Degrees of Intolerance

Some interesting facts about Utah/Mormons that I heard last week while visiting a friend in another office in the English Building.

1. Utah is full of Mormons (this was said as an act of discouraging my friend from ever wanting to move to Utah)
2. Can’t buy beer in Utah (cause everyone who isn’t Mormon, drinks)
3. Can’t buy coffee in Utah (cause everyone who isn’t Mormon, drinks coffee)
4. Some Mormons own coffee makers (only Mormons are expected to live according to the teachings of their faith)
5. Mormon men have so many wives so they can choose which one they want to spend eternity with (Mormon men are selfish and horney) There is no difference between a Mormon and any “fundamentalist” Mormon.
6. Mormon women can only be saved through their husbands (who call them up from the grave) (apparently Mormon women are to be 100% submissive in all things, including death and resurrection, when they use the bathroom, what they eat...so y’all better sit down and zip it and wait your turn)
7. Mormons are buying up all the land around Warsaw, Illinois, which is upsetting the “local” folks (No one is forcing anyone to sell the land. How much of this land is being re-purchased after it was stolen from early Mormons in Illinois?)

With the exception of the last comment, I was able to correct and clarify these gems of information. This individual that was spouting off, was unaware that I was Mormon, and from Utah.

Come to find out, this fella that was a spoutin off, did all his younger days studying on religion, so now he’z the x-pert. He’z a sertifide, bonofide no-it-all.

An Ode to David Sanborn

The Dream, from your A Change of Heart album, has been my favorite from the first time I heard in when I was working as a custodian at Dixon Middle School during the summer of 1987. My friend (Tim Rand) who also worked there, was a Jazz musician who loved to play the saxophone, and always aspired to be like you and hit those amazingly hard to hit high notes. Readers….do whatever it takes to listen to this song. Start surfing the net…Launch Cast, I-Tunes, Napster…whatever. Listen to it. Spend $.99 to own it, cherish it, relish in it, use it to serenade your lover. I don’t care if you don’t like Jazz. You will not be able to resist liking this song. If you are truly abnormal and do not like this song because you were dropped one too many times as a child then I will buy you a Happy Meal at McDonalds to make you happy.

No matter how down I may be, this song has the ability to sooth my troubled soul. When I am happy, the song makes me happier. It is medicine for the heart, mind, and soul.

One of the greatest moments of my youth was listening to this song, relaxing on the overly padded carpet of Tim’s bedroom, while eating jumble berry cheesecake and washing it down with ice cold milk.

the duck that didn’t quack

The bits of bread thrown into the water bobbed once, never more than once, like a leaf floating to the ground, sank in a lulling rock-a-by motion. Bottom grime hor'dourves for the carpy cousins.

From two stones throw away, a single mallard, of the green headed male specimen paddled closer to investigate. His actions and diversion did not go unnoticed. Geese, two swans, six white ducks and a smaller black bird with a red beak immediately stopped playing with their jacks, yo-yo’s, and Sudoku. What was greeny up to and what is that land lubbin boy buffoon doing so close to the shore. In a mad dash, like paparazzi chasing Brad Pit and the mystery girl, they swarmed and beheld, with their beady black eyes and one red beak, a gallon ice-cream container full of dehydrated fermented morsels being scattered like chicken feed . It is their manna from heaven. The solitary mallard never saw what hit him, the purse, a brick, the old crane’s walker, the frenzy had begun and he was in the way.

That’s what might have happened had I not come to work today.

That is So Cool!

My two oldest are a part of a co-op home schooling program where once a week, they find themselves learning cool stuff in someone else’s home. They recently have been studying botany and boy am I jealous. Two weeks ago they learned all about cotton blossoms. First they found out that each blossom only lasts for 24 hours. They start off white and quickly make a transition to a deep red color and then fall off. How cool is that? They also got a chance to dissect a blossom and boy could they see everything...stigma, stamen, ovaries, style...and an intro to the birds and the bees.

This last week what should they bring home to my surprise? A live, baby Venus fly trap. I love Venus fly traps. My very own Little Shop of Horrors! Feed me Seymour! I haven’t seen one since 8th grade science class at Dixon Middle School....with the teacher that was convinced her room was tilted. So far, we’ve fed our little beauties two flies and an earwig. I’d have every single trap full of bugs, but it’s been raining for the past four days and all the bugs have taken cover.

Both of these activities were a big booster following the fiasco that happened right after our astronomy project three weeks ago. Our kids created their own solar system with proportional sized planets, complete with an asteroid belt. Within a week of displaying our solar system down our hall way, those crazy, out-of-their-mind astronomers, whose heads must be the size of a meteorite (with egos the size of the Pistol Star), went and declared that Pluto was no longer a planet. Come on....it’s not like discovering that the world is round and you won’t go sailing off into an abyss. We need nine planets just as bad as Saturn needs its rings. If we can have a planet that rolls like a barrel, we can have a planet whose orbit is elliptical....and every half a billion years gets to have a David and Goliath moment with Neptune as Pluto sneaks momentarily into eighth place. How cool is that?