Two little things about Yale

1. My mom just showed this to me, and I thought it was very funny.

2. It was fun to read this: "The work by Yale scientists Smita Krishnaswamy, David van Dijk, Guy Wolf, and Kevin Moon, and their colleagues at Sloan-Kettering Institute was published June 28 in the journal Cell." (source: Yale Daily News)


Lots of great minds at Yale, that's for sure!

Coming full circle

There's a funny little number I'm rather fond of called tau. Tau is defined as 2*pi, or about 6.2831. It isn't as famous as pi, but there is a case to be made that we should use it instead of pi. Perhaps pi (the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle) made sense to ancient Greek mathematicians, but in most instances we end up using 2*pi. It takes 2*pi radians to get around a circle,1/sqrt( 2*pi) is the constant used for the normal distribution, and so on. So, why not just use tau instead of 2*pi?

I mean, it will never happen. Maybe when the US switches to metric or we start using the Deseret Alphabet. But nevertheless, every June 28 (since it's 6/28) I like to spent a moment commemorating tau, and how, unlike pi, it goes around the full circle. (Good excuse to eat pie again, if you dare use your oven in the summer.)

Actually, there's a lot in life that feels like it's come full circle these days. When we first moved to New Haven, our landlord was out of the country, and the person she gave the keys to was in a meeting, so we were locked out for a little while and sat on the steps.

Then on Monday morning, we sat on the steps again, and later in the afternoon we were locked out again (intentionally this time).

Tuesday afternoon, our flight arrived in Salt Lake City, and then we drove north.

Back home. For good.

When I was in a children's choir as a teenager, we often sang a song by the local composer Jay Richards. As we drove into the valley, the words came back into my head.

My blessed canyon home waits long for my return
For long now have I been away.
Until my eyes behold my blessed canyon home
My heart will never rest.

For there is waiting the end of journeying
The long, lonely road I've known.
A heart is weary and longs for my return
To my blessed canyon home.

In restless youth I longed to see the world beyond.
I heard the fair horizon call
Then left I far behind my blessed canyon home
To seek my fortune there.

I wandered mountainsides green and blossoming
But never did I behold
A valley lovely and half as fair to see
As my blessed canyon home.

We don't know what life has in store for us. We think we'll stay here forever, but life is full of surprises.

But amidst those surprises, life has a way of coming full circle.

New Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk on New England's mountains green

And was the holy Lamb of God
On New England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight!

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem

In New England's green and pleasant Land.

Based on "Jerusalem," by William Blake

I think I can I think I can

Packing is a grueling process, especially when your body has decided to wake up at 5:30 every morning no matter when you go to sleep. The last week has been pretty exhausting, and at times I've felt like the rusty old engine in The Little Engine That Could.

Today after Sacrament Meeting, Kevin leaned over to me and said, "Do you know what phrase describes me right now? The one the old engine says. I am so tired. I must rest my weary wheels."

We are literally on the same page.

And we're going to make it!!!!

An improvement Facebook ought to try

Right before I went to sleep I realized what websites like Facebook need. They need a filter system.

When I first checked my Facebook after going off for a week, it felt like emotional whiplash. A funny video of my friend's kids was then followed by Go Fund Me links for kids who had died in tragic accidents. Birth announcements were followed by political tirades. Posts that made me laugh were coupled with obituaries.

It was intense.

That was part of what made me not want to post there anymore. Over the years I've felt like a callous human being when I've wanted to post something funny while everyone else is mourning. It wasn't that I didn't care about the event, but I did have something else on my mind. And I think that's okay.

I get that Facebook is the Walmart of the internet world, but even Walmart has some organization to it. It seems like people would like Facebook more if it was more like a newspaper with an opinion section, personal section, humor section, etc.  People could decide which category their post fit into and Facebook would filter accordingly. That way you can read things when you're actually ready to. (I guess right now you can do that right now by unfollowing people and just checking their page when you want to see their stuff, but that seems like a lot of work.)

Anyway, maybe that will happen, and maybe I'll start posting there instead of here so much if that changes. I do miss the comments and occasional banter. (By the way, blogger hasn't emailed me notifications about comments for months, but I have gone back and checked occasionally. I also switched away from Google+ commenting so you might be able to comment again if you haven't been able to for the past few years.)

In the meantime, thanks for reading this! It's a little clunky right now but I'll figure it out!

Birdsong

We are pretty excited around here about a new hymnbook. For years I've had a dream of having a hymn in the hymnbook, and now it's an actual possibility!

There are lots of lovely songs out there that I hope make it in, too. And then there are some that . . . even though they were published by the church, I don't think they'd quite fit. Like this one:

The song really has a good message -- my body has been naturally waking up really early lately, and the only good thing about it is hearing the lovely warblings of the birds -- but the title is a little intense. Actually, way intense. I actually think Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins might be a nicer song to put in a new children's songbook, to be honest.

I do wonder if any BB-gun enthusiasts were ever deterred when they sang about the birds' plumage. Or maybe this was more of a song for their moms.

Fowl towel

"I want to go back to Edgerton Park."

"You liked the chickens there today, huh."

"Yeah. They ate my leaves."

"We'll have to find chickens when we move to Utah."

"Yeah, and splash pads. Chickens can't go to splash pads . . . Because they need towels, right?"

". . . Right."

Sorcerer's stone

"The trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them." - Albus Dumbledore

Like not napping.
And skipping a nap the next day.
And then staying up til past 10 at night.
And then waking up early.
And then refusing to nap again.

When Harry learned that the sorcerer's stone offered eternal life, I don't think it meant eternal wakefulness! Especially eternal grumpy wakefulness!

Why do toddlers and babies do these things to themselves????

EDIT: He did take a nap. Magic is real.

Ward Choir Director

Today I conducted my last song as ward choir director in New Haven. It's been a good experience, even if I was only in for a few months. Here's a recap of what we accomplished this spring:

1. Called To Serve

We don't have many youth in our ward, but I thought it would still be nice for them to sing in Sacrament Meeting. So, I went into Young Men's and Young Women's a few times and helped them prepare to sing "Called To Serve." There were definitely more leaders than youth singing the day of the performance, but it was still great to have some youth up there! I played as energetic an accompaniment as I could for them.

What I learned: Tell all the leaders what you're planning to do. I told the Young Men's president since I'm married to him, and I told the Young Women's president, but I think other counselors would have been less confused (especially that first day) if I had warned them beforehand.

2. Easter

Our ward hadn't had a choir since November 2016, so it was exciting to get things going again. I got up my courage and asked people directly if they would sing, even people I didn't know well. Most of them said yes! That personal invitation is really effective.

We sang on Palm Sunday since Easter was the same day as General Conference, and this was our program:

Opening Hymn -- That Easter Morn

Sacrament Hymn -- He Died, the Great Redeemer Died

Scripture: John 3:16

Song: "God So Loved the World," by John Stainer performed by the ward choir (We used the John Leavitt version) 

Scripture: Alma 7:11-13, possibly other Book of Mormon scriptures about the Atonement

Song: "Gethsemane," performed by special Primary group (It was included in the March 2018 Friend, and a better accompaniment is found at the Hoffmans' website.)

Scripture: Matthew 27:27-50

Song: "O Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown," to the Kingsfold melody, sung by congregation (I had initially been planning to have the ward choir sing Sally DeFord's gorgeous arrangement of this piece, but I didn't know if a brand new ward choir could handle it so I instead transcribed it for the whole congregation to sing.)

Scripture: John 20:1-16

Song: "Himno de la Pascua de Resurreccion" (He is Risen), sung by congregation. (We have a Spanish group in our ward so we included a song in Spanish.)

Scripture: Alma 26:16

Song: "Wonderful," arranged by Suzanne Shippen. (Someday this should make it back onto the music.lds.org website once it's fully revamped, but in the meantime Suzanne was very kind to share the music with me. Oh, it's gorgeous.)

Closing song: Christ the Lord is Risen Today

And that was the Easter program!

What I learned: The most stressful part of this for me was the children's number. Since the Primary music conductor was gone for a few Sundays and I never touched base with the subs, I held afternoon practices and sent music videos to interested kids. That worked okay, but I learned it's just easiest to work with kids on Sundays!

3. For All the Saints
Since we had a good group of men coming, I thought it would be fun to have a men-only number. So, we quickly threw together a rousing version of "For All the Saints." I never wrote down an accompaniment, so another woman in the ward conducted while I played. I kept the arrangement simple so that people could learn it quickly. It's just two-part, and either the tenors and basses are always singing the melody except for verse 4 which is minor. The number of measures of rests is arbitrary since I never wrote down the music, but to the people singing it was clear when they were supposed to come in. I suppose I ought to write it down for real sometime.

What I learned: Don't write music at midnight.

4. Heavenly Father Loves Me
I was first introduced to Rachel Mohlman and Anna Molgard's music at the Church Music Festival, and I fell in love with "Come and See" which some women in our ward performed as a small group at Christmastime. While looking through the Church Music Library I saw their lovely version of "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" and decided to do it since the end of April is such a lovely time of year. It wasn't as straightforward as I was expecting for the second verse, but it still came together really well.

What I learned: How to conduct in 6/8.

5. Teach Me To Walk in the Light
When my second son was a baby, I discovered that I could sing "Teach Me To Walk in the Light" to the tune of "Be Thou My Vision," and I sang it all the time to him. It took me a few years to write it down, but I finally did, and it was really great to share it with the women of my ward. Here are a few pages from it:

What I learned: It's important to write music that flows well! I actually had some awkward jumps in there that I felt bad about having them sing, so right after the performance I changed them (I read this helpful article a little too late!). I still think there are spots here and there I might know how to arrange better with fresh eyes, so I'm not quite ready to distribute it widely besides a few teaser pages. That and I am still learning about copyright. I think "Teach Me To Walk" is in the clear since it's (c) IRI 1958, but I just want to do things right.

6. The Lord Bless You and Keep You
When I was searching for a final piece for the choir to sing, I thought of this almost immediately. Then the ward music chair recommended it. And then, once I found it in a hidden music library while I was visiting Utah, I decided it was a sign that we should do it, even though I didn't want to do John Rutter music.

And it was a challenge. The last page is very complicated, and it took a lot of practice for me to keep a steady beat while helping people come in at the right time. But it came together, and it was beautiful. I really appreciated how hard the choir worked on it!

What I learned: You might want more than two weeks to learn this. Then again, people love a challenge more than they love spending weeks on the same song.

Our ward choir accomplished a lot in less than four months! It was such an honor to work with them!

Just a few other things:

• This YouTube series helped me a lot with learning how to bring people in, cut people off, and add dynamics.
• I love warm-ups. I love teaching about "tall and narrow" and blend and "raise your soft palate." I really wanted to work on those with the choir. But I learned to be realistic. After all, I had choir every day in high school to practice those concepts, and ward choir was just once a week (and I certainly had no training in how to teach those concepts). So I threw those in when I could, but I learned that the most important thing is for people to sing the right notes.
• We only had a few rehearsals for each song, so I sent out recordings of me playing or singing the parts so people could practice at home. I am generally pretty self-conscious about my voice, so it was funny to hear people say they were listening to it all the time! But I sure was grateful they were practicing! It showed!

I am so grateful for all the hard work and sacrifice the choir members and choir accompanist put in these past few months. I loved the moments when I remembered to just listen to them as I was conducting. It was wonderful just basking in the glorious sound they produced. It reminded me of this quote from Betty Jeanne Chipman's Singing With Mind, Body, and Soul where she quoted her friend JoAnn Ottley:

The idea of a voice as a healer is not new. It is rather ancient, and might most accurately be classified among the valuable things we've forgotten in our quest for scientific measurement. The paradox lies now in the fact that a clear understanding of the power of the human voice to heal comes directly from the physics and our expanded concepts about the universe, which at the fundamental level could be said to be music . . . The human voice may be the best tool available for reconciling the internal and external components of our beings. It works with the breath and with vibration, the fundamental elements of our lives. It is available to all, without cost, and requires no expertise. Anyone who can groan or hum can claim the powerful benefits offered by the human voice. The body acts as something of a "sounding board," responding to the influences of the sound, and most especially the sound of the human voice.

I've wondered at times why I prefer singing to playing piano since I am a better pianist than singer. I think that for me it comes down to this idea of breath and vibrations, of creating something in yourself to share with others. I'm grateful I was able to work with the ward to harness our collective voices to make a beautiful sound glorifying God.

Love is the fulfilling of the law

"We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets."

If you haven't heard about the latest policy, this provides a pretty good explanation by someone in the thick of it.
However you might feel about illegal immigration, it's important to not conflate it with asylum, which is what's going on here. I think perhaps a more fitting verse in Romans 13 than the ones Jeff Sessions cited is verse 10:

"Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

To fulfill the law is an act of love. To love is to fulfill the law. Either way you read it, separating children from their parents (asylum seeking or not) isn't justified.

"We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society."

Dialogue Tags

When I was in school, I got really good at using words other than "said" in dialogue. My characters would remark, reply, respond, and even retort (when I was feeling brave).

Come to find out, that's actually not what you're supposed to do when you write dialogue. Nor are you supposed to use adverbs. The characters shouldn't say things testily, anxiously, hurriedly, or determinedly. It distracts from the writing and makes things clunky. If you have to use a dialogue tag, most of the time you should just use "said."

I get that, I really do. But I feel like if I were to document most of the quotes from my toddler these days, "said" would be woefully inadequate. It would perhaps give the impression that he spoke with an even, calm tone of voice, rather than one that makes the baby cry sometimes and makes my ears ring other times.

So, for the sake of accuracy, I have adopted a classification system to determine which dialogue tag fits the blasting noise I just heard. Was that more of a shriek, scream, shout, squawk, squeal, scowl, or screech? Most of the time, I usually land on screech. I assume that means that I would use "screech" in place of "said" each time I wrote about conversations with him.

And then there's this guy, who makes sounds I don't even know how to characterize. (He makes the sound in the first few seconds of the video, and then not again, but he makes that sound all the time, especially when his brothers are laughing and he wants to join in. It's not pertussis, I promise.)

Does our house sound like a wildlife sanctuary sometimes? Absolutely.

"But they sure are cute," she retorted admiringly.

Publishing party

We just got back from an event at Joseph's school where each kid had written a short story about themselves. It was called a publishing party.

But more accurately, it could have been a party called "How many different ways can you spell Beyblade?"

Is every kid obsessed with these, or is it just Joseph's class?

Prime

"What time is it?" Joseph asked as he was getting into bed.

"7:56. 28 times 27," I responded.

"28 time 27 is 756?" Joseph asked.

"Yes," I said.

"No, it's 752!!!" Matthew said. (Everything has to end in 2 for him.)

"What is 757?" Joseph asked as the time changed. I made a quick run through my mental sieve. "It's not anything really. It's just 1 times 757. It's prime."

"Optimus Prime?" Matthew asked excitedly.

"No, not that kind of prime," Joseph scoffed. Then he thought for a second, ran out of bed to get some transformers, and brought them back into bed with him, grinning at me. Naturally, Matthew followed suit.

Maybe Joseph has already figured out what prime numbers mean, but at the end of the day, I know what kind of Prime he really cares about.

Mind the music

Joseph was casually looking through his lesson book to find something to practice when I saw Yankee Doodle.

"Joseph, how about you try this song? Here, I'll play it for you!"

After I played it, I said, "It's a good one to learn right now because the 4th of July is  coming up."

He looked at me quizzically. "Why would we sing about Barney for that?"

My last Facebook post

In some ways, Facebook has been good to me. My first date with Kevin was facilitated with Facebook chat and our friendship blossomed during his study abroad via Facebook messages (which felt less intrusive than email, somehow). It's been nice to have it as another outlet for people to get to know me -- I've heard a few times that people didn't realize I had a sense of humor until they became Facebook friends with me. And it's nice for crowdsourcing, especially punny crowdsourcing.

But a few weeks ago, I realized that Facebook was no longer doing its job for me. It was hiding my posts from close friends. It was hiding their posts from me. It had become primarily a mess of virtue signaling (guilty), giveaways (not too guilty), and systems of equations where the answer is always 15, unless they change the time on the clock or the number of French fries. Even if there were things of value on the feed, I was usually checking Facebook at times that made it hard to read the meatier material, so I didn't benefit from those articles either.

When President Nelson recommended a 7 day social media fast, I tried it, and what made it easiest was being able to assume that all of my friends were doing it too. I would check notifications to see if anything posted on the ward page, but besides that I didn't care to check more. It was great.

I still see enough current value in Facebook to keep my account open, but except for huge life changes, I don't plan to post anymore on my page. I have a blog that I've kept for 8 years that I will use instead any time I want to make a Facebook status. If you want to check it, great! If not, that's great too -- we all have our own lives to live!

How God Does Spring in Connecticut

He starts off slow, that's for sure. Oh, there might be some 65 degree days in February, and you might see a forsythia starting to bloom, but then He decides to remind you it's winter right until the last day of March.

And then, just in case you were getting overconfident, He gives you sno-cone trees instead of popcorn trees.

April 2nd

April 2nd

But it's April, so snow like that is short-lived. So He opens up His celestial version of MS Paint and chooses the airbrush to start greenifying the land.

Oops. Must have right-clicked to get the white spray paint instead of the green. April 6th is Mormon Christmas, after all.

After a few false starts and ctrl-z's, we're back to ground one. Gray and brown branches, with a few green stragglers that survived the winter.

April 12

April 12

April 13 -- He's started a slight green misting of the branches in back!

April 20

April 20

April 24

April 24

 Occasionally, instead of the airbrush He might try out the oil brush or marker to get some speckled dots on the ground.

April 24

 He starts experimenting with other colors like pink.

April 24

April 26

April 26

April 26

April 28

April 28. This might look like slightly pink snow, but it's not.

 And then, He stops his halfhearted measures with the airbrush altogether and decides it's time to bring all the colors back!

April 28

April 28

May 2. Okay, so He still takes His time when it comes to most trees.

May 2

May 2

May 2

May 2

May 2

May 2

May 2. Got a little carried away with the pink airbrush on this one.

May 2

May 2

Almost overnight, things have gone from this:

April 28

to this:

May 2

where now every branch has at least some green on it.

May 2

May 2

May 8

 And again, in a matter of days, God adds another coating of green on to go from this:

May 2

to this:

May 8

 His wall of green is ever inching upward.

May 9

May 9

 And best of all, He's figured out how to click on the "Edit colors" button to see how many different kinds of pink He can make.

May 10

May 10

May 11

May 11

May 11

May 11

May 11

May 11

May 11

For some reason, He keeps a spray bottle handy, so it rains all the time. But when He puts it away, the sunshine makes for some glorious days.

May 11

May 11

 And, for that matter, when He tries His hand at making the sky just as green as the leaves, the eerie post-tornado glow makes for some spectacular custom-colored pink sunsets too.

May 15

May 15

 Yep, God is pretty good at MS Paint here in Connecticut.

May 16

May 21

May 21

May 21. Beats the April 2 view any day (except maybe Christmas)

In a sense, it's almost a relief when all of the pinks and white blossoms fall off, looking like new snow on the sidewalks. There's no more reason to run around trying to catch every single blossoming tree.

Instead, we can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the world of green God made. 

It was worth the wait.