Preparing for the Christmas Season

It's the Christmas Season. It really is. I see decorations up. I hear Christmas music on the radio. I've come across Christmas movies on TV. I see people helping each other out. The weather's getting brisk. It's truly the Christmas Season.

There are several things we do to prepare for Christmas. We set up our decorations both inside and outside. We look for gifts for our friends and family. We may go around and sing carols to your friends and neighbors, delivering a little gift as you go. Perhaps you have a Christmas Advent calendar. Maybe you begin reading all your Christmas books and stories. Possibly you read Luke 2. We may sing and hum about Santa and his reindeer or about how beautiful the first Christmas was. You might go to a soup kitchen and serve a meal. Or maybe go to a nursing home and sing carols. Sometimes you may have a huge meal with family and friends. There's a great many things we do to prepare for Christmas.

Missionary Poetry

I've mentioned previously that I don't like most poets; that Billy Collins is my favorite and I enjoy Robert Frost. Yet, now I have another to add to this list of poets I like.
My Young Adult Literature class had required that I have 25 cards on which I had written about 25 different books. The cards were to be 4x6, and I just so happened to pick blank ones. Thus, when finishing the assignment I had 75 4x6 blank indexcards that I had no idea what to do with. They've been sitting on my desk for a few days.
This same class required that I look up and bring a poem to class, and that's when I told all of you about Billy Collins and some of his poems. In the midst of this assignment, as I glanced at 75 huge blank cards, I was impressed with an idea.
Hallmark cards, or any professional cards for that matter, usually have a little poem or thoughtful/humorous message. I thought, Hey! I have 75 huge blank indexcards... I can totally make cards and send them out to my friends on missions!
As a result I googled Missionary Poems. There isn't a lot out there. But I finally did find an excellent source. My Mormon Mission Poems: a Witty Poem a Week for 2 Years. Written by Russell Elkins and first published December 2006, it is the most hilarious thing I've read for awhile. Elkins served his mission in Guatemala and these poems seem to be truly expressing his feelings on the matter. On the copyright page he says:

Feel free to use the poems for anything you see fit, but if you ever claim them as your own or somehow figure out how to make money off of them, I’ll hunt you down and rhyme you to death.

 I haven't bought the book for it's cheap price (though I think it would be worth it), but I was able to download it for free. Thus began my reading of the poems. They seem to give a true sense of a mission.
I found some that I liked and decided to print them onto a few of my huge blank indexcards. After they were printed, I wrote on the other side of the card, put them in an envelope, and mailed them off. I hope they appreciate the gesture.
These are some of the poems I've gotten around to reading:


Canonized Meals
Many just cook us simple things
And that’s more than just fine
‘Cuz many people think like
The 3rd verse of Genesis 9
    The things my comp can stand
    Aren’t all the same as me
    But we don’t talk about it much
    After reading Romans 14:3
Sometimes one of us gets sick
And what he ate is what he blames
There is only one thing to do
And that’s in 5:14 of James
    Sometimes when elders get sick,
    To the bathroom they’ve gotta run
    But God won’t heal who stays in there
    Alma 60:21
If you are not exactly sure
You understand what I mean
It is well explained once again
In Jeremiah 4:19
    There is always an alternative
    When the food does not satisfy
    This is what the scriptures teach us
    In 19:20 of 2 Nephi



Another Food Poem
In the past ya’ll got in the mail
A few of my precious rhymes
About how we eat lunch with members
And how bad it is sometimes
    Elder Lesueur and I developed a plan
    That has risks that aren’t few
    But it’s more than worth the gamble
    Let me tell yous what we do
If the people have a dog
Then that takes care of the fuss
Dogs were put here for a purpose
To help ease the burden on us
    There’s still hope without a dog
    We can still make them think we ate
    We stick what we can fit in our pockets
    And leave the rest on one plate
The next part’s kind of hard
Cuz the cook you’ve gotta trick
The one still with food says he’s full
Cuz lately he’s been sick
    If they start to catch on
    There’s one thing that never hurts
    And that’s to make sure you both
    Have gotten some on your shirts


It’s Not All In the Wrists
Back in the states I didn’t think much
Of the music director up on the stand
Here in Guat the calling is so much more
Than just standing, waving the hand
    Often times members’ voices start to drift
    From the top to the bottom of their vocal range
    The director helps ‘em jump keys in unison
    So that they all sorta make the same key change
It’s the chorister’s decision to decide
Which notes to hold extra and those cut in half
Despite what the congregation wants to sing
Or what the artist wrote on the staff
    The chorister takes all the parts written down
    And decides which parts need fixed
    The chorister won’t do this with every verse
    Just the ones the chorister picks
I hope you realize now the importance
And that ya can’t just use any bum off the street
If ya follow their direction, you’ll be fine
Just don’t watch his hand or you’ll lose beat

Poetry

I used to have a strong dislike for poetry. Really. The only ones I rather enjoyed were Robert Frost's; and that's only because of how famous they were and the fact I had read them before learning about them in school.

Last year, however, I discovered that I could actually learn to love poetry, beginning with having a tolerance for it. For my Young Adult Literature class I'm required to find a poem or an excerpt of a play or some such, and I remembered last year and my newfound tolerance for poetry because of a poet I couldn't remember the name of.

Thus, digging through my journals of the pervious year in the approximate time frame I learned about him in class, I found him! His name is Billy Collins; someday, I'll purchase a book of his poems for myself.

His poems are rather clever and simple and easy to understand as well as amusing. I'd like to think that I can actually identify with them versus so many other poems that I just can't comprehend at first, second or third glance. 

Here are some of his poems that I am particularly partial to:

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light 

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means. 

Japan

Today I pass the time reading

a favorite haiku,

saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating

the same small, perfect grape

again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it

and leave its letters falling

through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.

I say it in front of a painting of the sea.

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,

then I say it without listening,

then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,

I kneel down on the floor

and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell

with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating

pressure of the moth

on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,

the bell is the world

and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,

I am the heavy bell

and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,

you are the bell,

and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown

from its line

and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

Thesaurus

It could be the name of a prehistoric beast

that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up

on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,

or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury, but it is just a place

where words congregate with their relatives,

a big park where hundreds of family reunions

are always being held,

house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,

all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;

hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy

all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,

inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile

standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother close

to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.

And every group has its odd cousin, the one

who traveled the farthest to be here:

astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven

syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.

Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.

I rarely open it, because I know there is no

such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous

around people who always assemble with their own kind,

forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors

while others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, away

from their families and the warehouse of Roget,

wandering the world where they sometimes fall

in love with a completely different word.

Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever

next to each other on the same line inside a poem,

a small chapel where weddings like these,

between perfect strangers, can take place. 

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

It seems these poets have nothing

up their ample sleeves

they turn over so many cards so early,

telling us before the first line

whether it is wet or dry,

night or day, the season the man is standing in,

even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.

Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune

on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.

"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"

is another one, or just

"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with

"In a Boat on a Summer Evening

I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.

It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying

My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here

as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"

"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.

No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning

to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"

is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"

is a servant who shows me into the room

where a poet with a thin beard

is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine

whispering something about clouds and cold wind,

about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,

to sit down in a corner,

cross my legs like his, and listen.

Alcatraz verses the Evil Librarians: Book Review

I loved this book. It was one of those books that gets you to think in a different way. The "author" of this book is actually the character Alcatraz Smedry. He says the book is actually autobiography rather than fiction and he went by the name Brandon Sanderson rather than his own as "both are guises to hide the book from Librarian Agents". One would assume that this book is about a boy who hates to read and has some sort of conflict with librarians, but of course, that is assuming that our normal frame of reference is the definition for these librarians. In this book, the Librarians are actually the people from the country of Libraria. The Librarians have taken over all of the world. Well, the world that we know of. See, the Librarians are for controlled information; information is power. Thus, every country we (the readers) have heard of is actually under the slavery of the Librarians, but no one knows it. Except those in the Free Kingdoms (continents that we from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia have never hear of, because the Librarians have kept the information from us).
The book has a good plot, but it's the style of the writing that I'm extremely impressed with.
I believe that this book could be presented to those who think literature is boring, dull, and a method of torture. The author, Alcatraz, thinks so too. He's trying to tell everyone that he is not a very nice person, writing the books proves it. "Ask yourself this: would any decent, kindhearted individual become a writer? Of course not. I know how the story ends. ... But I am not a nice person. And so, I'm not going to reveal any of these things to you."
The author, Brandon Sanderson, wrote the book in such a way that you can feel the new neuron connections form while reading the book.
Again, I believe this book to be a great bridge for a person to begin to enjoy books. It has a fast-paced plot, but also presents new ideas and themes that cause you to think.

Beastly: Book Review

I've just finished Beastly by Alex Flinn.

It's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast in the modern era and from the Beast's perspective. I love it. Retelling of fairy tales are almost always excellent. But this one was particularly good with it being as true to the original tales as it could, yet still having original elements. It's also more realistic than many other retellings, but it is also very much a fairy tale with its occurrences. The Beast was originally the popular handsome guy who was a jerk to all those who he believed to be beneath him and not on his level. The entire thing was a great story, but I believe it could have been better if the connection to the fairy tale wasn't so obvious and whimsical. But it is a great book. I'd recommend it as a book to past time and to teach that the qualities that matter are on the inside of a person, and it's possible that you'll never learn the true workings of the person. Great book.

(www.alexflinn.com)

Green Rider: Book Review

I love Green Rider by Kristen Britain. Karigan G’ladheon, a merchant’s daughter who dislikes nobles, was running away from school when she comes across a King’s Messenger who has been shot in the back by two black arrows. The messenger makes her swear that she’ll deliver the message to the King, as it’s a matter of life or death for the kingdom. She promises, and thus begins her journey into a world of magic she didn’t believe in while running away from dangers she had never known. The author makes you feel as if you were there. Britain’s experience as a ranger with the National Park Service is shown in the details and knowledge she uses as she describes Karigan as she tries to deliver the message while traveling through the country. This is a great book, but could be better on setting the foundation of the story for the books that follow in this series. However, it is a clean book, yet still captures the imagination and drama of a normal girl thrown into something unexpected.
These are the rest of her books as follows:

1998

2003

2007

2011

Kristen Britain's Website here.

Things to Smile About

I was at the McKay Library this morning and I found a well worn thick little red book entitled Lengthen Your Smile. Its by Robert Nash and published in 1996. It looked interesting so I picked it up and checked it out. To my unexpected amusement I discovered that the book contains short stories for a Latter-day Saint for every day of the year but Leap Day. I randomly opened to a page, read, and then started laughing. Here are some of the stories and the day it is to coincide with (not that the day matters, but just incase you want to look for yourself sometime):

April 21
"Four Religious Myths:
1. It's easy op get credit for doing good, but hard to get cash.
2. Noah's wife was Joan of Ark.
3. The fifth commandment is 'Humor thy father and mother.'
4. It's hard to hear anything in church because the agnostics are so terrible."


May 15
"A Poem quoted by author Alma Heaton probably contains some good advice for young men and young women:

Before I heard the doctors tell
The danger of a kiss,
I had considered kissing you
The nearest thing to bliss

But now I know biology
I sit and sigh and moan,
Six million mad bacteria
And I thought we were alone."

June 2
"Spencer W. Kimball told the story of a young Mormon soldier in World War II who wore both a standard wristwatch and an older, larger pocket watch. His buddies noticed him regularly looking at both watches, and asked why he checked the time twice.
'The wristwatch tells me the time here where we are, but the big watch Pa gave me tells me the time it is in Utah,' said the soldier. 'When the big watch says 5:00 A.M., I know dad is rolling out to milk the cows. And any night when it says 7:30, I know the whole family is around a well-spread table on their knees thanking the Lord for what's on the table and asking him to watch over me and keep me clean and honorable.
'It's those things that make me want to fight when the going gets tough,' said the young man. 'I can find out what time it is here easy enough. What I want to know is what time it is in Utah.' "

June 5
"Just when you think you've escaped pride . . .
A Sunday School teacher gave a lesson about the arrogant Pharisee who prayed in the temple next to the humble publican and expressed thanks to the Lord that he wasn't like his prayer-mate. The publican, meanwhile, bowed his head and smote his breast and asked the Lord to forgive him for his sins.
The Sunday School teacher's suggestion? The members of the class should all thank God they were not like that Pharisee!"

July 23
"A rancher in Kamas, at the base of Utah's Uinta mountains, decided he wanted to sell his ranch. He hired a real estate agent, who came out to inspect his property and write up an ad.
Later the realtor called the rancher to go over the ad copy with him before placing it in the paper. 'For sale,' read the realtor, 'Picturesque white frame ranch house with white picket fence and eighty acres of rich farmland in the middle of beautiful Kamas Valley. Clear streams of mountain water flow nearby, well-stocked with rainbow trout. House faces rugged mountain peaks and is located in a small, friendly farming community with good schools and a new church.'
'Stop!' said the rancher. 'The deal's off! This is the kind of place I've wanted all my life!'
The moral: 'Hold fast to the blessings which God has provided for you,' said J. Reuben Clark. 'Yours is not the task to gain them. They are here; yours is the part of cherishing them.' "

August 26
"A positive mental attitude is important - and so is a firm grip on reality. Charles Ora Card was called by President John Taylor to build a Mormon settlement in western Canada in 1887. The town he founded - Cardston, in the province of Alberta - became a wonderful settlement, but on the high Canadian plains, it was wind-swept and cold.
One gusty, frigid morning, Brother Card was walking to Church with his father. 'Isn't the air fresh and invigorating?' he asked.
'Yes,' said the father, 'and isn't there a lot of it?' "

October 19
"Lucile C. Reading, a former counselor in the general Primary presidency and managing editor of The Friend magazine, illustrated her belief in the joys of work with a story about Thomas Edison.
Edison's wife worried her husband was working too hard and encouraged him to take a vacation.
'But where would I go? asked the inventor.
'Just decide where you'd rather be than anywhere else on the earth, and then go there,' Mrs. Edison advised.
Her husband agreed. 'Very well,' he said. 'I will go there tomorrow.'
The next morning found him right back in his laboratory."

December 15
"Parents: If you ever wonder whether or not you have an influence on your children, remember the story of a father who took his three young sons on a summertime trip to Yellowstone Park. Upon their return, they dropped by Grandma's to report their adventures. And the first thing out of their mouths? They didn't describe the bears, geysers, elk, moose, hot pots, mountains, fish, rivers, or lakes. 'Grandma!' they said, 'Daddy got a ticket for speeding!'

I would highly recommend this little book to everyone and anyone. Although, I think that with most of them your probably going to have to be LDS to really understand. Otherwise your going to think we are a bit peculiar. In which you would be entirely right.

Library: the Collection

I was about 8 years old when my parents began looking for a new house to live in, because we were having an addition to the family, my little brother Robert. Once in awhile, they'd take the rest of us children with them. One time we were looking at different house models, and I clearly remember wanting a certain model because they had two high walls of bookshelves. My parents had to explain to me that the house we were building wouldn't automatically have the bookshelves in it. I knew that, but didn't really believe it, because since I could now visualize it, I wanted that house just because the dream of having a little library like that seemed more realistic when living in that house.

Cicero has said, "To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul."

Since I was little I began to picture owning a library in my home. But what amazed me was that as I grew and matured, so did the context of my imaginary library. The shelves were first filled with the Harry Potter books, the Eragon books, the Alex Rider books, the Dr. Seuss books, mostly the entertainment and fantasy books. Soon, the were filled with a more classical, science and historical fiction angle. But I never really had much of an interest in the non-fiction genre. Until recently.

As Holbrook Jackson said, "Your library is your portrait."

Now my library would include all the perviously mentioned books, along with Way to Be! by Gordon B. Hinckley, as well as some of his other books like Standing for Something. It would include Elder Neal A. Maxwell's books such as Moving in His Majesty and Power. Also, I'd love to get some works by President Thomas S. Monson and the other church presidents. It would also contain Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach their Kids that the Poor and Middle Class do not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter, The Five People you meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, Seven Miracles that Saved America: Why they Matter and Why we Should have Hope by Chris Stewart and Ted Stewart, Live your Life for Half the Price by Lyle and Tracy Shamo, Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

Of course, this isn't all. I'd include all my textbooks from college, some literary journals, some encyclopedias, church magazines, talks on CDs like The John Bytheway Collection Vol. I & II and The Little Things that can make a Big Difference by Daryle Hoole. I'd add on biographies, "How To" books on different skills, essays by Thoreau and Emerson, and journals of my ancestors and relatives, including my own. My library would also contain little inspirational thought books like Small and Simple Things by Marjorie Pay Hinckley.

I'm sure that in a few days I would even have more to add to this imaginary collection.

President Hinckley has said, "I love libraries. I love books. There is something sacred, I think, about a great library because it represents the preservation of the wisdom, the learning, the pondering, of men and women of all the ages accumulated together under one roof to which we can have access as our needs require."

What a wealth of Knowledge! What a wealth of Wisdom!

There are few things I wish to collect in my life: friends, family, and wisdom.

"A library of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it," says Richard de Bury, one of the very first English collectors of books.

I don't entirely agree, as there are more important things then books, such as family, the gospel and the goal of achieving Eternal Life, but a collection of wisdom, even if it is only located in the mind, is something to always increase and magnify.

How I wish to make my dream a reality. And I am working on it. But it'll take awhile. Books and the like cost a bit of money, and poor college students do not have that much to spare. Except slowly and surely. The textbooks will be a required buy, and every once in awhile I shall buy a book to add to my currently non-exsistant shelves. It'll be an adventure.

When I was little I learned about the Library of Alexandria. I noticed it because, well, Alexandria is my name, then the word "library", and I discovered that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I learned it was the largest library of the ancient world. I then came to the startling question of "What is the largest library in the world today?" I learned that the Library of Congress was in fact the largest library. It soon became my goal to visit that place someday and own a library card for that library (though not long after, I learned that public can't check out books, though they can use them). So someday I would visit. What's rather ironic of course in the fact that my family this Spring Break is going to D.C. without me. Sad sad sad. Oh well, I shall accomplish this goal someday! I have a whole life ahead of me!

What an adventure it will be! To collect knowledge, wisdom, and experiences.