Some Pictures from My Son's Mission Field - Pohnpei, Micronesia

Above: This 12-year-old boy climbs coconut palms with ease. He took Taylor and his companion to a waterfall near his home.

Below: Pohnpei is a dense jungle and the second wettest place on earth with up to 400 inches of rainfall per year. It rains more or less daily there. (Fortunately, Taylor has always loved rain.)

Below: Taylor behind a giant leaf.

Below: Pohnpei is called "The Garden Isle of the Pacific." This is an orchid he came across. He is in the jungle area of the island (the south side).

Below: Pohnpei is near the equator so the temperature hovers around 90 degrees years-round. People spend all of their time outdoors, needing protection only from the rain. (They have almost no crime and no poisonous species of animals or insects.)

Some Day Brighteners

I saw the national weather report this morning -- frozen temperatures and ice everywhere, almost. So here are some amusing poems my daughter Emily discovered in a book we've had taking up shelf space since before she was born:

The Optimist (by Anonymous)

The optimist fell ten stories,
And at each window bar
He shouted to the folks inside,
"Doing all right so far!"

The Tiger (by John Gardner)

The tiger is a perfect saint
As long as you respect him;
But if he happens to say ain't
You'd better not correct him.

Humpty Dumpty (by Anonymous)

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again.

Mary Had a Little Lamb (by Anonymous)

Mary had a little lamb,
You've heard this tale before,
But did you know she passed her plate
And had a little more?

Housekeeping

Quite often my first thought of the day is also my most (and sometimes my only) brilliant thought of the day. Saturday I woke up with the word housekeeping in my head, which is not a complete thought in itself, but as I said the word aloud I realized for the first time that it's the second half of the word that's key: housekeeping. It's the 'keeping' that is so difficult.

For me, housekeeping is an art analogous to plate spinning. (During the Mulan parade at Disneyland ten years ago, I witnessed marching Chinese plate spinners managing six rotating plates per person at the ends of long wooden poles, three poles in each hand. It definitely left an impression.)


Anyone with enough motivation, gumption, energy, elbow grease, and chemicals can clean anything. Take, for example, a refrigerator, which can be rendered gleaming white and smooth regardless of its previous condition. The problem is a refrigerator has a door, and all of its contents are out of sight, out of mind. Within a matter of days, you can't find a place for the ketchup again and there's something brown and sticky on the your favorite shelf.


I love a clean house! But rather than having sound routines and good habits to maintain a clean home, I tend to clean in fits and spurts. I clean when the mood strikes me (thank goodness, it does occasionally) or in desperation or because company is coming. Sometimes I clean when I want to think about something. After an early morning confrontation with my son, who was then ten years old, I spent the school day deep cleaning his room. It gave me an opportunity to think about bridging the divide between us. He was surprised and delighted when he came home, and he knew that I loved him, which is, after all, the most important thing.


I've known and admired many excellent housekeepers over the years. My roommate's mother moved out of her house room by room every spring to thoroughly clean every square inch of it and all of its contents. Over-the-top? Maybe, but her home was truly a sanctuary.

Most great housekeepers whom I've observed seem to clean in stride. They don't walk through a room without putting something in place. They clear the table and wash the dishes immediately after the meal with lightening speed. Before bed each evening they tour the house putting everything right again after a day of living.


But I've known housekeepers, too, who are so obsessed with cleanliness that they and their families can't really live in their homes. They seem to have forgotten that a home is supposed to be a place of rest and refuge.

American Idol

This is the eighth season of American Idol, and the first one I have watched. I saw a few minutes of the preliminary competition last year, but I was discouraged by the unnecessary roughness of the judges. Why couldn't they issue a polite and succinct "Sorry, you're not what we're looking for" and let the wannabes leave with some self-dignity intact? I was so turned off I decided to turn it off.

By the end of the season, a local phenom was vying for first place, so our whole family started watching. (Scott knows and occasionally gigs with David Archuleta's dad, a professional trumpet player.) It was so hokey at times I felt like I was back in the '70s watching Donny and Marie, but I have to admit that despite all of my reservations I enjoyed it.

So this year when they started promo-ing the new season I decided to give it a try from the beginning. They've aired two episodes so far with a broad range of talent and I've learned something I had forgotten, or maybe never really believed but should have understood.

I've learned that you can't tell how well someone will sing by the way they look.

That got me thinking and I realized you can't tell how well someone will paint by the way they look...or how well they will write or how well they will do anything! We think that looks indicate something, and I suppose they do indicate SOMEthing, but they do not indicate talent.

Two more thoughts on American Idol, as a new fan of the show:

1) It might also be called American Idle, since so many millions of people watch it. I felt like a total couch potato watching 2-hour episodes TWICE this week!!!

2) Who am I to critique anyone else's voice? I do have an opinion and I think I can tell if someone sings well or not, but I'm not 'in the business.' That's part of the show's appeal, of course, and it works.

Laundry

I had an epiphany yesterday while I was writing my weekly letter to Taylor. As usual, I was summarizing what everyone in the family had been up to all week, and, as usual, laundry made the short but exciting list of activities I had been engaged in.

That's when it hit me: LAUNDRY IS AN ETERNAL PRINCIPLE. We can spend our whole lifetimes trying to understand it, trying to master it, trying to subdue the impulse not to do it, but it's there...It's always there.

I shared this insight with my husband, Scott, who immediately observed that laundry has been around since the Fall of Adam. It is apparently part of the curse.

Now I don't mind some things about laundry. There's almost nothing I like better than the smell of clean clothes fresh from the dryer (if they are soft, knit, and slightly static-y, like baby sleepers, all the better). If the rest of my house is clean and my life is in order, I actually enjoy doing laundry. It's almost a reward because it's something I can do while half-heartedly watching a movie on television or listening to a favorite radio show.

The problem is laundry is always at the bottom of my to-do list. Everything else seems more important...until there's nothing more important. It's feast or famine with laundry. In general, I lack patience, I lack energy...I don't have a fail-proof, rain-or-shine system...I don't have good laundry habits. There, I've said it. I have not perfected my testimony of laundry - I'm not living the principle - but I know it's true.

Movie Review: Bonneville, 2008

I was excited to see the movie "Bonneville" from the time I heard what it was about when it was released last summer. It's a road trip movie (and I almost always enjoy those) about 3 Mormon women traveling together, which sounded like an interesting premise. Unfortunately, despite both of these elements and some spectacular scenery (mostly in Utah), I really did NOT enjoy it. (Though it is a movie about Mormons, it was made by 20th Century Fox.)

So right now I am experiencing 'movie letdown.' This is a familiar sensation for me -- I buy into a movie scenario whole heartedly, imagining possible plot twists and character dynamics, but when I actually see the film, I discover that the screenwriter or director or actors (or all three) failed to live up to the concept's potential.

In the case of "Bonneville," I would pen the blame on the screenwriters. The actors did the best they could (Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen and Christine Baranski), which implies that the director was doing his job. The cinematography was excellent -- so it was the script that lacked substance and plausibility.

What exactly bothered me about the film?

• Carol, the most devout of the three women, was stereotypically uptight and humorless. In my own experience, devout people have depths of emotion. If anything, they take more meaning from life and experience it more profoundly.


• Marjean, the rebel, reveals her coffee and Scotch drinking habits to the other two women as soon as they've left Pocatello city limits. These are women she has supposedly been intimately acquainted with for decades.


• The whole purpose for the trip is never resolved. Never! Quite a disappointment after nearly two hours.


• Details...like driving away from Bryce Canyon when they're supposed to be driving toward it...Like dropping a hitchhiker off in the middle of no where...Like meeting up with a big rig trucker in three states and on schedule.


• Too much time spent mourning. It felt more like a drama than a comedy.

This review would not have discouraged me from seeing the film -- that's how much I wanted to see it. I have a feeling I will remember it more fondly with time.

In Search of Barbara Sanders, Teacher Extraordinaire

I've been searching for her for years on the web: Barbara Sanders, my eighth grade social studies teacher at Broadmoor Junior High School (now defunct, it's been turned into a mental health facility, which seems appropriate for a junior high). She was well educated, funny, professional, tough...I would love to be able to thank her lo, these many years later (30, to be exact) for giving me a greater thirst for knowledge than I will ever be able to quench.

I adored her in my shy-student way and tried to rise to the occasion on all of her tests and projects to impress her. While other students (even my best friend, Shawna) complained that she was too demanding, I relished her over-the-top assignments, her witty notes in the margins of my essays, and especially her "fast casts," a current events teaching method -- probably her invention -- which I have attempted to replicate when volunteering in my children's classrooms over the years.

At the beginning of every class, Mrs. Sanders stood at the chalkboard, her hand flying to print the essential facts and figures, names, terms, and acronyms of people and events in the news while we, her students, took notes. To this day, I have the major world events of 1977-1978 down. And she didn't just teach about what was happening at the moment -- she taught about how today's events evolved from events of the past. She conveyed the most brilliant and succinct summary of the conflict in the Middle East, for example, that I have ever heard.

I've tried Classmates.com and dozens of Google searches over the years to locate her. I've even made attempts to find her through the school district. Here are the facts I remember:

• Barbara Sanders (married name; husband rumored to be a banker in Kansas City)
• taught social studies at Broadmoor Junior High School in Overland Park, KS (Shawnee Mission School District)
• Eldest child named Tara
• African American
• Thin, attractive, professionally dressed
• Two unusual words she used frequently: cherub, esoteric

Mrs. Sanders, if you're out there somewhere, I salute you! Thank you for teaching me that history is an ongoing story and introducing me to the modern world in context of the past.