LIMB

June 30, 2010 limb

“That is one strange looking tree.”

Dave paused as we climbed the small hill. My fingers, interlaced with his, felt him stop, so (though I had been watching my feet and not the scenery) I paused too.

“Sure is.” I said, cocking my head to the right side.

“I wonder how it grew that way?” He pondered underneath his pursed eyebrows.

“I think that’s not the trunk that goes all the way up.” I said. “I think somehow the trunk got diseased or broken and the limb became the trunk.”

We both stared for a minute, wondering what may have happened, and when it may have happened. The Quakie was bent like the arm of an Egyptian dancer; like the letter Z on an ancient torture chamber stretcher; her silvery bark reflecting the setting sun over Farmington Pond like Zorro had sliced the sky.

When trunks struggle a good strong limb will take over and keep the flow going. Pretty soon it’s hard to tell the difference unless you pause. And you look up.

Trunks break all the time. I wonder if trees grieve the loss?

My mother’s family tree suffered a broken trunk somewhere during the Great Depression. Mid 1930’s. That’s the year her mother, Lizzie Parrish, left the ranch in Blackfoot with a belly ache. Headed to Salt Lake City to visit a doctor. On the way they stopped in Soda Springs to visit her brother Joe. They never made it to the city near the Great Salt Lake.

Mom was in seventh or eighth grade. Her sister Becky was nine years old. Mae was in High School. Mae remembers being called out of class. Someone, unremembered now, followed the path of the three schools like a dot to dot, hastily gathering daughters into an old black automobile. Silently they bumped over the rough roads to Soda Springs in time to say goodbye to their mom.

The trunk broke.

George Parrish grieved the loss of Lizzie until he couldn’t stand it any longer. One year after Lizzie died he married again. Alice. A young thing, rough around the edges, with not much to offer a grieving family. She was younger than some of George’s children, and she didn’t care to raise the younger ones.

So the limbs took over.

Nine good limbs remained on George and Lizzie’s tree: Fred, Parks, Ruth, Ruby, Edna, Mary, Mae, Afton and Becky. Mae, Becky and Afton were pretty green and tender. The big branches stretched up toward the heavens and let the life flow despite their sorrow and discomfort. Not only had they lost their mother, they had in many ways lost their father as well.

My mother, like the two sisters who straddled her in age, lived her remaining teenage years in the limbs of her older brothers and sisters: hung there in a small space while they raised their kids around her. They were good to her, and gave her safety in her solitude. She learned to fend for herself early on. Sewed her own clothes, worked jobs and lived her own stubborn life until she was seventeen and old enough to marry Cy Davis and move, finally, to a home of her own. In their own individual ways my uncles and aunts nurtured my mother into the woman from whom seven more branches sprung. I bend my little green twig of self down toward them here in our family tree, wanting to connect, wanting to thank them for not letting go; for not giving up and letting the whole thing die. When I came along, the trunk had grown over where the break occurred, and not knowing anything different I thought our tree was just a normal one like all the others on the hill.

That’s before I learned to pause.

My own funny little branch sprang from the large sturdy one that came from the crooked trunk of my mother’s family tree. We are zigzagged and odd, but strangely interesting nonetheless. And with every turn of the seasons, like every other tree in the forest, we burst with new life, proving to ourselves that, despite our awkward appearance, we are survivors.

It’s a good thing to pause. And look up.

HONEY

June 25, 2010 honey

Years ago, when my mom and I went on outings because we had something we needed to do rather than to just get her out of the house, I decided I was going to make friends with beeswax. I loved the way the pure beeswax candles we bought in Williamsburg dripped when we burned them. I was gonna make my own! Both Mom and I had antique tin candle molds sitting on our hearths, and I wanted to try candle dipping as well. The prospect was sealed one day while dusting a couple old Santa candy molds I also own; I thought I’d also try making beeswax ornaments from the old molds. Thus began our quest to find good quality beeswax.

Thanks to the yellow pages (these were the days before Google) I discovered a small shop in Salt Lake City where they sold the residue left over from their honeybee hives. On an autumn afternoon Mom and I followed the seam of I-15 down south, off an unremembered exit, past a business selling cast lawn ornaments. We drove back across a long narrow driveway and opened the door to the shop. I’m not exactly sure what the memory was, but the aroma of the place evoked one: a remembrance of something long forgotten…like hundreds of years old. Something stored deep in the spiritual pocket behind my belly button.

We purchased two large blocks of golden wax. I lifted the bricks to my nose as we walked out, inhaling at half-speed. It was earthy and sweet and balanced…it felt balanced - in the way that all the earth should be balanced. Like a dinner plate with two thirds vegetables and one third protein. Like water from a mountain spring the minute it emerges. Like morning air damp with dew. It felt like the benefit equaled the sacrifice. Sweet and earthy and old.

We melted the wax in an old can which we set in a pot of water. The can clanked and jiggled as the water below it boiled, the clump of gold turning to liquid as I stood above it and watched. I stirred the wax with an old chop stick until it was melted. We poured and dipped and scraped. Re-melted, re-poured and dipped again. We still have those golden Santa’s made of beeswax. I recall that afternoon every time I lay my Santa collection across my concrete mantle in our family room.
A few years back I spent a summer travelling to various public libraries in Salt Lake City. They had hired me to do a summer program for children. We called it Happy Faces – Happy Feet. We sang songs, traced our feet, dressed up like fairies, made music shakers out of empty pop cans (we had plenty of them at our house, what with Dave’s Pop Shoppe). Then we marched and kept the beat as we sang, following the pattern we had laid on the ground with our traced feet: A marching band of children with a Pied Guitar-er in the lead. I did a different library every week.
One week there was a little four-year-old boy who completely charmed me when he talked. I had been sitting on a stool, explaining something, when he raised his hand. His name was Thomas.
“Yes, Thomas,” I said, worried that his helium-filled arm was going to wave off his body.
“My Honey said we should do this or that (I can’t remember what it was he said, just that he mentioned his Honey.)
“Oh, good idea!” I responded.
“Who’s Honey?” I wondered who the sweetheart of a four year old would be.
“Ummmm”, he thought for a minute, “She’s just my Honey.”
“OK,” I said.
One week later he showed up in another library.
“Hey!” I smiled as I winked at him. “Weren’t you at our last one in South Jordan?”
“I brought you my Honey.” He turned and took the hand of a middle aged woman. The sort of woman I am now.
I was charmed almost speechless that he called his grandmother Honey.
“So do all your grandchildren call you Honey?”
“No,” she responded, “Only Thomas. He just started calling me that one day and it’s been that way ever since.”
I could not take my eyes off the two of them for the rest of the program. I watched him wrap his arms around her neck when they finished their rattle. I watched her talk to him as he colored. They were perfectly balanced; like the beeswax. The just-right amount of give and take. Sweet and true and eternal.
Honey.

ps- my Honey and I were married in the Washington DC LDS Temple 33 years ago today.  Happy Anniversary, Honey!

ROCOCO

June 23, 2010 rococo

We stood hunched over in the basement of a centuries-old shop in Bolzano, Italy: Dave, Libby, Mom and me, along with my sisters Sherry and Sue. The shop owner, a man small enough to stand shoulders-back and still have head room, had invited us to maneuver the narrow stairs down into his workspace after Mom had expressed particular delight in his work.

Angels. He carved angels. Rococo carvings: swirls and vines and wavy hair atop cherubic faces with pale plump lips and chubby, kissable necks. Chiseled out of wood, they belied their medium, looking for all the world like you should be able to squish them into your arms like we snuggled our well fed babies, except for the fact that their squishiness always sat atop a set of gilded wings.

I fell in love with them, too. Italy does this to people. Charms them, as if Italian flute players sat invisibly outside little shops and lured us in. We think we can take the feeling home with us to our sterile American houses.

Mom looked adoringly at all the pieces the artist was currently carving. “Oh my!” she’d say, “You have gifted hands!” The more she said, the deeper he took her into his workshop, until finally we were in the chilly dank back room, a fruit cellar sort of place, where there was very little light. There my mother fell in love with two large angel faces, almost life size, beautifully crafted, with obvious spirit infused into them. The were truly beautiful. And truly expensive.

I made myself turn away as I watched them start to negotiate. I got a pit in my stomach. Seriously…was my mother going to try to buy those things? I mean, are you kidding?

I made myself climb the stairs back up to the store space. Found some nice little 2 inch angel heads that were perfectly charming. Singularly lovely, each of them, and much more affordable. “You should be looking at these, Mom.” I thought this to myself, too un-daring to speak it aloud. But I grumped, like I had any right whatsoever to comment on what my mother chose to do with her money. I laid down my chunk of cash for eight tiny angels, which were wrapped in a nonchalant sort of way; while afterwards I watched the artisan, risen from the tomb with two angels under his arms, carefully dust the years of waiting off the ones my mother bought. Large, heavy ones, whose wing-gilding alone cost more than all my little angels. He carefully wrapped them and boxed them and took her money, almost hesitantly, not because he thought it was too much but, it appeared, because he was not so sure he wanted to part with his handiwork.

I hmphed around as we continued down the street, annoyed that she would allow herself such a luxury. I don’t remember, but maybe she was living with us at the time and I thought I had some say in what she did. I don’t know. It was immature and silly nonetheless.

My mom has this strange relationship with money. She thinks it is to spend. She has always had great credit…at least after Dad left and she was in charge of her own checkbook. She went so long with so little that when she started being successful in her own career you’d presume she’d hold on to a bit of it. And she did, I now know. At least held onto enough for a rainy season, if it should come again. But she was not one to believe she should hoard. Money, to her, is to facilitate life. Life does not focus itself on money. Sort of like some people live to eat and others eat to live. When Mom had it; she used it. And when she didn’t; well, she could live happily on less than anyone I know. Libby has learned this from her. They are Realtors. This current economy is a serious test of that philosophy for them. But they are making it; without complaint, without furrowed eyebrows. They are so graceful in their struggles, both of them. They don’t panic. Maybe a bit of silent worry…but they won’t panic until the spirit tells them to. I wish I was more like both of them.

Those big, beautiful rococo angels currently hang right by their front door. I see them every single day. They remind me that my mother loves beautiful things; as my sister does. She understands that artistic excellence requires a cost, and she (bless her heart) is willing to pay that. So few people understand the cost of good art.

Meanwhile, my cute little cheap rococo angels sat in a drawer, unseen, for years. I found them last Christmas and tied them to my chandelier, swaging cedar boughs between the candelabra from which the cherubs hung. I don’t know if anyone even noticed them.

I need to remember this and other lessons from my mom: some things there is no need to chintz out on. If you love something and want it to last; pay for it. This holds true in so many things: education; vehicles and homes; relationships; and rococo angels.

PERSNICKETY

The randomly generated word for today is: PERSNICKETY

Her nostrils twitched when she entered the room. They twitched, then twitched again until finally she wiggled the back of her hand against her nose in a Bewitched manner, like she was trying to charm herself to another place but didn’t have the witchery of Samantha to actually get herself there.

“Here”, I said, hurrying over to the chair, “Have a seat.” I was working in my study, hammering the keys of a small red laptop; still in my PJ’s, stomach growling from breakfast neglect. I lifted a stack of papers from one of the chairs opposite my desk; laid them on the mountaintop of the desk-pile, held my hand there on top of all of it until I was sure it was balanced enough to walk away.

“No, really, I can’t stay. I just wanted to return the things I borrowed.”

I struggled for the correct response. I knew she was uncomfortable. Persnickety as she was, I still loved her, and something in me wanted her to try to feel at ease with someone who was…well… was not.

She tried. She sat on the very edge of the chair; her knees pressed together, her hands in her lap. She tried to sort of lean her back into the chair, then thought better of it. I could tell she was trying to look relaxed. Trying to pretend she was enjoying it.

It reminded me of the day I tried parasailing over Lake Powell. The boat started up with me tied to its tail. The parachute lifted me into the air then dipped me down over the sandstone, dragging my legs across the rock before the chute found air again and lifted me up. I floated above the boat, high above the cliffs and reservoir. I remember the sounds in my head “Oh, this is so lovely, Ow, ow, ow. Enjoy this Cori, cuz you will never see it again.” I tried and tried to tell myself I was enjoying it, but the blood dripping into the water below me kept blurring the picture. So I knew how she felt. And it stung me in the center of my chest to think I would cause her pain. I looked at her across the miscellany on my desktop. Saw the glow of sunlight through the wisps of hair around her face. Dust specks swirled around her head forming a sort of divine nebula. I found it interesting that I could hold a conversation with her and myself at the same time. Trying to chat politely with the woman opposite me, while the gal who giggles in my head was considering the irony in the fact that the very thing my persnickety friend despised was creating a halo around her face.

Most of the time I don’t mind my desk so much. If it was clean, that would be nice, but I’m fine with it the way it is. I choose to write instead of clean when I’m in here. Most the time I’m ok with it all, until a persnickety friend stops by to return some of the stuff they borrowed. Some of the stuff I keep stuffed in my space. I keep it here because I don’t mind it being here so much, and someone might need it someday. And so many of my friends do mind their spaces being full.

It’s a good thing we have each other, I say as I shut the door behind her. I set the stack of plates and tablecloths at the top of the basement stairs, waiting for David to take them down when he goes to exercise in the morning. I walk instinctively over to the fridge, pull it open, glance to the left and to the right, the top then the bottom, decide its too much work to make something healthy. I shut the fridge, shuffle barefooted back to the study, and lay my fingers atop the computer keys.

WORD OF THE DAY RETURNS

I awoke this morning determined to actually do what my early-morning brain suggested I do.  I think early morning prayers are the best because they are unencumbered by the mounting stack of unfulfilled objectives of each day. So this morning my first thought on rising was to go find the random word generator and sign up for a Word of the Day and then actually DO it! So that's what I did. When I finished writing and went to save it in my Object Writing file on my computer, I was so sad to see that in the file entitled 2010 I have a grand total of ZERO writings.  Since today is Summer Solstice, exactly half way through the year (can you imagine???) I think I'll start anew.  And the word that came up today, truly...this is amazing...was....

TABULA RASA

6-21-2010 Tabula Rasa

There was a store in the no-longer-in existence mall in downtown SLC called Tabula Rasa. Just outside the top floor of Nordstrom, where you left the children’s department and entered the environs of display windows and miscellaneous mood music wafting from little cells of stores lining the sides of the mall. Tabula Rasa was filled with yummy papers and note cards; lovely glass and metal pens with split tips and inkwells whose tops had been dipped in sealing wax. Books, bound in tooled leather with elegant clasps, or with strips of raw leather attached waiting to swaddle the journal: empty books waiting for the touch of ink from daring hands. The store was small and delicious, like a very expensive truffle. I loved visiting Tabula Rasa. My mom has a fabulous carved Nativity set she bought there, which I love. Lib puts it out on their living room mantle at Christmas time. It stretches across the whole mantle: elephants and camels and other creatures making their way to the Holy Family. It was a very expensive set. One only my mom would buy. I, on the other hand, would purchase three inferior sets for the same total amount of money and leave all three of them up in the Christmas cupboard because they just don’t quite do it for me. I wish I was more like my mom.

Tabula Rasa, it turns out, is Latin for “tablet erased”. Fresh start. New Beginning. Do Over.

I lift my hand to my mouth every Sunday afternoon. Insert broken bread. Tip my head back and let sacred water fall past my lips and into my throat. The very center of me knows what I am doing. I do it on purpose. But not always with purpose. Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I’m rattled. Sometimes I am pondering and still preparing for a lesson I’ll be teaching an hour later to my class of Young Women. But sometimes, when my heart is still and my mind is clear, I imagine the King of Kings sitting at His desk in His heaven-place. I imagine, in my odd way of imagining, that His desk in stacked with pink erasers. Mounded in an orderly pile like a stack of Lego’s, like a pile of pink bubble gum slices, like the countertop in the teacher’s work room the day before school starts; the erasers sit ready to be used. I imagine Him peeking over the edge of Heaven and watching me chew and swallow. He smiles, His eyes twinkling a bit in the sunlight. I imagine Him lifting my pink eraser from the pile…one with my very name on it…and I see Him rubbing the pages of my tabula. I think to myself how thin the paper must be getting by now.

I suppose I should look at my book of life more often. I suppose I should allow myself to see the pages are clean because He cleaned them, and I honestly believe He has the right and power to do that. I wonder why I would believe that. But I do. I feel peace in that belief. I suppose I should notice after I allow the sacrament bread and water to enter my body that my tablet is clean. I would be more gentle with myself then. I would be more grateful and therefore more conscious and therefore more ready for new writing on my tablet: good or bad. If I remember the erasers are ready then I might be more willing to live as I should live…willing to try more passionately because I am willing to make mistakes. Knowing, but not in any irresponsible way, that He can make my tabula… rasa.

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?

Yes. Why yes...indeed...there is a doctor in the house. In OUR house!  A fabulously talented, brilliant, beautiful, creative doctor lives in our house.  At least for a while. Fortunately she brought with her two delightful little ones who sleep in their own little beds upstairs.  Timothy, the lover of all things Mickey Mouse; and Anna Bella, the lover of all things pretend. There is nothing more heart meltingly wonderful to this old Gummy than to pull into the garage and see the door open; standing there with both arms thrown out to his side and a toothless grin stretching from one ear to the other. "Gummy!" He squeals my name like he just squished it out of his heart. Oh make me melt!  All our grandchildren do this to me. They completely own me.

So here's to Dr. Sarah Connors Petersen, the Pediatrician. She practices with the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. She just finished doing a segment on Good Things Utah this morning.  She was great.  Not that I have any bias...but if I were looking for a kid doc, she would be it.  I suspect she listens to her patients, and their parents, and she communicates without sounding like a know-it-all flippant doctor. I'm her mom, but I think it's true nonetheless.

So tonight we will load the two munchkins and their parents into the van and we will all drive to Kansas City, where we get to celebrate with the rest of the graduating Medical Residents the end of their "training". School's out - so to speak!

Hooray for Sarah!

Sarah will be presenting the school with a large giclee' of this painting she did in high school.  (sorry for the keystoning in the photo) She received the Utah High Schools Masters award for this painting, and the Utah Education Association bought the original for their gallery and gave her their Purchase Award scholarship for that year.They also made a poster of the painting, which is a watercolor, and distributed it to all Utah schools.  Here's what the poster said:

For the fifth consecutive year, UEA has purchased an outstanding work of student art to feature in our Collector Poster Series.  this year's selection is "JOY - Chemo Can't Conquer a Smile", by Sarah Connors.  Sarah, a 1998 graduate of Davis High School, is the daughter of David and Cori Connors.  She is currently an art/pre-med major at Southern Utah State University, where she received the Presidential Ambassador Scholarship.  "JOY- Chemo Can't Conquer a Smile" won the Master's Award in the All-State High School Show as well as being selected by UEA.  Sarah would like to thank her art teachers: Harold Peterson, Jan Richins and Roger Cushing for developing her art talents.  She is hopeful that the extra sensitivities that a love of art have given her will help her as she aspires to serve others through the practice of medicine.

I guess she is living her dream, huh? Now that she's done with Residency maybe she can think about picking up a paintbrush again.

Sarah started medical school pregnant.  Imagine Gross Anatomy class (we're talking cadavers here) and morning sickness. Yuh.  But she did it, and that June she gave us this little jewel:

Timothy.

We call him Timo, or Mo, or Mosely, or sometimes Mr. Magoo.

Then, her last year of medical school she was pregnant again.  In spite of a very rough pregnancy she finished her work and wore these robes on one fine June day:

...and two weeks later she did this....

Anna Bella...or Bella Boo...or Princess...or Shrinky Dink.

What fabulous work she does!

Congratulations Dr. Petersen.  You survived, with the help of a good husband, over three years of 85 hour weeks in the hospital.  Inadequate rest.  Inadequate time with your children.  Living in a strange new place with strange new people (who have since become cherished friends. Funny how that happens.) And now...ta-da.....

You are HOME!

(at least until your new house is built!)

Yay for Doctor Mommy!

WELCOME JUNE

I love June.  It starts out great and ends great.  The best thing I did on June 1st was help God make this:

She is as beautiful inside as she is outside...

and she's kind and intelligent and funny...

and she's full of love...

She started out a boingy little bopper we called Captain Destructo (If I had a scanner that worked I would put a picture of her up here in that memorable role...she broke three cribs from bouncing in them.).

Alas, you can only see her as a beautiful woman now.

Happy Birthday my Annie!

(I loved you before everyone else!)

(OK, maybe not God.)

WHAT ANGELS SOUND LIKE

A friend sent this to me today, saying she thought this must be what angels sound like.
I think she's right.

age

I usually use capital letters in the title words when I blog, but not today.  Today I prefer lower case letters for the word "age", and if my computer would do it I would draw the "e" backwards.
I'm feeling aged at this moment.  Not old yet, but ....well, not young.  I married a man 6 years older than myself.  A professional man; a successful one who lifted me rapidly in socio-economic status after I married him...at a young age I might add.  We moved into our beautiful, dignified, well-kept neighborhood here when I was barely 24 years old.  Everyone was older than me.  Like, ten years older than me, most of them.  I was blessed with open armed neighbors who did not hold my youth against me.  At least they didn't make me feel juvenile.  I taught their teenage daughters who were a handful of years younger than I was, and it felt perfectly natural.  But I was always, in the back of my head, a bit younger than everyone else and I worked to feel older, like I was mature and I belonged.
The tables have turned.
Today I joined a lovely group of women for a friend's lunch.  Happy Birthday to my good friend Sheri, who looks like she's maybe 33 and yet has a grand baby who is walking now.  She is younger than I. In fact, and I made mental note of this to myself as I drove home, I was the oldest woman at that table.  I became aware of this as I watched various conversations unfold.  They talked about which instructors they preferred at the gym.  They talked about dealing with their teenage daughters...about corsages and boutonnieres at the prom...about what the proper age to teach kids to do laundry should be.  Of course I was generally pleasantly engaged in conversation myself, but it struck me with every pause that they are where I was ten years ago. Even 15 years ago.
Maybe I am just in that mode today because I woke up knowing I would shuffle out to the computer and compose a letter to Sandy Holman, whose retirement hoopla is at Knowlton Elementary School this afternoon.  Sandy taught our kids, all of them.  We were blessed by this.  And I worked closely with Sandy through the PTA years.  When I was PTA president Annie was 3 years old and thought she owned the school because, truth be faced, we spent more time there than at home. I knew Sandy as a friend, as I knew many of the teachers there.  So in this letter I wrote this morning I was hurled back in time; the same way I am every time I walk through the doors of that school to pick up one of our three grand kids who attend there. It made me feel aged.  Not old.  Just aged.
So then I go to this lunch and I'm ...well, you know.
Tonight I am joining a circle of songwriters at Viewmont High for a benefit concert.  Most of the artists are half my age. I have to have this talk with myself.  I have to remind Her Agedness that she may be playing with more hip, current, attractive, talented youngsters, but she should not beat herself up about it nor should she try to change her style to fit theirs.  I have this talk with her before a lot of shows lately. Things are going weird I tell ya.
Ah, me.  She nods her head and says, "yeah, yeah, I know.  I'm just fine the way I am, blah, blah, blah. Leave me alone."  She is a rather unpleasant person to lecture, myself is. She grabs her guitar and walks on stage and tries not to think about the physical appearances of things...tries to concentrate on the fact that the best songs should be ageless.  She tries to tell herself all this, but her voice still quivers when she starts because she is following some dyn-o-mite guitar player who has fabulous vocal chops and looks like Johnny Depp (that's not always the case, I am just in a worst case scenario mood). I tickle my strings and let this thin thread of a voice fall out onto the floor.  Somewhere deep down, there is a part of me that believes I should be able to stand up next to anyone with my songs and not have to feel like apologizing. She appears only occasionally, however, and the rest of the time I am doing silent battle with the demons of doubt while I sit up there trying to look all hip and relaxed on stage when really I'd rather be in my pj's on the family room couch eating Carmel Corn.
Oh well.  No changing it.  And the alternative to aging is not exactly what I'm looking for.
Onward and upward, so they say. I'll take hold of the reigns and kick my heels into what's left of this life I've been handed. 
I think, however, I'll go take a little nap first.

MY GUY

Exciting things happened this week, not the least of which is this:

Connors nominated for state Supreme Court

Apr 15, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — A 2nd District Court judge is one of six nominees for an upcoming vacancy on the Utah Supreme Court.

Judge David M. Connors, a former mayor of Farmington and 2nd District Court judge is one of the six nominees.

Connors was appointed to the Second District Court by Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. and took office January 2008.

He earned a law degree from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School where he was a member of the Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1979. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1974.

Prior to his appointment to the bench, he was a partner with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, L.L.P., where he served as head of the Utah litigation group.

From 1979 through 1980, Connors clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, in New York City.

He served as Farmington’s mayor from 2002 to 2006. He has also served as a board member of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, Davis County Council of Governments, Davis Education Foundation, and the Mormon Arts Foundation, and as a trustee for the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. He is a past chairman of the Business Law Section of the Utah State Bar.

Others nominated include: Judge Royal I. Hansen, of Salt Lake City, 3rd District Court; Thomas R. Lee, counsel, for Howard, Phillips & Andersen, and law professor, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University; Judge Carolyn B. McHugh, of Salt Lake City, Utah Appeals Court; Judge David Mortensen, of Springville, 4th District Court; and Jeanette F. Swent, of Salt Lake City, chief, Civil Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office.

A 10-day public comment period will be held before the names are submitted to Gov. Gary Herbert.

Utah Supreme Court Nominating Commission Chair Gayle McKeachnie is accepting written comments regarding the nominees at the Administrative Office of the Courts, P.O. Box 140241, Salt Lake City,, 84114-0241.

The deadline for written comments is April 22, 2010, by 5 p.m.

The commission may request further interviews or an investigation of the nominees after reviewing public comments.

After the public comment period, the names will be sent to the governor who has 30 days to select a candidate.

The governor’s nominee is then forwarded to the Senate Confirmation Committee, which reviews the nominee’s qualifications and conducts a public hearing and interview session.

The Senate Confirmation Committee will forward the final nominee to the Utah State Senate, which has 60 days from the governor’s nomination to confirm the nominee.

The position will replace Justice Michael J. Wilkins who will retire in May.

mwilliams@davisclipper.com 

GIVE ME JESUS

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ALL GOOD THINGS

Every other Wednesday I take a gig somewhere in the Salt Lake Valley on assignment from an organization called Heart & Soul. It’s not always convenient, but it is usually in the afternoon and that’s a good time for my mom to take an outing so more often than not Libby will drive me and Mom and Sherry will ride along. I go wherever they send me, which is usually to a nursing home, or a rehab center, sometimes a school or retirement center. Sometimes I sing and play guitar for little kids, but more often it’s for the generation one or two steps above me. There are not many left who would be two generations above me, people old enough to have grandchildren my age, but there are some. I’ve written about this before in this blog, because the moments are so meaningful to me. I was setting up last week and a woman over to the left was rather irritated. She mumbled and shook her head and I wondered, as I strapped my guitar to my shoulder, if I was going to have to try to sing above her rant. But when I started she looked up, her forehead pursed in a questioning manner. She cocked her head to the side, as if she were lifting her ear to hear better, and then she let out a soft sigh. I looked her in the eye and began to sing “Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds thy hands have made….”

I think of that, in contrast to the anticipation we feel as our dear friends Jason and Erica Gardner labor away in a hospital in New York City, inching their way toward the first breath of their first child, and the first grandchild of Reed and Cindy. That little first breath has been so long awaited. The thought of it got Cindy through her walk through the valley of the shadow of death, her sword cinched at her side as she pushed herself toward the beast called breast cancer, faced him head on, and slew him with every ounce of energy she had. She is reborn herself, her eyelashes returned and her head has a soft layer of fuzz under her baseball cap. She has a bit in common with her soon-to-be granddaughter.

In between that first breath we pray little baby Gardner will take today, and the last sigh so often heard in the homes where I sing, is the place of all good things.

When I set out to write ALL GOOD THINGS my intent was to give every day emphasis to the scripture Psalm 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. Whether the receiver of His goodness is even a believer doesn’t seem to matter, still the origin of all good things is the Lord himself. But as I wrote, it kept coming back to me that even things that appear difficult, even bad, are in the end vehicles toward good. We think of life being filled with dichotomies, but on further examination it becomes obvious that what at first looks wholly wrong is often the seed to what is beautifully right.

From the lowest of earthly places, in the rawness of a stable with the stench of dung with the non-sterile blanket of hay as a bed, the King of all Kings was first presented to his kingdom. It seems incongruous. But when you think about it the incongruity is part of the majesty of it. The place was undefiled by human hands, it was humble…and he came to live and work with the humble at heart because they were open to what he had to say. It was close to the simple soil of the earth, and to the creatures of that earth which he himself had created. The oldest soul among mankind, the first born of all the spirits of heaven, and therefore the eldest of all the spirits, came to take his throne in the new flesh of a baby.

The shape of the song became a study of contrasts, and I hoped to show how contrasting things become unified in Christ. At least that was my thinking. It probably doesn’t come across that way if you are listening for aesthetic pleasure. If that’s the case, then hopefully the song isn’t distasteful either. But there is more in the lyric if you care to find it.

We are given hard tasks, with long days of labor, and what does the Lord give us for that? Able hands. He doesn’t take away the hard; instead he gives us the ability to deal with it.

We, in our innocence, look at tiny dry seeds, unaware of what they can do, and He says, “Here, place them here. Push them down into the dirty place and give some care. Look what I will make of them.” It only takes one growing season for us to understand how that works. Soon we have whole fields full of amber grain.

When storms come, and there is no shelter to protect us, he gives us the ability to bend in the wind. There is a promise he made us that nothing will come upon us that we cannot, with his aid, survive. Corinthians 10:13.

You catch my drift, hopefully. I feel like explanation is turning into preaching and that is not what I want or intend.

I started writing this post this morning, before we took the kids to the egg hunt and before we colored eggs and before we had the movie night and before I made potato salad for dinner tomorrow. It’s time to let it go, quit analyzing and move on to other tasks. Since I started writing this morning Jason and Erica have delivered a fabulously beautiful dark haired 10 lb 2 oz daughter. Welcome, little one. We share the same air. I breathe you and you breathe me, eventually. We all breathe each other, in joy and sorrow. Same air, passed around, cleansed in the clouds and the sea and the rain.

It’s all good; and we know from whence it came.

All Good Things

CHORUS:

All good things
Great and small
King of Kings
He gave them all

Small boy – Old soul
Broken earth – made whole
Look now what the stable brings
Lord of Lords and King of Kings and…

CHORUS

Hard work – Able hands
Small seeds – Good land
Whole fields full of amber grain
Warm sun and Cool rain and…

CHORUS
Wind blows – willow bends
Heart breaks – Love mends
Lullabies on a winter night
Dark skies have starlight and…

CHORUS

Sun set, moon rise
First breaths; Last sighs
And everything in between
All come to good things and….

All good things
Great and small
King of Kings
He gave them all

Tag: King of Kings He gave them all

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IF YOU WERE MINE COMPLETELY

In 2000 the Seatrek Foundation commissioned me to write songs for an oratorio. The foundation was planning a worldwide celebration called SEATREK 2001 in honor of the Latter-day Saints’ answer to the call to gather in Zion from 1840 through 1868. Over 85,000 converts from Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles left all that was familiar and dear to cross a treacherous ocean, after which they picked up handcarts or purchased wagons and travelled another thousand miles of prairie and mountains before they arrived at the promised land…a desolate desert. The foundation gave me a wide creative berth, which was wonderful and awful at the same time. Having unlimited creative options can be overwhelming.

I decided it would best suit our circumstances to tell the story of the actual people who made that decision, then made that crossing. The foundation had planned a three week tour where tall ships would travel from port city to port city. There we would have a large exhibit telling the story of the saints, along with entertainment and a travelling genealogy library so people could research their ancestors. In the evening the oratorio would play in whatever concert hall aligned with that city; in Liverpool it was the Liverpool Cathedral, in Portsmouth it was Guild Hall, and so on. After the show there would be a grand fireworks display. The songs I wrote were to be orchestrated by Kurt Bestor, who would compose the score to go with them. Soloists from the Metropolitan Opera and Salt Lake City would sing, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir would play and sing. Pretty big stuff. So I felt a great weight of responsibility. In fact, I felt wholly incompetent. It became a problem. I mean seriously; I don’t even read music. I am not proud of this. I wish it were different. But it’s not. I kept telling Mark Robinette, who hired me in the first place (this is when we first got to really know each other), that he might want to find someone else. In retrospect, he probably should have found someone else. But if all we really got from it was our good friendship and the open door to performing together, well…that’s enough for me. Mark just kept telling me he knew I would find the right lyric for the right stories, and the music would flow with the lyric.

“But I am just a folk song writer.”

“Exactly!” Mark replied. “Do what you do best. Tell a story that will reach the center of people. Kurt can do the big flowery stuff.”

So there I was, commissioned with this daunting task, overwhelmed with the possibilities in storyline. I began reading. And reading…And then reading some more. I read ships logs, old diaries and journals, letters. The more I read the more amazed I was. These were normal people, with fairly common lives and thoughts and families and situations. What in the world would compel someone to leave their place of comfort and join strangers in such a far away desert? Like I shouldn’t know this already?

I was never asked to leave my home, or my family. I did not have to quit my job or sell my most precious things to pay for the passage. I have lived in comfort with my faith, relatively speaking. Sure I had my share of oppression, having grown up in Pennsylvania where some of our teachers looked closely at the top of our heads to see if there were nubs of horns. We were not invited to parties, we didn’t date much, we lived far away from our fellow saints. I was one of two Mormons in my high school class, and the other one was not all that active. That was the extent of my sacrifice, however. I don’t know what I might have done if it came down to deciding between my family and my faith.

In the interest of time I asked family and friends to read with me. We studied many books, and we used the Mormon Emigration Index, available at the Church Distribution Center. It is massive! And so interesting. Family and friends fed me the stories that were most compelling.

Eventually I had gathered a stack of writings from various people. A certain woman’s writings always seemed to rise to the top of the stack. I could tell, almost just by the style of her writing, if a collection of words quoted by someone in some book was originally written by her. Something valuable was left for us through the eyes of Jean Rio Baker. Jean was the wife of a fairly wealthy London accountant. She and her husband had seven children. They joined the church, in spite of rumblings from her family, and decided to sell their two homes and most of their goods to go to Zion, the area now known as Salt Lake City, Utah. Before they could leave, however, her husband died. Jean then had to make the decision again. Against the wishes of her extended family she sold her homes and goods and boarded the George W. Bourne in London with her children. She was able to purchase space to bring her piano with her. It was the first piano to come to the Salt Lake Valley and can currently be seen in the Church History Museum.

I wrote a few songs specifically after journal entries written by Jean. The one that gets to me most was written in my basement after a long day of fasting for direction. I was just not getting anywhere with this assignment, and I had no songs. I had journal entries, and ideas, but nothing was coming that fit. So I went to my basement, asked the family to leave me alone, and I lit candles all around me so that all light was natural. It was just me and my guitar and the flickering candle light, a pencil and a writing pad.

Whatever vehicles the Lord chose to use to help me, whether it be angels, or whisperings of the spirit, or just my imagination, I finally found the seeds to a song in the center of one of those flickering candle flames.

Jean Baker had written about the death of her youngest son, Josiah. He was four years old. She did not say what took his life, though we know he had been ill. What she did note were the exact longitudinal and latitudinal points where they committed his small body to its watery grave. That specific was so telling, and so wrenching to me.

I imagined having to do the same. I wept in the imagining. Sobbed, to be exact, there in my flickering space. Sometimes a good imagination can be so painful. And yet I read subsequent journal entries by Jean, and I could tell how she dealt with it. Her determination and her faith were unwavering through the whole journey. Despite her great losses, she still maintained her wonder at everything…the beauty of the stars at night, the quest for a bit of refinement in an unrefined setting. I was charmed by the fact that, when she was crossing the prairies in the Midwest, she would spy a farmhouse off in the distance. She would turn the reigns over to one of her sons and run up ahead, tea bags in hand. She’d knock on the door, hoping someone might be home for a mid-afternoon respite. “Would anyone here care for a spot of tea?” I can hear her say with her British accent, facing a wide-eyed farm-woman. She had no apologies, and she moved with grace and energy through more dirt and rawness than she might ever have imagined. I loved her. I felt like I knew her. When I imagined how she might have responded when her youngest son was taken from her, this is what I came up with:

If You Were Mine Completely

If you were mine completely

If you were mine alone

I would not let you leave me

I could not let you go

And Hope and Sorrow

Would not be so entwined

Oh, if you were mine completely

If you were only mine

Instrumental with voice over journal entry reading

Straight from your home in Heaven

Into my arms you came

How could I keep you here when

We heard them call your name

Now Hope and Sorrow

Cannot be taken away

Even if you were mine completely

I would not make you stay

No Hope and Sorrow

Would not be so entwined

Oh, if you were mine completely

If you were only mine

I believe that same faith that compelled Jean to leave her native land, to take company with strangers from different countries and different classes, to settle in a desert with little her money could buy…that same faith told her that this boy was not being left alone in a grave of water. He had gone back home, from whence he had come to her. He had once belonged to another, and he still belonged to another. He was not hers completely, though he was surely hers to love.

Hope assured her that she would see him again. Hope can abide alongside sorrow. It makes sorrow bearable. Mothers who have lost children know this. They are a distinctly noble group of people, being able to understand each other without a word. It’s a club no woman wants to join. But if there were some sort of support group for mothers who have lost children, it would be led by Mary. The same Mary who wrapped her baby in swaddling clothes; who took him dutifully to the temple; who kissed his cheek in a tender farewell when he left to enter the desert for 40 days and nights. This same woman stood by and watched as history turned on is side and changed the fate of mankind. I can hardly bear the thought of her kneeling at the base of the cross, her shoulders curled in around her heart, wondering herself why the Lord of all would not change this course. I can feel John’s arms wrap his cloak over her back as these words were spoken from the cross: “Woman, behold thy son…behold, thy mother.”

This song is for Jean Rio Baker. But today, this Good Friday, it is also for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Surely she knew that He was not hers completely. He belonged to God. And He permitted himself to belong to all of us. He is the giver of that Hope, and the comforter in that Sorrow. And because of Him, we are… none of us….completely our own.

**************

Following are from two separate recordings: The first three are narration, journal reading, and song from our Live Unplugged stage show, which we do occasionally with my folk artist friends. It’s pretty raw, and very “unplugged”. Following that is the oratorio version of the song, sung by Jennifer Welch-Babidge. Kurt asked me to write a preface for that, which you will also hear.

By the way, all that was imagined about the Seatrek adventure…the tall ships, the port city celebrations, the shows, the fireworks…it all happened. We had a glorious adventure travelling between cities for each show. Who gets so lucky to do this kind of thing?

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Here, as if you had not read enough already, is an article by Janine Creager in LDS Living Magazine about my writing of Saints on the Seas: http://ldsliving.com/magazine/show/2386/Saints-on-the-Seas