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?

Sunday Musings

 It is Father's Day. We got Bruce a few gifts, both suggestions from Nancy (a massager and an ice cream shovel) and he seems to like them. We got a cake that is kind of like a layered trifle, and it was good--we ate that at about 1 pm, as soon as Rachel and I returned from attending her roommate Lizzy's mission farewell. (Well, she spoke in church and then had people at her house.) Rachel went into her house; I sat in the car and read my French short stories book (that I am really enjoying!) but I did snap a picture to remember the moment:

Lizzy is going to Georgia Spanish-speaking, and so I love that she is wearing a peach dress, because of Georgia Peaches!

I have a roast in the crock pot, and potatoes are cooking, so we will eat dinner soon! In the meantime, I saw a post on Facebook that made me think of a fun memory to share.

So, Josie's childhood friend Liz has a boyfriend who is the father of her second daughter, and she posted a Father's Day message to honor her boyfriend, her father, and her boyfriend's father. Her boyfriend's father's name sounded familiar to me--I am thinking, "I think I know him from El Cajon..." So I clicked on his name, and went to his profile page, and he totally looked like some brothers I once knew (younger than me!) only grown up. I knew one of them the best--I think he was a primary teacher or something? This man was not the one I knew the best; he was the other brother. But there is a memory associated with those brothers...

So, their mom was Juanita Woodfield. I knew her less than the one son--I spent my time at church in primary, and she was in Relief Society. Anyways, my parents visited us when David was born, and my mom remarked that she wondered who in our ward would be from Raymond, because at every ward she had visited anywhere in the world (including places in Europe) there was always someone from Raymond.

I said, "Mom, there is nobody from Raymond in my ward. I know everybody, and literally nobody is from Raymond. They all know that I am from Alberta, and nobody has said anything about knowing anybody from anywhere in Alberta." Mom looked skeptical and said, "Well, we'll see..."

So, we are in Relief Society (I was not in primary because new baby) and the lesson was being taught by Juanita Woodfield. And Mom leans over and whispers "I think she is Juanita Wall..." And I said, "Mom, her name is Juanita Woodfield." Mom said, "I think she was Juanita Wall in Raymond. Her sister Ramona was my age...they moved away after grade three..." I said, "Well, I know that the Woodfields moved here from New York. Not from Raymond."

So after the lesson, my mom goes up to her and says "Juanita Wall?" And she says "Yes!" And Mom points at herself and says "Pearl Hancock. Your sister was in my class in Raymond!" 

Mom was right! There was someone from Raymond in my ward!

Juneteenth

 June 19th is a holiday at BYU, but not at Orem Public Library, so while Rachel and I did not have to work--indeed could not work, because our building was locked tight--Josie did have to work.

Rachel went to the temple with her former roommate, Lizzie, and I did lots of laundry, and then went to meet Janet to drive to Heber to meet Janice for lunch. We went to a very old-timey and also very old looking cafe called Chick's, which served delicious and abundant food, and then drove back to Janet's house, where I got my car to drive to OPL to pick up Rachel, who had gone there, and drag her home. She was perfectly happy sitting at Josie's desk and helping with library things--I had to go and pick Josie up later anyway, so why did I drag her home? That was silly of me! Funny story Josie told me was that Nancy's friend Kate, who also works at OPL, just could not wrap her mind around the idea that that tall adult human standing before her was Nancy's daughter--surely a sister? Sister-in-law? Niece? Somthing else, surely. No, Josie had to reiterate, this is literally Nancy's daughter.

In the evening, I picked up my co-worker, Mary, and we went to the wedding reception of two of our students who married each other.

For the record, this is couple five, I think. First we had Doug and Christina (5 kids now), then Brian and Julia (10 kids now), then Justin and Angela (also 5 kids now), and then many years of NOT having our students marry each other, because like Justin's oldest is 18, so...a long time. Then maybe two years ago, or maybe only one year ago (can't remember which!) Crozier and Lillian married each other, and then on actually June 18, but the celebration was on June 19, Carter and Annalise married each other. 

I took pictures so, here they are. Oh yes. The venue was the Springville Museum of Art. First I took a picture of Mary with the happy couple. She is the actual hiring manager who actually hired these two, so she wonders if without her, they might not have met.

Then I nabbed a nearby young man to snap a photo with me in it, too. (He turned out to be the boyfriend of one of the harp girls that I know, although her name escapes me at present.)

So apparently my green flowery dress is my wedding reception dress. I think that in every wedding event picture recently, I am wearing this dress. Hannah's wedding, Trevon's wedding, and now Carter's wedding. (I checked Will's wedding last summer, and I was NOT wearing this dress. Phew.)

Then I took some photos of Mary with some of her former desk students. (Since I am the department chair, technically all of the students are my students, but these were students who worked for Mary on level five.)

Mary surrounded by Elise on the left (Mary's right) and Eve on the right (Mary's left). They both currently work at the Church History Library in SLC. Elise is doing an internship that ends in a month or so, and then she is going to grad school in Norwich, England. Eve works in collection care, and is starting her MLIS at San Jose State in the fall (virtually).

And here is Mary with Toni, who is now a high school English teacher. (I only took one photo, and Mary's eyes are closed, but she did not care. I should have snapped more than one!)

Back to the newlyweds: Carter just graduated in music (trumpet performance) and will be doing a master's in musicology at BYU starting in the fall. He worked with me on rehoming the musical instruments to the School of Music, and then asked me to be his honor's thesis advisor, and I was not very good at it, having never done it before, so now I know what to do! Thank goodness for Dr. Harker and Dr. Thornock who were also on the committee, because they knew more than I did, but I learned. Also Carter has worked with Janice on a project that they have presented at several conferences, most recently International Trumpet Guild, and this same project was the subject of his master's thesis. Annelise is a commercial music major with aspirations to attend law school focusing on copyright law. After working at our fourth floor desk (as Carter also does), she has moved on to work for the copyright office. 

And...that is all for now!

A tale of two Gerrits

 Yesterday, my colleague Tim was pretty upset. He had been asked to peer review an article that had been submitted for publication in an academic journal, and he very quickly could see the (undisclosed) hand of AI, and not in a good way.

Tim is a scholar of Chinese History, so this article was on that topic, and based on a quotation from an Ancient Chinese writer. Only when Tim read the translation of the quote (into English) it was just...off. So he looked for the original quote in Chinese (he is fluent) and found it in a couple of places, and the translation was just wrong. He kept looking, and finally found the quote in someone's writing, with footnotes that were that writer's interpretation of various aspects of the original quotation. And it seemed, based on the translation of the quote in the article, that the person had used an AI version of the quote in which the AI bot had glommed the quote and the footnotes together as if they were the original quote. It kind of threw off the premise of the whole article, based on, you know, not the truth of the original quote. 

If that wasn't upsetting enough, THEN he found in the footnotes a hallucinated book. He searched high and low for evidence that such a book existed and found none.

Tim was so upset that he had to come and vent to me (his department chair--and I had just finished  listening to Patrick venting about his reviewers for an academic article, so that was fun for me! Two venters!) and then he had to go for a walk to cool down so he could figure out how to be somewhat diplomatic about giving a scathing review. 

And also, he advised me to watch a video by Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the 12 apostles that had just dropped, about AI, which he felt was very good. 

And so I did! 

The video was very good. I have already recommended it to others--we are grappling with how to teach about AI use in library instruction. I like Elder Gong's God, self, others, and the environment approach, because these elements all need to be considered in AI.

I am not a big fan of AI. It is neither artificial nor truthfully intelligent, so why do we call it that? And why are we all jumping on the bandwagon when we literally have real problems that are more important to focus our attention on? I was reading a lot about AI today, and in an MIT publication, one teacher commented "The world continues to be plagued by climate change, war, and hunger. Solving large global crises will require critical thinking and strong communication skills, skills that the current inception of AI undermines." Well--this is tangential to the title of this post, which is about two Gerrits, right?

The first is Gerrit W. Gong. Early in this video, he talks about his name: Gerrit, which is a Dutch name, Walter, which is an American name, and Gong, which is a Chinese name. Now, I have to relate that I first became acquainted with Elder Gong when he was an assistant to the president at BYU, in my early days as an employee. I didn't "know" him; I just knew of him, and I was impressed with his sincerity, kindness, the calm he carried, the gentle stalwart way of being he had. We parked in the same parking lot, and I saw him many times. We would say hello to each other, since we frequently crossed paths. This one time, I pulled into the parking lot just behind him. This was the west ASB lot -- he parked facing west, in the last spot reserved for BYU officials. I parked a bit north and east of his car, facing east. As I got out of my car, he was walking away from his car heading to the ASB, when another car came into the lot, went to park beside Gerrit Gong's car (I thought of him as just Gerrit Gong back then) and hit it instead, smashing the right rear bumper and tail light.

Gerrit G. of course heard the crash, turned to see what happened, and came back to deal with the damage to his car. I got to see first hand that he stayed calm, that he was firm but also kind, and that he helped the person who had hit him to maintain her dignity. He did not devalue her; her personhood was important to him in that moment when his vehicle had fallen victim to her mistake.

I have always liked him more since witnessing that event.

But I have to say, that whenever I think of Gerrit Gong, I think of Gerrit de Jong. Like Gerrit Gong, Gerrit de Jong was not large in stature. He too had a very pleasant demeanor, was kind, was intelligent but not arrogant, was just a really nice human being. 

Gerrit de Jong was a linguist, a musician, a composer; he was the person for whom the concert hall in the HFAC was named. I met him there when I was an usher for the School of Music programs--back in the day when we, the ushers, had to wear formal gowns to usher. Nobody went to concerts in jeans. Everyone dressed up. Like, no short day dresses; I am talking evening gowns. That is an aside of n'importe quoi to my story! But still, that is the way it was on the day I first met and talked with Gerrit de Jong for the first time. He was a frequent attendee at concerts, so I got to be well acquainted with him.

He was left a widower to raise his daughters; besides his children, his proudest accomplishment, he told me, was the hymn he had written, "Come, Sing to the Lord," which was in the 1948 hymnal (and would also have a place in the 1985 hymnal). We were standing in the lobby of the concert hall that bore his name when he was telling me that that hymn being included in the hymn book for all to sing was his greatest accomplishment. He was humble about the concert hall.

So, when I became aware of Gerrit Gong in the early 2000s (some 25-ish years since knowing Gerrit de Jong), for some reason Gerrit Gong always made me think of Gerrit de Jong. Like always, persistently, over the past two decades (+) those two men were linked in my brain. I mean, their names are similar. And their personalities also were similar, seemed to me. But why did I persistently link them?

So yesterday, after watching that video, and thinking about Gerrit W. Gong talking about his name (Gerrit is Dutch; Gerrit de Jong was Dutch) I thought "I wonder if there is a Wikipedia article?" And I looked him up and guess what? He was named after Gerrit de Jong!! HIs mother roomed at the de Jong house while she was a BYU student, and the de Jongs were like family! Gerrit Gong called Gerrit de Jong "Grandpa de Jong!" 

So. My brain connected them somehow, I thought erroneously, but actually correctly!