Photo Essay: Where I Live

Where I live is at Valley Villas Senior Housing -- 650 West 100 North -- in Provo, Utah. I have been here for about 2 years. Before living here I stayed in a friend's unheated basement storage room. The building is owned and run by the Provo City Housing Authority. Rent is based on income. I pay $249.00 a month, which includes $25 a month for cable, which I don't use but have to pay anyway. Utilities are free. The place was built in 1995.

                                           You need a key to get inside the building itself.

I spend most of my time in this recliner in my living room -- I'm in it right now, putting this photo essay together. Before I was able to get a bed, this is where I slept at night as well.

                                               I'm on the ground floor, apartment 115

This is my patio -- regulations only allow 2 chairs outside

This is the view from my patio

My bedroom

My bathroom

My kitchen

My storage closet

My laundry room. Washers are $1.00. Dryers are 50 cents.

The main lobby

The community room, where we have a brief LDS Sacrament Meeting each Sunday

The garbage chute is on the third floor

The third floor also has a computer room, installed by Google. But the computers keep getting ripped out. Right now we're down to two.

I'm grateful for my little apartment. When I was raising a family I bought houses in North Dakota, Kansas, and finally Minneapolis. But I guess I'll never own a home again. Or live in a motor home or on a train again, like I did with the circus. Or rent a three bedroom bungalow with my beautiful partner in Thailand again. This place is as final as it gets, for me. I'm thinking this will be my home until I am called Home.

The Polished Soul

“Our trials and our difficulties give us the opportunity to learn and grow, and they may even change our very nature. If we can turn to the Savior in our extremity, our souls can be polished as we endure.”

Henry B. Eyring

My soul began its journey here as jagged as a rock;

Awkward angles, edges sharp -- yet dull as forceless chalk.

It would not take a polish nor hold up to heat and cold.

Twas not a thing of beauty, but a piece of punk fool’s gold.

The years have blunted many barbs; and tears dissolved the crust.

Yet heartache packed the rubble firm, with ev’ry unfair thrust.

And now perhaps a sparkle may at last come from my soul,

As Jesus starts to polish it and make it sound and whole.

Photo Essay: The Provo Farmer's Market at Pioneer Park

The Provo Farmer's Market is held on Saturdays this summer at Pioneer Park, from 9 until 2. But truth be told -- it's more of a Craft Fair than a produce market. You can buy soap, Korean kimchi, jewelry, and other assorted knick knacks -- but I didn't see any fresh produce at all. Maybe it's just too early in the season . . .

This brings back memories of my days of circus tenting. The competition to get a plug on the rhino box was intense, even cut-throat -- because if you didn't get there quick enough, you couldn't plug in for juice for your trailer. It looked to me that only about a third of the booths at Pioneer Park were using electricity.

Dream catchers for sale

Frying up samosas 

Henna tattoos

Political parties canvass for new members

Myosook Lee sells bulgogi and cucumber kimchi -- it looked so good I promised her I'd come back to buy my lunch -- but after reflecting on my budget for July, I decided I'd better stick to pork & beans. I just bought a new cell phone . . .

The candy man

Musicians pass the hat

Sales can be slow

There's one born every minute . . .

I did this kind of stuff with pipe cleaners as a kid

The Missionary Heart

“May the Lord bless all of His Saints . . . with a missionary heart.”

Thomas S. Monson

The missionary heart can see

The fields of ripe eternity.

Proselyting day and night,

It pumps but love with all its might.

When such a heart is placed in man

He does more than mere mortals can.

O help me, Lord, to love such work,

And ev’ry petty fear to shirk!

Headlines & Verse. Saturday. July 1. 2017.

NEW JERSEY BUDGET BATTLE CLOSES STATE PARKS AND BEACHES FOR THE HOLIDAY.

Don’t travel to New Jersey for your weekend holiday.

The state is without budget, so you’ll find no place to play.

The parks are closed just like a clam; the beaches, too, are shuttered.

The Governor won’t pay their bills, no matter how he’s buttered.

Of course all the casinos will be open for your trade --

So you can lose your shirt and have your mortgages parlayed.

LOS ANGELES PROPERTY VALUES ARE EXTERMINATING SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

A bizness that’s run in LA

Hasn’t much chance now to stay.

Those mom and pop shops

Are hit in the chops --

While highrises chase them away.

FRENCH PRESIDENT REFUSES TO TALK TO MEDIA -- CLAIMS THEY CAN'T UNDERSTAND HIM

Reporters in France have no clue

What Monsieur Macron will do --

His thoughts are so deep

That he has to keep

Them locked up like snakes in a zoo.

IOWA STARTS SHIPPING THEIR FAMOUS SWEET CORN TO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY STARTING THIS MONDAY 

It ain’t a decent picnic on our Independence Day

Without a cob of corn or two from down in Ioway.

With butter melted over it and salted down as well,

It’s nothing but ambrosia to palate and to smell.

I can eat a dozen without blinking, yes sirree,

While shooting off a cherry bomb in thanks for Liberty.

You folks down there in Ioway, please keep up the good work --

Without your ears of sweet corn I do think I’d go beserk!

CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING TELLS HONG KONG RESIDENTS -- 'YOU BELONG TO BEIJING NOW; SO SAY GOOD-BYE TO FREE SPEECH!'

Obtaining Hong Kong with some cant,

The Chinese are now on a rant.

They’ve told all the world

That tongues should be furled --

It’s jail for so much as a chant.

A Homophone Rerun from the Summer of 2014: Nomen Global.

Sitting on a park bench on Center Street in Provo by the City Center yesterday, I watched as Clarke Woodger made his way across the street to go into City Hall. I hadn't seen him since he fired me back in July of 2014 over a misunderstanding about the word 'homophone.' I nodded at him; he nodded at me, and said "Hot out today, isn't it?" To which I replied: "Sure is." Then he was gone into the bowels of City Hall.

For those of you who never heard the tale of the consequences of my firing, let me rerun the Salt Lake Tribune article that Paul Rolly did on my predicament. Just for nostalgic laughs, you understand:

Paul Rolly: Blogger fired from language school over 'homophonia' 

Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there.

This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.

But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

Tim Torkildson says after he wrote the blog on the website of his employer, Nomen Global Language Center, his boss and Nomen owner Clarke Woodger, called him into his office and told him he was fired.

As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw.

"Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality," Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.

Torkildson says he was careful to write a straightforward explanation of homophones. He knew the "homo" part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational.

Nomen has removed that blog from its website, but a similar explanation of homophones was posted there in 2011 with apparently no controversy.

Woodger says his reaction to Torkildson's blog has nothing to do with homosexuality but that Torkildson had caused him concern because he would "go off on tangents" in his blogs that would be confusing and sometimes could be considered offensive.

Nomen is Utah's largest private English as a Second Language school and caters mostly to foreign students seeking admission to U.S. colleges and universities. Woodger says his school has taught 6,500 students from 58 countries during the past 15 years. Most of them, he says, are at basic levels of English and are not ready for the more complicated concepts such as homophones.

"People at this level of English," Woodger says, " … may see the 'homo' side and think it has something to do with gay sex."

He says Torkildson had worked at the center for less than three months before he was terminated in mid-July.

Interestingly, he was hired on April Fools' Day.

—

Headlines & Verse. Friday. June 30. 2017

ATHENS AWASH IN GARBAGE AS INFRASTRUCTURE CRUMBLES

In Athens the tourists wear masks

As garbage leaks out of large casks --

The Parthenon reeks

While many fine Greeks

In history pompously basks.

FEDERAL RESERVE TELLS AMERICANS 'YOU CAN TRUST YOUR BANKER'. (AND THERE'S A BRIDGE IN BROOKLYN THEY'D LIKE TO SELL YOU, TOO.) 

The Fed says our banks have good health,

Are safe for the storing of weath.

What they overlook

Is that the poor schnook

Who trusts them grows poorer by stealth.

COLORADO TOWN SOLVES PROBLEM OF ATTRACTING TOURISTS:  THEY PUT OUTHOUSES ON WHEELS AND RACE THEM.  

A town in the Rockies agreed

They needed more tourists to breed.

They thought that appeals

with toilets on wheels

Would bring ‘em in with greater speed.

Focus

“We need to put aside our cell phones and ponder about Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

M. Russell Ballard

A baby has a rattle that distracts it constantly.

A child will watch the TV set until it cannot see.

A teenager rides in a car until the wheels wear out.

Adults are on their cell phones like its water in a drought.

Distractions vary in their size and shape, and what they do --

But all of them are hurtful if they blur our Christian view.

Our Living God has sent His Son to save us from the pit --

This only should consume us as we stand, or run, or sit.

Headlines & Verse. Thursday. June 29. 2017

HAS THE 'ROBOCALYPSE' ARRIVED? INTERNATIONAL BANKERS PONDER THE SPECTRE OF MILLIONS LEFT UNEMPLOYED BY AI AND AUTOMATION

Computers are able to learn,

Which makes my blue collar to burn.

My skills as a clerk

Are not worth a jerk --

I can’t even sympathy earn . . .

RARE MINNESOTA BUTTERFLY IS MAKING A COMEBACK -- WHICH IS MORE THAN WE CAN SAY FOR SOME PRESIDENTS WE COULD NAME

When butterflies start to get rare,

You know something’s wrong with the air.

Or else all the weeds --

Like those ancient Medes --

Have vanished from history’s glare

.

WILL DENVER BANKS CAPITULATE TO MARIJUANA MONEY? DO BUZZARDS HAVE HALITOSIS?

Do money and cannabis mix?

Seems like there might be some tricks

To faithfully cope

When you’re full of dope

And want nothing but bowls of Trix.

GUN ADDLED MINNESOTA COUPLE COMMIT DEADLY YOUTUBE STUNT. NO CUTE KITTENS HERE . . .

A book as a bullet proof vest

Is not an idea at its best.

No matter the theme

A bullet will ream

A sizable hole in your chest

To Praise the Lord

And they did sing praises unto the Lord; yea, the brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord.

From the Book of Ether

Bringing light to darkness, quenching all our thirst,

Offering salvation -- we ought to praise God first.

Hold off on all the questions, delay our anguished pleas --

Accept His loving kindness on humble bended knees.

The heart was made for praising, the tongue should wag with joy --

Our curdled thoughts are enemas with care we should employ.

The mountains sing for gladness, though we choose not to hear;

The birds a festive chorus are ever bringing near.

The next time I start kneeling, with any kind of doubt,

O Lord make me a mute until with joy I learn to shout!