August is also hot

 Still reaching 100F or higher every day--but there were a couple of cooler mornings this week, for which I was grateful! Twice I opened windows for a short while and let in some cool fresh air. I really like fresh air! I get really tired of air conditioned air, even though I am so grafeul to have it. I just prefer fresh air.

I am low-key dreading this coming week--I am supposed to get a new computer. This was supposed to happen last week, so I moved a bunch of pictures and files onto my hard drive, and I am so good at that that I lost a lot of files, so I copied my entire recycle bin from this computer onto my hard drive, which means there is a lot of junk on there. 

I am worried that I will even lose access to my blog, because what is the password? Who knows? I don't think I do!! Arrgh!! I can currently just click into many things because my computer is smart like that, while I am password challenged. All the time.

Oh well!! Progress, right? Gotta love it!

This was Miriam's last full week with us before she flies out to join her family in Doha. We have a couple more days with her, and then it will be airport day on Tuesday.

This last full week was the BYU Organ Workshop that is held every year. Miriam attended last year, and also this year. 

This year, her private organ lesson (on Tuesday afternoon) was with her first organ teacher, when she took the Organ First program at BYU taught by Nora Hess, beginning when Miriam was only eight years old. It was fun to see the two of them interact all these years later, which I got to do because the rules are that minors have to have an adult with them. Rachel had a class at the assigned time, so lucky me! 

It was fun to hear the new pieces Miriam is working on! The Bach Gigue Fugue had a very sticky tune and very tricky timing. Nora got Miriam going with the metronome, and it was, from my point of view, super helpful. The other pieces was litanies of some kind, and I liked how Nora described it as this big rock, and when it starts to roll downhill, it doesn't go at the same rate because science! That was a helpful metaphor for me (who was not the one playing the piece!)

Here are Miriam and Nora together at the end of their lesson:

The other organ event this week was the Hymn Sing that they traditionally do at the BYU Organ Workshop. This was held on Thursday evening, and Rachel and I met Miriam there.

This year, Don Cook, who retired from BYU a year ago, was the featured organist. He was so happy to be there, and so emotional. He was the one who worked tirelessly for a long time to get the huge wonderful pipe organ that BYU has today. "The concert hall pipe organ is the Létourneau Opus 100, a custom-built instrument designed in the English Town Hall style. Installed in October 2024 in the BYU Music Building's Concert Hall, it features 4,603 pipes and 81 ranks." (quoting Google's AI overview) BTW, this is a Quebec-built organ--when Isabelle Demers was here she commented on how close she lives to their facility. 

Don planned a program of 10 of his favorite hymns. As per this event's usual, the printed program had two sides: one for the singers, and the other to explain to organists how he chose to accompany each piece. Also people who were registered for the organ workshop would also have (for one week) access to the free organ accompaniments used on each last verse. These arrangements were mostly by Don Cook himself, but there were a couple by Gerald Dick (he was once upon a time the music librarian at BYU, and then the music cataloguer, and also a bag piper as well as an organist AND apparently was also a harp builder) and the last one was by my good friend Vanja Watkins, which was a free accompaniment for the hymn "Press Forward, Saints" with lyrics by my other good friend Marvin Gardner--we three are currently working on a music project together. Also Marv wrote the lyrics for another one of the hymns that Don planned.

Free accompaniments -- people might not know what that means. "An organ free accompaniment (also called an alternate or free harmonization) is a creative re-harmonization of a standard hymn tune. Organists play it to support the congregation or choir, usually on the final verse of a hymn while people sing the melody in unison." - Google AI but they got their info from the BYU Organ website.

Anyways, here is Don talking about one of the hymns. He just spoke for a minute or two about each one, about why he chose it or what it means to him.

This next picture is an attempt to show that they also had a screen set up on stage that showed his feet while he was playing. (That would have been cool to have for the Isabelle Demers concert, but I guess nobody thought of it until later!)

It happens that I took that picture at the very beginning of "Silent Night." Yes, we did sing not one, but two, Christmas hymns in August, on a blistering hot day!! This is because Don was choosing favorites, and so "Hark, the herald angels sing" and "Silent Night" were chosen.

For "Silent Night" the house lights were turned off, and then on the phrase "all is bright" people were supposed to turn their little candles on. (Because people were given the opportunity to take a little tiny candle light when they came to the concert if they wanted to.) Only the first row would turn on theirs, and then the second, then the third, and so forth, until all the rows in the concert hall had their lights shining by the time we got to "radiant beams" in the third verse. (No free accompaniment for this one.)

 People who came in late (there are a bunch at top left of the above photo) missed out on the opportunity to have candles, so not many lights up there. And we also sang the last verse a capella, in the candle light. It was lovely. It was indeed calm and bright, like the song says.

And at the end, I took a picture of Miriam with her friend Abby who has also attended the BYU Organ Workshop for two years. So they have become pretty well acquainted with each other. It happened that Abby and her mom sat behind us. (That is Abby's mom just behind Miriam, talking to a young man.)

And that is all I have to report on this week! I am just walking every morning while it is still decently cool, and digging lots of dandelions, and dreading getting a new computer next week!

Goodbye July (including books)

 So hard to believe it is July 31! This month has been both too long and too short. And definitely too hot!!! 

Do you know what NOAA is the acronym for? I did not. I had to look it up. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Only I don't believe that average nighttime low, because I think it hardly ever got that low at night!! Sometimes on my 6 AM walk it was 79 F. Or even 82 F. 

I am soooooo thankful we decided to spring for a second air conditioner for the downstairs. With three girls (and three cats) downstairs, it would have been so hot, and just impossible to cool down since the nights were so warm, without air con.

I have been working at BYU for nearly 25 years. It will be 25 years in about the middle of August. I have had three different offices in those 25 years. My first office had dark wood panelling on the walls, and nothing to decorate those walls. My second office had a bit of dark wood panelling, but mostly the walls were cinderblock. I put up a couple of gamelan posters, but mostly I had nothing on the walls because neither panelling or cinderblock are particularly good hosts for artwork. I have been in my third office for one year, and to celebrate, I put art on my walls for the first time in 25 years. TA-DA!

The four posters of similar style were created for me by Nancy when she lived in North Carolina. I used them then--and still use them now--to promote the library. I have some on sandwich boards that I take to things like CFAC NSO. (College of Fine Arts and Communications New Student Orientation.) And so I sent the files to Roger, our PR person in the library, asking to have them printed and mounted for my walls. 

The other poster is from two conference poster sessions, at IAML in July 2025, and at MLA in February 2026. I really like the poster, and there it is as evidence in my office that I do research and scholarly work. Even if about Korean Dramas. 

This other view shows that I also have a piece of art created for me by one of my student workers, Alyssa, which she made for me when I got my PHD, which was I think in 2013.

I only read six books this month. It was a long month, but a busy month, and so I did not do lots of reading, comparatively speaking.

1. A study in Charlotte: a Charlotte Holmes novel (2016) by Brittany Cavallaro. Jamie Watson, greatgrandson of Dr. Watson and Charlotte, who descends from Sherlock, run into trouble at their Connecticut boarding school. This was interesting enough that I have started the second book of this series (but have not finished it yet). (This book reminded me of the book I read last month that opined that Sherlock was really a woman named Charlotte.)

2. Max in the house of spies: a tale of World War II (2024) by Adam Gidwitz. This is one of a two-book series, and I am also about midway through the second book of this series, too. (This book reminded me of the book about Enzio Busche that I read last month, because of how it makes you realize that people in Germany thought the Nazis were good until history and hindsight changed their minds. When you are living in the moment, you are too close to see the whole picture.)

Lately, when books get too tense for me, I have to set them aside and read something else. So I am constantly reading four or five books at a time. The second books associated with both of the books above are like that--therefore taking me awhile to finish.

3. The herring-seller's apprentice (2007) by L.C. Tyler. This is the first in a series called the Elsie and Ethelred mysteries, which feature Ethelred Tressider, a crime writer, and Elsie Thirkettle, his literary agent. I will quote from the blog "Clothes in Books" whose author wrote "Crime writer Ethelred Tressider and his agent, Elsie, are investigating the disappearance and then the murder of his ex-wife. There is an alternating narrative, a lot of jokes about the literary and crime fiction worlds, some pastiche, and some unreliable narrating. It could have been an unfunny disaster, but actually it was great fun, and I was delighted to see that there are more books in the series. Elsie is an absolutely splendid character, and I hope the books will follow her for a long time to come." I concur.

4. My double life (2010) by Janette Rallison. It has been awhile since I read a Janette Rallison, and this was such a fun read. I had forgotten how refreshingly fun her books are. A picture of Lexi is posted online, and is seen by the agent of a teenage singer, Kari Kingsley. She is looking to hire a body double for Kari, someone who can lip-sync onstage at small events while Kari remains in the studio working on her newest album. Lexi discovers that there is a reason she and Kari look so much alike!! 

5. Glorious Rivals (2025) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes is the sequel to The Grandest Game, the puzzle-solving game that Avery and the Hawthorne Brothers have cooked up. It had been too long since I read the latter; I did not have a great handle on the characters going into the book. But it came back to me! I still prefer the original series, The Inheritance Game books, better. But she is a good writer, so I enjoyed this book, too. 

6. The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club (2025) by Gloria Chao. The Thursday Murder Club, The Marlow Murder Club--these books are good, so this title appealed to me. I did finish the book, but I did not love it. I just found her language a little crass. Unnecessarily so. I was suprised that an MIT graduate who was also a dentist before turning to writing full time didn't have a better vocabulary? Or didn't use a better vocabulary in the book, at least. Clearly she is an intelligent person. But so much of my a$$ and your a$$, instead of just me and you. Why? Do people really talk like that? I do not think that they do in my circles!

Today I had another former student visitor, Abby!  She was my intern, then my RA, and she also worked at the help desks. Now her sister, Hazel, works at the fifth floor help desk. Here are we three together:

Me, then Abby, then Hazel in yellow. Abby has had such interesting jobs since graduating from BYU! She worked for the seeing eye dog foundation in Oregon while working on her MLIS from UNT, and also volunteering at the Sandy Public Library in Oregon. Then she went to Alaska, working in Skagway as Lucky Lou, helping cruise ship visitors pan for gold, while dressed in character as a lady of the Gold Rush era. Then she got hired at the public library she volunteered at, and on the side she writes book reviews for Kirkus Review. It was fun to see and catch up with her!!

Organ Surprise

 As promised, the sequel to the Organ Concert post! How can it be a surprise, since I gave notice it was coming? Read and find out!

So, Friday was July 24, which is a holiday in Utah. For Bruce, it was a normal retired-person stay-at-home day. For me and Josie, it was a stay-home-from work and do-work-at home kind of day. For Rachel, it was a drive-Heiss-grandparents-to-the-airport kind of day. And for Miriam, it was her last full day of the POE, and at the end of the day would be a recital (or two) at which the 30 participants of the POE would be the performers. 

Rachel was back in time for the first recital, which she attended with Josie and me. The two of them were happy to support Miriam, but less happy to immerse themselves in four hours or more of solely organ music, played by performers of mostly unknown (for us) ability. There was talk of maybe bringing a book, but in the end, we just went, and I think we all had a good time! 

The first recital was to be 16 of the 30 players, but two of them were sick. (Janice thought that their illness was heat related--it was 100 degrees outside pretty much all day every day all week, and when the organizers did their planning, they were expecting less heat than there was. So, for example, on Thursday evening, they ate their dinner outside by the carillon tower, and Janice offered our fourth floor seminar room in the library as a place to eat in the air conditioning, but the organizers were pretty set on following their pre-arranged schedule.) 

It was interesting to listen to the variation in proficiency, and even when players were beginners, you had to admire their courage to play on a huge pipe organ--which is an instrument that is not very forgiving of mistakes. Whatever is played is going to be heard! It was also interesting to see that some of the students came out with their teachers, who handled pushing stops or turning pages, while other students were able to handle those kinds of logistics on their own. 

After the first recital was the "dinner." We knew about this--Miriam had been asked to RSVP about how many people would attend the dinner. I imagined a banquet hall and a sit-down dinner. But in talking to my friend Sheri at the concert on Thursday night, I learned that they were going to be feeding 160 people--way more than anticipated--and that they did not have access to a room that would hold that many. So they were going to set up the food in the long hallway between the two large ensemble practice rooms on the bottom floor of the music building, and then people could find a place to sit in one room or the other. They meant to offer an opportunity for students and their parents to be able to quickly eat between the two recitals, since there was not really time to leave and come back between them.  Sheri said she was planning to set up a donation box and because I had a hard time imagining what that would look like, I planned to donate via check and put it in an envelope.

So, at the end of the first recital, they asked that all the people who had RSVP'd leave via "door no. 2" which is downstairs, so we all trooped down: Janice, Josie, Rachel, and me. And there was a familiar face!! Surprise!! It was Cherilea (Hardy) Pace!! Wearing a POE volunteer blue T-shirt!!

Cherilea is our cousin Rita's daughter. She was among my first piano students in Raymond. I had had a piano studio in El Cajon, CA, when we lived there, and then also in Raymond, AB, when we lived there. (That was the end of my piano teaching, though--got too busy with other things, mostly raising children. And then working.) Cherilea went on to become a very good pianist, and then an organist. She took classes from Don Cook at BYU, and then continued on to have seven years of organ lessons on her own, and actually now has one organ student (the only student she has ever taught) who is a young man in her ward who asked her to teach him when she was ward organist. And now he is ward organist!

Doesn't Cherilea still look just like her young self? I think she does. But she is now a grandmother--her son Malcolm has one child! So she joined our group for the dinner break, and she and I had a really great visit. Some of her news was not so fun: for example, she got tested for the BRCA 2 mutation, and she has it. So far, of Rita's 13 children, only Cara, Cherilea, and Janae have been tested, and Janae does not have it. Also Nola's daughter Holly has it, but she found out, like Cara, the unfortunate way, by having breast cancer. Visiting with Cherilea sure made me miss Rita, her mom. Rita was such a good cousin to me when we lived in Raymond, and also after. We have stayed at her house. In 2014! That was a long time ago. And then Rita died (thanks, BRCA 2) in 2021. Cherilea, who lives in South Jordan, Utah, went up and spent Rita's last month with her, caring for her mom. 

After dinner, we trooped back upstairs, and sat in our same row, only in a different order, this time with Cherilea on the outside edge. I asked one of the organ volunteers, who I had met at the organ lunch in the library on Thursday, if he would take a picture of our group, and he did.

Here we are: Cherilea, me, Rachel, Josie, and Janice. (Janice is not wearing her POE volunteer shirt this day because she had no volunteer responsibilities. She was wearing it on Thursday, but I did not take a picture of her on Thursday.)

We knew by this time that Miriam would be playing on the second recital, third person from the end. Actually, when we were in line for the food, Sheri told me that she texted me to tell me when Miriam would be playing, but apparently it has been a long time since Sheri texted me, because she had my 801-669-4533 number still, so of course I did not get the text!

So, we were sitting there enjoying the second recital, when between one student and another, a handsome blonde young man slid in beside Cherilea, put his arm around her, and there were some whispers back and forth. Cherilea leaned over to tell me that--Surprise!! It was Ammon, her brother Jared's son!! They were there in support of his (brand new) wife Eliza's brother, a student at the POE from North Carolina. (Only Cherilea got confused and told me South Carolina.)

We did take a picture of ourselves with Ammon and Eliza after the recital was over. I will just put it here now. (They actually just got married on my brother's birthday, June 6, 2026, in the Raleigh, North Carolina, temple.)

Here we are: me, Ammon, Eliza, and Cherilea. (Thanks to Janice for taking the photo.)

Now, the Heiss family lived in Durham, North Carolina, for five years. And for the weirdest surprise in a night of surprises, the last three people on the program were Miriam Heiss (who is not presently from North Carolina, but has a history there) playing Carillon de Westminster by Vierne, and then Calvin Stewart, Eliza's brother (who is from Apex, North Carolina) playing Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F Major, and then Seth Austin (who is also from North Carolina, and who Miriam already knew was from the stake the Heisses were in when they lived in Durham) playing the Vierne piece that Miriam really wanted to play if he hadn't decided to play it, the Final from Symphony no.1.

So--three North Carolina connected people in a row, two of whom share relatives!

There was also one young man (emphasis on young--maybe about 13 years old) from Raymond, because of course there was someone from Raymond. (As my mother would tell you if she could, there is always someone from Raymond! Wherever you go!) Anderson Stone was his name, so Ammon and Cherilea had to go and talk to him to find out if he is from the Stone family that is related to them!! (On their Hardy side.)

Miriam could not remember what names to say about Raymond--she knew she was related to people in Raymond, but knew that it was not Layton that would be the right name to say. I told her (too late for it to matter) that she could say Hardy (because Rita had 13 children, so, lots of Hardy people) or Navratil (because Aunt Celia had 9 children, so lots of Navratil descendants) or Hancock, my mom's maiden name and also a big family of 12. Any of those names would have been familiar to young Master Stone. Probably!

And weirdly, though I didn't know at the time I told her that, if she had said the name Hardy to the group, not only would Anderson Stone have noticed, but also Calvin Stewart, since his sister only recently married a Hardy from Raymond!

So that was fun--all the connections!! Connections we would not have discovered if Cherilea had not stayed for the second recital!! She only stayed for the dinner because she saw me; she only stayed for the second recital so she could hear Miriam! We would not have met Ammon and Eliza and discovered the connection to Calvin Stewart had Cherilea gone home early as she had originally planned to do!

Here is Miriam playing her recital piece, which she did very well. I think Josie did a video recording of Miriam's entire performance, but I do not have it. Maybe she or Nancy will put it up on YouTube. 

And here is a picture of the entire group of POE students and teachers. (Thanks to Janice for picture!)

You can see Miriam in the white sweater and black skirt close to the left side. Miriam's first organ teacher, from when Miriam did the "Organ First" program at age 8-9, Nora Hess, is at the far right in brown pants and green and white top. It is wonderful to see how Miriam has grown as a musician and organist from when she was just a little girl!

And that was the end of the evening! We stood around and talked with people, and didn't eat the Rice Krispie treats they had on offer, though Rachel took one home for herself, and for Bruce, and then we left Miriam to enjoy her last night with the POE friends, and Rachel picked her up from the BYU School of Music at noon on Saturday.

Today was Sunday, and we had a little surprise for Miriam, who came to Relief Society with us, and led the singing (because Jane, who should do it, was delayed after sacrament meeting) because she was volunteered to do it. (Surprise, Miriam!) She was visiting Relief Society instead of visiting Young Women, and after Relief Society, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce both Rachel and Miriam to Janice Kapp Perry (JKP to me and others at the library who routinely call her that, but to her face I call her Jan, which is what everyone who knows her normally calls her). 

I asked her if we could take a picture of her with the girls, because the girls want to be fan girls. Jan said, "Do they want to be fans of old ladies? Because that is what I am now--an old lady." 

Aren't they so cute? Wearing their Primary Colors! (Our Primary Colors are 1-2-3! Red, yellow, and blue...)

And I will just end with a completely out of place picture, because I took this picture in honor of Rachel's birthday on July 20, but then did not remember to include it in that post, so here is a picture of the sixth floor at the library. Colette's desk is in front, and she is the one who made this poster celebrating Rachel. (Heiss, to be clear: there are other Rachels on the sixth floor. At least one; maybe more!)

Organ Concert

 Miriam is attending the POE: Pipe Organ Encounter, which is a week-long camp for teenagers to have some organ immersion and also to play magnificent pipe organs. The American Guild of Organists sponsors POEs every year--this year there are three--scattered around the country. So there has not been one in Utah for awhile. Turns out that my friend and neighbor Dorothy is the organizer of the event this time around. And I found out about it because my friend and library colleague Rachel W. posted about it on Facebook, and I noticed Dorothy's name and contacted her about it...and long story short, Miriam won a scholarship to attend it. Which was great, because she had to get here from Georgia, and that already cost money.

So she started on Monday, Rachel's birthday (Rachel H.), and I think she has been having a great time. On Tuesday, Dorothy called me because they "lost" Miriam--it was her turn to play the pipe organ in the choral hall, but she was in the concert hall, having been given conflicting information. (Miriam is not the type of person to just blow off something!) I was, of course, worrying needlessly until one or both of Dorothy or Miriam let me know (they both did) that she was "found."

Yesterday, I took a cart full of things up to Janice in cataloguing, but she wasn't there, and Colette said she was doing some choir thing with Rachel (W.) today...and I was like "Maybe an organ thing?" Yes, that was it. Somehow, Rachel and Janice had to end up driving the kids from Timp Lodge to campus yesterday, and also they had to figure out lunch, which Colette did the ordering for them. And when I went downstairs, I happened to run into Janice who told me to come and crash their lunch party, which was in the Flex Room. So I had a nice visit with Janice (who is also an organist) and Rachel W. and other grown-ups, and Miriam did come and talk to me for a minute. 

Everyone was saying that Miriam looks like me, which is a nice compliment to me, but I am not sure how she feels about being told she looks like an old white-haired grandma. 

Last night was the concert given by their guest artist, Isabelle Demers. Janice walked over directly from work, and I drove over and we sat with another organ person who assists the BYU organ faculty and I cannot for the life of me remember her name even though Janice told me several times. She was nice, though! I remember that! She who I cannot name because I don't remember her name helps with organizing concerts, and she mentioned how happy she was to see a good-sized audience; she was afraid it would be an almost empty hall because the organ is a bit niche. I told her that Dorothy invited our whole ward. (Later, after the concert, I would talk to a bunch of people from our ward, so her invitation worked.)

The concert was amazing. The students all sat on the sides, which would give them a better view of Isabelle's hands. Here is Miriam and the other girls from the POE. (The student breakdown was 23 males and only 7 females. The girls, it was reported to me, had become a pretty tight-knit group.) In this picture, there are actually six of the POE girls and one of the POE boys. The man in blue a couple of rows behind is Dorothy's husband, Richard. (Picture taken before the concert, not during. There were more people during.)

We sat in front, so we had a good view of Isabelle's back, and also her feet, which would become important! And wow, what a workout she gave herself, playing more than an hour's worth of music (including two encores)--playing the organ is NOT a sedentary thing to do!

Isabelle played two Allegro Vivace movements from two Fifth symphonies (of Charles Widor and Felix Mendelssohn, respectively) and then Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D MAJOR--the minor one I know well, but was unfamiliar with the major one.

Because she is Canadian, she wanted to include some Canadian music. Healey Willan, though born in England, lived out his adult life in Toronto. Isabelle said, "Well, he could not help it that he was not born in Canada, so he came as soon as he could!" And then she played a lullaby by Rachel Laurin, who was her friend, and Isabelle is currently working on a CD release of music by this now deceased friend.

And then she ended with Variations on a theme by Paganini by Sir George Thalben-Ball and holy doodle! That piece is about 3/4 played only by FEET. Trills and arpeggios and crossing one leg over the other, and reaching both feet as far as possible away from each other and chords and runs--Isabelle was sometimes balancing herself with both hands on the bench while her feet danced hither and thither. 

There is no NEED to play the organ that athletically, by which I mean that the organ was designed to play using your hands, supplemented by your feet, but that composer/organist, Sir George, wanted to see if it could be done to give the feet the bulk of the music, and yuppers, it could be done. But I do not think there are many organists who would take that challenge on!! I am sure Isabelle was exhausted after playing that piece! But she still played two encores (walking across the stage each time, as if she wasn't already worn out from playing for so long and on that last very athletic piece!): her own arrangement of "Somewhere over the rainbow" and then I think a Reger arrangement of a Bach invention. 

Janice and I were standing just outside the concert hall with Miriam when Isabelle popped out of a side door with Neil Harmon. So we were the first people who got to talk with her, and the first thing she said to me was that in that morning's master class, at 9 AM, Miriam was the first student to play, and that she was wonderful--did I come to it? (I didn't know about it, so no.) We had a lovely chat, and I said, "Did Miriam tell you that she is Canadian?" And she had not, and so the two of them had a lovely chat about that. And then I asked if I could take a picture of the two of them, Isabelle and Miriam, together, but then Neil said to let him take the picture so I could be in it, too. And so I said thank you, and here are the results. 

I had a chat with Dorothy's son, Daniel. I have known him for a long time (I knew him before I knew Dorothy) because he used to be a frequent attendee at the Hymn Sing program that I ran in the BYU library for a very long time--stopped due to COVID in 2020, and never resumed because we are now in a super red-tapey era, and I just don't want to have to deal with it. Anyways, Dorothy got Daniel to take the kids on a hike to Stewart Falls, which apparently Miriam was very excited about. Dorothy is a very outdoors kind of woman, and also she is still (at now past 80 years old) running more than one Cub Scout troupes! She just has found that she can't do the hikes anymore--she can still hike, but she is so slow and young people want to go faster, so she gets Daniel to do the hiking. 

Daniel said it was a successful hike. (The bar is low: nobody died = success!) He said that organists are a good group of youth to hike with because they value their limbs and know that they can't really do their thing--play the organ--if they have damaged their limbs. So, he didn't even have to tell them to be careful, because they are just, by nature and self-selection, a careful group.

Also I had a chat with Neil, who said that Miriam can do an in-person audition for BYU School of Music admission. I am to have her email him. He also said that she can go into the SoM and practice on their organs anytime next week. He thinks the other organ professor might have a busy week, but he doesn't, and I told him that Miriam literally has nothing to do next week except whatever she wants to do. So we will work that out.

Last of all, I heard Neil say to a tall, dark and handsome (and married) organist, that he thought the Canadians should meet: meaning this guy and Isabelle. Well, it was Dallin Bissett, from Raymond, who is the grandson of Bob and Mari Bissett. Mari was my sister  Colleen's roommate. I am afraid I told him tales of his grandfather sleeping on the couch in Colleen's apartment when he had some roommate issues going on. Dallin and his friend thought that back in the day they were maybe looser with the Honor Code. I think that back in the day we were generally big-brothered much less about everything than we are today! At BYU and everywhere else!! Anyways, he was fun to talk to. 

Tonight we have more organ stuff to happen, so stay tuned for an organ update!

Adventures in Buying Something

 I got my title from Nancy's post, Adventures in Buying Nothing, only real buying was involved, so Something instead of Nothing. 

The Something we needed to buy was a recliner. We first bought a recliner for Bruce 19 years ago (almost--it will be 19 years in September) after his open heart surgery in 2007, because they sent him home (too soon, in my opinion--culture shock Canada to US medical systems--they would not have sent him home that soon in Canada) and he couldn't really lay down and get up and stuff. So before he could realistically come home from the hospital (too soon) I had to go and buy a recliner. Which I did.

I had hoped that one recliner would be enough for one lifetime, but it turns out that it was becoming less comfortable, and if you know Bruce then you know that when he is not comfortable, you find out about it. And I thought, okay--we'll just get a new recliner. They have improved over the years, anyway, so we can get a better one.

Before I decided that we should just bite that buying bullet, he of course was sending me links to this recliner and that recliner and generally reinforcing the idea that he wanted a new recliner. But as I looked at the links, and read the reviews of people who had purchased recliners online, there were those who said "Go to a store. Try out a recliner. Buy the one you like," 

That made sense to me, so I sent him on an errand to go to stores and try recliners. Which he did, but he did not buy one because they are expensive, and he was in sticker shock. Also delivery fees are much higher than they were 19 years ago! (Or even six years ago, which was about the last time we had anything delivered from a furniture store.) 

So it looked to him like buying from Amazon, and letting our Prime membership pay for delivery, was a good idea. A better idea.

Okay, so I went along with that. Knowing what features he was hoping for, since he had gone to stores, I found one that met his desires that also included free shipping (and was also much less dinero than any of the store models he had tried) and ordered it. (This was my first mistake.)

It came. And that is when the trouble started. Nobody was home when it was delivered last week (July 15), and Bruce came home from shopping (the rest of us were at school or work) and there was the huge box. Apparently he stood and looked at the box for some time, causing Josie's Ring Camera notification to go off time and again, and she would look at him standing there looking at the box.

Our neighbor Clark also saw him standing, and came over to help. And the two of them opened the box. Which, by the way was quite damaged. (Later, Bruce would show me the Ring Camera video of the delivery of the box. The one man dumped it out of the truck and then flipped it boom boom boom end over end four or five times.) Inside, the chair was also damaged.

Well. That is not what you want to see on a new piece of furniture that you just received. It wasn't in a hidden spot either, just very much in evidence. 

So, he sent me this picture at work, and I made my second mistake. I went on Amazon to try to click on one of the options for a dissatisfied customer. And I should have waited--Amazon has a very generous return policy, so there was NO RUSH. And yet, I was too hasty. I should have gone home and looked at the chair, and looked at the box, and taken my time. But no. 

At first I clicked on return item, but then I made my third mistake, and changed it to replace item. Which immediately triggered a second chair to be sent to us. I did not realize that it would do that tout de suite like that. Arrgh.

Because when I got home, I saw that there was a bigger problem than just a wrecked brand new chair. There was a bigger problem than just significant damage to the box it came in. Bruce and Clark had basically finished the job of ruining the box that we would need to use to return the chair, AND when I looked in the trash can to pull out the packing material that Bruce had thrown away, there was so much very little there!! I could not believe how flimsily the chair had been wrapped for shipment!! Like, no wonder it got damaged. And watching the video of how the guy unloaded it--it is a wonder there wasn't worse visible damage. (And maybe internal damage too, which we will never know about because we have not tried the chair out.)

Seeing that made me realize that I did not want a second chair from this company!! If they packed it so terribly, and if they had it delivered so carelessly, then the second chair might be as bad as the first, or worse. So I thought that maybe I could change the replace back to refund, but no. That is not an option.

So the next day, I called Amazon Customer Service, and after enduring stupid AI questions from a stupid AI operator, and after asking politely and then demanding and then yelling that I needed to talk to a human, I finally got to talk to a human.

Oh but wait! I forgot to relate the worst mistake--which was not one of mine, thankfully. This mistake was completely mind boggling!! So here is Bruce, this person who "needs" his recliner, and who cuts online calls with his children short because he just can't sit in this (high-backed and in my opinion pretty comfortable) chair, because he needs his neck to be better supported by his recliner. This recliner-addict...wait for it...took apart his old recliner! As soon as the box was delivered! Before he even knew what was inside! And then, when the new recliner was obviously not going to work out, he could not put his recliner back together. So he sat in it leaning it against a wall, with the back kind of connected but not properly.

So once I knew this--he had apparently tried to tell me, but I think my brain just could not compute "I took apart my chair," because WHY would you do that?--Josie and I worked with him to try to put it back together. But like Humpty Dumpty, all the effort we could muster couldn't put the chair back together again. In fact, I think that the back of the chair got broken in the taking apart efforts that I was not there to see, because it was literally not possible to line things up to put it together.

And also...why??? All he had to do was put it on the front porch AS IS, and I would have listed it on the Provo Buy Nothing Group, and someone would have taken it...

Instead, we put it in the van, and in the morning, he took it to DI. He was excited because I told him to just go to wherever his favorite chair he had tried was, and just buy it, and pay the delivery fee and have it delivered.

And so he did. But delivery would not be until Monday. So he took his puzzle chair (which is an office chair) into the TV room and was just uncomfortable for all those many days. Like, he thought he was uncomfortable before, but this took uncomfortable to a whole new level.

In the meantime, I am going back and forth with the Amazon Partner company trying to stop the shipment of the replacement chair. By Friday morning, they were telling me that I needed to call FedEx and stop the shipment. And FedEx is telling me that only they can do it. And they are telling me they did do it. And FedEx is telling me there is nothing telling them to stop the shipment. And both are telling me that what I need to do is to refuse the shipment, because if it is delivered without me refusing it at point of delivery, then I will need to return not one but two chairs.

And one is a problem enough, because I need to somehow recreate a ruined box, and that sucker is heavy to lift into our van, and take it to UPS, which handles Amazon returns. 

So Saturday, starting at 7 AM, mostly me, but occasionally spelled off by Bruce or Josie, someone had to be watching for the delivery. It was excruciatingly boring. (Rachel and Miriam were both "here" but had gone for the day with their friend from Georgia so were not pressed into the watching rotation.)

Finally, at some point in the afternoon, I had the idea to use the tracking number the Amazon Partner had given me on FedEx's website, to see if I could pinpoint a window of time, because Josie and I wanted to run to Costco to buy a Costco chocolate cake for Rachel's birthday, which we were going to celebrate on Sunday because Miriam and Kelli would both be there, and neither would be there on Rachel's actual birthday.

Fortunately, that worked, and the window of time was 6:15-9:15 pm. So we left Bruce to watch (because windows of time have been known to be wrong, even when you think you know them) and ran to buy just only what we needed at Costco. (That was not hard because we both strongly dislike the Orem Costco. Too many people. Too much muchness.)

We also picked up pizza for dinner because I didn't want to be cooking and miss the stupid truck, because our kitchen has no windows on that side of the house where the truck would come.

We ate early, so that we would be finished by the time the 6:15 window of time opened, but would intermittently also open the kitchen door to look outside to see if there was a truck in the street. (We had the garage door open, but didn't dare leave the kitchen door open because it was 100 degrees out there.) 

When the truck actually came--early!--I was the only one who heard it. The driver was already in the back of the truck about to unload the box and I yelled "Wait! Stop!! We want to refuse this delivery! We have been trying all week (hyperbole!) to stop the delivery!!"

And so he stopped, and he got me to sign the appropriate place on his little device, and then he drove away, and just like that, we had succeeded in refusing the box with the replacement chair inside!!

One down and one to go!!

And then on Monday Bruce's new chair came, and he feels quite relieved with his adventure in buying something he wanted, even though it cost a chunk of change.

And I am still trying to acquire a big enough box to at least be able to patch together some semblance of a box so I can return the damaged chair.

Lessons learned: I mentioned one already, "don't be hasty." I should have taken at least a day, or at least until I got home, to make a choice about how to handle the problem. Lesson two is related: with Amazon orders ALWAYS just return. You can always buy the item again later if you change your mind that you really did want it.

And to finish on a positive note, here is a selfie or two of the girls on July 19, Rachel's not-birthday, after Bruce had gone to bed for lack of a recliner to sit in.

And this one, which I think is so cute of Josie, but that she probably might not like:

So. All is well that ends. And this adventure has really not ended yet. I have one refund for one chair taken care of, and one more to go. And, not being hasty, I have a week or so to figure out how to box up and ship out the last chair, so eventually this adventure will indeed end. 

Music and Move

 A week ago Thursday, July 2, our neighobor's daughter, who is a BYU alumnus and also University of Kansas alum for her master's degree as a collaborative pianist, gave a recital at the end of the work day in BYU's Museum of Art. It was so good! 

Here is Beth, talking about the program:

 And here is the oboeist, Colby, she collaborated with on one piece:

And here is Beth and her mom, Mary Elizabeth, collaborating on a couple of piano duets by Oliver Davis, who was a composer I had not heard of before, but who I find I really like the music of, so I have begun ordering a few pieces for the library.

Beth also collaborated with herself, singing and playing the Sammy Fain piece, "I'll be seeing you," which she dedicated to her deceased brother Jacob, because in the year and a bit since his death, when she goes to all "the old familiar places" she sees him in her mind's eye. It was very touching. A couple of other pieces she played as piano solos were also kind of "about" family love, and I was moved to tears unexpectedly--don't always expect to cry at a piano recital! 

All week we were gearing up for yesterday! Josie was working an extra hour every day so she could take a half day off on Friday so that we could help Rachel and her Heiss grandparents with emptying Nancy's pods. And it only took two hours start to finish, including driving time to Spanish Fork and back!! That was because we had so many helpers. Many hands make light work!!

I didn't remember to take pictures on the Spanish Fork end of the pod unpacking, but there were maybe 17-20 people helping at that end. They did not all come to the unloading zone at the storage unit Nancy and Andrew had rented, but these people did:

R-L: James, who works with Rachel in the Music Cataloguing area, Steve and Janice (Janice Rachel's boss and also James' boss), me, Josie, Rachel, and the lady and her two children who are neighbors to Aunt Linda. Missing is Janice and Steve's son, Reuben, who had to leave a few minutes before the picture was taken, and Reid and Darla who somehow both avoided being in the picture, and the nice man from Aunt Linda's ward who drove the truck we put all the stuff into.

I think the most awkward thing to move was Grandma Conrad's old sewing machine (dated by my colleauge Jed to, he thinks, 1921) which was heavy. Mind you, boxes of books were heavy, too. I proved myself to be very weak compared to other people. So I was really grateful there were others there to help. Had it just been me and Josie and Rachel, it would have really been noticeable how weak I am, and it would have taken WAY longer!!

Here is Reid, holding up the code that Nancy and Andrew devised, which helped us know where to put things. White tags are back left, with the two purples in front of it (not perfectly sorted, but those are Rachel's and Miriam's things). In back right there are the furniture-ish things, like a desk and the sewing machine and TV screens, then red tags and food buckets at front right.

We left home at 1:05 (that was my fault; Josie and Rachel were right ready to go at 1:00; I was 5 minutes late according to the timing that I set) and got home again at 2:53. Not even two hours!!! That is amazing. We brought the musical instruments, the viola and the ukulele, to our house, and Janice put the bike in her van, and dropped it off at our house. It is nice that there is an aisle in the storage unit.

And there are the bookends to the past week. Or the past ten days.

Coda to June

When I posted about Books Read in June last night, my intention was to do one long post with other events of June recorded, but instead I got so sleepy that I left the post unfinished and took a little nap. That was before nine--and I woke up two hours (+) later (so not a little nap! a long nap!) to finish the post, but only finished posting about the books, and then went to bed for real. 

So the events of the past week or so now have a post of their own!

Last Monday (June 22, Nancy's birthday) Dr. Jerry Jaccard called me to ask if he could bring some Kodaly Society visitors from Hungary to see the Primrose International Viola Archive. (Dr. J is the president of the Kodaly Society.) He said they would come some time during the week, and then actually came that afternoon. Since Patrick was Dr. Jaccard's TA or RA for several years before he started in Book Repair, I asked one of the guests (a theory department head and a strings department head from a university in Hungary) to snap a picture of the two of us, which I then sent to Patrick.

Patrick responded immediately with "Dr. Jaccard! He is the best of people!" Followed up with "Goodness, soon I'll be a Dr. That's weird..." Jerry was so happy to learn more about Patrick's PhD journey and immersion into academia. I told him that young Patrick who worked for the music education department back in the day would not have ever imagined himself as a PhD! 

On Tuesday, I got word that the office furniture for my office and Tim's that were ordered fully a year ago had arrived, and would be delivered on Thursday. So that day and Wednesday I did a lot of packing things into boxes to get ready for the move. It was much easier for me than for Tim, who had at least three tall and one short book case, and a big filing cabinet full of things.

I decided to take a picture of my office the way it has been for the past year.

That is not a great picture, but I hope it shows that my desk was huge, taking up a lot of the space in the office. I had one bookshelf to the right against a wall, and several boxes under the desk that I had not ever gotten around to unpacking. Also three stools under the desk because I like them, and didn't want BYU to surplus them. I could pull them out if I needed more seating in my office. I also had three chairs and a small fridge that I inherited from Elizabeth when she moved offices to the LAO, where they have a big shared fridge already.

On Wednesday, they (furniture movers) started to move boxes of furniture outside my office, ready for Thursday. Eventually, there was so much that it completely covered up my window.

I thought there was a lot of stuff when I took these pictures, but really this was just the beginning. I never took a picture when it reached its maximum. There was so much stuff!! I could not believe it was all going to fit in two rooms. 

Wednesday evening, I was a guest lecturer in Heidi's World Music class, and after class, she so kindly helped me move everything from my office, except the desk and computer stuff and the bookshelf, into the Music Seminar Room (which was where her class was held and is through the door you can see to the left in the photo above). Tim apparently was moving things until 7 pm!

On Thursday morning, Ernie from LIT moved my monitor and printer -- I took my computer home at night, and then in the morning set myself up to work in the Seminar Room, but I forgot my computer cord at home, so by 10:30, I was out of battery, so I shifted in the DVD collection where they had gotten too tight. And did that kind of work until finally they were finished with my office. Soon it looked like this:

Boxes still packed, but you can see that the computer desk is much less wide, the wires are arranged more neatly. You can see my three stools under the desk! (Now I am down to two, because Tim has one under a table in his office.) I kept my wooden book shelf because they brought me two that were too big -- I would never fill them. And I wouldn't want the possibility of filling them because that would be too much stuff!!

So, my office is still a work in process, but it does feel a bit roomier with the smaller desk!

I took this picture on level five because I wanted to show my colleague Kellie that, yes, the library DOES cover up outside windows. We were talking about this because she and her husband just bought a house, and one of the windows you could see from the outside did not exist on the inside. The seller is going to open the wall up and let that window be a window before they buy it, but she was nonplussed by that hidden window, and I said, oh, we do that in the library...she was shocked. So I took this picture! 

On the fifth floor, we have created these new reading nooks. So these next two pictures and text are about them. These were in places where we had to keep existing walls, for reasons to be revealed.

So, Tim had made an Asian Readers area on level four--the idea being to support extensive reading instead of intensive reading. Historically, universities have relied on intensive reading for foreign language reading--so, reading difficult material with great intensity. But for language learning, actually extensive reading is stickier for your brain--so, reading a lot of easy material and gradually reading harder things as you grow your vocabulary.

So, we wanted to do the same thing on level five with other languages. This nook, which is beside the new fifth floor seminar room, is bounded on one side by an electrical/utility room, so we were stuck with walls in set places. This nook is near the ancient studies collection, so houses the mummy, and the books here are affiliated with the languages students encounter in the ancient studies collection: Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew. Bob, who collects Greek and Latin materials, thought this was a stupid idea until suddenly he decided it was a wonderful idea, and then there has been no stopping him!! He has left the other collectors in the dust. You can see how he was been working on this collection! (Whereas, the Arabic and Hebrew shelves are still pretty empty.)

This other nook is bordered by a restroom and a stairwell. At BYU, the restrooms and stairwells belong to the university, not to the building they are housed in. So, we could not move those walls in any way, so we were stuck with this little nook, and this was the space that originally prompted developing a reading collection for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. You can see how enthusiastically the three librarians who are working on that collection have gathered materials, right? (Grin) Don't worry--it will be great soon. Hopefully by fall, anyway!!

In sadder news, my friend Rosalie died on June 23. She was a few months short of age 87. She had a fall and other medical issues arising about a year or two ago, and needed to move into an extended care facility, which was very disheartening for her because she loved her independence. She was the oldest person in our Book Group.

(A quick independence story: after she was supposedly no longer driving, she told her niece she just wanted to sit in her car one last time. And then got in and drove away, going for a spin!)

Rosalie's niece Char was Josie's library director before OPL started falling apart after Char resigned due to city shenanigans that she would not go along with. So when I got the news on Thursday that Rosalie died, I texted Josie to tell her, since we have this mutual connection to the family. 

See the heart up there? Well...after my post about her death, I had noted that I was happy to have known Rosalie for the past 5-6 years. I wrote "She was a lovely, kind woman, and I am glad to have known her." And that is the message that Josie meant to heart!

And I do think that Rosalie was happy/ready to let go of this life. 

I got to meet Char, pictured below with a display honoring Rosalie, at the funeral, which was on Monday, and she told me that Rosalie was worried about dealing with a lot of pain in her death, but it was instead really peaceful. She just ate and drank less and less, and slept more and more, and had careful hospice monitoring, and slipped peacefully away. 

It was so interesting to learn more about Rosalie's life. She was the youngest child on a farm in Sugar City, Idaho, where they grew sugar beets--similar to my growing up, honestly! Only Rosalie's siblings were ten (her brother Ken) and seventeen (her sister Kay) when she was born! She was the little caboose.

Rosalie never married, but instead had lots of education and a mission and travel, and ended up teaching AP US History for decades at Timpview High School, where she was a very popular teacher. She was demanding, but always kind, and was sought after as a teacher, even students coming from other high schools in the area to be able to take that class from her. As a teacher, she was a force to be reckoned with, was an award-winning teacher, and influenced hundreds upon hundreds of students. (Edited on July 12 to add this link to an article in the Deseret News--an ode to Miss Mackay by one of these many students. This link also appears in a comment I added.)

Rosalie was a member of the Republican party so that she could vote in their primaries, because she wanted to have a say in who ran for office, even though she was more likely to vote differently, because she was in favor of strong social support because students who are hungry or facing social or medical challenges, etc., do less well in school. And she was all about school success. (This I did not learn at the funeral. This I learned at Book Group. But I did learn at the funeral that even though her life was slipping away, Rosalie made sure to VOTE in the recent Republican primary election. Her nieces took her ballot to her, and turned it in for her, because voting was very important to Rosalie.)

Michael Sellers, in our Stake Presidency, has known Rosalie since he was six years old. He was the last speaker, and he talked about her impression on him as a human being, as a ward member, and as his teacher in high school. He said that he knew her first as a very quiet, kind, helpful woman who always gave quiet service in the ward and in the neighborhood. Emphasis on quiet. But then Rosalie was his teacher, and she was dynamic and outspoken and impressive in a way that seemed quite different to him!! How come there was a church Rosalie and a school Rosalie? They seemed like two different people to him! 

My last story about Rosalie is about her house. It was very hard for her to decide to sell it, but her nieces wanted her to sell it during her lifetime instead of leaving it to them, although they helped and supported her in the process. She did NOT want to sell to an investor. She lived in a condo, but it was her home, and she wanted it to be a beloved home to someone else. The first few offers the realtor brought were indeed investors from California, interested in buying her condo sight unseen. She would not sell. Finally, her realtor found a buyer, a woman from Virginia moving to Utah to teach at BYU, and that is who Rosalie sold to, with the hope that this would be a person who would love her home and be a contributing member of the community and the ward. 

Here are more pictures. First, Char and her sister Linda with the Rosalie memory table. 

Next, a quilt that her 1992-1993 AP US History and Government class gave to her.

I hoped the writing would show up better. A handmade quilt-- something about hands--thanks for all you have done--something about "hand it to you." I wish I had written it down. I didn't realize the picture quality did not capture the text. Anyways, I thought it was very sweet, and clearly it meant a lot to Rosalie, because here the quilt is more than 30 years later.

And here are several of the ladies in our book group standing beside Rosalie. We will miss her! She was a great reader and always had interesting thoughts to share about what we were reading each month.

That is Kari (pronounced like car-ee, like the car you drive), Lynn, Dorothy (organ Dorothy for Nancy and Miriam's info) and Me, and we are beside Rosalie's photos. The painting on the right is of the slough and the bridge over it on the Mackay family farm in Idaho.

Last of all, back to Sunday and Miriam's organ recital which Nancy posted about here. In our house, four people watched/listened to it, but all of us in a different room on different devices. (We all wanted our most comfortable spot!) Bruce watched it on his big screen TV (there are bigger screens--this is just the biggest screen in our house) and wanted to try taking a picture of Miriam on that TV, which he succeeded in doing. It is very blue!!

We were delighted that we could "attend" from so far away, and are very proud of the way Miriam is developing her talents!

June Books

 Nine books read in June! That is a record for 2026. I have read 6, 7 or 8 books in every other month this year, but the number is 9 for June.

1. At the end of last month, I was suffering from ideas for books to read, and remembered that in the past I liked to read Ian Hamilton's Ava Lee books. My records indicate that I read these books in 2014, 2015, then  2018 where I picked up in the series where I left off for a book or two, and then read one again in  2022 and then forgot about them until here it is 2026 and I had not read any Ava Lee books for four years. So I read the next in the series, which was The Imam of Tawi-Tawi (2018). Zakat College in the Phillipines is a source of possibly training terrorists, and it is the Islamic Brotherhood who are worried about that and seek help. (Just saying because people are always blaming terrorism on Islam but guess what? They don't like it either.) This book was interesting, but I don't really like the direction he has taken with the series (too much emphasis on romantic relationships, when it is the mysteries I am interested in), so I think I won't read any more. (FYI there are 17 books in the series. I liked the books in which Ava Lee was a forensic accountant working with uncle. I have liked the books less since uncle died, and Ava Lee goes into the fashion business instead.)

2. You know that I was reading The unselected journals of Emma M. Lion vol. 8 (2024) by Beth Brower, because I was slowly savouring it! Well, I finished it in early June! This was actually my least favorite of the eight volumes so far, though I still enjoyed it. It was just that they left St. Crispian and spent a month in Stonecrop, and I missed all the characters who live in St. Crispian! There were not many new characters to add in the remote countryside, and while I am sure it was very relaxing for Emma and friends (if they were real people and not book characters!) I missed the London life that I was used to in the first seven volumes.

3. A world without summer: a volcano erupts, a creature awakens, and the sun goes out (2025) by Nicholas Day. I loved this nonfiction book written for a YA audience. It tells of the 1815 eruption of Indonesian volcano Tambora and the years of bad weather and no crops that followed in its wake. In some parts of the world, there was a dearth of rain. In other parts of the world, massive flooding occurred. India's monsoon cycle got interrupted and has never really recovered even still. But the people had no idea that it was the volcano that caused it, because people were not yet following and meticulously recording the weather. Since then, people have been and yet...do we use that data effectively? What do we do now, when we can see climate change but are complacent?

4. The impossible fortune (2025) by Richard Osman. It was lovely to meet again the Thursday Murder Club characters--it has been a gap of a few years, so that Elizabeth could recover from her husband Stephen's death, but she is ready to get back to solving tough cases. There are so many twists and unexpected turns in this novel, and new characters are introduced. But through it all, the theme of the value of friendship and love as what matters most arises to the surface. I thought it was very good, and even a bit tender. (But my friend Cassandra, who otherwise loves the Thursday Murder Club books, of which this one is #5, disliked this book. To each their own!)

5. Yearning for the living God: Reflections from the life of F. Enzio Busche (2004) by F. Enzio Busche, edited by Tracie A. Lamb. This was our book club selection for the month of June. I got the book, which I had placed on hold, on the Thursday before the Tuesday that was our meeting. And so I read it fast! It was really interesting--I think it was so interesting to hear from his point of view what it was like to grow up as a child in the Third Reich. They thought Hitler was wonderful; they thought their country was wonderful. When they heard of terrible things happening, they did not believe they could possibly be true. Only in retrospect. I also was really impressed with Busche's humility, and his easily admitting when he made mistakes or errors in judgment. 

6. Just Julie's Fine (2023) by Theric Jepson. I found this book, and thought "Utah Mormon Author" immediately because...Theric?...like, if that is not a Utah Mormon Baby Name, what is? Well, I am not sure if the author is from Utah, but the book is supposed to be about what it was like at BYU in the early 2000s. I was like Huh. But the book grew on me, even though I started out just giving it a charity read. (Also Andrew Heiss did the typesetting? So bonus.) I especially liked the growth of Julie from guy magnet with an easy major, to deciding to study engineering and really use her brain.

7. One Good Thing about America (2017) by Ruth Freeman. Loved this book, which I found on the third floor America 250 book display shelves. Anais has moved with her mother and brother to Maine from the Congo as refugees. She does not like it here, but her grandmother back in the Congo challenges her, in her letters, to write at least one good thing about America. Most of the time she succeeds, though a few times, she can't think of one good thing that day. Ruth Freeman, who is a teacher of children learning English, really shows the point of view of the ESL learner. Anais is already fluent in two languages, and has been learning English at school in the Congo before coming to America, too. Like--these kids are smart! Oh, I also sort of made peace with "America." Like, people from what we call India call their own country Bharat. And people outside of the USA call it that, or the United States, but people within the USA call their own country America. So, I get it.

8. Ms. Holmes of Baker Street: The truth about Sherlock (2004) by C. Alan Bradley and William A.S. Sarjeant. These two University of Saskatchewan professors (in broadcasting and geology respectively) who are not English professors but who ARE Sherlockians posit that Holmes was a female pretending to be a male since Victorian conventions did not allow a tall, plain woman without marriage prospects much of a chance at life. They give their evidence story by story, and also pull in references from other scholars who share their opinion on the matter. (I found this because I wanted to know if Alan Bradley has written another Flavia deLuce book; he did, but it comes out this fall, and also he died after finishing the book--he was 82, so not a huge shock. And this book was the only thing of his I had not read yet.)

9. Death comes to Marlow (2023) by Robert Thorogood is his second detective romp with Judith, Suzie, Becks, and Tanika on the case. This time, Sir Peter Bailey is found dead in a locked room that only has one entrance. And the only key to the room is in the victim's pocket. Yet, it seems to Judith that it was no accident--it was murder. But how? And by whom? And why?