Junior Sunday School, suddenly they had this problem of what to do because of Priesthood meeting. Before, Priesthood meeting occurred (in my ward, anyway) after Sunday School. Women went home, or hung out at the church visiting, while those who had been ordained went to Priesthood meeting. So it wasn't really an age thing--I think there was significantly less pressure on a boy to be ordained at a specific age. At that age he was ELIGIBLE for ordination, but if he was not ready, it was not a big deal. Like, it would not affect his life at either Primary or YM because they were separate auxiliaries.

Suddenly, with the change to the consolidated Sunday meeting schedule, it did become a problem. Since they were scheduling Priesthood Meeting to be the counterpart to Relief Society and Young Women, they felt like boys needed to be ordained to attend Priesthood Meeting. And they needed to be age 12 exactly. If they were going to do the consolidated meeting schedule, it would have been smart to handle it the way they are going to handle it now--moving the whole class together--but nope. Nobody was ready for letting go of exact ages for ordinations at that point in time.

So they came up with the idea that the girls should be on the same exact age schedule. (See how that would have messed me up? I would have only been a Laurel for one year due to the combination of my late birthday and my early high school graduation.)

If I am going to be honest, I have always thought, since 1980, that the whole moving up on your birthday thing was a stupid idea. And I have seen it cause a lot of angst. I have seen it cause a lot of silly drama among teenage girls, who can be ridiculously mean and self-centered anyway. I have seen a lot of Primary children, both male and female, who were ready to just move on with their friends already who were stuck in Primary for too long. Like, I personally love Primary, and there is nowhere I would rather be, but when you are as peer-pressure conscious as children are at the pre-teen ages, it sucks to be left behind, and for girls at least, subject to "we are more cool than you are because we are in young women and you are still a baby in Primary" attitudes.

Thankfully for me, when I was young, it didn't matter when your birthday was. You were equally included in Primary or YW or YM, the same as all the other kids. But since the boys had to be 12 to be ordained, and since all the meetings were on Sunday, this weird age thing happened. 

Aside from that, honestly, I think week day Primary had been a good thing, and I was sad to see it go. Now, I am sure, nobody can think how there would have been TIME for week day Primary, but people have filled up that time with music lessons and sports and all sorts of things. Back then, an after school activity that was provided by one's religion was just something that was prioritized. My United Church friends also had one--it was called Messengers. We could take our nonmember friends to Primary pretty easily. Or they could invite us to Messengers.  Not all religions had a week day activity for their children. Lots of my evangelical friends attended Messengers regularly, and some children of various religions attended Primary regularly. I do not think this was a bad thing. I counted it a loss when they eliminated week day Primary. Inviting other children to SUNDAY meetings was not perceived the same way by parents.

Week day Primary was, I think, more fun than Sunday Primary because it wasn't SUNDAY. In my ward, the gym was open on cold days for just running around for a half hour before Primary started. While the lessons still had a church focus, there was also a focus on good manners and respect and life skills that, honestly, would not at all be a bad thing for the children of today. For the last three years of Primary (grades four through six) when girls and boys are both repulsed by each other but also beginning to develop fairly serious interest in each other, girls and boys were in separate classes. Girls had lessons that involved learning to do cross-stitch, knitting, crocheting, cooking--just exposure to things like that, which were fun and interesting. Boys had lessons about I don't know what because I did not pay attention to what they did. My brother was already out of Primary by the time I was six, so I only knew what the girls did.

With Primary being held on Sunday, gospel study became the sole focus of Primary. I felt like the elimination of more active things was a loss. And it was pretty irritating to me that the boys got to have cub scouting during the week still, while the girls had nothing during the week. How unfair was that? Finally, that idea bubbled up to the attention of the powers-that-be, and they came up with activity day for the girls, but only twice a month instead of once a week. Better than nothing, but still not quite fair. Our two oldest girls missed out on that almost entirely. Their cousin Jenna, however, did not--her stake in California was running the activity days pilot, so Jenna started activity days at age 8. I think it kicked in for Kelli at age 11, and Abbi at age 10, when it was adopted church-wide.

So, now they have decided that they can be a bit more loose with the ages of ordination for the boys, so that they can all stay together and advance at the same time, regardless of when their birthday is, and so they are also going to do the same thing with the girls. Interesting. This will make a lot of children happy.

It will also make Primary a bit easier. That last year, when the kids who are going to turn 12 see their friends moving on while they have to wait--it is not good. That is when the girls get sulky and the boys start acting up. I wish they could understand that they are LUCKY to be in Primary, which is way more fun than the other organizations, in my opinion, but all they can see is that they are being left out, and they feel inferior, all because of when their birthday is. It was stupid. Nearly 40 years of children who felt weird during that last month or two or four or twelve of Primary. So I am glad to see that silliness go. 

Happy birthday to me

Well, I survived another birthday! It was actually a really good day. The day started with me unwrapping my husband's birthday gift to me--more about that later. I received a text or message from 5/6 of my children, birthday greetings from assorted friends and family, and phone calls from both sisters. My brother and my daughter were kind enough to attend my library event, the Christmas Hymn Sing, which was well attended, and I even survived having the hymn sing group sing "Happy Birthday" to me, which I think I even accepted pretty graciously. For me.

I do not know why birthdays are such a hard thing for me. It has nothing to do with getting older--that will happen whether my birthday is acknowledged or not. No, this lack of delight, this feeling of panic and stress, goes back a long, long ways.  All day on my birthday I kept thinking of this picture, taken in 1965, when I was eight years old, and which I think demonstrates how birthdays make me feel. I have learned, I think, to keep this look under wraps, but it is actually the reality, the epitome, of  how my birthday makes me feel inside. And worse, I know that I should not feel all angsty about it, that I should feel happy, but, nope, this:

As my birthday approaches, inside I am almost terror stricken! I do not remember any birthdays until the year I turned five. That year, I was shopping with Mom, and we went to the Tomboy's store, which we rarely went to, and there were these big stuffed bears, almost as big as me. I wanted one so badly! There was a pink one that I really wanted. My mom put it in the cart, but told me that it was for Aunt Ila June (my mom's handicapped sister) for Christmas. (Cue temper tantrum.)

A few days later, on my birthday, I opened my gift and it was a small pink and white bear (which my children probably remember--it was well-loved and ended up pretty threadbare) but I was so upset that it was a SMALL bear and not a BIG bear that I threw it down and cried and pouted and carried on for a long time. Then, two weeks later, when Christmas rolled around, and my present revealed itself to be that big pink bear that my mom had bought at Tomboy's, I threw IT down, and didn't want it. Even though I had wanted it so badly I felt like I was going to die just a few weeks before. (Tempter tantrum number three--at least--over the pink bears.) You see, I was insulted that my parents would give me the bear that was supposed to be Aunt Ila June's. Excuse my politically incorrect phraseology, but she was RETARDED. I figured that, if they thought the same toy should go to both Aunt Ila and I, then they must also think that I was retarded. You see how my super-logical brain worked in all sorts of ways to make me miserable.

Because I really DID like both bears. I named them Pinky (the pink and white one) and Teddy (the all pink one.) I know that is mixed up--their names were opposite to what they should be, but you see, I named Pinky two weeks before I knew that I was going to also have the pink bear, who then had to be named Teddy because I had already used the name Pinky. I am pretty sure that whole situation bothered me for a long time, because here I am, still remembering it. Vividly.

The year I turned six, I had to face the agony of having people at school know it was my birthday. I had to get up in front of the class and be sung to. It was worse because of my six weeks or so of yellow jaundice, so I was not really comfortable with my teacher and class yet, or again, after the long absence. Somewhere I still may have the birthday card my teacher, Mrs. Ellingson, gave to me. It was a bunch of girls in old-fashioned dresses, and I loved it! (Amazing! I loved something! A birthday miracle.)

Then poor sweet Harry Bekkering handed me an envelope. I was mortified. I opened the envelope, looked at the birthday card inside, handed it back to him and said, "You can have it back. I don't want it." That poor child had to go to school with me for another 5.5 years until he could melt into the crowd in junior high. (If I was mortified, how did it feel to be him, getting slammed like that in front of all the kids in the Grade One Cloak Room? Poor guy.)

Then I had to worry that my bus driver, Howie Winberg--who my kids met in Taber this summer--did not find out it was my birthday, because he SPANKED the birthday kids.

From Grade One forward, my goal was always to suppress my birthday--never to tell a soul about it until it was safely over by months, and by the time it came around, nobody would remember, and I was sure not going to tell them.

Then the picture--1965--that completely upset look is because my dad FORGOT to take a picture of me on my actual birthday, and then on Sunday (THE NEXT DAY) he had the gall to want to take my picture, and IT WASN'T ACTUALLY MY BIRTHDAY. You can understand, I am sure (not) the completely unhappy and upset look on my face.

So...that is how birthdays roll for me.  And then I married a man who, I have slowly (super slowly) come to realize LIKES to give gifts. And I am this person who DREADS receiving gifts! Not a great combination. This year, he gave me some really lovely sandals.  A few years ago, he gave me some really comfortable white sandals. When he worried out loud (repeatedly) that I am hard to buy for, I reminded him that I really LIKED the white sandals. I mean, I didn't love that they were white, but they were so comfortable, that they could have been any color and I would have liked them because they were that comfortable. I have worn them to pieces.

Really comfortable white birthday sandals from a year or two ago. Probably two.

So, Bruce apparently decided to stick with something he knew might work--but he talked about it ALL THE TIME. Probably because he was worried I am going to throw them down and have a temper tantrum. But all the talk about my birthday gift leading up to my birthday drove me NUTS. Still, I lived through it, and the sandals he chose fit, are comfortable, are not white, and are actually really attractive, I think.

Really comfortable brown birthday sandals from this year.

Now I just need some sandal-wearing weather, so he will be able to see for himself that I like the sandals because I will definitely be wearing them. And I need to just get through Christmas, which stresses me out almost as much as my birthday does.

I really apologize to my family for how I am about my birthday. Like, I would like to just be all cool, calm and relaxed about it, but seriously it ties me up in knots. I am just so worried that I will end up hurting someone's feelings that inevitably, I must do. AARGH. I will keep trying to figure out how to do this better...maybe by the time I am 100, I will have it figured out.

Translation

Since I am a librarian, I am in a position to help Patrick find some of the articles he needs for the papers he needs to write. For one of his topics, I turned to my colleague Connie Lamb who is the subject librarian for topics closer to Patrick's major (archaeology and anthropology) and, among other things, she suggested he use the AATA online, which is only a citation index. We found there an article called

La restauration des ais de bois des reliures médiévales. (Restoration of Medieval bindings with wooden boards)

This sounded about perfect for his topic. It also sounded like it might be in French. Which it was, except for an abstract which was in English. And so I decided to translate it.

The article ran from page 97 to page 105 in the journal it had been published in, but page 105 contained only the English language abstract and an advertisement. So only 8 pages needed to be translated. I estimate that this work took me about 12 hours to do.

I will describe I method I used. First, I saved the original PDF of the article as a Word file. This, of course, meant that some of the words got messed up. Lost in translation were things like the difference between l, 1, and i or I. Words that contained a cedilla always got messed up, with the cedilla itself being given as a letter or symbol other than what it is, and sometimes dropping the "c" the cedilla was marking entirely. Spaces were inserted where they didn't belong, or dropped where they did belong. The word oeuvre was never displayed correctly.

I could have gone through and fixed all these things in the Word document, but instead, I waited. I copied and pasted a paragraph at a time into Google Translate. Then, in the bigger font used with it, I would make a comparison to the original PDF, and fix all the typos. Just one paragraph at a time. Then I would read the English translation and see if it made sense. It very rarely did, on the first pass, though I think at least once, it did--it was good as it was.

Usually, however, there were things that didn't make sense. Since the article was not in a discipline that I am super familiar with, or have the necessary vocabulary for, this became a challenge. Sometimes I would have two or three google translate windows up, and would isolate words or phrases to translate again. The difference in context would result in different translations in some cases. Also, with only one word, sometimes google translate would offer other possible meanings for the word. Usually, in these cases, one of the other meanings was closer to what seemed to make sense in English in a particular paragraph.

The word "ais" which seemed to have something to do with the boards used to make medieval books --where we mostly use cardboard now, covered with fabric or some other kind of material to make a hard-backed book, in medieval times they used wood. For example, this was the very first sentence of the article:
Les a1s de bois sont utilises dans la confection des reliures durant toute la periode medievale.

So, once I fixed "a1s" to "ais" I expected that Google Translate would suggest something like: "The boards of wood were used in the making of bindings during all the medieval period." But instead it said: "The wood aces are used in making bindings throughout the medieval period." And this problem with "ais" never went away. It gave me ace, or aisle, or left it at ais, or something similar, but it never could translate that word. I am still not sure if it actually means "board" but I know that it meant those rectangular things used on the outsides of books, with the paper in between, so I just always translated it as board or boards. (Which is how it had been translated in the title we originally found in the citation index.)

Early on, I had trouble with "curr." The context suggested to me that a possible choice that would make sense with the rest of the sentence would be "leather." Leather in French should be "cuir." This was actually a misprint in the original article--something that a French speaker would immediately recognize, but that took me awhile, because maybe "curr" was an actual French word that I just didn't know. Since "cuir" appears elsewhere in the article, I could finally decide that indeed the first use of the word was an error that had escaped notice before printing.

A word that I never was able to translate was "chanfrein." Google Translate couldn't do it either. It would just give that word back as if it were also the English word. I finally looked it up in a French dictionary. I didn't translate it in the article, but highlighted the word in yellow and then gave the French definition, which I had translated into English. I personally can't think of an English word that means the same thing--maybe there is one, but since this is not my discipline, I don't have the vocabulary to come up with one.

Chanfrein = Surface obtenue en abattant l’arête d’une pierre, d’une pièce de bois ou de metal = Surface obtained by cutting the edge of a stone, a piece of wood or metal.

There was lots of talk in the article about galeries d'insectes xylophages. I thought these sounded like tunnels made by the insects. Google Translate consistently translated "galeries" as "galleries." At first, I would use tunnels, but then galleries started making sense to me. This was probably me thinking in both languages at once. But I figured the reader (Patrick) would be the same as me--tunnels or galleries, whatever--we could see in our minds what was being described regardless of which word was used.

So--that was fun! I thought of passing my translation by my brother, but it was an awful lot of reading about book boards and xylophagous insects. (Which, by the way, are insects whose diet consists of mostly wood.) And so I decided that I would just be happy with my own work. I actually really enjoyed it.

Earlier this year, when I was researching Emma Nevada and her daughter Mignon, who came to live and work in Paris after starting out in Nevada and England respectively, there were so many articles in early music journals in French. I did not have time to translate them before I gave a paper on these women at the MPMLA conference in Reno, Nevada, so I didn't use them. But this experience translating something completely out of my discipline has given me courage--so if I find a topic that takes me into French territory, I think I will be able to handle the translation just fine.

Vulnerable

When bad things happen to anyone, anywhere in the world, it is sad. And a message that it could happen to ME, so it calls for my compassion. Like peace itself is a very fragile thing--I think of Sarajevo, and how such a short amount of time passed since it was a place of peace when the Olympics were held there, to it being war-torn and left in ruins. That could happen anywhere, sad to say.

A few recent bad things have caused me to feel very sober. My friend Jonny, a former music student who is in law school in Idaho now, posted about his cousin Jake. Jake, a healthy and fit 30 year old, suddenly collapsed last Tuesday morning after his daily exercise regime. He would have died then and there had his wife not performed CPR. But he is in a coma still and the prognosis is not great. I was following Jonny's update about his cousin and the progress being made in a Go Fund Me campaign that Jake's brother started when I saw a comment that tagged Jake's wife. She is one of my former students!! Her brother is a great friend of mine--we were in gamelan together, he became a music librarian. Suddenly, what had happened to a stranger who lives miles away--they are at Duke, so in North Carolina (both things that made me think of Nancy and Andrew, so I was feeling a little vulnerable already)--suddenly, it seemed more personal, because this weird and unlikely event was happening to someone I personally know.

This is what Peter, Jake's brother-in-law, wrote to me about it:

Thanks for your email and concern. Yes, Jake is Erica's husband, and last Wednesday he had a cardiac event after exercising in the morning. Luckily, Erica was there and performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. He has been in the hospital since, and is slowly recovering. His heart is gradually building up to full capacity (it's being assisted by machines now), and after several days of coma, is finally starting to show signs of coming out (eye movement, hand squeezing). The real question is brain function as this point, but we won't really know until he can get off the machines.

The outpouring of love and help has been miraculous and Jake's mother and many siblings have gathered from around the world (such as Japan and Saudi Arabia) to his bedside. So we are hopeful for the future, but know that it will be a long recovery. We just visited Jake and Erica and their 16-month-old son Jesse at Thanksgiving a few days before, so it was a shock when we heard the news. The doctors still don't know what the problem was, but Jake seemed in perfect health—when the doctors went to check his heart, his arteries were "pristine". I think they have good health care coverage, but the chances of long-term costs and continuing care are high, hence the GoFundMe account.

A few days after this happened, we had our student jumper in the Tanner Building. That was shocking because she is a part of our BYU community. I don't think that building has easy places to jump from, so effort was involved. That is a bit incomprehensible to me. I know that our BYU students are way too stressed. We have seen the statistics in the School of Music, which I don't remember exactly, but something like 50% of students are dealing with anxiety issues. We see it in our student employees, where almost all of them are dealing with some really heavy stuff. This is a huge change from ten years ago.

And then, to find out last night that the girl is from our stake--that made me feel vulnerable. My friend Dot lives only a half a block away from her sister Janet, who is in a different ward. Angelynn and I often visited with Dot at Janet's house, so we got to know Janet and her husband well. Janet called Dot Tuesday in tears because of this girl's suicide attempt. This girl's dad is in Janet's bishopric. Janet loves the family. She loves the girl. Wednesday morning, the girl died. This brings it so much closer, makes it more personal.

Bad things can happen anywhere, anytime. They can happen to strangers, and they can happen to people very close by. It makes it more real, much easier to feel compassionate when it happens close by, but when it happens to strangers, it is devastating for them, too. There, but for the grace of God, go I.