Camellia

Australia Pictures

Botanic Gardens

Saint Paul's Cathedral

Melbourne Market

Goats here. Sheep over there.

Be fun!

Attitude

Fish ready for your dinner

Porterhouse stakes. Who wants to serve a mission in Australia?

$4 Turkish Delights? Where's that witch when I need her?

Around Melbourne

Train Station

Mexican Restaurant

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and the Police

Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar

Devon Ducks

Melbourne Museum

These are canoes used on the Pacific Ocean

If anyone knows our friend L from Church, this is his first dog.

These are birdsongs set to music

Lots of beatles

Melbourne Aquarium

Fish

>

More Fish

A Morey Eel

Penguins swimming

Penguins

Crab

Summer News

In June, P and I went up on Friday for the campfire at scout camp, stayed overnight, then drove the young men down. Our air mattress was missing the plug, so it was a long night using backpacking pads under our sleeping bags. We went for a hike up the Butterfly Trail early Saturday morning.

A few days later, we went to the temple with D and P and sealed his parents, and he to them. I was proxy for C M and felt the spirit strongly as we did the sealing. It sure appears that they have stronger missionary work on the other side of the veil.

On July 1 we drove to Panguitch. We found that the 65-watt inverter that used to work with the laptop computer would only work for recharging the laptop when it wasn't in use. The following day we traveled to Provo, then went to Lagoon with the family. It was a rainy day, which discouraged many of the people from coming, and many left; consequently the lines were short and the day was quite pleasant.

The following day I went with D C to pick up H from the airport. Later we went to the temple and did baptisms for some of our McCay relatives. We had to wait for quite a while, but it was good to be there in the temple.

On Saturday the 4th, 3 of the family ran the 5K run. P and I went down and cheered them on; then we met the Cs for breakfast; then we looked around the booths. There were mainly activities for young children and booths where people could buy junk they don't need. From there we went the M B F's for a picnic lunch. We visited for a while, then went to L B's having a good visit with them. We went and visited with their son L and his family and saw his newly remodeled home. L's wife R is really a lot of fun, much like L. L was reading something, and I commented to her, “You still don't wear glasses?” and she replied, “Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

On Tuesday we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house. It was very nice. We went to the adjacent stake center, and saw the labeling of the rooms for training various volunteers—it appears that training goes on each morning, so everyone knows what to do. There was also a control center, and there was in large bold letters on the wall the phone number of the local police department. As expected, the Church prepares for all contingencies, so that the rejoicings of His children are not interrupted by those who don't understand.

We prepared a care package for W, and the Cs and S and D dropped that off at the mission office, and W was there, and they got to greet him. M C said that he looks very good and seemed to be very happy.

After leaving the open house, we met P's Uncle S and had dinner with him at the Lion House. The food was excellent. It seems to me that I had been there many years ago, possibly with the Ts. Afterward we went to the Church Art and History Museum. I very much enjoyed our time there. One interesting painting was a portrayal of Jacob and Leah in a modern setting, Jacob being a disgruntled man sitting is a chair, and tentative Leah standing behind a nearby chair. Leah was wearing glasses, harking back to L's comment a few days before.

On Wednesday, I went to the Ogden temple and did the initiatory work for some of the McCay men. I had given the rest of the names to S and S as she hasn't done any Initiatory work since she went through originally. W had said that he wanted to do some endowments, so I went over to the mission office to drop off some names, and I was informed that he was in a training meeting at that time. I also spoke with his last companion who said that W was a good missionary and he enjoyed working with him.

We tried to install some running boards on the new Toyota Tundra the Cs had purchased, but there were for a longer cab, and we needed to package them up and sent them back.

On Thursday we packed up and went to Provo. We went to the Paleontology Museum, then had a birthday dinner for J M with S and S. Afterwards we went swimming. On Friday we drove clear to Tucson from Provo—a long, long day.

On July 23, 2009, I flew from Tucson to Los Angeles. My flight to Auckland was to have left at 10:30 pm, but it was canceled because of a fuel pump problem. The board showed that it was postponed, but both the front desk and the desk by the gate were swamped with people on the 9:30 flight. The board said the 9:30 flight was on-time, but they didn’t start loading the plane until 10:15 pm. After that flight was off, I could talk to someone. They put us up at the Hilton, which was very nice. I had arisen that morning about 3:30 am, and by the time I got to bed I couldn't sleep. I think I got to sleep about 2:30 and slept until 6. They asked us to come to the airport at 10 am to leave at noon, but arriving at the airport, our flight was delayed two more hours. We finally left about 2:30 pm. We arrived at Auckland about 10:30 pm, were bussed to hotels, and I got to sleep about 12:30 pm. I caught the 5:30 shuttle, and was flying to Melbourne at about 8 am. The sun was just coming up as we left, so I really didn’t see anything of New Zealand.

Arriving at Melbourne, I took the bus to the city. Coming out of the bus terminal, I looked at my map and determined the route to take to a shuttle, but after walking a ½ mile I determined that I was walking north instead of south. When I looked at the sun I knew it was winter, so I assumed that the sun would be in the south sky. That assumption is not true south of the equator. I started back, but having my heavy suitcase, and probably about twelve hours of sleep the previous three days, including a couple on the plane, I took a taxi to my hotel. I changed clothes and took the shuttle to the Church. I asked the driver if it was safe to be out at night where my hotel was, and he said that it was for me—but there are violent incidents occurring in the city where minority people are targeted.

The Internet had indicated that I could buy a trolley ticket on the trolley itself—I could, but I didn’t have coins to buy the pass with. By then the trolley was moving. I rode illegally, and got to the Church as the meetings were just ended. I spoke to a man who had a nametag “R...”. He was the son of a missionary couple who had served in our ward in 1989 or so. I told him that they were extremely effective activating members of our ward. He was pleased to hear that. He mentioned that his father had been talking about his mission just that previous week.

The ward mission leader, R C, visited with me, and invited me to attend their missionary correlation meeting. He also asked me to give a spiritual thought. I told them about Brother Rs’ parents serving in my ward and how effective they were, what we’re doing with the President Monson approach, and I read from the Doctrine and Covenant a President Monson favorite scripture, “I will be on your right had and your left…”. I very much enjoyed the spirit of the meeting. They had two full-time missionaries serving the Chinese people, two Chinese ward missionaries who assist them, and four other full-time missionaries. They all had a good spirit about them. R pointed me to the train station where I could purchase a trolley ticket, but then I found that it wouldn’t give changes for more than $10. I thought I had just $20 and $50 notes, but I had a $10, which worked.

Returning to the hotel, I changed clothes and went to the Botanic Gardens. They were very nice, but the sun was too far down to get any pictures. Walking from there, I went by the Memorial to the Men who died during the first World War. Walking towards the city, there was a statue of a man on a horse. I looked at the inscription, but it wasn’t for the “Grand ol’ Duke of York.”

I then bought a meat and mushroom pie dinner and returned to my hotel. The hotel was older, but the bed was comfortable and the linen and bathroom was clean. The heat was provided by a register, but even though I had it on high, I don’t think the room got above 66 degrees. The two managing the hotel were a brother and sister from China.

A difficulty with the trolleys there is that the stops aren’t marked very well, and it’s hard to know were to get off. Coming home from Church, I asked a young lady to tell me when my stop was, and she did. She got off too, and we spoke while walking down the street. She was very friendly. She works in the Victoria Market selling vegetables, and she and her husband are from India. I told her I’d just been to Church and told her the name of the Church, and asked if she knew about it. She hadn’t, but she’d seen our missionaries, and I told her that they have a good message.

I awoke at 3:30 this morning, and worked on editing my journals from 2000-2008. I also worked some on improving my Sudoku program. I think I have found why it continues iterating when it has found a solution.

I checked out of the hotel, dropped my suitcase at the hotel where the conference is to be, and went to the aquarium. It was very interesting. Australia has the most unique wildlife. Afterwards, I went to the Melbourne Museum. It had dinosaurs, bug collections, an aborigine section, a human brain section, a section which covered historical Melbourne, Pacific canoes and weapons, the first Australian computer, their world champion race horse, and other things.

Leaving the aquarium, I asked a clerk if there was a water fountain where I could fill up my water bottle. She replied, “No, but you can do what I do and just fill it up from the toilet.” Over there, “toilet” means the entire room. For dinner I went to a Thai place having salad and noodles and prawns.

On July 28, I ate granola for breakfast again—this is granola that I brought from the United States. Passing through customs in both New Zealand and Australia, I had to declare it, but they didn’t confiscate it. After breakfast, I really wanted a roll, so I went out and got a doughnut; then headed over to the marketplace. It was a amazing. I was puzzled because last night I asked a doorman where I could get a fish dinner, and he really didn’t have any good suggestions. Neither did I see any fish restaurants, but there were booth after booth in the market selling fresh fish. I bought some gifts, some dates for me, had a baked fish and chips lunch, wrote up some postcards and mailed them, saw Saint Paul’s cathedral where the organist was practicing, and started my work assignment.

I spoke with a young woman who was employed by the United Nations to raise funds for the refugees of Sudan. She was surprised that I knew so much about what was going on in Sudan. I spoke to her about our humanitarian outreach of our Church, and shared some of the projects that I knew of.

I attended a presentation by an IBM vice president, then attended the reception. There was sushi and other hors d’vors and soda and other drinks.

One man stated that he had gotten married on Sunday, and I asked him what he was doing here. He said that he wanted to come to the show, and besides many of their relatives came from the United Kingdom, so they’ve stayed and are visiting with his wife.

On July 29, I attended the storage presentations, and I gave a presentation What’s New in TSM 6.1 in one of the sessions. That evening I ate dinner at an Italian place having lasagna.

At the conference, they had these hand-held devices on which participants could answer questions. At the end they asked us to put a text good-bye message into the device, and the good-bye messages were displayed to everyone in the hall. One person wrote, “I have the swine flu.” Currently there is pandemic concerning the swine flu. It hasn’t proven as deadly as they were worried, but it does most quite easily.

On July 30, I attended the last day of the conference, giving another presentation on performance tuning for TSM. After it was over I went to the Regent Theater and put my name on the lottery list. Then at 6 pm they chose 25 tickets, and those people who were chosen could pay $30 to get into see Wicked. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones, so I bought a ticket for $119. I then went and got dinner at a Korean place. It was excellent.

The show was tremendous from the scenery, to the special effects, to the acting, to the plot. It was well worth the money I paid, multiplying $119 by 0.9 gives the equivalent price in our dollars. The show talked about why people are the way that they are and how people are often misunderstood, how difficulties affect our personalities, and that sometimes people we think are good are not.

On Friday I met with our business partners at the IBM site which was about a ten-minute walk from my hotel. The meetings were productive. That night I was planning on going out for fish near the docks, but then I found a fish restaurant right by the Regent Theater as I was walking by. It was about 5:30 and I thought about signing up for the lottery again, but I didn’t.

They had steamers, and they were wonderful. My only regret is that I didn’t find that restaurant the first day was there.

I kept waking up about 3 in the morning. I logged on at work and worked on defects that came out of a static analysis program that we use. On Thursday, morning I awoke at 3 or so, but I managed to get back to sleep again. Then at 4:30 the doorbell rang—room service bringing breakfast. Unfortunately, it was for the room next door. Oh, well.

I had been eating granola (in fact, I found a store which had soy milk) and trail mix for breakfast because breakfast in the hotel was $30 just for bacon and eggs. I found a restaurant which had bacon and eggs for $15, and it opened at 7 am, so I went over there Saturday morning. It was all dark, so I went over to Subway and had a breakfast burrito.

The trip home was long. I think I may have dozed a couple of hours, but they had a chess program on the TV. It allowed setting the difficulty, so I picked 1300, which is my Chess Federation rating, and I easily beat it. I kept increasing it up to 1850, and that gave me a decent game. In the airport and on one leg of my journey, I worked on editing my journals from 2000 through 2009.

Pretty much, I would talk to the people next to me, and often there was an opportunity to talk about the Cs serving their mission in Australia, but the people like the ones in the United States just treated it like something interesting.

A women who sat next to me from Australia to New Zealand was Hungarian. Her mother left Hungary during the revolution during the coldest, most miserable night of the year, since she knew the Russian soldiers would be hiding in their hut next to the stove rather than watching the border. My co-worker V R did the same thing. I told her about T W who served his mission there.

From New Zealand to Los Angeles, I sat next to a woman in her twenties who was going to Corsica to work on a project for her doctorate in Biology. She had just been married a month, and had been married in New Hampshire, United States. Her father owns resorts. Between her marriage and this trip, she’d made another trip to the states—I forget what for.

Australia was very water-conscious. Their toilets had two flush buttons, and many of the places I visited had posters on how they were saving water. The botanic gardens were installing rain capturing devices. There is a river right by it, but the salt content is too high to use that water.

In August, P and I flew to Salt Lake City. D and MA Carpenter picked us up at the airport, and we drove to Provo. S and S moved into a new apartment in Pleasant Grove a couple of weeks ago, and they put us up at their new place. They had returned from Billings and were tired of the small basement apartment with the spiders, and looked for a new place.

We then went to the Mariott Center for the Commencement Exercises. S has earned her Master's degree in Speech Pathology. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve was the keynote speaker. He did not give the usual “graduation speech.” It seems to me that the usual “graduation speeches” aren't really relevant, and he wanted to give us something of value that we could leave feeling that our being there wasn't just “to support so-and-so” in his graduation. He spoke about how we can be more effective with our non-member associates.

J and her apartment roommates were cleaning their apartment last night, and we took them some dinner.

After, we went to Applebees and had a nice dinner together.

The following day we arose and went to the Joseph Smith Field Building for the Convocation, and S was called by name and presented with her degree. After the Convocation, we returned to J's apartment where we did a few final things, and then we went to S's where we had a baked potato bar and played Taboo. There was an ice cream place next door, and we got an ice cream before we left. The customer orders the type of base, the flavors and add-ons, and then they quickly freeze it with liquid nitrogen. I had a rice milk base with cherry and coconut, sweetened with agave. It was very good.

The Cs then drove us to the airport, and dropped P, J, and me. While returning from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, a passenger became ill, and we were diverted to Las Vegas. The paramedics came on-board and she walked off the plane with them. They also told us that we'd make our final destination, and called all passengers to Tucson and several other places to get off the plane, and were were put on flights leaving Las Vegas, and we got home about ninety minutes before we were projected to arrive.

The following day we went to Casa Grand and visited with B's family, and R and C (P's cousin from Canada). We had a good visit with them.

Latest Readings

Miguel de Unamuno

When I was studying Spanish at Weber, several of the professors commented on Miguel de Unamuno. He is, indeed, an interesting author, and his stories are thought-provoking and entertaining.

Unamuno fought for intellectual freedom during his life—after he had returned from a five-year exile, he began his lecture by saying "As we were saying yesterday, ...", as Fray Luis de Leon had done in the same place four centuries before, as though he had not been absent at all. He ended his public career opposing a violent and strong political movement in a speech. A couple of excerpts: 1) from the beginning: “Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent”; 2) at the end: “This [the university] is the temple of intelligence, and I am its high priest. You are profaning its sacred domain. You will win, because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. In order to convince it is necessary to persuade, and to persuade you will need something that you lack: reason and right in the struggle.”

La Tia Tula (Aunt Tula)

This story challenges traditional men and women roles; shows how pursuing what looks like a worthy goal, often negatively affects others; that forceful people push others into poor decisions; that people often make poor decisions even though they know better. It was a very thought-provoking book.

San Manuel Bueno, martir (martyr)

San Manuel is a well-beloved Catholic priest who lost his faith, but continued to minister to his flock and to encourage them to be faithful to the Church. The narrator of the story and her brother learn of his unbelief, and the story relates the many conversations they had with him over the years until he passed away. As of the inmates of which Solzhenitsyn wrote, the priest used relentless work to bring meaning to his life until he could sleep without dreaming.

La Novela (novel) de Don Sandalio

This story tells of a man who writes regularly to a friend Felipe. This man has become tired of the foolishness of mankind, and looks for solace in nature, but shortly thereafter he begins to frequent a casino where he watches Don Sandalio play chess. When Sandalio's opponent doesn't appear one day, this man plays chess with him. This continues day after day for some period of time. No conversation passes between the two men as they play. But at times, the author wonders if, after the chess games were over, whether Sandalio ever thought of him. When Sandalio is absent from the casino one day, some of the other patrons try to tell the author what has happened to him, but he doesn't want to know. He has, in his own mind, determined what it is he knows about Sandalio. This disinterest continues when Sandalio mysteriously dies in jail. Then Sandalio's son-in-law comes to the author to speak with him, and relates that when Sandalio was at home, he spoke very animatedly and intimately about the author. The author is puzzled in that they had never spoken of anything, and he posits that Sandalio had done the same thing that he had, in creating a person in his own mind.

Un Pobre Hombre Rico ( A poor rich man)

The poor, rich man speaks of a man who works and saves all he can, and moves away from his boarding house allowing the women he loves and who loves him to believe that he wasn't interested, Subsequently, she marries someone else. Years pass, and she becomes a widow, and he then has another chance to be part of her life, and he marries her. At the end, Unamuno comments, “Now you see that I can write a story that doesn't end in tragedy.”

Heart of Darkness

This novel characterizes most of the human race as a group who is only motivated by grabbing as much as they can, with no understanding that there are other people on the planet.

But occasionally there comes a man like Kurtz who wields tremendous influence over his followers. He has great charisma and attracts a great following, even after his death. He also provokes many to great self-introspection. But when we ask them who Kurtz is, what he stands for, where he's from, what his background is, etc., no one knows. He listens to no one, dominates all conversations, is often openly hostile and violent to his followers, but he has their loyalty.

The book tells about what power does to people. Kurtz knows that he has been overcome with darkness, and loathes himself and everyone else. But before we too quickly condemn Kurtz, Marley, the narrator, asks us what we would become if there were no civilized people around us and no police to restrain us, and the opportunity presented itself.

Abraham Lincoln by Thomas Keneally

This is a biography about Lincoln. In 1831 when he saw the blacks mistreated, he became opposed to slavery. He was very honest, insisting on paying his debts, even when his partners walked away. He had bouts of melancholy, and it appears that his time as president with the nation at war was extremely physically and mentally draining on him. At times he doubted the divinity of Christ, but after a great loss during the Civil War called for a day of fasting and prayer. He also acknowledged the existence of a divine being who watched over the human race.

His marriage to Mary Todd was very trying. She went through moods—at times was a loyal supporter willing to do anything for her husband and children and exerted a great influence with people. At other times she made everyone around her miserable. When she was in a bad mood, he often would would stay in his office or go on the road. Often he brought the children to his office for their protection.

The South decried the mistreatment of workers in the North factories as inhumane. They asserted that the North could treat their workers anyway they pleased because there were always new, healthy people arriving from Europe needing work. In the South, however, they had to buy their work force, so it was to their advantage to treat them such that they could work for them for years.

The assertion that freeing the slaves would mean that they would take all the white jobs in the North was countered by Lincoln's belief that the freed slaves should be deported to other nations.

The concept of “popular sovereignty” was proposed, in that each admitted state would choose to be free or a slave state. Lincoln saw that this would lead to all states eventually becoming slave states as the North labor market could be flooded with slaves from the South. He also astutely asked, “Can the people of a United States territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?”

He argued that the Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, but others stated that it didn't include blacks. Referring to the “Know-Nothings”, he stated that if they get control, “I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

The opponents of freedom stated that this would lead to marriage between the races. Lincoln emphatically stated that just because he didn't want a woman to be his slave, didn't imply that he wanted her to be his wife.

There was one thing that Lincoln didn't understand. He felt that if a man were free he could work hard for someone else, and eventually be his own boss. He didn't understand that in many situations even a free man didn't earn enough to ever escape his situation.

Lincoln was opposed to President Buchanan's attempt to admit Kansas as a slave state and other decisions, like considering surrendering Fort Sumpter to the Confederates. As we've seen elsewhere, Buchanan often took the easiest choice, rather than the correct choice.

Lincoln exercised as much restraint as possible with the seceding states. When Fort Sumpter had no provisions, he sent ships in to resupply the fort. He told the Confederates that the ship was only delivering supplies, but they were fired upon, thus starting the war.

He had a terrible time getting generals who would fight. He went through general after general who just made lame excuses. His patience with them was extraordinary, much to the frustration of his cabinet.

When Lincoln freed all slaves in the rebel states when they refused to return to the union, the ward took on a moral dimension. Other countries could not support the South and claim to believe in freedom.

When it was heard that the South was executing black Union solders instead of keeping them as prisoners of war, it was suggested that the North execute Southern solders in like manner. Lincoln refused to lower himself to such barbarity.

Angel of Repose by Wallace Stegner

The title refers to the angle of a hill at which when dirt is dumped where it obtains stability. It follows a couple in the late 1800s who have very different goals in life, but marry anyway. They work very hard at being united, but never overcome their separateness.

Oliver Ward is a somewhat quixotic person—hardworking with personal integrity; a man living his dream and vision; honest and trusting and generally forgiving of others; always within reach of being a great builder of the West, but never able to attain it—generally because of others who lose vision, or because he refuses to compromise his personal integrity, and, hence, is unable to support his wife and family as she desires.

Susan Ward, his wife, is a brilliant and beautiful writer and artist, loving culture and those who are well-known in society. She wants Oliver to be great, well-known, witty, intelligent and sensitive as her friends back east are. No matter how hard he works, he never measures up to her expectations. As he experiences failure after failure, she loses faith in him, and often emotionally and physically separates herself from him.

Even when a period of physical separation is over, rather than having a happy reunion, she seems more concerned with whether Oliver has changed during the separation, and her reservations are so overpowering that they continue to poison the relationship. In these circumstances he seeks solace in drink, and she gives her heart to someone else.

But when a tragedy strikes the family because of her affair, even Oliver, who can forgive those outside his family circle any manner of outrages, cannot find it in himself to forgive Susan. In his despair he destroys the rose garden that he made for her.

Their lives end on that note, at that angle of repose.

The narrator of the story is Lyman Ward, their grandson who is writing a book on his grandparents. He is suffering a progressively fatal disease, and was betrayed by his wife who left him when he was diagnosed with the disease. Helping him organize the grandparents' papers is Shelly, a young-adult woman who is caught up in the 60s-hippie culture. Lyman and Shelly spar over whether things are better now than when Oliver and Susan lived their Victorian lives.

Then Lyman learns that his ex-wife now wishes reconciliation, and he is faced with the same challenge as his grandfather.

The book, over 500 pages, progresses ploddingly, up to the last chapter, which then progresses rapidly. Lyman has a dream which is nothing like the rest of the book. In fact the dream is very much like the scenes as described by Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesee. Interestingly, Kesee was a student of Stegner. Since Cuckoo was written just four years later, I wondered this scene influenced Kesee.

19 June 2009

The garden is progressing. I'm needing to water it three times a day, but we've got a few tomatoes and a couple of peppers so far. It looks like we'll have a bumper crop of peppers about the second week in July.

It has been a year since Grandma M[...] M[...] passed away, and I prepared her temple work submission. She was always disinterested about the Church during her life, but as I was preparing it, I felt that she had indeed accepted the gospel. I remember years ago that I was strongly prompted to do her mother's temple work, that she had accepted the gospel; and I wondered if when Grandma M[...] passed away, that her mother had met her and taught her the gospel.

Yesterday, P did her endowment and felt that she was there and accepted the work. The last two times that we went, the temple was really crowded, and we decided to go while D was up at scout camp. We did two endowment sessions and a sealing session. It was a good day.

We got a year subscription to ancestry.com, and interestingly enough I have found some undone temple work in the McCay side of the family. I've been researching in Ancestry, then checking in the Church's FamilySearch website to see if the temple work has been done. My plan is to take the names with us to Utah in early July and to do the baptisms with the family there.

The California Supreme Court overwhelming agreed to follow the will of the people concerning Proposition 8, which amended the California Constitution to define marriage as be one man and one woman. I was very pleased with the decision.

The missionary work is progressing in the ward. We are doing a program called “President Monson's” questions, and working with the home teachers to present this to each family in the ward. It's been a bit slow getting things rolling, but I believe that good will come of our efforts. I've been out a couple of times this last month with our missionaries, and our time together has been pleasant.

On Tuesday I went up to Camp Lawton and spent the day and night with our scout troop. The young men seem to be having a good time there. Four of them including D were building a lean-to of native materials in which to sleep which is a requirement for the Wilderness Survival merit badge. Tonight P and I are going up to the adult program, and we'll bring the young men back tomorrow morning.

Lead Kindly Light

On Sunday, J, L, S, P sang Lead Kindly Light in sacrament meeting with me accompanying on the piano. Later, a sister in the ward sent this link, saying it reminds them of P and me:
http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4365716

Comments?

Other book reports

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

This is an intense social comment. It involves primarily a group of men who are in an asylum and what happened after R. P. Murphy arrived. It is told from the point of view of native American inmate Chief Bromden who pretends to be deaf and dumb. But it really has to do with how people survive in our world.

Combine is the word used by Kesey to describe those in control (Solzhenitsyn referred to it as Organs in his books). In this book, they are ostensibly there to help the inmates, but incontrovertibly their actions at best do nothing to help the inmates, and at worse drive the inmates deeper into their problems. The Combine measures effectiveness by the cleanliness of the ward and patients, following established procedures, and them peaceably passing their days in approved activities and pursuits. Many professionals visit the ward, who see it as an example of how all mental heath wards should be. Supposedly the days of cruelty to the mentally ill were gone.

The ward is dominated by a head nurse. Even though there is a doctor in the ward who should be making many decisions concerning the patients, she dominates him, too. Her crowning achievement is a daily group counseling session with all the inmates where they discuss together how to make things better in the ward and how to help inmates with their struggles. It isn't clear from the text whether the head nurse really believes that she is doing her best to help the inmates, or if she's just a hateful, manipulative despot ruling her kingdom. But the motivation of the head nurse is really not the point of book; rather even the other women in the book are mere caricatures.

Those who misbehave are dealt with in a variety of approved methods to cow them into submission. Bromden characterizes submission by hiding out in the fog which prevails in the ward. (The fog was from a past experience). Bromden has learned what happens when you cry out in the fog—they can then find you and subject you to a variety of undesired treatments.

Then Murphy arrives, a prisoner that somehow got committed to the facility from a prison. Murphy is loud, opinionated, uncooperative, and is a man who takes charge. But he is unsophisticated, and doesn't understand the rules of the establishment.

Murphy becomes a savior-type to the inmates there, and through his antics and his opposition to the head nurse, the fog begins to be dispersed. At times he even gets the doctor to agree with what he proposes, which causes tension between him and the head nurse.

But then Murphy comes to understand that he will be in the institution until the head nurse approves his release. This is quite a revelation to him knowing that his jail term was six months, but that his stay in the hospital can be indefinite.

He does an about-face and becomes very cooperative, and begins doing everything that was requested of him. But shortly he comes to understand that the head nurse is never going to agree to his release. He had disrupted her world, and she will never forgive him for it, and only in his destruction would she be satisfied.

There was even a more startling surprise for him when he discovered that most of the inmates were there of their own volition—they had checked themselves in. He was flabbergasted that they would be so unsatisfied with their lives in the ward, but they didn't have the courage to leave.

He then returns to what may seem on the surface antagonizing the head nurse and encouraging others to antagonize her, but really what he is trying to do is to have the inmates gain the confidence they need to step out of the fog, to check themselves out, and to live real lives.

He organizes a day fishing trip and convinces the doctor to come at the last minute. At the beginning they were scared and ill at ease, but after a day fishing, they gained their confidence. Even Candy who Murphy represented as his aunt to take them fishing, but really was a whore, was mercilessly mocked by those at the wharf before the trip, but got respect when she returned having caught a large fish.

After the trip came the inevitable confrontation between the head nurse and Murphy. She decided the only course of action was to subject Murphy to shock-therapy. But after each session, he would mock her and refuse to submit, even though he grew weaker and weaker.

Consistent with savior-type of literature, Murphy gives his life that others might live. The story ends with many of the inmates leaving her ward or the facility, the head nurse unable to enforce her commands, and Chief breaking out of the facility and going back to his native land.

This was truly a complex book, and I agree that it is a classic. I disagree with the Tucson Public Library classification as a teen book due to the intensity of the symbols that he uses to make his point.

Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett

This is another tragicomedy, existentialistic play. It has to do with our loneliness and inability to to have meaningful relations with others, who can't or won't remember what we just said, let alone what happened yesterday, or understand the points we are trying to make, or are distracted by various things; our being in unsatisfying and hollow relationships because we somehow ended up together and our inability to end those relations because our fear of the unknown has us over-idealize the strengths of our relationships; our tendency to be waiting for some great thing to happen in our lives, which always gets postponed, and which, when we really examine it, is really just a vague notion; that there is injustice in the world, and that on one hand we feel indignant about it, but we can't seem to do anything about it or to engage others to even acknowledge it, and other times we are unjust because of some injustice we have experienced; that often we feel trapped in our relationships because of perceived reasons beyond our control, but said reasons appear ridiculous to other people. The end of the play shows the characters very much like they were at the beginning, except some notion of time has passed.

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

I read this book when I was a sophomore in high school. I read it again. In 1959, Griffin took medications and treated his skin with an ultra-violet lamp to darken his skin, then traveled for a few weeks in the south as a black man. He first-handedly experienced extreme prejudice, discrimination, and the hate of the whites, and later published his experience. He was surprised at the extent of the hatred directed to him as a black by white people, and was very pleased with how supportive blacks were of an unknown back man in their midst. Especially troubling was walking by white churches when services were being dismissed, and experiencing the hate stares from those who just a few minutes before were ostensibly worshiping God. At the end of his experience, as his skin lightened, he could tint his skin either black or white and walk through the same places as a member of either race, and he documented how he was treated by members of both races as he altered his color. He proved his thesis that many people treat blacks solely on the basis of skin color.

He found a white culture that outwardly encouraged the blacks to educate themselves and to get out of their poverty, but provided limited educational opportunities for the younger blacks, and virtually no opportunities for post high school education; that would fire any black from their job if they showed the least amount of discontent with their situation, and would only hire them to do the most lowly of work that whites did not want to do; that claimed that if the blacks were patient, over time the issues would be resolved, but never made any real progress; that published in gory detail every crime committed or allegedly committed by the blacks, but was silent on their accomplishments; that would persecute any white who attempted to help the blacks.

He found a black culture that was in frustration and despair looking for help, with some who would pretend to be happy and content to survive, and others who had just given up and lived their lives drowning their sorrow in drugs, alcohol, and other destructive pursuits. The former group was held up as an example to all that “the blacks are happy in their situation” and the latter were “the few bad apples.” This despair would become rage as the 60s progressed.

This version of the book explains what happened in the years after his experience, how he became an advocate for racial equality. He went to countless communities trying to help them work through the issues, and he became very accustomed to how blind prejudices make people. Often he would meet with all the white leaders of a community to talk about the problem, and when he asked where the black leaders were, they often said they hadn't thought of inviting them. Other times a black leader would try to explain something to the white leaders, and they couldn't even hear it, but ten minutes later he would say the same thing, and the white leaders would accept it. He'd then point out that this black person had said the same thing ten minutes earlier, and why was it that they could hear him, but not the black person?

He found many compassionate, talented whites, who worked tirelessly to help, but who felt that the solution was really in the hands of the whites who had the skills and abilities to really help—even they couldn't see the blacks as equals who could solve their own problems if they were just given a fair chance. Other helpful whites felt slighted and offended as the black community gained power and influence and were able to help themselves.

Being an advocate for the blacks entailed many physical dangers but there were also legal entrapments that the opposition employed. They would find people who would swear out false statements before the law when these people came to help.

As the 60s unfolded a common rumor would be released that a group of armed blacks from community A was coming to community B to stir the blacks up to riot. Based on the rumor, the riot police would lock down the black neighborhoods of community B. Often, the residents of community B had no knowledge of the lock down and many were arrested and/or beaten. And finally when the blacks fought back, the headlines blared about the rioting, but no word of the contributing factors to the riot appeared. This scenario played out repeatedly across our nation, but not once was a group of armed blacks found. Thus the blacks were in a no-win situation where their only safe choice was to remain locked in their homes for some number of days until the curfews were lifted.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp

This book is the basis for The Sound of Music. P[...] and I read the book.

As expected, there were several differences between their story and the film: 1) The love triangle had some interesting differences, and the original story is as entertaining as the movie version; 2) They were married years before the Nazis took Austria; 3) As Nazism became infused into the culture of Austria, they determined to leave because they refused to accept this culture; 4) there was no sneaking out during a concert; 5) they didn't walk over the mountains.

It gave an insightful view of the relevance of the Catholic feasts and celebrations as they were followed with devotion and how it strengthened them.

At another time they were in the same restaurant as Adolph Hitler, and were close enough to observe him and his bodyguards. She wrote of Hitler, “If one hadn't been so deeply impressed by the fact that this man held the fate of many millions in his fingers, one wouldn't have looked a second time at him. He seemed to be very, very ordinary, a little vulgar, not too well educated—no resemblance to the hero in silver armor on the wall[referring to the propaganda posters that were everywhere].”

They came to America, stayed a while, and were deported when their visa expired; then returned and because of an ill-advised comment she made to an immigration authority they were imprisoned and could have been deported again, but with help of friends they were allowed to enter the country. It required a tremendous amount of work for them to establish themselves and to be able to pay their bills in the United States. Their sons were drafted and served in Italy returning safely at the end of the war. She almost went to jail for ten years for building a music camp without the proper authorizations as building was restricted during the World War 2 period.

During all of this they relied heavily on prayer to a kind God who looked over his children, and her testimony was that they were blessed, usually when they were down to their last dime, or when there was no more time left, or there was no other human help possible in their situation.

J and J

For those not on Facebook, here's J and J's picture taken a couple of weeks ago at J's best friend's wedding reception in Salt Lake.

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The First Circle by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

This is a historical fiction novel. The First Circle refers to Dante's first circle in hell, that is the best place to be, if you are unfortunate enough to be there. The story takes place over three days of time, and much of it takes place in a Soviet prison facility, called a sharashka, where the convicts are developing voice technologies to be used by the Soviet Union. The story also follows prison officials as they leave the facility, some family members of the prisoners, and a couple chapters portray Josef Stalin as he is an interested party in the development of those technologies.

The main theme of this book is that there are people who will live according to their conscience irrespective of the consequences. Thus Nerzhin refused to betray his wife, irrespective of whether she would be waiting for him or not at the end of his term. He refused to take a certain job at the sharashka, even though he understood that he would be sent to a prison work camp.

Lev Rubin is a “dyed in the wool” communist who was unjustly imprisoned, and is working on being acquitted. He spends his free time arguing for communism and earning the wrath of the other prisoners.

Spirodon was an interesting character who was a hard working, non-drinking farmer with a wife and children, but his success as a farmer became a death sentence for him when collectivization began. But through a twist of fate he became someone assigned to force peasants into collectivization. At this time as he became an aggressor, he began to drink. He then went through prison, the army, in hiding, then in an occupied territory. But he finally decided to return to Russia because his children wanted to be there, and he was imprisoned upon returning. In prison he didn't slander anyone, lie, or steal, or curse, except when necessary. His whole hope was on how to help his family.

Ruska Doronin was forced to become an informer, and he rebels by letting everyone know about his assignment. At the end of the book he is in the punishment cell of a prison van being sent away.

There are many others in the book who have their individual circumstances and challenges.

The story starts as State Counselor Second Rank Innokenty Voldin tries to secretly warn someone (a naive buffoon) of a trap being set for him. He could not in good conscience just allow the wheels of injustice to turn. But the buffoon's wife refused to believe the warning, and her blunderings led to the secret police being able to record a conversation that shouldn't have been so long. As the story develops, the prisoners and their technology are engaged to determine the identity of the person on the recording. But even though the task was to determine the identity of the voice, the Soviets were very comfortable arresting all potential suspects and sending them all to interrogation and prison, because, “they all are guilty of something.”

Chapter 51 has an interesting comment on The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas which some of the inmates had read. Nerzhin characterizes Dumas' prison as a “seaside resort” compared to Russian prisons.

The Gulag Archipelago, volumes 5 - 7, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

This is the final volume of the series.

One topic was prison escapes, how they walked through deserts for days without water, and everything they tried to avoid being detected. Unfortunately, whenever they found civilization, the local population out of fear would report them. So to continue fleeing, they had to steal papers and vehicles from local citizens, but then they were faced with the choice to either murder them and hide the bodies while they proceeded, or just to tie them up knowing that they would eventually free themselves and report their stolen identification papers. The only population who wouldn't report them were the people in the Chechen provinces who choose, even today, death over obeisance to the Soviets. Unfortunately, the prisoners didn't know that about the Chechens until they had arrived there and had stolen property which brought the Chechen's wrath upon them when they were caught.

During the late forties and fifties many of the prison terms went from ten years to twenty-five years, and there came into the hearts of the prisoners the knowledge that they had nothing to lose by resisting. The tactics of finding ring leaders and sending them to other camps were ineffective because they continued their resistance in their new camps. For some inexplicable reason, they just didn't shoot the ring leaders, or if they did, they didn't shoot enough of them.

The political prisoners, who for years had suffered greatly at the hands of the thieves and informers, began to assert themselves. They began to murder the informers, one by one, and the remaining informers would choose going into the punishment cells and torture rather than face the prisoners.

The thieves were always outnumbered by the political prisoners, and the politicals demanded that the thieves join with them. They did—life was preferable to death.

Various strikes occurred in the camps. High-level Soviet officials would fly in to negotiate—they would promise improvements, but once the prisoners were cowed and went back to work, the promises were forgotten. The demands of the prisoners were reasonable—guards can't murder prisoners for no reason; 8-hour work days and remuneration for work; the right to send letters; not being locked in their hovels; and a review of their cases.

But then they just struck and refused to listen to more lies. Interestingly those only with a year or two left on their sentences would stand with them. Word got around that in previous strikes when the loudspeakers said, “Amnesty for anyone who will come out,” those who did were executed or given new prison terms. But in the end, the tanks rolled in followed by the infantry, and the strike was squashed.

There was a total disconnect between the prisoners and Soviet leadership. The leadership believed the prisoners were enemies of the state and intent on destroying it. Many had no idea of the condition of the camps. The guards were forbidden to speak with the prisoners except to order them around—the guards were given inservice on what kind of people the prisoners were from the government.

When Solzhenitsyn met with government officials in the 60s, he had to be so careful of the questions he asked and the concerns he raised. He was worried that his manuscripts would be confiscated or that those people who gave him information would be imprisoned. He still didn't understand how it was that he was able to write his works.

Solzhenitsyn wrote how silently the evil had proceeded in his nation. He was a young husband, in love with his wife, and they were enjoying life. Yes, he was aware that sometimes a professor disappeared from the university, and sometimes a student would disappear, but it never touched him personally. It wasn't until he was sleeping under the bunks in an overcrowded cell that he realized what was going on while “he was dancing with his wife.”

He recounted how he wrote while in the prison camp, how he would have to work on something during the day, commit it to memory, then destroy it before the inspection at the end of the day. (Of course, if you were writing poems about how wonderful Stalin was, you didn't have to destroy them.) At one point he made a rosary with a hundred beads in it. While waiting for roll call he would touch each bead and silently recall what memorized passage was referenced by each bead.

Early in the fifties there were two key developments that greatly affected the prisons: the death of the paranoid Stalin and his replacement by a more moderate Khrushchev (but he was just less evil than Stalin); but more importantly the execution of Lavrenti Beria, who was in charge of the prison system since 1938. All of a sudden the lauded protector of Russia to whom all had affirmed their unfailing allegiance was a traitor. In Russia's culture, anyone who swears allegiance at any time to someone who later becomes a criminal is also guilty of the same crime. The prisoners openly mocked the prison officials saying things like, “When will you be joining us?” , “Sounds like you'll get 25 years,” etc.

Another topic treated was exile. There were various forms of it. Released prisoners often were exiled, sometimes to a specific place—sometimes they got a meal ticket; sometimes they didn't and many of these would beat on the prison gates to be readmitted to hard labor because at least there they hadn't starved to death. In some places they could get jobs; in other places anyone who gave them a job or even a meal would be arrested. Usually they could not remarry, and they were continually watched--the slightest infraction or accusation would land them back in the prison camp again.

Some prisoners weren't given a specific place of exile—it was common when the reported to the police on arrival in some city, the police would say, “You aren't assigned here, so leave.”

Exile was also pronounced on communities—those who didn't respond properly to collectivization, those who were more prosperous than other communities (obviously, they were taking advantage of the system somehow), or ethnic groups that someone in power hated. Everyone would be stuffed into box cars on trains with a half-hour of warning and several days later they were unloaded somewhere, or trucked or taken on sleds elsewhere. Those who didn't die in-transit found themselves in some inhospitable place. Sometimes they were given supplies, sometimes not; sometimes there was water there, sometimes not. This was cheaper than prison camps—no kitchen , no barbed wire, no housing—just some guards to shoot whoever tried to escape. Millions died, but many also survived.

During the Khrushchev period, many terms were reduced. One condition of being released was admitting guilt—that you confessed when being tortured twenty years ago wasn't sufficient—they wanted to know that you were reformed before releasing you.

One man admitted his guilt and was released. He traveled to the camp where his wife was—she was told that if she would confess for being a co-conspirator with her husband, she could walk out. She refused and stayed another three years—her husband told her she was stupid and left her.

For those who weren't perpetually exiled, they eventually became “free.” Free means that your papers are marked that you were a convict; it's hard to find work; it's hard to make friends; you're watched, and many think that freedom is just the period between prison periods; your family doesn't know if they dare accept you for fear they'll go to prison with you the next time. And then there's dealing with how you feel when you run into your interrogators, your prison guards, and other prison officials in the street. They are dressed well, have a good retirement, and all the good things in life—when they see you, they want to “let bygones be bygones.”

This series of books was certainly an eyeopener. Freedom is very much to be prized.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

The Willy Loman family lives a life of illusion and lies--as they flatter each other rather than looking at life as it really is, lying to get approval, and lying to avoid responsibility for their actions. A common theme with Cat on a Hit Tin Roof is that they don't listen to each other, except to pick up on the gist of what was being said and to interrupt with some flattering words. Even Linda, Willy's wife, who is generally supportive of Willy and rebukes her sons' hurtful behavior towards him, keeps interrupting him when he's trying to speak, even when he repeatedly asks her to stop.

Willy prides himself on his salesmanship record and his ability to build things with his hands, but he isn't selling and the home that he has remodeled over the years was done with pilfered building materials. Willy looks to his Uncle Ben for advice, but Ben is always in a rush to go somewhere. Willy wants his two sons to be successful, but they live for the moment. There are people who want to help the Lomans, but in their pride, they reject help and often abuse these people. Biff summarizes the Loman family destructive trait, "And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody."

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Blanche, an aging older sister who appears prim and proper (even the name Blanche signifies white) comes to visit her sister Estella and her husband Stanley in New Orleans. She finds them and their associates crude and uncultured. Stanley and his two poker friends are abusive to women in general, but their wives are willing to overlook their abusive behavior because of their deep feelings for them. There is conflict between Blanche and Stanley, and as the play progresses, it becomes known that Blanche is much more like those she despises than she wishes to admit.

3 May 2009

About a month ago we went to J[...] L[...]'s wedding reception. It was a very nice time seeing everyone. She had an interesting courtship. She was dating two young men, and she was involved in a serious accident. One young man came to visit her, but finally said, “I can't deal with seeing you like this. I'll call you after you're better.” But the other young man stuck by her through the long recovery, and now they're married.

G[...] T[...] and I went to a single sister's home and repaired two coolers. In one of them we needed to replace the bearings. We couldn't get the flywheel off, but we filed down the middle of the shaft, and got the bearings on from the back. After we were done, she served us lunch, which included potstickers. They were really good. I thought if I become homeless, I can hold up a sign by the freeway, “Will work for potstickers.”

A couple of weeks ago, we cleaned the Church, then went to the temple with J[...], then went to the stake dance festival. It was a good day. The stake trained a couple in our ward in the three dances, and then at the Church Ballpark, all the wards did the dances together. It was very nice.

I spoke with our stake president at the dance. Elder Costa, who will be our visiting general authority at stake conference, is from Brazil, and his petpeeve is members in the United States who ask for a temple, since many in his poor nation travel twelve hours to a temple. When Elder Bednar visited our stake many years ago, he asked the president what his his focus was, and he said, “The youth.” Elder Bednar replied that that was a good answer, but the correct answer is “the temple,” and explained why.

I suggested that when Elder Costa asks what their focus is to say, “The temple, but we don't want one.”

I was called to be the ward mission leader. Since my full-time mission, I've never had a specific Church calling in missionary work. I'm enjoying the work. When I was set apart, I was encouraged to be humble enough to listen to people, and to find simple things to ask people to do to help them to be involved in missionary work.

The mission had a booth at the Pima County fair, and our ward worked there one evening. We didn't know where the booth was, and as we were walking out there, I said, “Hopefully, they didn't put us next to the pigs!”

It was a very good location for the booth. Most of the people walked by without seeing us, but some looked at the booth, and a few talked with us. One woman said that she really needed to get back active in Church, and we had a nice talk with her. I feel that our time there was well-spent.

At work, I've finished with my current release responsibilities, and am working on my next line item. This involves support that is closely related to some support that is going in the next client release, so I will be getting very familiar with the session and verb protocols.

I did the training session for our European service people. The training was a Voice Over IP(VOIP) session that I did with my laptop computer. I didn't know that my laptop had a high fidelity microphone built into it until then. Since then I have been using the laptop for business calls thus freeing up my home phone line.

9 April 2009

General Conference was last weekend. It was very inspiring. One item that caught my attention was that there was much emphasis placed on quorums: the importance of being active in one's quorum, and what quorums can do to help their members.

Last night we went to the Easter Pageant at the temple in Mesa. Once again we've had a cool spring, but we took blankets and jackets, and it was a very enjoyable evening. For years, we've kept saying that we'll go this year, but we always were busy. This year we were busy, but we went anyway. I am glad that we did so.

I read Candide by Voltaire. It challenges the philosophy that every bad thing that happens to us ultimately works for our good. Candide is a young man who is optimistic and somewhat naive about things who falls in love with Cunegonde. Then his mixed experience of bad luck and good luck starts. All kinds of natural disasters and bad experiences caused by evil, conspiring and greedy men happen to him, and initially Candide survives them to testify that that the proposed thesis is true. But as more and more bad things happen and as he speaks with more and more people about their lives, he starts to question the thesis.

At the end of the story he is finally reunited with Cunegonde, but she is now ugly and he doesn't want her anymore. He and the others with him discuss the thesis, and don't come to any satisfying conclusion. They spend their time discussing philosophy, but it just results in irritability and boredom. He then learns a lesson from an ignorant Turk who pays no attention to what is going on in the world, but cultivates his twenty acres, which delivers him from “boredom, vice, and want.” Candide accepts the lesson, and as Adam did in the beginning, he tends his garden.

29 March 2009

On Thursday, D's honor band performed. He was first chair for the flute and had a solo. The concert was very enjoyable.

On Friday, S's school put on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. S had the part of Violet Beauregarde, and chewed the gum to perfection. The play was entertaining.

On Saturday we took P's parents to the Titan Missile Museum. It has an interesting museum and the tour was insightful. D, my son, was in the chair and turned the key to simulate the launch.
http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/lotl/lotlf95/titan.html has more information on it.

We then went to the Asarco Mine tour. It was quite interesting too.
http://www.asarco.com/AMDC/mine_tours.html.

We then went to K and A's home for a visit, then went to their son T's new home.

Today, I noticed an article from the Salt Lake Tribune which gave a balanced view of LDS temple ordinances: http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_11942258.

3/22/2009 Entry

We've been finishing up the home improvement items around the house. It's been a real busy time, but it's getting done. The carpet and wallpaper went in our master bedroom last week, and we moved back in yesterday.

We released our product to manufacturing on Friday. It's been two years of tremendous work. I've written the most complex code of my career during these last two years. It's been really challenging, but very fulfilling.

Our bishopric was released today. I really enjoyed our time together, and I wasn't ready to be released. As I was thinking about my calling, I remembered the temple recommend interviews, the dance card interviews, Mutual, being in the temple with the youth, extending callings and releases to people, and all the other things which are such positive memories. And I was privy to so much good being done in the ward. Quite often people world share the challenges they faced, and it was a testimony to me how these people kept being faithful even when there were great challenges.

For those looking for short video segments about the basic beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as well as inspiring stories and messages of hope: http://www.youtube.com/MormonMessages.

The Gulag Archipelago

I've read The Gulag Archipelago, volumes 1 and 2, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. These books mainly talk about the plight of political prisoners. I knew that there were people unjustly imprisoned in Soviet camps during Stalin's reign, but I had no idea of the magnitude of the evilness, that sixty million perished in the camps, which started immediately after the revolution with Lenin, not with Stalin as is generally believed. Much is said about The Holocaust, but little is said about other slaughters in the 20th century which were as bad or worse than that one.

Not unexpectedly, the communist concept of a classless society never came to be, that even in the prison camps there were those who had many privileges (didn't have to do general work, got plenty of food, could steal from, assault, and murder the other prisoners, etc.--these were never political prisoners; they were the hardened criminals of society), those who had some privileges (usually those with needed skills or were cooperative), and those who had no privileges. Of course, the amount of food allocated was too little for all the prisoners, so when the privileged got their fill, the others had less food. And the amount of work expected of the prisoners was based on the total number of prisoners, so it's the unprivileged prisoners got to do the extra work.

We've all heard that criticism of the government would put you into prison, but I never imagined how criticism was defined: “The line to buy bread is too long”--that's criticism. Suppose you're in the army during World War 2, and you're being attacked by the Germans. You say, “They have lots of firepower.” That's praising a foreign government. Both of these comments will get you ten years.

What about all the Russian prisoners of war? When they were returned after World War 2, they became prisoners because: a) they certainly had picked up non-Communist ideas while in captivity, and b) If they'd done their job, they would have won the battle and not been prisoners of war. Equally, Russian citizens who ended up in occupied areas who were later returned to Russian control became prisoners. Also the ex-patriots who were forced back into Russia met the same fate.

There were informers everywhere—they were forced to inform to prevent being sent to prison themselves. They needed to provide names so they wouldn't be sent to prison for not supporting the government—they provided names. And there were quotas to meet, and if you didn't meet your quota you'd end up in prison. To meet the quotas, sometimes you just had to round up some number of people and send them to prison. And, no, there were no mistakes—if you were captured, you were guilty and became a political prisoner.

Another source of names was the friends, family, and associates of those captured. If a person was guilty of treason, he had obviously affected those close to him. A third source were names forced from people during torture. The answer, “I don't know of any who oppose the government” didn't work.” The most prevalent tortures were sleep-deprivation, being starved, and being put into freezing cold cells day after day. Other tortures were employed, but these previous ones required the minimal amount of effort, and almost always worked with patience. After a week or two of sleep deprivation, most people will sign anything, agree to anything, or betray anybody to be allowed to sleep.

Everything was based on distrust and lying, and to survive one had to live while someone else died. Thus those who were free and had power at one time, at any time, could be betrayed and go to prison themselves. Solzhenitsyn lived because he was a prisoner for many of the years with partial privileges. Writing his experiences and exposing the great evil was a partial atonement for his surviving. Five out of six prisoners with no privileges died of overwork, starvation, disease or being outright murdered.

There were two reasons that the thieves, i.e. hard core criminals, dominated the prisons and camps: 1) By definition the political prisoners were the enemy of the people, and the guards treated them as such; 2) the political prisoners had been interrogated, tortured, and starved for six months to a year—even though the 80-90% of the prisoners were political prisoners and many came from the army, they had been physically, mentally, and spiritually broken during that first year, and were in no condition to oppose the thieves.

Solzhenitsyn examines why very few of these prisoners committed suicide, and he concludes that deep down these people knew that they had done nothing wrong and their innocence sustained their will to live.

Part of sustaining themselves involved sharing their life stories with other prisoners. They were constantly being moved, and prisoners remembered others' stories and shared them. When a certain person was not heard of again, they knew that he had died.

He also examines why the Russia did not prosper financially even when it had millions and millions of prisoners working for almost nothing—effectively, the camps were rife with corruption and greed and theft, and those in power put the prisoners to work waiting on them, building them furniture, stealing all they could from the government and selling those items for money and privileges, and falsifying their output to look like they were meeting the work quotas. It was ironic that someone who became a political prisoner for stealing a pound of grain from a collective farm to keep his children from starving, would get ten years in a prison camp, and be involved in stealing thousands of dollars of goods from the government to stay alive. Thus one political prisoner, a nun, could so effectively rebuke her captors, “Why are you putting all religious people into the camps? We religious people are honest—we will not steal from the government. You have nothing to fear from us.” But this was about power, absolute power over everyone, and the pursuit of absolute power over others corrupts everyone absolutely because tyrants are cowardly, weak, and paranoid. Thus, Hitler, as he was losing the war, kept filling the trains with people to be sent to the death camps, rather than using those trains to support the war effort. In Hitler's mind, the destruction of the weak was what dominated his thoughts.

There was a chapter about the children in the prison camps. At one point in the twenties almost half of the prisoners were children. The little ditty that our children sing about burning down the school got Russian children ten years in the prison camp. The government was actually kinder, in theory, to children than to most prisoners—they got more food and better food, and clothing and bedding. They also got to go to school for four hours a day and be instructed in the doctrine of Marx. That was the plan, but what actually happened was that any of the extra items that weren't stolen by the jailers, were sold by the children themselves for cigarettes, alcohol, and privileges. Since enemies to the state couldn't be allowed to corrupt children, many of the people available to teach Marx to the children were the hardened criminals, who taught them to be hardened criminals. The children became the most incorrigible, the most violent, the most unrestrained of those in the camp. Because they had no parents to teach them, to restrain them, to care for them, they had no moral compass. The political prisoners suffered much at the hands of the children. When the children were released, they joined the hardened criminals who preyed on society. So much for converting them to be loyal followers of Marx.

There was also a chapter about women in camp. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how they survived. But he did mention one thing that helped some of the general prisoners survive—as women sewed for a man and cooked him potatoes, they both were empowered to survive. For the general prisoners, anything more than a little sewing and cooking would land them in the punishment cells, which almost always were death cells. If you didn't die in them, you were so weakened from the experience, that death often soon ensued.

Solzhenitsyn infers that the Marxist dream was only an illusion. It was never about equality, never about justice, never about the people; it was about a certain group of people gaining control of a country and glutting themselves on the efforts of the others and ensuring that they weren't overthrown.

When the Soviet empire failed during the 90s, one thing that surprised me was the amount of organized crime in those countries. This also became evident when we went into Iraq, that organized crime was alive and well in those countries.

But there were some who survived the camps, who did not survive by abusing those weaker than them—for example, stealing their food and clothing. There were some who refused to abuse others or to inform on them, or take any leadership role in any manner because to do so would be to become murderers. Most of these died with their honor intact, but there were survivors. For some inexplicable reason, they survived on insufficient rations and were empowered by the work itself, and losing themselves in the work, there was enabling power given them to survive. They didn't die of overwork, cold, and starvation; they didn't die of scurvy and tuberculosis; for some reason they didn't perish in the punishment cells when millions of others did.

Solzhenitsyn talks about the effect of a paranoid government on people. Because people could never share any real feelings with anyone and never knew when they might be betrayed, they couldn't forge meaningful relationships in their lives. The people lived in fear.