Heather and the Peanut

Heather is one of my step-daughters. She is called this because of the frequency with which I had to step over her in the middle of the floor. What better place to watch the tube, read Harry Potter, or get to know a boyfriend?

She enjoys throwing people off with little acts of insanity. But it really is just an act. I think. I'm pretty sure, anyway.

As with most of the young women among my ever-more-numerous relations, Heather has always been too cute for her own good. While she was still in high school, she was so constantly beset by the attentions of young men that she had to wear fake wedding rings and take a spare male friend along to repel boarders during her frequent trips to the store. I served in this capacity a couple of times. So did my boy, Hyrum. I even seem to recall dimly that she actually allowed herself to be seen in public with her brother Josh a few times rather than face the hordes of young men who were desperate for her attention.

Now Heather has a new hobby. His name is Peanut, for now, and he's about 14 weeks along, I think. Candid photos taken only yesterday by our agents in Virginia Beach verify that Peanut is in fact a boy and that he has not yet developed the habit of wearing clothes. In fact, anonymous witnesses tell us that he has been seen frolicking around the womb in a state of nature!

Motherhood does strange things to women. All at once, they begin to see themselves as authority figures. Sheryl tells me that Heather's latest edict to me makes me responsible for the selection of the child's first name. This will explain the likelihood of my being seen in coming days with my head stuck in volumes of ancient Germanic or Celtic lore, searching for a title of sufficient grandiosity for this little legume. Wish me luck. Cute she may be, but the wrath of Heather makes Khan look a little sick.

Posting Without Thought

I have a cold that would stop a moose. I'm tired, too. So I'll spare you another of my boring (but sincere) harangues tonight. Let's just look at some pictures of this past weekend. Dante came to see us, a minor miracle in itself. We also got to put him in the same room with his nieces and nephews whose clever costumes you just saw in Mary's blog. When we took him back to Mtn. Home, we stopped at the Perrine Bridge and at the Twin Falls Temple for photos. It's expensive and hard to get together with my fifth child, but it's always worth it. I love him greatly.

Our Own Members of "The Greatest Generation"

I've often been known to "beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries," but in reality, the only thing we're low on is money. We have everything else in abundance. This should be a big Thanksgiving for that reason alone.

The greatest of all great blessings is family. The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ makes that very clear. And we have a great family. I love to read all your blog posts, not to mention emails. I have never had lots of friends, but I have had a few very close ones. But in terms of family, I've been blessed with both abundance and quality! There isn't a single one of them whom I don't love and admire. Every child and grandchild, every niece and nephew, every sibling and in-law, and even every outlaw! (That's a private joke between me and Mary.)

Let me dwell for a moment on the subject of my parents. I love and admire them greatly. They sacrificed a great deal to join the Church, but they've always seemed to count it a privilege. They are members of what Tom Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation." So are Len's folks, Lynne's folks, Sheryl's folks, Shayne's folks, and many other people in or close to the family with whom I've had the privilege to associate in my life.

Brokaw called them this because of what they endured, accomplished, and built. This was a generation raised by survivors of "The Great War," 1914-18 (1917-18 for Americans except those who volunteered early for the air forces of other nations.) They saw and lived through The Great Depression, an event which seems to be growing more real in our imaginations all the time. They fought, financed, and endured The Second World War, the largest human conflict in 6,000 years of recorded human history.

After the war they built a nation which led the world in defending the peace which had been so hard won. Preserving peace does not consist of merely refusing to fight. It often consists of being the only one who is willing to continue to struggle with the forces of evil in the world. And evil is a very real thing in this world, regardless of what some might say. I believe that John Marshall is quoted as saying, "Peace does not come through avoidance of conflict but through the ability to deal effectively with it." So those who laughed at Reagan's "Peacekeeper" missiles and Sam Colt's "Peacemaker" sidearm were not being honest in their accusation of irony.

Our parents' generation was the one that funded and worked The Marshall Plan for Europe and similarly huge projects for Japan. Cynics and skeptics may say we did it for selfish reasons. They may say that we did it to ensure that we had healthy trading partners in order to secure our own economy. They may be right about that. But I ask, "So what? What is wrong with that? It is still the only thing of its kind that has ever been seen. And its immediate effects were anything but selfish on the part of the United States."

Our parents' generation literally rebuilt major nations which had tried to destroy the world and had come pretty close to doing it. They imposed on them democratic forms of government which most of their children have come to appreciate. (That Samurai who tried to take over the Japanese government in the seventies was jeered and hooted at by the very soldiers he had hoped to enlist in his absurd cause. No one ever more justly committed sepuku.)

Theirs was the generation that "stayed the course" as Mr. Reagan asked us to do. They are the ones who literally outfought, outspent, outworked and outlived the huge and powerful Soviet Union. It's so easy for today's doubters to say that the USSR was never much of a threat anyway since it didn't succeed in rendering every other nation on earth a "worker paradise." But if you lived through it, you remember that their desire to dominate the world was very real. If you lived through it, you recall that we often discussed - even in grade school - the very real possibility of waking up some day as a big, smoking hole in the ground!

When you add to these accomplishments the fact that we were raised in the Restored Church, you come to the inescapable conclusion that we are a blessed generation, more so than any which has yet lived.

The oldest living members of our family are truly "The Greatest Generation." May we remember that on this Thanksgiving Day and strive every day of our lives to be worthy of them.

Concentrating on the Good Stuff

Kali the Cuddly

The Book of Mormon in Croatian

Miss Sadie in the Wide, Wide World

Miles Brown and his Smile of Renown .


Seth and the famous face.

Lexi the Lilliputian.

Molly Susanne Haeberle

The One True Dix with her good husband, Zach.

We take lots of pills at our house. It's not as if we want to do this. The doctors insist. They seem to think that Type Two Diabetes and mini-strokes and being many pounds overweight and depressed over things you can't do anything about are bad things. Go figure!

But last night we had lots of fun. We ate supper with many members of the family in the Rexburg/St. Anthony area. My sweet niece Jennifer hosted the entire crowd at her home in Rexburg. The food was good. The company was even better. I'll attach some of the photos we took last night just in case anyone doubts how cute the kids are in our clan.

One more thing! Some of you know that I have a young Macedonian friend. His name is Mojso Popovski. He is 26 years old and has expressed interest in the Church and in the Book of Mormon. Earlier today I called our local Pocatello Mission office and asked them to order a copy of the Book of Mormon in one of the three languages Mojso says he can read: Serbian, Croatian, and Albanian. It has not yet been translated into Macedonian.

A few hours later, the same sister called me back to say that they had found a Croatian copy of the Book of Mormon in the basement of the mission office! No, I don't believe in coincidences any more, either. I believe that the Lord had it waiting there, perhaps for years, against the day He knew was coming when we'd need to have it for His work. I hope you'll all pray for my young friend Mojso so that he'll get a testimony of the truth of the Book of Mormon as he reads it.

Cicero Endorses History

Tomb of Andrew & Rachel Jackson

The Hermitage, Tennessee, summer 1990

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."

Cicero, Roman Senator

I always had this on the wall of my classroom, over by the door. Surely everyone saw it a couple of times at least during the course of a school year. It's true, you know. Children, especially little children, are so limited in their awareness of things outside their own bodies and their own experience, that they actually think that other people exist only when they are awake. That trait is cute in a baby. But we expect folks to grow out of that. When people in their mid to late teens still see others and the efforts of others as existing for their own entertainment, those children are lost as useful members of society.

How will new citizens become informed about the past which built our present? Less and less money is set aside from school district budgets for the so-called "core classes," so called because they are recognized as being basic to a person's function in society. History and other Social Studies are often thought of as disposable or as of secondary importance. This bothered me for the two decades I spent trying to instill an appreciation for History into the hearts and minds of people who were leaving childhood and about to be held responsible for the status of the nation. I had some success. A few kids over the years reported back to me that they sill loved History. A few more actually went so far as to go into History themselves, giving me the credit for their choice. Pretty thrilling flattery.

But for every one like that in our society, there are dozens who can't tell you the difference between the Revolution and the Civil War. The can't tell you what the Civil War was about. They can't name any major battles in any of our major wars.

I think I've spotted a key difference between them and my generation. Fewer of them read. Kids from my generation are likely to run across historical facts which repeat things they've learned, because they read lots of different things. Many kids today don't read. I can guarantee you that many of today's kids CANNOT read. Someone has said, "Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't." How literally true!

Have you ever seen Jay Leno do his little segment called "Jay Walking?" He asks people on the street basic question about current events and about history or the constitution. They often betray an embarrassing lack not only of knowledge but of interest in these things. Once he even did the segment on the USC campus. Only a relative few of the students stopped could name who is on the one dollar bill or the five or the ten. They confuse one war with another, Austria with Australia, and the names of states with the names of cities. It's actually pretty upsetting for a patriot to watch this sort of thing, even though it's presented as humor.

They don't know who the vice president is. They sometimes provide the names of famous entertainers when asked for the names of important pubic officials. I don't know what will cause America's youth to become a proud nation of readers and informed citizens. Indeed, so many people today seem to be embarrassed to have much knowledge. They' don't want to offend the crowd which seems so bent on becoming the least informed generation to date.

There were many generations which came and went in this country which were populated by persons for whom demonstrating knowledge was as important as showing off physical prowess. My father-in-law has worked with his hands all his life. But he prides himself on his knowledge of political and military history, both during his 79 years and before them.

We need once again to take pride in doing that which is good. We need to be willing to be the one who stands out from a crowd by not believing what the crowd chooses to believe and by speaking up for that which is morally right. We need to be willing to sacrifice friendship and popularity for a clean conscience. History is replete with such people. If you read it, they'll demonstrate to you how hard it is to stand up for that which is right. Sometimes they lived to be cheered by the same people who once shunned and persecuted them. Sometimes the were not vindicated in their righteous attitude until many ears after their deaths.

The great Frederick Douglass, former slave, abolitionist, political organizer, and powerful public speaker, had a leonine head and fiercely piercing eyes. This is what he said on the subject of choosing the right without regard to what others think:

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence."

We are taught to seek wisdom out of the best books. Biographies and Histories can often be among the very best. I know.

I Warned You

In my first post I warned all those who might show such questionable judgment as to read my blog that they should expect lots of quotations from people like Colonel Jeff Cooper. I got one from Clark a day or two ago, and I like it:

There is no political answer to the problem of evil. Evil is a moral problem best handled by religion. If we have no morals and no religion, we can do nothing collectively about evil. Individually, of course, we can shoot.

Jeff Cooper

October, 1989

Richard Jordan, Underrated Actor

Back when Joseph was just a twinkle in our eyes, Shayne and I spent a Saturday at the mall (there was only one back then) in San Bernardino, or San Berdoo as most of the people at George AFB called it. We had just been paid, so we were naturally spending freely. We had bought lunch and decided to take in a movie before driving back to Victorville. The theater was in the mall, but it was much smaller and less awe-inspiring than theaters of today. The film was a new one called Rooster Cogburn and The Lady. We were fans of both Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne, but we'd never seen them together before and thought it might be fun.

We soon found that the character John Wayne was playing was the same fellow he'd played a few years before in True Grit. That had been the only film I'd ever seen up to that time that used true nineteenth century speech and language style. I've seen a couple of others since, but they're pretty rare.

Well known character actors were seen throughout this great new Western. But the chief antagonist was a new face to me. Cogburn refers to him once as "a mean, blue-eyed villain." Typing those words puts me in mind of what someone said of Lt. Gen'l. T.J. Jackson. He called him "a pious, blue-eyed killer." Succinct, pithy, and accurate. But I digress. Former students will know just how easily and frequently I do that.

Richard Jordan's bad guy was an unhesitating killer with a constant impatience which led him to kill his own men as casually as he killed those who were guarding the shipment of nitro glycerine he was after. He even went so far as to kill Anthony Zerbe's character for not killing Cogburn when he had a chance. I mentioned this to Zerbe that time he came to Ricks College to read poetry with Roscoe Lee Browne. "I didn't wind up too well in that one, did I?" he said, smiling.

Jordan's cold-bloodedness and boundless confidence lent the film a tension it would not otherwise have had. Set-backs could enrage but never deter him from his wicked goals. When Cogburn and his two compani0ns manage to steel a Gatling gun from his camp, Jordan's character shouts down the hill at them through the night air, "You've got the gun, but you ain't got the know-how to use it!" Katharine Hepburn ("Miss Goodnight") liberally sprays the hillside with .45-70 Government ammunition, cutting down trees, blowing up rocks, and sending all the bandits under cover. "Ain't that how it works, Hawk?" Only John Wayne could gloat in such a casual, American way.

A couple of years later I saw Richard Jordan again, this time in a late show on TV. It was one of the many good films I'd never heard of, because they came out during my time in Italy. It was a great western, too. Valdez is Coming! Bob Valdez, a quiet, unassuming Mexican-American sheriff in a border town gradually comes to see that the only way for good to triumph is for him to dig out the trappings of his youth as a scout for the American Cavalry and start hunting the cattle baron whose greed and duplicity have caused all the problems in the first place. Richard Jordan played a rotten kid who started out on the wrong side and almost didn't change his ways in time. Again, he was so believable! I had known oily, sneaky kids like that.

The years passed and I would occasionally recognize Jordan in something else. Never did he disappoint. Never did he give anything but a seriously professional performance. He even played one of my favorite literary heroes, Dirk Pitt, in a film I only saw part of called Raise the Titanic, based on the novel by Clive Cussler.

The last two performances I saw him do were in a couple of great films, again based on good books. Tom Clancy's novel, The Hunt for Red October , saw Jordan playing the oft-repeated Clancy character Jeffrey Pelt, National Security Advisor to the unnamed POTUS. He put on a lovely southern accent for this one which lent a marvelous charm to some of his most quotable lines. Early in the film, he tells the protagonist, "Dr. Ryan, I'm a politician, which means that when I'm not kissin' babies, I'm steelin' their lollipops." After the Soviets have been fooled into thinking that the submarine Red October has been destroyed, the Soviet Ambassador comes humbly, hat in hand, to Jeffrey Pelt to ask for aid in locating another submarine, a hunter/killer type, which the Americans know perfectly well has been sunk. But Jordan's character is all sympathy. "Oh, Andrei! You've lost another submarine!"

While he was dying of cancer, Richard Jordan played his best, most moving role, that of Brigadier General Lewis "Lo" Armistead, CSA. He positively shines in three major scenes. On the night of 2 July 1863 he tells Lt. Gen'l James Longstreet of his great love for Maj. Gen'l Winfield Scott Hancock, USA, against whom he must help to lead a charge the next day. He speaks rapturously of his admiration for Hancock's wife, Elmira, with whom he, Armistead, had once been in love. He reminisces about their last night together in a fort in California. "And I said, 'Win, if I ever raise my hand to you, may God strike me dead.' " It was perhaps the finest portrayal of brotherly love I've ever witnessed.

The next day, 3 July 1863, a Friday if memory serves, sees Armistead explaining the motives of all the young men who are about to die in the terrible event which today is called "Pickett's Charge." Colonel Freemantle, Queen Victoria's military attache' and author of a book back home in England which helped the British understand the American civil war, listens very respectfully to Armistead's slow, reverent description of the southern men and their simple faith in their cause. It was a scene that some actors would have been tempted to overdo. But Richard Jordan actually makes the viewer feel the sacred privilege so many of the Rebels felt they were receiving in the opportunity to die for their "country" - Virginia.

As he prepares to lead his men on foot, Lewis Armistead quietly bows his head and quotes his Savior. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." I still recall with joy the one little Junior girl in my class who said, "Hey! That's what Jesus said."

At the end of their one mile walk into certain destruction, Gen'l. Armistead places his hand on a Union field gun and begins to urge the men of his brigade to turn the guns around on their enemy. At that moment he is hit by a Minie'-ball. When told by his captors that General Hancock has also been wounded, his grief is palpable. He dies two days later.

Richard Jordan died before the film Gettysburg could be finished. Knowing this makes his part in Pickett's charge all the more poignant to me.

There are many people of the past whom I look forward to thanking for the inspiration they have given me. Many of them were martial men. Many were politicians. A few were scientists. Many were prophets and apostles. A few were actors. In this last group, I can think of no one who reached me as did Richard Jordan.

The Wrath of Miss Sadie

Sheryl's former USMC daughter, Hannah, and her devil-dog companion, Erik, drove to SLC today so that she could be looked after by VA physicians. Our duty was to pick up Lola, Erik's big baby Rottweiler, from day care. We did so.

At maybe 7 months of age, Lola is already a lumbering giant compared to the tiny canines which inhabit our humble domicile. She weighs 53 pounds and has a lot of growing to go yet. Her vigorous affection can knock a man down if he's not careful.

When we got her home, Mico, as he's done before, tried to avoid her. Sadie, however, failed to notice that the offending creature who had the audacity to enter her dwelling was 25 times her size. She tried repeatedly to engage Lola in vigorous play. She was ignored. When Erik and Hannah finally arrived about 9 pm, Lola decided to get playful. This made Sadie a bit nervous, and she ran for Sheryl's lap.

Lola did not recognize this as the sanctum sanctorum which it has always been for our dogs. She ambled straight at Sheryl's knees and received quite a shock. Miss Sadie charged her, not once but several times, fairly screaming her rage each time. Her growl was so high pitched that she sounded a lot like an angry cat rather than a dog. Lola, still thinking it was all in fun, kept returning to the forbidden area. And every time Sadie would charge her with abandon, seeming to be fed up with the audacity this interloper was showing. At first, we four humans only stared agape at this phenomenal behavior. When it showed no sign of stopping, we all began to laugh helplessly. Sadie was pushing her back 4 or 5 feet each time!

After the kids left, taking Lola with them, we retired to bed. The pups took up their accustomed places on the bed as we held our prayer. Sadie curled up into her furry ball self. In that condition, she's not much bigger than the average baseball. We had to laugh again when we realized anew that this tiny creature, weighing in at 2.3 pounds on her last visit to the vet, had unhesitatingly charged a 53 pound Rottweiler and lived to forget about it by bedtime. We are looking at her with newfound respect.

Nice Day for It!

I spent a few hours at the public range today. I am of the opinion that those who have never had the pleasure of blowing up a water-filled milk jug from 100 yards away with a high-powered rifle cannot truly be said to have lived. I'm borrowing that phraseology from an old gun writer from Lewiston named Jack O'Connor. He said it regarding the experience of trying to hit a running cottontail with a semi-automatic .22 rifle. And he was basically right. But for me, it's the joyful experience of hydrostatic shock that seems to impart more life to life.

Water, like everything else, tends to remain at rest unless acted on by some outside force. Today's force was a .366" diameter bullet weighing 286 grains and moving in the neighborhood of 2,400 fps (feet per second.) Robert Jones, a former student and longtime friend of mine, actually managed to get a photograph of the moment of explosion one time when I ventilated a milk jug with extreme prejudice on the desert west of Rexburg. I was using a .223 that day. Tiny bullet, lots of speed. If I can find that photo, I'll stick it in the old blog some day. It's the kind of picture that makes a guy smile. Thousands of droplets of water are stopped in the act of escaping in all directions at astonishing speed. A little of the jug and it's yellow lid are visible, to remind the viewer of what it once was.

Once of the rifles I used today in this worthy pursuit was my CZ 550 American in 9.3x62mm. Its bullets are of .366" diameter. This makes it a "medium bore" rifle, larger than .30 caliber (.308") and smaller than .40, 41, and .45 caliber rifles and larger which are generally known as "big bores." My cartridge, the 9.3x62mm, was designed in 1905 by Otto Bock, an employee of the great Peter Paul Mauser, himself! The idea was to provide a cartridge that would feed through an action of the same length as that employed by the German 8x57 mm military cartridge, but which would throw larger, heavier bullets at African game with sufficient force to topple them, thus freeing German colonists and hunters from the humiliation of having to use British rifles and cartridges.

A picture of the "medium bore" can be seen above on the left. As you can well imagine, the little rifle kicks pretty hard, but I've felt worse. Besides, this one has such a wonderful trigger, and tends to shoot almost all ammunition with acceptable or more than acceptable accuracy. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Aric Armell set a bright green golf ball on the 100 yard dirt berm. I asked whether he minded if I had a go at it. He graciously consented, assuming that I'd miss and he'd get to plink at it with his . 22 WMR Marlin bolt rifle. As he watched, he says,the dirt berm "seemed to swallow up the ball." It hasn't been seen since.

That was done with a 270 grain semi-pointed bullet by Speer. I rezeroed today for a 286 grain Nosler Partition bullet. This renders the rifle the equal of anything on the American continent. It pleases me to own such a thing. My friend Clark Myers also has a medium bore rifle. His is one of Colonel Jeff Cooper's famous scout rifles, the "Lion Scout" in this case. It shoots bullets of .375" diameter. Its cartridge is called the .376 Steyr, named for the Austrian firm which builds the rifles. It, too, renders one the equal of any creature on the continent. Belonging to the "medium bore" club is an unending and unalloyed joy for me. You ought to try it.

Brag Blog: Joseph & Mary's Kids as of 14 November 2008.

It takes no eloquence to praise our grandchildren. We simply open the wallet - or the blog - and the pictures fall out and we are satisfied. There is nothing better about getting older than being a grandparent.

Dallin, the highly literate.

Eliza, the highly silly.
Andrew, the happy cowboy.

Matthew who is now 3.

Molly , who strongly reminds me of her grandmother Shayne.

Concerns for Miss Sadie

Miss Sadie with Sheryl

At a little over six months of age, Miss Sadie weighed in today at 2 pounds, 3 ounces. This alarmed us, because when we first got her more than a month ago, she weighed 2 lbs., 6 0zs. I guess this would be comparable to me losing 30 or 40 pounds in a month. A good thing, but done a bit too quickly. And Sadie didn't need to lose any weight! She has grown visibly, being maybe an inch taller and an inch longer than when we first got her. And she eats two meals per day. But still she had lost weight.

The lady who seems to be our vet now sent Sheryl home today with a bag of expensive food which Sadie is supposed to eat 4 times per day! Mico is not to be given any of it, because he's a middle-aged adult, already prone to carry too much weight, rather like his owners, and would inevitably balloon up to frightening proportions, says the vet, on this diet.

Sadie, on the other hand, seems to have the metabolism of a hummingbird. She must eat the new stuff four times each day and be kept still for a half hour after each meal so she doesn't run too much of the food off. This part made sense to me. She does like to run around a lot. What a contrast to when we first brought her home!

She would stand still exactly where she was put down, looking warily around at everything and everybody, seemingly afraid to make a move or a sound. Now she tries to body-slam Mico, the 9 pound Maltese whom she dethroned as the chief citizen of the house. He resents her intrusion, but for the life of him, he can't help playing the older and wiser protector for her.

Hannah was here for a while early this evening. Her Siamese was let out of its little cage and placed on the kitchen floor. Mico was curious about her but politely wary. Sadie, however, growled at her and began to advance on her with all the confidence in the world. We were grateful that the cat retreated under the table. It weighs 6 pounds!

Only the grass still seems to hold any terror for our "Sadie, Sadie, Puppy Lady." This is apparently because some of it is taller than she is.

Choosing Ignorance

Joseph choosing knowledge.

In 1956 I began kindergarten in the classic way, with a scary German lady as my teacher. It's a German word, after all. Garden of Children. I didn't really recognize how scary she was until I was about 7, maybe 8, and took swimming from her. I could do a lot of things she asked us to do in the Franklin, Tennessee municipal pool, but actually putting my face in the water was not one of them. She had an assistant in the swimming class, a boy of about 12 who had the confidence of age and size so that we could all tell that he was infinitely superior to us.

One day during the class, while I was struggling to do something that the teacher had asked of us, she waded up behind me, grabbed my head, and shoved me under the water. When I got back to the surface, coughing and probably crying, she chastized me for not ever having done this same thing myself. As I squeezed water out with my clenched eyelids, I opened them on a scene which has ever remained with me. The boy, the 12 year old, was sitting on the edge of the pool and laughing at me. This made the experience all the worse, of course.

I could never enjoy the classes after that. On the days when I would have to go, I would get a sick feeling in my stomach and hope fervently that something would prevent my having to go. I don't recall how I lived through the classes. I do know, however, that I did not learn to swim there. We were in Idaho, a couple of years and a couple of thousand miles removed from the scene of this terror and humiliation , before I began, ever-so-gradually, to teach myself to swim. Eventually, I succeeded.

All my life I've been easily hurt by the derision of anyone who thought I should have some ability or some knowledge that I did not yet have. Sometimes that sensitivity has extended so far as to include my family, all my friends, or even my whole nation. The first time I read George Bernard Shaw's quotation on American ignorance of geography, I was a little miffed. But I finally laughed and have laughed at it many times since. He said, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Perhaps the rebuke was justified. I don't know. But I understand better than he did why we had become that way. We had spent many generations, by the time GBS began writing great plays and poking fun at others, concentrating on building up a mighty nation which had not previously existed. Kids who had learned a fair amount of geography in grammar school would have forgotten about the non-American parts by the time they showed up in France in 1917 as part of the AEF. Our British and French allies could hardly imagine that we didn't know the names of certain cities, rivers, farming zones, disputed areas, etc. How could we be so ignorant? Yet those same doughboys could probably have rattled off the names of all the states and of all the counties in their own states. As we grow up, our experience and our limited time almost force us to choose knowledge of some subjects, ignorance of others.

Sometimes knowledge and ignorance are assigned to us by higher powers. In 1957 the Russians, who already possessed 15 satellite nations, launched another satellite into space. It was called Sputnik, and it scared us to pieces. I recall hearing the word mentioned almost constantly for a while.

It took more than a year for the Americans to catch up to this scientific and technological achievement. I remember very clearly riding in the car up to a high spot outside Franklin, or maybe closer to Nashville, to see a satellite which had been launched by our people. There were lots of cars and lots of families on that hill. By one accord, all the lights were turned off and everyone pointed and oohed and aahed as the bright, tiny object zipped overhead again and again. The thrust of our amazement seemed to be that the thing which was living in a balance between speed and gravity had been built and sent up there by people. Sputnik had been explained to us as being a "baby moon." Now we had one of our own.

We had no idea what a big impact on our young lives this "space race" would cause. Aesthetic things like literature, poetry, history, and geography were seen by many in government and in the private sector as being wastes of time, effort, and money. What was needed to keep us from being wiped out by accurately placed ballistic missiles launched from Soviet-controlled territory was a generation of kids who specialized in math and science. We didn't feel it right away, but things began to change. More and more older kids chose to major in math, science and other technical things when they got to college. More and more kids were going to college. And the things I enjoyed most, such as reading for the pleasure it gave me, were frowned on in some circles, sort of ignored in others.

This belief that the patriotic thing to do was to study and specialize in technical things certainly did work. Our space program, until recently at least, was the wonder and the envy of the world. So was our R&D of weapons and weapons delivery systems. And I'm not criticizing our accomplishment in these areas, either in space research or in mililtary technology, especially the latter. No less a soldier than Dwight David Eisenhower, after all, had taught us that "Good defense is not cheap defense." It takes concentrated effort and great expense to be ready for anything in a world which just might throw anything at you.

But in the late sixties and continuing through today, we have seen admissions officers in colleges around the nation express "shock and awe" (Thanks, Mr. Bush. I liked that one.) at the degree of utter ignorance we displayed about literature which was a basic part of our national identity. They were stunned that many of us didn't know the history of our own country or the names of a couple of New England states. Some people were applying for admission to college who could not read above a third grade level.

Almost none of them could tell you what Hamlet, MacBeth, or other Shakespeare plays were all about. Some of them thought they knew the story of Romeo and Juliet, but even those kids had somehow missed the chief points of the dramas. The ones who had only seen modern remakes of R&J probably thought that Verona Beach really was a town near LA where two families were wiping out each other with constant "drive-bys." No one had ever told them that Gaius Julius Caesar grew up in a republic and that his "ambition" was a threat to what little was left of that democratic tradition.

Today, many people seem to be choosing to be ignorant of virtually everything. If it doesn't entertain them, feed them, or help them feel good, many of them are simply not interested. I could wish that more of them had read the line that Marion D. Hanks quoted in a talk in October of 1968:

"Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say NO to one's self."

How sweet it would be for more of us to say "no" to that which will weaken or stupify us and "yes" to the kinds of literature, music, art, and yes, science and math which will strengthen us and make us useful and happy.

A Thought from Damon Runyon

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

Damon Runyon

Highland High Honks

I went more than fifty years without ever having a sister-in-law. I had been blessed with three brothers-in-law named Hartsell and one named Green, but nary a sister-in-law could be found. But my uncommonly wise decision to marry Sheryl in 2002 let me have that experience for the first time. My sister-in-law is a pretty good kid.

Teresa

Her name is Teresa Bosen. She and her husband, Doug, both teach at Highland High in Pocatello. He teaches economics and golf. He's even a semi-pro golfer and bought a house which backs onto a golf course. That's devotion! Teresa teaches drama and theater and all that good stuff. Tonight we got to attend her new production called HONK!

It is a musical retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen classic about the ugly duckling who was mistreated because of his appearance, only to become one of the most beautiful creatures in nature in the fulness of time. The writing is clever. Ida, the mama duck, reproaches her lackluster husband, Drake, with the comment, "A duck shouldn't look sheepish. It confuses the other animals."

The music is good, too, especially a couple of numbers like Warts and All and Look at Him. In the former, a frog tries to cheer up the ugly duckling by convincing him that , some day, someone will love him, "warts and all." Look at Him is a song to stir the audience's empathy with someone who is persecuted for being different. Another song on the same theme is called Different.

All the major parts are well played in the Highland cast. The voice of Ida, the duckling's mother, is a powerful instrument which seems to find the right notes and hold them as long as necessary. I suspect some professional training there. The duckling is also played by a good singer who also plays his part to the hilt.

A boy named James Carter so captivated the audience as the villainous cat which is constantly plotting to eat the duckling, that he received excited applause and cheers when he came out for his curtain call. Honestly, I don't know how a professional actor could have improved on his performance. A female cat and a hen, who inexplicably cohabitate in a farmhouse together, are also very well done.

Costumes were cleverly done. The barnyard's tom turkey was wearing a black top hat and a gorgeous red tailcoat. The male swans wore white tuxedos. Their female counterparts wore eighteenth century French dresses and wigs. A blue jay who worked as a TV reporter, was all ready for a role in Mark Twain's Jim Baker's Bluejay Yarn, sporting an all blue tuxedo and top hat.

Now it's time for a little nepotism. We have a niece by marriage named Sidnie who was a cute kid when we first met her but has since become one of the most naturally beautiful young women one could imagine. Her face is of world class loveliness. Her skin complements perfectly her lush, red hair. She played one of the duckling's siblings, and, as always, charmed me half to death.

Vickie Wilde with her daughter, Sidnie.

I wish I could encourage you to see the play, but, alas, tonight was the last performance. But, the next time Highland High produces a play, you might seriously consider a trip to Pocatello. That sister-in law knows what she's doing.