A week ago Friday, I went camping with the deacons. We went to a lake in the mountains and fished on Saturday. The young men started talking about the upcoming presidential election, and I was surprised at their reasons for their opposition to Democrat candidate Barach Obama. Their view is that Obama is the ultimate demon whose primary focus in life is the destruction of the unborn.

I find Obama's pro-choice position troubling, but McCain is running around saying that if he's elected things will change, when McCain has been a stanch supporter of Bush's policies for the last eight years, policies which are financially disastrous.

We caught six fish, most during a half-hour interval about 9:30 in the morning. My son D was having trouble with his fishing pole and I was trying to fix it and when trying to cast it, I caught his ear. It went in and came out. (So much for supporting the Brethren about no piercings.)

I'm still reading The Brothers Karamasov. It is a ponderous book. I checked out Cat on a Hit Tin Roof and read it in one evening. It was about people who talk and talk and talk, but never listen to or really care about anyone but themselves, and how miserable such people are and how they make everyone around them miserable.

There is a proposed amendment to the Constitution of Arizona which defines marriage as “one man, one woman.” Last Sunday, a member of the stake presidency came the third hour and asked people to register to vote, and indicated that the Brethren were in favor of the amendment, but that ultimately each person needed to choose how he would vote. The Church, on their website, has published a document entitled The Divine Institution of Marriage which explains very well why we feel the way we do and the need to keep marriage defined in the traditional way because of the safeguards it provides—primarily to prevent government interference in how our children are raised and limitations being placed on religious organizations who support traditional marriage. That website is: http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/the-divine-institution-of-marriage

Yesterday, I attended the baptism for a young man in our ward. A Beehive-age girl played the piano. During the service a 10-year old girl came into the meeting and sat by me. While we were waiting for them to put on dry clothing, the pianist played hymns and the 10-year old hummed along with them. It was a choice experience to be there for that.

Afterwards, we went to the temple with J and L's family. It was a good day.

After our vacation we got quite a few banana peppers from our garden. The other pepper plants didn't fare so well. We've got a few tomatoes, but I think once it cools down, the plants will bear again. The plants looked reasonably healthy until a few days ago when they started wilting. We removed all the banana peppers which were ripe. I'm wondering if there's some fungus in the dirt or something like that. There was a zucchini almost ripe, and then it just withered, but the zucchini plant itself looks healthy.

Yesterday, I worked in the garden rebuilding the wells around the plants, fertilizing with Miracle Grow, and taking out the drip system. I will water by hand each day now. When I was about done, I saw a swarm of bees on the 2x4 support just a foot or two above where I was working. I'm glad I didn't straighten up too much and run into them. I put on a winter coat with a hood, and then sprayed the swarm with insect spray. About a ½ hour later, the swarm was gone, but I didn't see any carcasses under where I had sprayed.

I finished Les Miserables. It was a great book. Several years ago I read The Hunchback of Notre Dame and very much enjoyed that one, although it had a sad ending. Hugo wrote much about social injustice. I'm now reading The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan is speaking about the evils of religion via a story he tells. He talks about some atrocities committed in the name of religion, and this section seems really familiar to me. He speaks about Jesus returning to a town in Spain during the Inquisition, and how the Inquisitor has Him arrested, knowing who He was, and that Jesus would be executed like any other heretic. The three temptations of Jesus are discussed, and the notion of the work of the Church being committed unto man is described in a way different than what I had heard before. (No, I don't agree with how they are interpreted there.) And the story ends in an unexpected manner, that I won't tell here, so you can enjoy it when you read the story yourself.

I received an award for my contribution at work and I'm going to buy a lap-top computer, which I think will be real helpful when I'm away from home but have work to do.

For my birthday, we went went out for lunch at Chuy's, then to the church where I practiced the piano while Patrice practiced the organ, then to see the movie Prince Caspian, then to Sachico's for dinner. Then, we went to a wedding reception. It was a good day.

The Republicans had their convention last week. I found it curious that John McCain says he's looking to change things when he's been there so many years and voted for the decisions that the current government has made.

Mitt Romney was talking about the failings of a liberal government, which is fine. But I was greatly disappointed in this: “Is a Supreme Court decision liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitutional rights? It's liberal.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/03/romney.transcript/index.html

I feel that any person detained by the U.S. Government has the right to a speedy, impartial trial; to have council; to be charged and tried according to the law; to be confronted with evidence and accusers, etc. The Bush administration has made a sham of justice by labeling a certain group of people “illegal combatants”, locking them up non-US soil for years without bringing charges against them, interrogating them endlessly; refusing them access to the Red Cross or another neutral group to ascertain that they are not being mistreated, etc. It harks back to the world that Hugo described in the Hunchback where people who have power wield it according to the vain imaginations of their own hearts.

“No, Mr Romney, holding a speedy, fair trial for the accused is not a characteristic of a liberal government, but rather a defining and necessary trait of any good government.”