Peace out, February

 And just like that, February is ending. Where did it go?

The last week of February was super busy, with our Music Library Association conference.

On Tuesday, the Film Music Interest Group came to the BYU library, and Ben Harry, Jeff Lyon, and David Day made excellent hosts talking about the various collections we have at BYU.

I just became a great fan of Ken Darby thanks to Ben Harry's presentation--Ken Darby wrote some great music that I am hoping to get sound files of from Ben. Here is my research assistant, Megan, holding the Oscar Ken Darby won for Camelot. (Shared with Alfred Newman, but part of the Ken Darby Collection at BYU.)

Then, we had to leave early, so didn't get to see all the Max Steiner stuff and RKO Pictures stuff that Jeff and David showed, which was sad! But we left for a good reason: my student Connor's Honors Thesis defense. I was his HT advisor, so I had to be there, and he and Megan work together a lot, so she also wanted to attend.

We could have taken the group upstairs to see Max Steiner's giraffe piano and tuba lamp, because they are actually a part of his film music materials, but we didn't. They are in our musical instrument exhibit case, which is just starting to get organized. (And the lamp is supposed to be by the piano, which it clearly is not. So that will for sure change.) FYI one of the guys from the moving crew who came to move these instruments HATES the color of the background. Oh well, can't please everyone!

Then we--Megan and I--attended MLA at the Hilton in SLC on Thursday. Megan does this daily picture thing with a few family and friends--she gets a message on her phone to take a picture every day. The reminder happened to come as we were sitting together waiting for a session to start, so here are those pictures. Two views: us small, the venue large, and the opposite view. Apparently the daily picture thing has a name, and it is BeReal, which is on both photos, so...that is it's name.

The sessions on Thursday were all SO GOOD. There were wonderful program ideas, and other libraries check out things like theremins and roll-up keyboards, and portable suitcase LP players. I want to do that, too!

Thursday we had our chapter dinner. Josh, who I had just seen on Tuesday at the Film Music Group event, at which he was perfectly fine, was on Thursday sporting a bandaid between his eyes...what? Bob Maxwell leaned over to tell me that the night before, as they were going in to dinner at a different restaurant, Josh accidentally walked into some glass that was poorly placed and clean so that it seemed to not be there, and cut his head!! (And it bled a lot, and the restaurant had him lay down and they iced his head and bandaged him.)

Here is our group, photo by Christine, so she is not in the picture:

Clockwise starting with Janice: Janice, Reed (Duke U), Laurie and Don (UC Boulder), Megan, me, Bob (BYU), I should know but don't, Sadie (left BYU, now the librarian for whatever federal district court is in SLC), Chuck, Stephanie (UC Boulder), Josh (U of Oklahoma), Margaret (Kansas State), Sara (U of Kansas) and Christine is also at a university in OK, different from where Josh is.

Friday was my big day...we arrived in plenty of time, but both Megan and I forgot our name tags, and it was Adrianne's first day (I know her as Annie, but she is using her full given name of Adrianne these days) so we stopped at the registration desk where Brian, the new accountant/manager for MLA printed out new badges for the forgetful people, and a new one for Annie. Then he asked to take our picture, as "the BYU contingent" but there were actually four more people there from BYU--Jeff and David and Bob and Janice. We were not even half! He shared the picture with me, which I forgot about when I was doing this blog post, so I am adding it today, March 1.

                                                            Megan, Me, Adrianne = Annie

Our session (me, Annie, Janice, Laurie and Don, and Bonnie) was the plenary, first thing in the morning.  "Music Research Meets Genealogy." It went really well. At the end, after our Q and A, we did "Relatives Around Us," and it was AMAZING. The people really got into it, finding their cousins. On our plenary group, Bonnie, Don, Janice, Adrianne and I are all related. Only Laurie was not, but I think she probably didn't do her family tree in Family Search, so that was why.

Janice took these pictures of people going to find their relatives.

Christine came to tell me that we are related, and my two closest relatives were Peter, on my Hancock line, and Elizabeth M., on my Barrus line. Both 5th cousins once removed. So that was really fun. (I was related to 33 people. I did not find all of them!)

After the plenary, I had to quickly run to the car and get my poster, which I forgot to bring in with me, since the poster session was next up. I ALMOST brought my terrific magnets, but settled on just tacks, and then what we needed were magnets. They put six magnets on each board, which was not quite enough for my poster, actually, But it was okay.

Same poster as last year at IAML, only with the MLA logo instead.

One person who came by had actually watched and loved DoDoSolSolLaLaSol. It was a lady from Berlin, here at the conference as a vendor for Berliner Philharmoniker. And, like me, she also did not like the ending at all, after loving the movie. After we talked about it, she said she is going to watch it again. A lot of people did say they were going to watch it. (I always told them that I did not like the ending, so they would know going in, so that if they hate the ending, they will know they are not the only ones. And they won't be wondering why ever did I like it [the ending], because they know I didn't.)

Lisa (Tulane U) took a picture of me and two people discussing my poster. I can't remember who the one on the left is. The one on the right is Blaine, and I have collaborated with her in the past on Video Game Music things. (She used to be at UNT, but now she works for a library vendor in Wisconsin.)

Last night, we got back to Provo while it was still light, but by the time I dropped off Annie, and Bob, and Megan at their respective residences, and then got gas, it was dark by the time I got home at about 7:15.

And then this morning!! I woke up too early, couldn't get back to sleep, read the message from Patrick that Hadis' family were all okay, and didn't get bombed. Thank goodness. And then I was so so tired, that I decided to just close my eyes and rest them, even if I couldn't sleep, and the next thing I knew I was having a dream I didn't like, and was relieved to wake up from it. But when I looked at my clock it was 6:43 and I was supposed to pick Megan up at 6:45! I had to text her to say 7:15, and had to have Bruce drive Josie to work, since she had to work an exact amount of hours today over a ridiculous amount of time because she had to be the morning supervisor AND she had to meet some after-work-men who were doing things that had to be done in the building when patrons were not there. YIKES! What a morning to sleep in--I had everything timed exactly, and sleeping in threw it all off!!

Oh well! It was okay. We all got where we needed to go. However...as we were nearing our parking lot, I realized that my shirt was on inside out!! I had grabbed it from the hang-to-dry rack and put it on without checking it! So my first order of business upon arrival was re-dressing myself!

I was glad we were on time to the conference because this morning's opening session, about "So you want to work in a music library" was so good--great advice for job seeking and also hiring. 

The sessions were all good today, and I texted Lynn to say that, in a session about opera in Washington DC, they used the opera Poppea by Monteverdi as a metaphor, with the DC Arts Scene being Octavia, and the Federal Government as Nero. Lynn responded that, had she not gone to the opera, that metaphor would have meant nothing to her! (In case you don't know, Nero was unfaithful to his wife Octavia and eventually killed her--in the opera he just banishes her, but in real life, he executed her).

Me and Janice and Sadie and Megan went to lunch at a place called Eggsburgh, where we ate eggs for lunch. (Avocado toast with bacon and scrambled eggs. Yum.)

Anna LoPrete gave a great session on the Great American Songbook. She is that organization's librarian. She talked about five of her favorite things "These are a few of my favorite things..." and the first one was Irving Berlin.  I took a picture of the slide of her cat...

Anna has been hosting Daniel Henderson from BYU-Hawaii frequently while he has been doing Billy May research. Daniel worked for David Day back in the day, and did research then in the Billy May materials that BYU has in the Capitol Records collection. Anna showed us a video of a BYU-H group performing a Billy May chart, and a neat video of Dan looking at a Billy May chart, but I can't find them online. 

I took a picture of Anna and what is called a "bone record" but is really a record made on old x-ray material that people in Russia and other places where jazz and rock music was banned would retrieve from garbages behind hospitals and make records on them. They were a hobbyist thing in the US, and magazines would print instructions for making them. 

Here is Anna holding up a bone record:

And her final slide was so fun that I had to take a picture of it.

It was so funny to me that she found sheet music titled "Thank you so much" and "Any Questions?" So final-slide appropriate! And it reminded me of my Aunt Celia who said that any word you could say, she would sing a song about it, and we could never stump her. Like all of her children (9) + all of my mom's children (4) and Lavon (1) working together could not stump her. Wouldn't she just love visiting an archive like the Great American Songbook!! So many songs!!

The first commenter in the Q&A said she wanted to speak on behalf of her Russian and Ukrainian ancestors, and how many of these songwriters in the Great American Songbook were actually refugees from war or pogroms or famine, and that this country welcomed them and that here they thrived, and we are calling their music "American" but they were immigrants, or the children of immigrants, like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, etc. And she got very emotional saying "I want our country to be like that again." The room was all quiet after that, and I know that I was tearing up (wet eyes kind of tearing, not paper tearing) and it took a moment before the next question came.

And then, Megan and I got a little lost in SLC, after I said "Now that we know our way around after three days, we don't have to come back again!" And then I didn't know my way around after all. 

Rain, Snow, Ice...land

 Our ward (and stake and area) FINALLY fasted for snow the first Sunday in February. I have been saying we need to do this for a very long time--in a farming area, when it is too dry, fasting happens quickly. Or at least, that is my memory from growing up. We would fast and pray for moisture in whatever necessary form the season called for, and our leaders would call other churches' leaders, and all the people would be praying together, even the many Buddhists in our farming community, because we all recognize that we need water to live.

I don't know--the most attention I find these city folks paying to water is that there is almost universal dislike for the word "moisture." Weird how so many people don't like that word. So--precipitation! That is something we need.

We got some rain instead of snow, which I was so happy about!! Hoping that at higher elevations it WAS snowing, because that is where we need snow the most, for our summer water supply. On February 12 I reported on Fam Jam, our family chat group, that we had enjoyed THREE days in a row of precipitation!! And on Feb. 11, it was raining hard enough (as I drove from home to Days Market) that I had to use my windshield wipers full on!!! And I was elated!!! That had not happened since December -- I had to use wipers a tiny bit on the day I drove Rachel to the airport. But had not at all since then, until Feb. 11.

Finally, FINALLY, we got snow on the ground here in Provo on Wednesday (Feb. 18). At first it was just light, which was fortunate for Josie because she had to put carts together, and outside is where she does it. You can see only a light dusting of snow. (In actually Orem, since that is where she works.) She finished up at about 10 AM.

But at about 11:45, Bruce sent me this picture of what it looked outside our front door. It looked amazing to this snow-starved me!

A half hour later:

At this point, Tim, whose office is next to mine, and who has an exterior window (I do not) excitedly popped in to invite me to come and look out the window!!! And then Adam, who had been teaching in the seminar room, came to give the same joyous news! It was really snowing hard!! Hurray!! Out our windows at work it looked like this:

Meanwhile, Josie and her colleague chose about that time to run a bunch of work errands. The visibility was poor, and the roads were slippery! Later in the day, it had sunnied up, and I walked out to the parking lot and saw all the cars with inches of snow on them, and thought, "Oh. Gotta scrape the car." I couldn't even remember if I had a snow scraper (I did) so I used a folder to scrape, except a girl ran over with her scraper and helped me. That was so nice of her!!

Josie and I were low-key arguing on FB Messenger about who would shovel our driveway: She doesn't want me to overdo it and hurt myself, and, because she is still recovering from her (Humpty Dumpty had a) great fall, I don't want HER to overdo it and hurt herself. Unaware of our dilemma, our neighbor solved it. Josie messaged me to say that the Ring camera revealed that Clark and his snowblower were taking care of business. We were so grateful, and we did thank him!!

Our snow did not hold a candle to David's snow in Alberta:

Or Patrick's snow in Vienna --

or even to Kelli's snow -- not in Tucson, but she had to drive to Flagstaff:

And yesterday afternoon, as I walked to my car, this is what the snow looked like on campus:

Poor Olaf!! He is melting.  

Still, I am so THANKFUL for the snow we got. It is cold enough that it hasn't all melted off the rooftops yet. I hope for more in the future!

In other news, the video about Patrick's work in Iceland came out!

The video is in Icelandic, including the captions, but Patrick’s part (in which he speaks English) starts at 2:22. You can of course watch the whole thing as well! (it is only 5 minutes long.) https://arnastofnun.is/is/myndskeid Scroll down to the video. (If you switch to English, like I tried, then the video is no longer present. So stay in Icelandic if you want to watch the video!) I didn't scroll down when it is in Icelandic, I just went to the first video, and that was the right one, but apparently there are many more. Not those--the first one.

I sent the link to my library community interest link, because Patrick used to work in the HBLL, and many people still know him. I got really nice notes from 14 people, which I forwarded to him:

Greg: Patrick gave a very good lay explanation of the technique! Fun to see him.

Tim: That is super cool and creative science to determine the age of manuscripts. I wonder if the Chinese use anything like that for determining the dates of old books?

Milan: That was an interesting report on his project. Thank you for sharing.

Liz: How fun was that?! I watched and was just amazed again at how the Lord works in our lives, how he moves us where He wants us and the growth that comes from that. I would have loved having Patrick around the library, but I don’t know if he would have had the same experience here. The work Patrick is doing is fascinating.

Sharolyn S.: Thanks. It was great to see Patrick again and their work sounds fascinating (the part I could understand)!

Mary: That’s very cool!

Susanne L: It’s great to see what Patrick has done in his career path!

Coreena: Amazing! I still miss Patrick! He was always so kind to me when I was a newbie and such a hard worker!

Allen: That was very interesting and fun to see Patrick again.

Marissa: Wow, that is so cool! And it’s wonderful to see what Patrick is up to. He’s moved on to bigger and better things!

David R: Thank you for sharing this. It was very interesting. I am always amazed at how different Scandanavian languages are from German. I served my mission in Germany and can understand a bit of Dutch, but almost nothing from Denmark which I'm about 1/8. It is sad.

Roni: That is awesome! I’m so glad that his part was in English—what he is doing is fascinating! But I loved hearing the language as I saw the words on the screen.

Jed: Very cool, thanks for sharing.  I’m happy to know he is thriving and his talents and interests being put to good use.

Heather: Thanks for sharing this. Patrick was always so nice to work with! I wish him all the best.

Edited to add comment #15 from Robert (2/23/26): Amazing video, and what a difficult, technical description Patrick had to give! He must be a musician like you [meaning me] (and other Laytons) by the way he used his hands to illustrate all this electronic movement and “waves” and orchestration. That was NOT easy to pull off.

And then I remembered that my retired friends would also be interested! They emailed me back, but also copied in Patrick themselves because they are still connected to him.

Richard (Dick): How very, very, very, cool this is. It’s great to see Patrick in the middle of his work and explaining so well to the men and women on the street or in the archives how the exciting of molecules on the papyrus can help determine age of a manuscript. Plus, it’s fun to be set into the midst of an Icelandic video, hearing the language spoken so Icelandically by Icelanders with friendly vibes towards Klosterneuburg!

Janet: I love this! Thanks for sharing. I’m trying to wrap my brain around how that machine can make the molecules of the paper vibrate … and then how they can use the info to help determine dating.  Pretty groovy (and Patrick looks very prof-ish).

And then he also got notes from other friends and family, too.

Auntie Arlene: Very interesting! & so fun to see Patrick! Thanks for sending this!

Auntie Colleen: And Patrick...wow. Impressive.

Bernie in High River: Your kids are so smart and doing the most amazing things!! Loved hearing about Patrick!

My neighobors, who don't know Patrick because he never really lived in this house, since he was in Hawaii when we moved here, and then in Vienna, but they tell me they like to know about our family, so I shared the video with them.

Lynn had a hard time finding him--I think she scrolled down and tried the wrong video at first. Then she emailed and said: OK, now I got it. Wow, what an amazing technique. Seems like it would be valuable the world over!

Mary Elizabeth: Wow! Very cool research. I didn’t know this existed. Nice to see that he is immersed in manuscripts like his mom!

Ardyth: His work looks highly interesting. Where does Patrick work that this technique made a connection with Iceland? What a valuable tool. Did he discover or help discover it? I have to assume that many researchers world wide must be using this if they know about it.

So many people have watched that video! The people in Iceland should feel so happy about all the views! (Spoken like a librarian in a library where stats rule! We are always counting uses and views!!)

In case any readers, like Ardyth, have a lot of questions, here are the answers Patrick supplied for her:

I work in Vienna; the lead researcher in Iceland is located in Vienna so we met through my advisor. I am the first to ever use ER-FTIR (external reflective Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) in this fashion. ER-FTIR has been around really from the the mid 60’s but generally not used so much due to some issues with specular reflection and diffuse reflection due to the material surface.

World wide, researchers are dating materials, but they are using near infrared spectroscopy which is a bit more complicated to interpret, but has really good success for paper.

No one has tried to date leather book covers, and NIR would have too much penetration depth to focus solely on the covers.

I am working with the people who pioneered paper dating non destructively though. So that’s fun.

I helped build the tool; the discovery was by Matija Strlic in Ljubljana, but we are the first to be full contactless getting dates of +/- 20 years for older paper, ones that we can date but all previous studies focus on younger collections, mostly wood pulp paper. The really fun fact is that the frame and device weigh 60 kg all together - 135 lbs.

And Ardyth sent the video and Patrick's answers on to some of her grandchildren and her husband. So, the watchers of the video continue to add up! Great stats for the Iceland project!!

Kudos

 Kudos to me, actually...

I do not wish to "blow my own horn" but also this was just the nicest thing ever, and so I want to "keep" it. 

Yesterday was the Library Advisory Council (LAC) meeting, which is held at noon and includes lunch. I have been to it once to talk about what subject liaison librarians do, but I am not normally there. It includes our library administration team and then one appointed person from each of the colleges on campus. I was actually approached about attending yesterday to then give a tour of our floor (since the remodel) but I asked for March or April hoping that we can get things finished a bit more. So I wasn't there in person.

But apparently I was very much "there" because the LAC member from the College of Fine Arts and Communications (CFAC) provided these hand-outs, which Elizabeth took pictures of and sent to me. (Not during the meeting, but after the meeting.)

Like, wow. I am just so honored. 

I posted these pictures to Nancy because I can only save them that way unless I download photos from my phone, and I like the easier way better.

Nancy said, 

And that also made me feel honored. So. I just want to save this. Not out of pride, but feeling thankful because it is nice to be praised in such an unexpected way, for just doing my job. 

Proverbs 27:2 (KJV/NIV): "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." And that is literally the case -- I have no clue who the CFAC rep is on LAC. I know it is a man because Elizabeth told me "he" said this/provided the handout. 

Thank you, stranger, for your kind praise. (And also, kind daughter. I do know who you are! And I thank you, too. Also, when I told Josie her eyes lit up and she was also so very happy for me. Thank you as well!)

Funeral in Spanish

 Today I tuned in to Louise's funeral, held in the Dominican Republic at 5 pm, and for me at 2 pm. Josie was supposed to go to her friend's house at 2, but she was making baozi, and it was taking a bit longer, so she had told her friends she was running late and would be there at 2:30. But then she realized that Louise's funeral was the same time, so unbeknownst to me, she texted Olivia to see if she would pick her up, and Olivia said yes. Excecpt, the funeral was 1.5 hours long, and when it ended just after 3:30, I told Josie I could take her, but she was just going to wait for Olivia, when Olivia texted to say she was JUST LEAVING. So she said "Don't!" And I drove her to Chelsea's house. (Chelsea who is probably related to us because Holdaway.) So...that was funny!

Thanks to Josie's assistance, I got captions in English, but I am not sure that they were any better than captions in Spanish, because I CAN read Spanish, although slower than I can read English.

To start off, a nice person who was actually in the DR posted these pictures:

It was lovely to see the full house of people paying their respects to her. Also there were, at maximum, 88 people on the Zoom call.

The beginning of the funeral was a bit interrupted by someone named Kim who was not muted. She would get a run for her money later in the funeral when someone named Lorraine accidentally unmuted herself, and that lasted a long time, and she spoke loud and clear, giving the speaker at the time a run for the money.

I am posting these screen shots mostly because I find the translateions so interesting.

Of course the sound for music was sketchy, but I heard enough of the opening song in fits and starts to realize they were singing "His eye is on the sparrow" = "Como podre estar triste."

This lady was the first speaker. She was so full of emotion. She didn't try to not show how she felt, she just shared those big feelings. In this screen shot, she was actually code switching between Spanish and English. When the English is better in the "translation" it is because she was saying English at that time.

This gentleman spoke next:

Then some English singers, singing "I know that my Redeemer lives" en ingles. Even though they were at the microphone, and you could occasionally hear piano accompaniment, the sound was the weird way that music often is on Zoom. I think these are a daughter and two granddaughters of Louise. 

The translation was just not happening for the song. The sound was too disjointed. 

Next speaker, I think a granddaughter, with (in my opinion) very good Spanish, but the translation...not exactly what she said...

This is, I believe, Louise's oldest son. His Spanish is also very good, from the viewpoint of me, a hesitant speaker of Spanish. Also the translation is not stellar.

This man who spoke next was also the person conducting the meeting. I took a screen shot at this point because he was talking about Louise and music, and that is a point where Louise and I connected, so it seemed appropriate to me.

This man spoke a few sentences before beginning to sing. His voice was very good, and he sang very confidently and from the heart. I loved it. I did not recognize the song. In places I would think, "This is familiar..." but then nope...lovely, but I have no clue what it was. (Maybe a song Louise wrote? It is possible.) Also, the Zoom handled his singing just fine. Maybe because it was just one voice, directly sung into the microphone?

And this man was the closing speaker. Also emotional. Well, they all were. The family were, the friends were. Louise is someone they love and will miss.

And the closing song was "I stand all amazed" = Asombro me da

It was a lovely experience. I understood enough to understand, but was sometimes confused at what the captions said. Louise was one of those people who does so much good, and it was wonderful to see such a group of mourners gathered together in the building, and also online. What a gift to be able to "attend" a funeral in the Dominican Republic without needing to travel there.

February 15

 I was about to write that the month is half over, but realized that because February only has 28 days, the month is MORE than half over!

I have black history month concerts in February. On the fourth, it was the Jazz Legacy Band, collaborating with Greg Stallings, a Spanish professor who has been my partner on concerts for all the years I have been doing BHM Concerts. I was sad when his wife, Gloria, whispered to me that he has Parkinson's disease. He still played, both flute and piano, but his virtuosity is less apparent--he did not assign himself any starring roles. 98 attendees. 

On the 13th, it was the Rhythm'N'Soul Collective. 130 attendees. This group has only been a thing at BYU for three years, and every year they get better--more polished, more assured. I had the thought to invite my friend Lynn, and she came and loved it! Lynn and I had a nice chat with Lita, who is the AAVP for the Office of Belonging, about the challenges faced by students of color in the current political climate. I realized that Lita's job is very hard. She is often in meetings where she is the only black person in the room, and one of only a handful of women, cheerfully and pleasantly trying to convince the  white men about things of which they have no or limited experience.

My friend Louise, who runs the Dominican Starfish Foundation, was in her beloved Dominican Republic when she fell on the steps of their villa, and required hip surgery. Which was successful--but  then she had a cardiac event on the operating table and died. I was so shocked when my high school friend Laura posted on FB that Louise (her husband's sister) had died!!!! I sat in my office and cried. Louise and I made friends in Alberta when I taught PreSchool Music and Storytime at both the Raymond and Stirling libraries. She was on the Stirling Library Board, so I would stop at her house and get the key, and also two of her children, and then do the reverse trip at the end of Storytime, and we had lots of opportunities to chat and get to know each other. (Also, her husband Jack was in the Raymond Playhouse Society, and I was the stage manager for two productions he was in: Finian's Rainbow and Arsenic and Old Lace. My brother Bruce was in the former, and my husband Bruce in the latter, so they also knew Jack.)

I wrote on Louise's wall in memory of her music. She was an organist and composer, and our library is the only owning library of any of Louise's published music:

I was talking to my cousin Mary about Louise's surprise death, because she knows her too, when Mary said did I know that her cousin Bob Bagozzi and his wife had been killed in a car accident near the California/Nevada border on Feb. 1. And I didn't know that!! Here is the link to information about the accident. So, what I am trying to understand is who was the seven-year-old girl who was traveling with them? She doesn't seem to be one of their grandchildren, and if she had been, surely they would have said something about it at the funeral, but they didn't. (I watched the funeral on Zoom, as did Mary and Don. Mary had wanted me to go with her to Sacramento for the funeral, but I could not get away due to BHM concert #2. Also--long way to drive. Expensive to fly. Etc. We are both getting old, she more than me, since she is past 80 these days!) 

Having traveled with Mary before, both Rosie and I have spent time with Mary's aunt Charlotte, my Uncle George's youngest sister, the mother of Bob Bagozzi. How do you pronounce their last name? Well they say BuGAUZEee. My mother always said it BuGOESee, because I think some of the people of that last name in Taber say it that way. But in actual Italian, it is BahGOATsi. Because in Italian A says AH and O says OH, and a double Z = TS.

There was a terrible shooting in Tumbler Ridge, BC. Which is a small town, so the many dead and wounded affected pretty much everyone pretty closely.  I wrote this to my kids: Do you know what I like about Canada?

When a disaster happens like Tumbler Ridge, the Prime Minister not only goes there to meet and give support to the town, but before he goes, he calls all the leaders of the opposition parties and says, "Hey, do you want to come with me?" And they all go together. All the leaders from all political parties, united in giving support. That is what I like. A lot. Can you even imagine politicians here doing that? Fat chance.

Josie has been busy making valentines. They are lino cuts and then she prints them. Here is the definition Google gave me: Linocut is a, relief printmaking technique where a design is carved into a sheet of linoleum using gouges, leaving raised areas that are inked and pressed onto paper or fabric.

I gave the one in the top right hand corner to my friends Lynn and Krista. And the middle bottom to some of my other ladies in the neighborhood. I used the scripture Proverbs 31:10, only I used "woman of valor." Those were the words as we sang them in Women's Chorus back in the day. I loved Rachel Held Evan's discussion of this scripture. Eshet Chayil.

Lynn and I went to the opera at BYU last night. It was Monteverdi. As Lynn said, "Well, our minds have been broadened." It is very different, being a Baroque opera. A lot of recitative, and not any arias. I did like the times the small orchestra was playing. It was loveely. 

Bruce asked me about it, and I talked about it a little bit, and he said, "Well, I am glad you enjoyed yourself." And I said, "Enjoyed is kind of a strong word." Because...it was an experience, and there were parts I liked, and I liked that I could support the cast members (one of the orchestra a student employee of ours) but enjoyed? A little strong.

Today at church the men sang "A Child's Prayer" as a musical number. It was amazing! I took the picture too soon, while they were just getting in place. There were just so many of them!

54 singers, the conductor and pianist. It sounded so great! Since This is a JKP composition, I bet she was over the moon. She loves when her music is used to good effect! She had a very good seat to watch and listen. I have circled her head below.

In Sunday School, Sister Cannon said, "Can we please take a moment to thank all the men who sang today? That was wonderful Thank you so much!" And JKP was all smiles, and clapping her hands. I felt like we should all clap for them--it was so great. Men's voices en masse make for pleasant listening.

And last of all, a family call tonight, with some of us present: Bruce and I, Kelli, Amy and all three of her children, Nancy's family (in this picture Zoë, Alex, and Phoebe, and in the bottom photo David, whose children were also in and out. (Millie had been in view, but by the time I pressed CTRL PRT SC, she went behind him, and you can just see a bit of her hair.) It was nice to spend some time together!