Miriam's Visit

 We have enjoyed a small snippet of a visit with Miriam. She arrived in Utah with her grandpa Heiss on Tuesday night, and spent time with her Aunt Linda, with her Aunt Sarah, an entire night and day with Rachel, and landed at our house late on Thursday evening.

I was chagrined to have forgotten that she was bringing a HEAVY suitcase that is to stay at our house until she comes back again in the summer for some organ events, so even though Rachel's friend Corbin was the one who manhandled the suitcase into my trunk, I just left Miriam to extract it, AND I didn't pull far enough into the garage, so I should have pulled in further or opened the garage door, because she had to really work to get it out, and then when I FINALLY thought to help her get it up the stairs, it was soooo heavy. I still feel bad about it!!

However, she got in the house, and actually made friends with Cinnamon, who lately is really testy and not super friendly to anyone, cat or person. (Except, of course, Josie, whom she adores.)

But Cinnamon is hanging out calmly in Miriam's lap!

On Friday, we got up earlyish, to take Josie to work by eight, so that I could take Miriam to campus by 8:30, so I could get to the Harman Building by 9 AM. It was the President's Leadership Summit, and although that seems funny, that means me. The meeting was actually really good. I don't know how-all Miriam filled her time, but I do know that she played on our lovely practice organ in the library. (It is a lovely organ, only as old as the new music building; same as the organs they have in the organ lab.)

At 1 pm, I met the girls at the organ offices/lesson/practice rooms because I arranged with Neil Harmon to give us a tour of all the organs and, at Rachel's suggestion, the bell tower. I asked Neil to tour me, Rachel, Miriam, and Janice. Janice is my friend and colleague and Rachel's boss. But then I mentioned to Janet yesterday while we were at the faculty choir event in the MOA what our plans were, and she and Daron wanted to tag along. I asked Neil if that was okay, and he said sure, so we were all going to meet there at 1. Janice only if she was finished with jury duty, because she was called to that this week, and it was a pretty unpleasant case to deal with. So she was delighted that they wrapped things up in court so she could enjoy the organ tour with us. And it was really fun!!

Thanks to both Janice and Janet for taking some of these pictures and/or videos. First, we were in the organ offices/lesson/practice rooms, and I may not remember all the details, but here are some pictures:

This is the organ that is in Neil's office:

This organ has an entryway at the back where you can go and visit the pipes. The technician is usually the only person who goes back there, but today, most of us did. 

Miriam checking out the pedals, while Daron looks on. There is something interesting about the pedals, something to do with their straightness? Or flatness? I don't remember much about it!! Too technical for me, apparently!

In the next picture, Daron is sitting on the bench of the organ that used to be in the room in the HFAC where we used to store the gamelan instruments, and one time we did something wrong and got in trouble. But Neil said that is forgotten and forgiven! Now it sits in a room with another organ. I meant to take a full-on picture of that organ because it is important because it is even-tempered instead of well-tempered. That means that the entire color of the scale is different when you play in a different key--the key of C sounds normal, with the order of whole and half steps our ears are accustomed to, but the other keys sound different. Hence composers like Bach wrote in specific keys because of the temperament, like for example the B-minor mass. Anyways, you can see a tiny bit of that organ here behind Daron, but not much.

The organ in front is an electronic organ, while the one Daron is sitting at is a pipe organ. Here is a view of the people all looking at me:

So that is Miriam, Janice, Janet, Neil, Rachel and Daron.

This is the electronic organ that Don Cook liked to teach on. Don retired last year, and Neil took his place, but not this organ because he prefers the pipe organ that is in his office, and the new guy who replaced Neil is in Don's office. We didn't go in--I took the picture through the window.

Then we went to the organ lab, I think, but I didn't take any pictures. Miriam noticed that it is a much bigger space than the one in which she did her Organ First lesosns for two years...and it has a window! I should have taken a picture...

Then we went into the choral hall, and only looked up at the organ, but didn't go into it the way the person playing it would go. 

This was the beautiful pipe organ that was in Neil's office in the HFAC, but when they built the new building, they didn't give the organ area enough square footage to keep  it. Had it been Neil's decision instead of Don's, he would have put the electronice organ here, and the pipe organ there. You see, electronic organs actually are better at accompanying choirs than pipe organs are, because they have more volume potential. Also pipe organs have less volume on high pipes and more volume on low pipes, whereas with an electronic organ you can keep the volume more even across pitches.

Then we went to the concert hall. This organ is lovely, and expensive, and built by a Canadian firm, I think from Quebec? Anyways, they needed a pipe organ that could be hooked up to electronics to play it, or hooked up to the manual console, which is apparently very heavy to play--like your hands and feet have to work hard to play it. So there are not many companies that build an organ that can switch, but this one did. Only trouble was, when the organ was installed, the building was still under construction, and the builder did not take enough precautions to keep it safe, so it has dust issues. This summer, the whole thing is going to be dismantled and thoroughly cleaned and put back together.

Here is Janice (who is an organist--like her music degree is in organ performance) happily climbing into the works behind the organ console:

And here are Daron, Janet, Miriam, and a tiny bit of Rachel gazing, up, up, up at the pipes:

Neil explaining something:

Miriam, to her surprise, delight, and consternation, invited to PLAY it!!

Michael Wahlquist, adjunct faculty who I have known in the past as a student, had been playing the organ when we arrived, but Neil called up to him to please stop because we were entering in the back, and it is deafening back there. So you can see Daron, Michael, Janet and Neil are around Miriam as she pulls up a work by Vierne to play.

I have a video of her playing which I don't know how to add, or I would add it here. It was lovely, but loud. We were all right there by the pipes, so...loud!

And here we are exiting. Well, here are Janice and Rachel exiting!

And then we all went out, and in two cars drove over to the bell tower because it was cold! Janet and Daron took Neil, and I took Janice and the girls.

First stop inside the bell tower was in the practice room. Students who are new to the carillon only play in there, where they can only be heard by people in that room. Because the carillon bells play to the whole community, so you sort of want to sound like you know what you are doing, right?

Here is the practice instrument, which has pegs that you push with your hands and feet.

I have some videos of Neil demonstrating how it is done, then Miriam trying it out, and of Neil playing the low part while Miriam played the higher tones--you need a big reach to get all the notes! And Daron messed around with it, too, being highly experimental with his reach. 

Then we went into the other bay, where there is another practice carillon, but they don't really use that one--they do not have enough students to pay to heat the rooms for two instruments, so this one sits in the cold. Nevertheless, as other people began their long climb -- 99 steps of a circular staircase climbing upward, ever upward -- Rachel had the courage to reach out and give it a try.

Looks like she enjoyed it!

No pictures on the endless stairway. I went last because I am so slow. I have been up in the tower once before, when we played a gamelan/carillon composition. This time, I stopped at the top of the 99 stairs, and did not take the ladder all the way to the top.

But here are people who did! (Everyone but me.) Rachel and Miriam:

Janice is front and center here, but you can see Miriam has her camera pointed up. That is because it was very hot up there, even though it was very cold in the tower while climbing. So Neil opened the ceiling-window to cool it off, and then also, we could see up into the bells themselves.

BYU got a new bell this year for BYU 150 and it was expensive and also it was a new lowest note. The carillon tower was a gift for BYU 100 (which was my Freshman year at BYU) and so they got one bell this year. Because of it they have to play "Come, come ye saints" in a different key to enable the lowest bell to be used for the BONGs that mark the hour. (They have the electronic programming to play a couple of phrases, following by the correct number of bongs every hour on the hour. Real people do not have to climb all the way up there to do it, but when there is a recital of music at noon hours, that is done by real people.)

Today, it was 2:10, and Neil played it and bonged three times. Joke's on anyone on campus who heard it! And then he LET MIRIAM PLAY. She was astonished beyond measure, because downstairs he was saying they don't let students play until two years of practice, and yet she got on and did play "Teach me to walk in the light." Like the pipe organ, lower bell pitches carry better than higher bell pitches. 

Miriam and Rachel and I were joking that it would have been fun to hear what Miriam's playing sounded like from NOT in the tower--we were joking that someone should have run down the stairs to listen! Which -- first, you can't run down those treacherous 99 stairs, and second, you could not walk down them fast enough to get there before the song ended!

Janet used to be one of the students who played the carillon, under the direction of John Longhurst, in 1976. Here is that little blast from the past:

And here she is today! With different onlookers!

And here is a picture with Neil and Rachel and Miriam. I was not actually upstairs, so I do not know the correct order, and I am grateful to Janice and Janet for sharing pictures with me!

And then we walked down all the stairs again and our tour was over! This time, I went first, and they all had to go slow because I am slow. I got a barely perceptible headstart, but everyone said it was okay, they did not want to go down fast.

In fact, when Neil is teaching in the tower, he goes up and stays all afternoon, and lets the students go up and down. It is kind of a chore to get there!!

This evening, Bruce and I took the girls out to dinner at Magleby's. Josie was supposed to come, too, but she was developing a migraine and couldn't face the light or the noise or the food.  But here are Rachel and Miriam:

Connections

It has been a few days of opportunity to ponder about connections between people, and making connections with people.

On Thursday, I had spent most of the day (including two hours in the early morning before I actually went to work) fixing things on my LibGuides. Which is...kind of boring...

Here is the summary of what I was doing;

Summary
1. A new federal law requires all government‑funded organizations, including universities, to make online content WCAG 2.1 AA accessible, with BYU aiming for compliance by 14 April.
2. This includes fixing common issues like alt text, color contrast, captions, keyboard navigation, and proper headings for web pages, videos, audio, and documents.
3. LIT (our library computer people) is scanning and making system‑wide updates, but we need help from content owners need to update items like alt text and links—especially in subject guides and Brightspot sites.
4. Going forward, sites and new documents must be accessible and LIT will continue regular assessments to maintain compliance. 

The idea behind all this work is to allow people with disabilities to make better connections with information that is available online. So, it is good work, but boring work.

I have too many LibGuides, so I am actually just removing every picture or graphic that I can, because I do not have time to do all the necessary Alt Text language by April 14, but I do have time to remove things. I can fix them later maybe.

However, after eight hours of doing that on Thursday, I was so done! And it was only like 3:30 or something, but I had started early in the day. 

Luckily for me, our friend Susanne in North Carolina reached out to (connected with) me to ask for help finding a family obituary in hopes of getting some surnames of female cousins who had married. I have access to a boatload of newspapers that are behind a paywall, so I was a good person to ask AND I am also a person who loves searching in newspapers, and pairing that research with the records in Family Search. (I just did a presentation on this with my colleagues at the Music Library Association conference a short while ago, so yuppers, it is something I enjoy doing.) I was sooooo happy to stop removing pictures and saving my work! Thanks, Susanne.

I enjoyed finding and sharing obituaries and news and if there were pictures, adding those to Family Search. And of course sharing everything I found with Susanne. So much fun. I will get back to it, too, because this is a large family so there are lots of people, and also I am related to some of them on my dad's side (8th cousins ish) and others on my mom's side (9th cousins ish) and they are such interesting, talented people, really involved in their music and their church communities, and their professions. Such a treat to make connections with them by reading about them and adding content to their Family Search pages!

Then, in the evening, I attended the opening of an art exhibition called Mimi Chen Ting: Make Movement Visible. 

I had been an early collaborator with the curator, Miri Kim, as she was just thinking about bringing this exhibition to pass. It was my privilege to connect Miri with two of our dance faculty, because Mimi Chen Ting was an artist AND a dancer, and movement was central to her ethos as an artist. As a reward for me just connecting people who could collaborate, I was mentioned (out loud) in a speech at the event (as was my colleague Tim and many others) AND Miri emailed me to be sure I knew that my name was also printed in the art exhibition catalog. 

Here is the cover of the book:

It was very fun to listen to Mimi's family talk about her life and work! She died of cancer a few years ago, and this exhibition in honor of her work was so important to the family! I was happy to feel connected to them because of the small role I played in helping this event to come true. (The dance part of the exhibition is going to happen in the fall, so I look forward to being a part of that, too.)

Friday morning, I was hoping to make connection with an HVAC professional because our basement is not airconditioned; only our upstairs. But we have all those full size west windows in our walkout basement, and I hope to make this summer more pleasant for the people and cats downstairs. The guy was not showing up, so I kept on "working" on Susanne's family while I waited.

I was supposed to connect with Janice and Janet for a lunch date, but I had forgotten to put it on my calendar!! AARGH. And then finally I talked to the HVAC company, and their man was delayed at the job before ours, so I reset an appointment for Monday and was going to meet the two JBs, but I couldn't find one cat. They had all been placed where we wanted them so the HVAC guy could invade their space, but when I went to let them out--well, it turned into a big mess of me making bad decisions! (And I missed connecting with J and J.)

I picked Josie up from work and she resolved the cat issue--she couldn't find Cleo either. Cleo was in a very small squishy space inside a box that was so close to the ceiling that she must have flattened herself considerably to slip inside that box!! It was important to deal with the cats properly because Josie was going to take the train to SLC to the planetarium to watch the Artemis II splashdown.

Josie made her train connection on time, and I hurried (finally) to my office to make a connection with another dance faculty member, Marin, who was bringing Maida Withers to meet me. Maida, from Washington D.C., was hoping to give her online archive of dance materials to BYU. But that is special collections, not me, but I had failed to connect with the representative they had appointed to meet with me. I had been trying to call and email him all week.

We were about twenty minutes into our meeting, when he called me!! Hallelujah!! And he came, and I think that BYU is going to come through for her. I hope so. Maida is a 1958 BYU Alum and had a 58 year career and only recently retired--she is 89. Here is her beautiful website! https://maidadance.com/

Here we all are: Maida's daughter (who is a Disney film producer--flew here from California to make sure things were okay for her mom on this long journey at her advanced age) Kristen, Maida, me, Marin, and Greg from Special Collections. (Tim, my colleague mentioned earlier, took the picture.)

Josie's trip to SLC went fine, and also I made a timely connection with her to pick her up from the train. She was interviewed by KSL and here she is, somewhere in here:

Today I got to connect early with my granddaughter Rachel, who texted me at 7:30 AM. That was a first!! She is usually asleep on a Saturday morning. But I picked her up to do laundry, because at noon, I needed to connet with Janice and Janet, because we were invited to Connie's graveside service! Elizabeth texted us because Connie's sister asked Elizabeth who were Connie's friends who would want to be there. So we went.

We arrived at the cemetery early, and visited and Janet laid flowers on her little son's grave, because it happened to be the same cemetery he is in. There is a little children's section there.

Little Andrew was born before midnight, and was pronounced dead just after midnight in that August of 1996. It was nice to feel the connection between him and his mother, and the pathos of that children's cemetery was very evident. So much love, so much sorrow.

Then we went to Connie's burial place, and connected with her sister Caroline, and with other people from the library who also attended.  Here is Connie's sister speaking:

Soon after Caroline's speech, I asked Janet to unlock her car so I could get my coat, because it was super cold and windy. I was freezing. So I am all bundled up in the picture that Janet wanted to get of the BYU people. 

Here we are: Elizabeth, Brian, me, Janet, Janice. Brian's wife took our picture. It was fun to connect with Brian again--he retired a couple of years ago. He and I collaborated on the Black History Month Concert Series for years. You can see that we are all suffering from trying not to blow away!

All of these many connections enriched my life over the past few days!

Then I came home and was digging dandelions, when my neighbor Ardyth ran over because she had gotten an alert that our neighbor Jane had fallen. There were some tense moments as Ardyth and her granddaughter searched for Jane, but she was not in her house. It turned out she had been in a car accident! She is okay, but her car is totalled. Ardyth learned that the emergency alert works, and that we need to be better at knowing where Jane is so that Ardyth can connect with her better in an emergency!

April 7

Already one week into April! (Well...technically that is tomorrow, but close enough. Tomorrow is only 2.5 hours away at this point. Time flies. 

Yesterday, when I picked Josie up from work, she had flowers for me in honor of her birthday. She has been doing this for about 15 years, even if she is not in the country! This year was the first of many that she was actually here for her birthday. So I didn't know what to do.

Here are this year's flowers: pink tulips!

I think they are very pretty, and I think it is very kind of Josie to honor me on her birthday. That was a hard day but a good day 32 years ago! And she was actually born in the evening, at 6:56 pm.

This year at that time, we were eating our dinner of Pizzeria 712, which is her favorite pizza place. (I got mac & cheese and brussels sprouts, which are also delicious.)

Josie wanted to make a certain cake for her birthday: a quebecois treat called Pouding chômbeur. We worked on it together-- there are dry and wet ingredients, and then there is the boiled maple syrup confection that you pour over the cake, and after it is baked, there is kind of a candy-ish maple layer on the bottom and the cake, with a kind of candy-ized crust on top. She made whipped cream to go on top, and made it very thick. It reminded me of the cream in the cream buns in Australia only a bit sweeter. (Which I appreciated because the cream in the cream buns in Australia was a big surprise to me!!)

She was following the directions of a chef in a Youtube video! That is one way to bake these days!

I really appreciate Josie. She is kind and caring. She has always cared about those less fortunate or those who are teased or bullied or beleaguered in any way. I learn from her example. I am thankful to be her mother. 

Other good things today:

I took a picture of the paper mural that is the way we roll at the Help Desk on the 4th floor. 

Suah, the student at the right hand side in glasses is the artist behind this particular mural. I think it is very cute. And good advertising for some of our services.

Another good thing is that Hadis got the job she has had three interviews for. She is still waiting on some paperwork, but that is such a blessing. Since he who shall not be named has been threatening to obliterate her homeland and her family, they are no longer in a position to help with her support at all, and she has been very stressed. I mean, when your contact with your family is unstable due to internet and power and cell phone outages, and they are being threatened with annihilation, that is pretty stressful all by itself, so that not having an adequate job is enough to about break the spirit. But--today the good news of this better job! And also Patrick has good news about graduating in October instead of June. He has had to wait for other people to do things they need to do, and what can you do? You ask, you tell, and then you can't make them do it with good timing. So he has been super stressed about missing deadlines, but actually--no worries. October will be fine. 

Yesterday I got the sad news that Connie Lamb, who had been my mentor as a new faculty member, died on April 3. When I first started to work at the library, I remember going to a library picnic, and working alongside her, and she was so sweet to me. I was kind of weepy all day (yesterday--not the day of that long ago picnic!), and that made the threats to Hadis' homeland feel even heavier. The one thing that surprised me was that Connie was only three years older than my brother! Which makes her only ten years older than me! (I thought she was older compared to us.) 

One year, when me and Janet and Elizabeth and Connie presented on Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch at MHA, and Connie's sister from Idaho came too, we got to spend a lot of time with Connie, and she was fun to be around, as well as being a stellar librarian and scholar.

There is no funeral or send-off for Connie. Sometimes I like funerals so I can hear a good send-off, but I can also understand not wanting one. Well, you are and will be missed, Connie. I was glad to know you and appreciated your example and friendship. 

March 2026 Books Read plus more

This morning, I was stealing a few moments to read one of the very good books I am reading at the moment, and thought "Maybe I will finish this book today, and then I will have read nine books this month..." and then the realization hit that yesterday was March 31, and today is April 1, so even if I finished that book today (which I will not)...it will count for April because it is already April. Time flies when you're having fun, and it also flies when you are feeling a little bit beleagured by all the not so great things happening in the world! "Time flies on wings of lightning" no matter what is happening to fill the time!

Yesterday the time was being filled with the "plus more" of Rachel's University Chorale concert. It was really good. The music was beautiful, and it was highly entertaining to watch the bounciness of some of the singers! There were a couple of Tiggers in the alto section, front row, to name a few who just bounced to the beat whether the song was silly or serious, and they gave me great joy.

Also watching Rachel gave me great joy, of course. She, however, was not bouncy any more than bounciness was actually called for (and sometimes, channeling her "don't watch me" genes, probably  was a bit less comfortable being bouncy at times.) Her family was watching her at home because Nancy sleuthed out a link for streaming the concert, and her dad sent Josie a few pictures. Maybe Nancy will post them, so I won't. 

Josie and I had tickets that told us to enter at door 2, which was downstairs, and it was crazy because our tickets were on the top row of the middle section, so we had to climb all the stairs--when one of the upstairs doors was RIGHT THERE. That was silly. We sat and waited for the concert to start, watching people come in and have trouble finding their seats. (My friend Hannah, for example, even though she is a professor of musicology and WORKS THERE was one of the super-challenged seat-finders!)

We saw Janice and her husband Steve come in and do their own little bit of climbing over people to get to seats that were actually on the other edge--it was just a night of hard-to-get-to-one's-seats!! Josie texted Janice a "we see you" message, and I sent her this picture, only without the circle around them! They sat just a ways from where Nancy, Josie, and I sat for Rachel's December concert, so we knew they would be able to see Rachel--if they could pick her out. I had the advantage of being beside Josie, who is good at picking performers out, while I suffer from face blindness enough to be pretty oblivious about who is who.

The concert was not long. There were seven songs sung, I think, which took about an hour, and then there was also some honoring of Dr. Broomhead, who is retiring this summer. The singing was beautiful and enthusiastic and lovely. And Rachel looked and sounded lovely too!!

Here is a picture of Josie, Rachel, Janice and me which Steve was kind enough to take as we were milling around after the show, and some of us nibbled on the promised cookies to honor Dr. Broomhead's swan song concert.

We drove home in the rain!!! Hurray!!! I am so thankful for the rain!! Then it rained all day today, until around 6:30-7:00 when the sun peaked out, and I could see the mountain tops wearing their new coats of SNOW. Double hurray!! We need it desperately, and I am so very thankful for the snow. I can hear that it is rainy outside now, so I hope it keeps it up all night again!

But I named this post "March 2026 Books Read" so I had better write about books. Eight books read.

1. Once upon a wardrobe by Patti Callahan (2023) was our book club assigned read this month. I really liked it, though it was not super fast for me to get "into" it. Megs has a little brother, George, who is ill in such a way that they know he has only months to live, not years, and George wants to know where is Narnia, and why did Mr. Lewis write that book? Megs, who is a student at Oxford, sets out to find out from Mr. Lewis, who also teaches at Oxford, though he is in a college that doesn't allow female students. This is a lovely what-if story that brings C. S. Lewis and his brother to life, as well as the family of Megs. What if they had met? This might have happened. (Lewis's step-son writes a lovely endorsement of the book, too, in which he appreciated what Patti Callahan did with a fictional story that involved his real family. Her second book that does that, actually.)

2. How to solve your own murder by Kristin Perrin (2024) was a book that I really liked! Annie goes to meet with her Great Aunt Frances for the first time in ages, since she was very young, because she has suddenly been named in the will instead of her mom, Laura. They are supposed to meet at the lawyer's office, but Aunt Frances is late, and well--it turns out she died. And then the coroner determines that her death was murder!! Her entire life, Frances was sure that she was going to be murdered, and had spent her whole life trying to figure out who was going to kill her, and how and why, and now it has happened, and of the possible heirs, the one who solves it will be the one who inherits. 

3. Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham (2015) is the second and last of the Veronica Mars novels. In this book, Veronica is investigating violence against call girls. When girls in this vocation are attacked or raped, they are often not taken seriously because are they not asking for it? Well, I don't agree with that, and neither does Veronica. When these girls are beat to a pulp and left for dead, or actually are dead as can happen (and does in this book) then that is a crime to be taken seriously. And so Veronica sets out to find who is doing this to these women.

4. The French Powder Mystery by Ellery Queen (1930). Why did I decide to read an Ellery Queen? I guess because I never have, and this team of cousins who used the pen name Ellery Queen wrote mysteries for their namesake to solve for many decades, so maybe it would be good? This was, I think, their second one. It was actually very interesting, how they keep you guessing, and then have an ending where all is revealed. I just didn't really like the name of the book, because French is the last name of the victim, and of the department store where the body is found, but powder? There isn't really a lot of powder in the story? Oh well, that is the book's name, even if it seems odd to me.

5. The road to wisdom: on truth, science, faith, and trust (2024)by Francis S. Collins. I really like this man's writing, as readers might remember since I read one of his books last month. In my notes on my spreadsheet, I typed "Get quotes from the end for the blog." Oh dear. What did I mean? BRB--I am going to look at the book--ah yes. So Dr. Collins is hoping that people with different opinions will talk to each other and listen to understand, so that animosity and vitriol, which are so prevalent in the world today, can be replaced with love and kindness. And he believes that is possible, though it will take effort and be difficult. There is even a website https://braverangels.org/ where people can go and sign a pledge to become a part of those who wish to make the world a better place and put a stop to toxic politics.

6. Christmas in Plains by Jimmy Carter (2001). I like memoirs, and this little Christmas memories book by President Carter was a fun and quick read. I have always liked him, and I think that he and his wife were both truly good, genuine people, I liked him even better after David and Donna Dalton had a lovely hour long visit with him which Dr. Dalton wrote about, and I have his memory of it. (Should I maybe put it on Family Search? I have wondered what to do with it!) Sad fact: I was the first person to check this book out of the library. Which just goes to show (as a cautionary tale to libraries)--it can take 25 years before a book is used, so it not circulating doesn't mean that nobody wants to read it ever! Someday someone may want to read it!!

7. Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani (2009) is about a high school student, Viola, who wants to be a film maker (hence reel) and she is the daughter of film makers who need to work in Afghanistan for a documentary they are producing, and so decide to send to Viola to boarding school (her grandma pays for it) for the school year while they are gone. It is a hard adjustment for an only child used to the action of New York City to be confined to an all-girls school in which she has roommates, but Viola learns and grows for real! (Although she does make an interesting reel for a contest while she is at it.)

8. The full moon coffee shop by Mai Mochizuki (2020) was a bestseller in Japan, so it was translated into English in 2024, and somehow landed in our library so that the Humanities Desk Students decided to put it on the "Staff Picks" shelf, and I, watching the desk on Spring Day (no students, noisy construction) started to read it, and actually made pretty good headway in it while at the desk doing nothing because no patrons came. It is actually really cool how she connects all the characters, and cats, and astrology, and this coffee shop that only appears at the full moon in various locations and then disappears. And mythology--which is associated with astrology. Pretty neat story.

And that...is that!! 

Percy Grainger plus more

 There has been a Percy Grainger Symposium at BYU's School of Music for the past few days, and I attended it. My work paid for it ($309) as a non-travel professional development opportunity. And it was really good and interesting.

I was initially quite shocked, before it even started, to hear that the only attendees were all of the presenters plus only TWO PEOPLE. I was one of those two. That was shocking to me. Like, our MPMLA conferences are small, but we usually manage to get four or five more people than presenters, though I do have to admit that our "audience" is presenter-heavy, too.

I was glad I got the "include food" option because that way they got more $$ and I did not eat very much, so hopefully my money helped to fund the symposium. 

Here is the small audience from Thursday:

And some of those may be BYU students, because they were all told they could attend for free as their classes allowed. During the opening talk, given by a Percy Grainger expert from Connecticut, all the band students that you see below on the stage were also in the audience, so it was pretty full. I mean, this is the concert hall with many seats, but at least there were people to fill the part directly in front of the stage.

This was a fun session -- they played a Grainger arrangement of Ye Banks and Braes that was democratic polyphony--so we, the audience, could sing or whistle, and the band had various choices to make as well, and it was fun and sounded good.

And this was the ending session yesterday--first the many, many student participants who were in this session on choral music

And here the small audience, still pretty big because of all the students that were taking advantage of the opportunity to learn. Still just filling only the section of the concert hall closest to the stage. (My RA Megan is the smiling face at the right.)

And the plus more is that it was mine and Bruce's 46th wedding anniversary, so we went out for dinner.

We each got our own entree, and then got one piece of lemon bar to share.

Then this morning, back to the symposium. I went to the session that I thought would be least likely to have a lot of people in it, and I was not wrong. The first man was Allen Feinstein, and he is honestly quite a big deal in the music world in Boston, and further afield, and aside from the band students who were playing, there were only NINE people in the audience. (Which--the room was crowded. Because of students and instruments. But still.)

This image is from Dr. Feinstein's presentation:

 I took that picture for the QR code. This session was introducing a new, Grainger-inspired orchestrationi of a folk song called The Rainbow done by that young guy in the picture, Matt Fishman, who unfortunately died of brain cancer in 2024. The music was wonderful, and I would like to get the score for our library.

And then, after the musicians left...the audience got smaller for the next guy, who was doing EDM that was Grainger inspired, and the last guy was from White Plains, New Jersey, where the Percy Grainger House/Museum is and the audience was down to FIVE.

Well, I have presented to only TWO people, so I get it. But arrgh.

The next two pictures are from the session about Grainger's work with Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. I had to take two pictures to get in all the students who were the performers. Obviously, they outnumbered the audience.

I think my favorite thing, even though I loved the Jungle Book thing, and also Mikayla Black did a band thing yesterday that I really liked, but my favorite thing was the piano program!! It was soooo good. Here are the performers for that event, which was pretty well attended because it was open to anybody as a free event.

And then I went back for the last session at four, which was like a roundtable discussion, with all FOURTEEN of us (presenters and me and a few students, but not all the presenters, because some were missing) and the guests from far away -- Connecticut, Boston, New Jersey, AUSTRALIA -- they were all completely delighted with how it turned out, and they couldn't be happier.

So I need to stop being shocked at what looked to me like poor attendance, and be happy for the six hundred students who got to learn Grainger music and participate in some way for the two days. I know that it was worth it to me--I learned a lot, and have a lot of material to look for that should be in our library!

The Past

 The past was very present for me yesterday--two different things happened that pushed me into the past in my thoughts. I can't remember which happened first, because they were sort of going on simultaneously.

One was that my brother shared with my sisters and my cousin a short essay he had written, and shared on Family Search, about someone we knew growing up, who I will call Merlin (not the Magician) and that was his actual name--weridly there were several Merlins in our little town, and none were Magicians! This Merlin was rather bold and brash, and in my brother's memory, that boldness was put to good use while serving as a missionary in France. This memory surprised me, because in my most potent memory of Merlin, his boldness was put to what seemed to me as harmful use as he tried to shivaree my cousin Lavon on her wedding night by locking her hand to his with handcuffs. However, as my cousin pointed out, Merlin demonstrated a "risk-in -the -moment quality...which also led him to share his testimony of the gospel openly, freely and often. Come what may." 

My sister Colleen asked why did Merlin do that to Lavon, so I asked her, and she said that he and other friends of her husband, Dennis, decided that doing the shivaree thing would be fun. But when the moment came, he was the only one with enough moxie to actually do it, which he tried to, only my cousin David calmly and gently talked him down, and he released Lavon. (For whom none of the experience had been fun!) 

However, our conversation caused me to look at Merlin differently--I could see the value of the boldness of his character. Whereas I had painted him as a villain (and my cousin David as a hero) I could see that the same personality traits he often put to very good use in following through as a missionary, and as a salesman in his career. I see the whole experience at Lavon's reception through different eyes, as I can now imagine Merlin following through on a commitment (that was a stupid commitment) but still, he was seeing it differently than I was. And so I can forgive him--I had been holding a lifelong bias because of it and I didn't even realize it!

The second thing that was happening while I was also discussing the Merlin stories in Gmail was happening on Facebook, where I saw that my friend Irene had posted this picture:

And I read the name, and I was like: I know him! So I posted: Huh. I knew Mark at BYU! He was in my ward, rooming with a bunch of guys from the Rugby team. In my FHE group.

And I messaged Josie, because Irene is the mom of her two friends Lydia and Eliza, who she has been good friends with since she was about eight years old. Whereas Irene and I only see each other occasionally, and mostly only interact on Facebook, and not much because I actually do not spend much time there any more. 

So I was conversing with Josie, who was conversing with Lydia and Eliza. I did not know that Irene had been in a weirdly there but not there relationship with Mark for NINE YEARS. And that she had been very present for him as he was dying of cancer.

I knew Mark when I was 17, which was how old I was when I finished high school early (compared to most people who finish at 18) and then went to BYU (where I was a terribly flaky student) and was in the BYU 100th Branch. Our apartment of girls, and Mark's apartment of guys, were in the same FHE group, and they also gave us Mike and Tom Nibley, sons of the rather renowned BYU professor Hugh Nibley, who lived at home but proximate to our housing units. 

Most of the guys in Mark's apartment were on the rugby team, although one was a BYU yell leader, and unknown to most of us, Tom was actually Cosmo, the BYU mascot, that year.

So my memory of Mark was of a tall, blonde and very cute kind of surfer dude from Compton, California, who mostly wore Hawaiian shirts. There was this one Hawaiian shirt that was clearly a favorite that he wore every week, I am sure. So fun to see him in the slide show for his funeral, which I watched a few times, wearing the exact same shirt as a young dad holding a baby! 

I had a crush on Mark (and, serially, on many of the guys in my FHE group!) but did not realize that he was born in 1950, so the same age as my brother! He must have thought of me as just a kid, since I was 17 and he was 24 (actually, no, he would have already turned 25!) when we met.

I observed Mark to be commitment shy, and in the few years, 3-4, that I knew him, he managed to stay unsttached to any girl, though his obituary informed me that he did marry and have five children, but his children's ages are like my younger children's ages, and I didn't have David until I was 25, so Mark would have been in his thirties before he married and had children.

The weirdness for me was putting Mark (the way I remember him at ages 24-28) with Irene (who I have only known as a married and then divorced (and widowed because he then died)) mom of six, And that just about broke my brain.

I am happy for Irene that she spent nine years having fun with Mark, because he was a very, very fun person to be around, and apparently never lost that, according to the obituary. And I am sad for Irene because while she was devoted to him, I think he was less devoted back, and at least he never became officially her boyfriend or fiance or husband, and that must have been painful for her upon his death. Where did she fit at that funeral last fall? I don't know.

I just know that thinking about these two men from my past, Merlin and Mark, caused me to see them differently in the present, and caused me to modify some of my thinking about them in the past, so my memories have altered somewhat. Weird. 

Nowruz Mobarak!

Today is the first day of Nowruz; and therefore the first day of the Persian New year. This is the day that marks the arrival of spring! 

Quoting from Wikipedia (with some of my own edits, so not exactly quoted): Haft Seen or Haft sin (Persian: هفت‌سین, lit. 'Seven S's') is an arrangement of seven symbolic items whose names start with the letter "س" (pronounced as "seen"), the 15th letter in the Persian alphabet; "haft" (هفت) is Persian for "seven". Haft sin is traditionally displayed at Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, which is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, marking the beginning of spring. Nowruz is a celebration of the beginning of spring and the start of a new year celebrated in more than 20 countries. With its special customs and traditions, such as the Haft sin table, this celebration symbolizes renewal and harmony with nature.

Here is our Hadis's haft sin table:

Here are some of the traditional things of which there are more than 7, so you can choose your own 7: 

Sabzeh (سبزه) – wheat, barley, mung beans or lentil sprouts grown in a dish. (represents rebirth)
Samanu (or Samani) (سمنو) – wheat germ sweet pudding. (represents fertility)
Senjed (سنجد) – oleaster (wild olive).
Serkeh (سرکه) – vinegar. (represents patience)
Seeb (سیب) – apple. (represents beauty)
Seer (سیر) –  garlic. (represents good health)
Somagh (سماق) – sumac. 

Sonbol (سنبل) – hyacinth. (represents Spring)

Sekeh or Sekke (سکه) – coins. (represents Prosperity)

Saa'at  (ساعت) – clock. (represents passage of time - vernal equinox)

Other symbolic items that can be used to accompany Haft-sin include a mirror, candles, painted eggs, goldfish, and traditional Persian confections. A "book of wisdom" is also commonly included.

There is a Nowruz table in the BYU Library. I saw the poster for it this morning, and took a picture to share with Patrick and Hadis.

And I accepted the poster's invitation to come and learn about Nowruz, even though I already have been aware of Nowruz for a long time due to association with Lloyd Miller and Katherine St. John. Lloyd, before his death in 2024, was the best scholar (in this country) on the subject of music in Iran, if not the entire middle east. Wikipedia explains about Lloyd thusly: "Miller spent seven years in Iran on a Fulbright scholarship. Known as Kurosh Ali Khan, he hosted a television show in Iran during the 1970s and worked as a journalist for several Iranian publications. His mother, Maxine Adams Miller, authored Bright Blue Beads: An American Family In Persia." (Which I have read.) Katherine, Lloyd's wife, is an expert on Persian dance (again, an expert from this country) and you can read about her here. Patrick, Josie, David, and me all took at least one class from Lloyd or Lloyd/Katherine. Also Uncle Wally and Auntie Judy took one of their classes with me and Josie one year. Josie even owns one of Lloyd's many instruments, a Persian santur. 

We didn't know then, when we began our long friendship with Lloyd and Katherine, that Patrick would one day meet Hadis, and the Iranian connection would be therefore even stronger. Here are the two of them on today, Nowruz.

Today has been a good day for Hadis, because she got to talk to her family for the first time in too long. They all live in Iran, and their daily lives (and internet connectivity) have been upended. This is a huge worry for Hadis and Patrick. The timing for Hadis was also horrible, because she was at the point of renewing her visa in Austria, when suddenly she had no contact with her dad, and he had been supporting her while she was pursuing her advanced degrees. She needed her housing contract, her school plans, her employment plans, all ready for her visa interview. She needed all her ducks in a row...without which, the only alternative being to return to a country that is being blown to bits. Dealing with all of that while being unable to even talk to her family, to even know if they were okay still, has been super difficult. So she felt a renewal of joy and faith when today her sister made it possible for her to speak with her parents. Hurray! (Star Link still works, but regular cell phone service does not.)

Current events are wreaking havoc for Hadis and all the many people like her whose lives have been shaken/destroyed/irrevocably damaged by the decisions of politics that do not consider, nor care about, the lives of ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives. 

So, back to the Nowruz display in the library:

First, the whole thing. This was the first year and they hope to make it better each year. 

 You can compare what you see here to the list of Haft sin possibilities.

And then posters of explanation:

I find this last one a little bit hard to read. This was true even while standing in front of it. I will have to tell them that small criticism, because maybe next year they can make the writing easier to read. 

In other news, we also had St. Patrick's Day earlier this week, which always brings to mind my son Patrick, even though his name was not chosen with St. Patrick in mind at all. Today I was covering at the 5th floor Humanities Help Desk, and it was sooooo boring. It is "Spring Day" so no students, and I was alone with intermittent construction noise. Luckily, there is a duck collection up there to look at and laugh at the funny names the students have come up with. Including St. Pat-duck.

Patrick said, "I would accept this as a nickname as long as you power through pat. Pa-duck."