End of the month recap

 So, on June 22, which was Nancy's birthday too, my brother and I drove to Coalville, Utah, for a memorial service for our cousin Darlla, who shocked her family by dying on June 8, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. (Though her granddaughter Hailee (her only granddaughter--the rest of the grands are sons) told me that Darlla had a number of medical complications going on, so it wasn't entirely surprising. A shock because she just died. No getting sick and giving people time for worry. Or mental preparation.)

It was lovely to spend the time driving there and back again with my brother before he and his wife head off to Hawaii, where they are going to serve their second mission as a senior couple on the island of Oahu. In fact, they just flew off there this morning! Maybe my brother will blog about their experiences! (Hint, hint.)

We were both really glad we went because Darlla's oldest brother Ron is in the latter end of the 80s, and it was just a nice opportunity to see cousins we might not see for some time or ever, because after all--who knew the last time we saw Darlla would be the last time? We don't get to see a game plan for life, and things happen, like happened to Darlla at only 71.

We were small in numbers, but it was a lovely time, and I grew in appreciation for Darlla and her family, and also for just the entirety of my Uncle Earl's posterity. They are good people. For pitching in and helping at (or running) reunions, they have been THE BEST. Honestly, without Ron there would not have been the decades of Hancock reunions that there have been. There would not be a Hancock Hummer, which Ron edited for decades, and then passed the baton to Bob Mitchell, who passed the baton to my sister Colleen, who passed it to Nancy, and she has been trying to pass it, but the relay team is not delivering, so Nancy is still doing it. 

So here are some pictures from last Sunday:

Darlla had four brothers and one sister. Ray and Carol have already passed on, Ray has been gone for many years, having died young of a brain aneurysm. The youngest brother, Leonard, lives in maybe Alabama? I think so. Far away. He joined the service via phone. The other surviving brothers are Ron, who came from Canada, and Gordon, who lives in Utah. In this picture, then, are two of Darlla's brothers, two of her children, and two of her grandchildren. The two children are Destinnie, and behind her her youngest brother David. The two grandchildren in this picture are Destinnie's daughter Hailee, and David's son Karsen. Destinnie's brother Frankie also lives in Alabama, and he participated via Zoom. And surprised me with the wonderful delivery of his mother's eulogy; I did not know he was such an eloquent speaker.

Here are Uncle Earl's descendants who were there (except for Karsen who somehow missed this group photo opportunity):

Back row: Brody (Ron's youngest), DeeDee (Gordon's daughter), Destinnie, Louise (Gordon's wife), Gordon, David, and Deanne (Ron's wife). In front is Brian's wife Heather and Brian, and Bobby and his wife Vikki (both Gordon's sons) and Ron. 

This is DeeDee, Destinnie holding a pencil drawing of her mom Darlla, Taryn (Gordon's first wife and the mother of the three children DeeDee, Bobby, and Brian) and Roberta, who has been friends with Darlla since they were small. Darlla was six or seven when her family moved to Utah from Canada, and Roberta has been friends with her since that young age.

Proof that we were there! Mary, Bruce and Me with Darlla's portraits.

And then we got the helpers out of the kitchen to be in this photo:

Pat Garrett (widow of our cousin David), Mary, Bruce and me with Deanne, Ron's wife. 

Deanne gave me multiple hugs, very big and long hugs. Because I remind her of my mother! She and my mom were friends for a long time. I don't even know how long! Deanne was from Barnwell, so maybe my mom knew her when she (mom) was a young married woman in Taber. Deanne and Ron had dated as young people, but she married a Kindt from Raymond, and Ron married Betty. The Kindts lived in Raymond, my mom's home town, and when she and dad sold the farm and retired there, she and Deanne became fast friends. Then Ron retired from working for the Alberta government, and he and Betty retired to Raymond. After Betty's illness and death, Ron and Deanne began dating again, and married, and Deanne was so wonderful to him, and to Brody, who was still a young teen when his mom died, and she just mothered him so well.  It is hard to think of two nicer women than Betty and Deanne, Ron's two wives. They are just both so golden.

I appreciated the way that Ron and Deanne looked out for my mom after she was widowed. My mom loved Deanne so much, and was just tickled when she married Ron, and she got to have her friend be also her niece. And I appreciate Deanne for thinking that I am like my mother, because my mother was a good woman. 

As a child, I did not appreciate my mom nearly enough. In fact, when at a funeral someone said I looked like my mother--I was only three or four years old, but I remember clearly being so offended. I was WAY cuter than my mom!! Rude. And when my dad poked me and told me to say "thank you" I could not LIE. I was NOT thankful for that RUDE COMMENT. 

Whenever someone says I remind them of my mother, I think of that first memory of my lack of appreciation for being thought to be like my mother...and I am thankful to have grown up enough to have learned to appreciate my mother, and so I thank Deanne for the compliment. She knew and loved my mom, and I feel known and loved by Deanne, too.

Okay! Well, I just enjoyed driving to Coalville with my brother, and spending time with my cousins, and getting to know Darlla's posterity better. It was a lovely way to spend a few hours on a Sunday. 

My Office

 My office, since I have been at BYU, has been in three places. Here is the first place. I think the office number was 4332. (My phone number is 422-4334, and I think my room number was off by two numbers. I can't see well enought to read the sign that has the number on it.)

I wrote about the way things were, and there is another picture at this post. 

Here is a better picture of the interior, though devoid of the office furniture that was in it at the time that I "lived" there:

Here is what that entire area looked like:

Those glass doors on the left side was the entrance to our office suite. The doors facing us were all faculty offices--for university faculty who wanted a research office in the library. There are more around the corner, and they were all torn out. 

And the view looking west toward the Asian collection as it was from my first office suite:

The thing I notice the most is how dark it was. The lighting was just inadequate to really light the space.

So they started deconstructing this area in May 2022, three years ago. So no lie, three years of construction SO FAR. I think we fill finish this year, though, so there is that. 

Here is this area deconstructed:

You can see the little pieces of carpet that outline where our offices were: Sherry's, then mine, then Janet's on the right, Irene's on the left. 

I moved to 4431 after the microfilm machine was moved out, when the library decided to consolidate all the microforms into the family history library. (Except they DIDN'T. Not completely. We just moved all the ones out of the music vault last year, and from the Ancient Studies room this year.)

Here is what it looked like when you stepped out of the stairwell and onto level four, with my new office (4431 HBLL) immediately adjacent to the elevator:

You can just see the back door to my office (or the front door!) around the corner from the harmonium, in the same hallway as the back elevator. (You get a nice view of my OTHER door at this deconstruction post.)

They deconstructed all around my office, until it was completely surrounded by construction, above it and on all sides.

Looking from the entrance to the floor to your left, you would see this:

Although, that was only after the walls around my first office got torn down. 

THIS is what it looked like, actually, before the deconstruction started:

When the walls were still intact, that clarinet display was against the wall by that office suite, like this. We moved it to where it is in the above above photo after the deconstruction started in 2022.

Once you got around the corner from where our old suite of offices used to be, you would see this: 

This photo showed how it looked after the construction in the middle was mostly done, but the south end and north end were both still under construction, so the maker space was in the middle of the floor. This picture is from when Ikaika was visiting from Hawaii, so at least a year ago. Or more?

Now I am in a new office that doesn't have a number yet. It sits in the middle of where the harp room used to be. 

I am still hidden behind a wall of plastic, even though this area is getting close to being finished, so I don't get a lot of traffic yet. I am sure that will change when they are actually finished! And when I actually have a room number! (And base boards, which you can see are still missing.)

Harp Room

The harp room as a place to house the harp scores--the problem was, if a collector is going to collect as many harp scores as possible, up to two and three and occasionally four copies--you are going to run out of room in the room! 

So this picture, which I found on Wikipedia, credit to a BYU student employee named Grace, shows the room as it was several (many?) years ago, not as it was when we actually started tearing down the walls. Speaking of which, the tearing down pictures can be seen at this link and also this link. 

So the room started out with a table, where the Music Special Collections students had their weekly meeting, and where harp students could gather to look at scores and discuass things about harp music. 

I am actually pretty excited to notice that in this picture, the ghost chair can be seen!! There is this rumor about a haunted chair, and it even made it into a book about Haunted Utah Places. And that upholstered chair you can see in this picture is THE chair!! I have looked for a picture in the past and not found one. What happened with the chair is that it would appear in the harp room, and then David Day would move it out into the hall, and the next day, it would be back in the harp room, and nobody ever knew who was moving it. (Except whoever moved it!) In the book about Haunted Utah Places, the author scoffed about it saying "what librarian has time to count chairs?" but see, the chair is noticeable because it is different, and so no counting is necessary to see if the chair is or isn't there! Finally, David sat in the chair, found it super comfortable, and put it at the head of the table, where he would sit while meeting with his students.  And there it stayed (no longer going in and out of the room!) until the room ran out of room for more scores, and the table had to go out in favor of more book shelves.

You can also see in the picture all the many, many, many, many (did I use enough manys? I am not sure, because soooo many) Harp DVDs and CDs that Janice had to catalog! And which also had to be moved out of the room and go to new locations such as the CD collection and Special Collections. 

Hey! I just found another picture, looking at the table that used to live in the harp room from the doorway. This was in a Halloween Harp powerpoint made by a student at some point! (Another view of the ghost chair, barely!)

In the room back then, there were also two harps, and here is a picture of one of them. 

And for your viewing pleasure, the other one:

Photo credit for both of those harps to the BYU student named Grace who took those pictures for the Wikipedia article.

The harps were just sitting out, because the room was locked and you had to be let in with a door code. And harp students were allowed to play the harps. Only then it was decided that the door must be left open so that people did not have to ask in order to access the collection of scores. (Also why Janice had to get those media items catalogued quickly and out of there.) But harps are expensive, and they didn't want random people playing them and breaking strings and stuff, so they put in this little terrible claustrophobia-inducing pod with a card lock and put the harps inside it in one corner of the room. I do not have a picture of that. 

Also there were various art objects on the walls, such as these:

And of course there were shelves full of harp scores.

And then, the walls came tumbling down as can be seen at the link above, which I will also put here and also here. 

We have a huge archival collection of harp materials, but BYU doesn't want to commit further space to it, so these items "The International Harp Archives" will be going to the University of North Texas, which does want to commit to space to grow this collection. I am going to see if David would like to send some of our duplicates to them as well, because we don't really need a bazillion copies of things. And the harp collection in our new floor plan is not encased in walls, so if it does need to grow, we can just add shelves without having to tear down walls.  Here is the new look. In the first photo, I am standing northeast of the harp stacks. The door you can see is where the new music seminar room is going to be. (The room is all there; it just isn't finished yet.)

For the second picture, I am standing at the southwest side of this collection. The door you can see on the right is the new harp room, where the harps will live. It is about 120 square feet or something like that--so bigger than the harp pod thing was, but not as big as the old harp room. Big enought that two harps and a few people can be in the room without gasping for breath. It isn't a finished room yet, either, so no pictures of it today. 

The reading room in the HBLL as was

 It has come to my attention that I have put construction and deconstruction photos of the library, but because I assume that everybody knows what it looked like before construction, no before pictures. So I fail as a historian!! 

For example, this post talks about the deconstruction of the reading room. So today's post will show the reading room as it was. It was, I think, a beautiful space.  

This was it:

The above picture was harvested from the internet, taken probably last year, since I can see that there are harp scores, which we moved in after removing many, many reference books to the stacks.

And Roger Layton provided me with others. This one shows the entrance to the reading room. (The portrait on the wall is of Merrill Bradshaw, who was a composer who taught at BYU. His grandson married Emily Bradford Bradshaw.)

You can see lots of reference books, front and back, and the display of the current periodicals. You can also just see, to the right, the giraffe piano that belonged to Max Steiner, the film composer, a gift to him from Johann Strauss, the waltz king.

 

Incidentally, NOBODY has taken pictures of the piano, except this little sidewise shot above. But I have photos from before Mrs. Steiner donated it, which my student Anna and daughter Nancy worked on a bit to improve. So I will just put them here, too.

This picture had a lot of glare, and Nancy diminished it quite a bit, which is better.

This picture was very off center so didn't look great, so Anna cropped it and positioned it like it was meant to look like this view of the giraffe piano.

But wait! Here is a shot that shows that side of the room straight on. That shows the giraffe piano as well, but alas, it is partly blocked from view.

On the western wall, the Tuba Lamp that also belonged to Max Steiner.

The eastern wall, where the door at the top left (that you can see the doorknob of if you try) leads into the MRA (Music Recordings Archive.) We have kept the small harpsichord (gift of Lotta Van Buren and her husband Mr. Bazallion) and the clavichord now lives in the School of Music.

Looking from the southeast corner to the western wall of the space. Nice view of (part of) the reference collection. 

And last of all, the north wall where the curtains in the reading room lived. They were much loved, and a lot of people asked to be notified if they were in BYU's Surplus Sale. I don't know if that happened, but here they are, so they will have their place in history.

And here is what the same area looks like today. Still not completely finished.

The CD collection is at the left, and then seating to the windows where the curtains used to be.

The old furniture is piled in a corner, to the center-right. We are going to reuse some of them, but with new upholstry. 

It is at least much lighter than it was before. 

Also, that back corner was actually in the Music Recordings Archive, which was a room full of very tall shelves of LPs. Thousands of them. (Over 100 thousand tbh.)  So I will put a picture of that here, too, because that last picture is really mostly what was the MRA. The door into the MRA was by that pillar you can see in the center. 

Okay. Now you have the before and after, and can click to the other post to see the mess that was in between. (For the area that was the Reading Room.)

The reference collection that almost filled a whole room is reduced to one row:

The LPs we are keeping will be put into bins, but we have not done that work yet--the bins arrived with problems. (Some were bent, some don't close, all of them did not have the slots spaced properly to allow for three rows of LPs. Mike Ball fixed that by making extra slots in each drawer. I will maybe remember to take a picture of that one day when we have done the work of filling the bins.)

Wait. Here are the empty bins.

Hurts my Heart

 I do not post much on Social Media, and maybe I need to be more courageous about taking a public stance, but I am just so upset about the way that many people in Alberta are behaving. Like Danielle Smith, who I even have met personally and who I thought was a nice person, she is such a divisive force as Alberta's premier, and it hurts my heart to see the division she is creating.

I love Canada, and I love Alberta. All the talk of separation hurts my heart. 

Today I had the courage to put a comment on a high school friend's post, asking her to look at an alternate point of view, which is actually written by Kim Siever, who is also someone I know. He married one of Donna Golbeck's daughters. I know where his house is in Lethbridge. Naomi's brother-in-law.

Anyways, people in Alberta keep whining about "this mess the liberals got us into." I am all just "what mess?" I see you all on Facebook going on all your trips and cruises, and it looks to me like a lot of you are doing just fine, and in fact that you are thriving, and that you are in fact NOT in a mess.

You will be if Danielle Smith has her way and Alberta were to try to seperate from Canada. 

I also have native Canadian friends, and they value the treaties that were made with the crown before there ever was an Alberta. Like, Alberta cannot TAKE most of the land that is Alberta out of Canada without breaking treaties that Alberta was not a party to. I am just so ARRGH over it.

Anyways, a high school friend--okay--acquaintance. Seriously, this girl was one of my best friends in Grade Four, but in high school, totally not friends. However, Facebook "Friends." She posted this 

There are many "facts" in this little piece that are in fact anything but "clear," And some of the "facts" are in fact not "facts" but interpretations. So I got brave and posted a pretty weak, pacificistic question asking her to maybe look at another point of view. 

Which was written by the aforementioned Kim Siever.  

If you read to the bottom of the comments, you would find this one that I wholeheartedly agree with.

Eric Steeves (Feb. 6, 2025) "Everyone pays the same federal tax rate no matter what province they live in. Largely because Alberta has a massive supply of oil, their GDP and income per capita is the highest in Canada. Because of this, Alberta pays the most federal taxes per capita. Why is this unfair?

The federal government collects taxes at the same rate from every province and spends the money to meet the needs and priorities determined by the elected Government and Parliament. One of these priorities is to redistribute some of this revenue to provinces so that each can have somewhat comparable public services at somewhat similar tax rates and a somewhat similar standard of living. Why is this unfair?

I keep hearing the constant whining from the right in Alberta about how unfair they are being treated by the rest of Canada. I am from Ontario which has 16 million residents, represents 40% of the country’s GDP, and pays at least 40% of all federal taxes in total dollars. For most of confederation, Ontario has been the economic engine of Canada and has shared its wealth through federal taxes with other provinces including Alberta before its oil wealth was developed. And during my lifetime of almost 80 years, I have never once heard anyone I knew from Ontario complain about how we were being treated unfairly.

We should be proud that we live in a country that is willing to try to help our citizens have somewhat similar services and living standards no matter where they live. I certainly am."

This is exactly what my sister Colleen has said to me many times. That she is very grateful for the good income they have been blessed with, and she does not mind at all paying taxes and thereby helping others who need it in an organized way.

(Not like how we do it with Go Fund Mes in the US!! Some people get help, and others don't!)

(Also: If you read Kim's article, or watched his video, then you know that Alberta supplies 15% of Canada's revenue; Ontario pays 40%; the rest of Canada 45%.)

And Mark Bishop (I think OUR family's own Mark Bishop, another Albertan who also makes a lot of money and therefore pays a lot of taxes) said on May 1, 2025: "Eric nailed it." (The Eric whose comment I put in above.)

Then a rabble-rouser commented again with all the "poor Alberta" talk, and again Mark responded:

Mark Bishop (May 2, 2025) "what is the ideology- “drill baby drill”, pollute, contaminate, ignore, repeat for another 100 years? Not progressive, sustainable, or logical. Uproar if you want, but maybe it’s Alberta that needs a new ideology."

I agree!! Sure, Alberta can make lots of money NOW, but doing so will bankrupt the future. Maybe they don't think there will be a future, because the US is getting all war-mongery, like Russia and Israel already are. And Iran!! My goodness--those poor people, being domestically treated terribly, and then others want to come and destroy them, too? 

And the anti-Mark Carney rhetoric. I can't even with it. Don't they know how lucky they are to have such an incredibly VETTED individual as their prime minister? I am in a job position that required seven layers of scrutiny and took about a year. The scrutiny since I became department chair has INCREASED. I understand vetting, and I realize that many people do not. They just apply for a job, and they get it. One and done. That is not how my job is. And that is not how the leader of the Bank of England or the Bank of Canada is chosen. They are VETTED. And they had better come up squeaky clean.

What politician gets that kind of vetting? Well--look around the world at the skanky people in leadership in various places for your answer. So Canada is lucky to have their leader. Alberta is lucky to have him. Alberta has a robust economy, and therefore people pay taxes (at the same rate as all Canadians) and can afford all sorts of fun trips that I watch them taking. So, just exactly what is wrong with them?

Only that they are listening to Danielle Smith and her followers and working themselves up into frenzies over nothing. 

We wanted to move back to Alberta. Now I am not sure that I could stand to live there. It would be just like living here, surrounded by people I don't agree with, only it would be colder. I don't even want to go to my High School (50 year!) reunion because same. Whine, whine, whine, when really YOU ARE SO LUCKY. 

MHA 2025

MHA 2025 is in Ogden this weekend. Yesterday, my friend Janice and I (and our student Carter) both presented. Janice and Carter presented on "Two Nichols and Five Pennies" which was about two musicians with the last name Nichols, and Five Pennies was the name of a band the younger Nichols played with. (A movie was made about Red Nickels and the Five Pennies: Here is a description: In this film based on a true story, Red Nichols (Danny Kaye) moves from his small town to New York City to become a jazz musician. Although he experiences culture shock, he soon becomes well respected in the clubs, even forming a friendship with Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong). Except for that according to Carter's research, Red Nichols and Louis Armstrong knew each other, but there is no evidence of a strong friendship which the film suggests. A little poetic license was used.) They chose this topic because the small town Red Nichols was from was Ogden, which was a small town back then. Or at least a town, if not small.

There was another man, older and retired, in our session, who presented on Louis Moench, a German professor at Weber State who was a lyricist, or at least a translator, for many songs and hymns. Surprise, surprise--this man used my computer and needed technical help sometimes, and I was the helper!! Fortunately, most of the help he needed was because his vision is even worse than mine (he has macular degeneration) and so he couldn't always see the arrows, or even read the menu on his files. So, I got to help him, even though when you think of technical help with anything, you don't think of me.

I was last to present, about the Organ Music for the Sacrament Gem in LDS Sunday Schools. 

Miriam and Zoë made this for me and probably one of their parents filmed it. I don't know how to put the video here, but it is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWMrZXNhzCE

Andrew made this for me:

There-- now you have "seen" my entire presentation!