Elder Seliger

I, Timmy, having been born of goofy parents, do hereby continue my personal saga and reminiscences. But before I get started I want to share an illumination that came to me just this morning, after I’d gone to the Provo Rec Center for a swim and hot tub soak, and then proceeded over to Smith’s for a bagel with cream cheese. As I sat at a table by their produce section I watched a man in a black apron pick up each onion, one by one, and vacuum them off. This struck me as so absurd that I nearly strained a cheek muscle from grinning. I can just imagine his homecoming tonight --

“I’m home, honey!”

“How was work, sweetheart? What did they have you do today?”

“Oh, not much -- just vacuum the onions like always.”

In a world where a man gets paid to vacuum onions in a supermarket, why bother to take things too seriously? That’s all I’m saying.

My previous entry about Elder Lang and the stolen fish inevitably reminds me of my very first missionary companion in Thailand. Elder Bart Seliger. We hit it off from the start. He was a genius with the Thai language and I was a dunce. He slept in, sometimes until 7 a.m., and I was always up by 5, before the cleft of dawn, trying to read the Book of Mormon in Thai. Round about 6 my eyes would cross, my head would droop, and I’d snooze in a pool of my own drool until Elder Seliger gave me a hearty slap on the shoulder blades, asking “Well, Elder Torkildson, are you ready to go get ‘em?”

Elder Seliger’s teaching and leadership methods were simple and direct. Whenever we got into a house he would introduce us and then have me tell the Joseph Smith story. Didn’t matter that I could not yet put more than two or three Thai words together at a time -- he never interrupted or corrected. In fact, sometimes he dozed off as I sweat blood to finish my narrative. I have to add that our Thai hosts never grew bored or fractious with my mangling of their native tongue. They sat and smiled and nodded, not understanding a word that I said.

Thailand has always been cursed with packs of feral dogs that roam the humid sois and patrol the weedy banks of klongs, just waiting for a farang to show up so they can snarl and hurl themselves at him. The Thais, being Buddhist, cannot bring themselves to gather up strays and put them down, so the mutts grow in numbers and impudence until the local village council calls in a Muslim butcher to eradicate the most egregious canines. After my first encounter with these slavering beasts I took a stout bamboo walking stick with me whenever I went out with Elder Seliger. He, on the other hand, had a more subtle and effective approach. He had a small plastic squirt gun which he filled with ammonia. Any dog that even looked at him the wrong way got a spritz in the snout and ran away howling in agony. After a while, all the dogs in the neighborhood recognized his lanky, sharp-nosed appearance, and gave us both a wide berth.  

Unlike Elder Lang, Elder Seliger never got trunky. But he did find ways to work smarter instead of harder. He liked to business tract -- not in the local stores that sold fish sauce, rattan furniture, and pickled skunk cabbage. No, his idea of business tracting was to go into the busiest and most modern business section he could find, full of banks and skyscrapers, and then barge into the offices of every executive on each floor, give the secretaries the brush off, and see the head man to give him a pamphlet about Family Home Evening and ask if we could come to his home to show him how to conduct this inspired program for the benefit of his family. And he did it all in English, which impressed the heck out of most executives, who had a smattering of English or had actually lived in Great Britain or the United States. The first few times I did this with him I was paralyzed with fear -- but when I realized that nobody ever called the cops on us, I got into the swing of things with Elder Seliger, and we would split up on each floor to tackle the bigwigs two at a time.

Getting past the secretaries, who always had a great opinion of their own self importance, was not too difficult -- if you didn’t mind a little play acting and bluffing.

“What do you want?” a secretary would ask me waspishly, eyeing my white shirt and name tag suspiciously.

“I have a very important message for your boss. One that I must deliver to him immediately.”

“Do you have an appointment with him?”

At this point I slowly slipped on my sunglasses and straightened my tie. Then looked around the room carefully before replying in a soft, confidential whisper.

“No. But he’ll be very happy to see me . . . if you know what I mean.”

I could see the secretary’s face change as she worked it out:  A young Caucasian male; white shirt; thin black tie; sunglasses, arrogant manner -- Buddha save us, it’s the CIA!   

“Please, sir, go right in! May I give him your name, please?”

“Don’t worry” I replied as I headed for the frosted glass door while pointing at my black plastic name tag, “he’ll know it very soon.”

This was in 1975, remember, at the height of the Vietnam War which was practically next door to Thailand, and the country was lousy with various intelligence operatives.

This was a great way to proselyte. We were inside, out of the tropical sun, in an air conditioned building with no stray dogs snapping at our heels. And the bosses were always extremely polite, although they never could understand why their secretaries ever let us in. And we never spent more than ten minutes with ‘em.

“These nacho grandes have the attention span of a two year old” Elder Seliger told me, with his slight Texas twang. “We just get in, leave a brief message and a pamphlet and see if they want us to come on over to teach ‘em.”

Polite they might be, but they never agreed to have us in their homes. Elder Seliger told me this was because most of ‘em didn’t live with their first wife anymore -- but had a mistress, a ‘small wife,’ squirreled away in some cozy little apartment down by the river.

Whenever business tracting began to pall, Elder Seliger would switch us over to government tracting. This was even more bizarre.

Our section of the city had several huge government compounds where clerks and other minor functionaries toiled away in huge, unairconditioned halls, each at their own modest teakwood desk, with a blotter, an adding machine (the kind you cranked to get an answer) and an IN and OUT basket awash with papers. These ballrooms for pen pushers and clock watchers were guarded by grim-visaged soldiers; Elder Seliger simply put on his sunglasses and waved an old University of Texas at Austin library card in front of their faces, and we were admitted without question. We tried to time our visits either early in the morning or after three in the afternoon, because every blessed one of these government clerks would clear off their desk promptly at noon, crawl on top, and go to sleep until three.

Elder Seliger decided that government pencil pushers would not appreciate the Family Home Evening approach, so he had me recite the Joseph Smith story at each desk -- whether the clerk was busy or not. As I got better with the language, I was able to make the story not only understandable, but exciting. When my monolog was judged fluent enough, Elder Seliger simply placed me in the middle of the clerk’s huge room and told me to let ‘er rip. I’d begin the story of Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni, and the gold plates, in a loud voice, and soon I’d have a crowd around me, whispering to each other that the farang with the big nose was telling a ghost story. Don’t ask me where their supervisors and managers were -- they didn’t seem to have any.

I was sorry to lose Elder Seliger as my companion after just two months. But companionships, at least in our mission,  never stayed the same for long. President Morris did not like companionships to get too cozy -- he wanted them to stay alert and to keep an eye on each other. There were too many cute young Thai girls joining the Church at that time, whose sole purpose was to bamboozle an American Elder into making a slip and then having to marry them and bring them back to America. Elder Seliger had to come to my rescue several times, when a cute young Thai would set her cap for me, and follow us around with a spoony look in her eyes. He would tell these fetching Thai sirens that I already had a girlfriend back home with the circus -- the bearded lady. Because I liked ‘em rough and hairy. That always did the trick . . .  

still dimly perceived

still dimly perceived

as a still green reflection

in a common pool

Who ate my fish in Thailand?

From previous narratives of my LDS mission in Thailand the reader may glean the mistaken notion that I did nothing but act the merry madcap in my capacity as a goodwill ambassador for the Church. True, I did over a hundred clown shows during my 2 year stint there, but I was never excused from my official calling as a proselytizing missionary. Sometimes a month or more would go by without a show. During such intervals I and my companion tracted, held street meetings, and taught the codified Discussions, as all LDS missionaries were required to do at that time.  

And that brings me to today’s missionary memoir -- The Case of the Missing Fish.

In Pak Kret, a northern suburb of Bangkok, I and my companion, Elder Lang, found ourselves living in a pillared mansion that included extensive grounds quickly reverting to jungle, as well as an ornate marble guest house in the back that had sunk into the moist ground and was now three feet under water in the middle of a pond.. Some mornings the maid’s little boy would silently glide into the sunken guest house to surprise a large toothsome carp for our lunch.

Let me backtrack --

One of my contemporaries in the mission field, Elder Nebeker, had run across this particular mansion while tracting with his companion, Elder Ah Ching. The old woman who lived there all alone was impressed by the good looks and good manners of Nebeker and Ah Ching, and asked if they would like to rent the whole shebang for a very modest fee -- that way she could go live with her daughter up in Chiang Rai. As Elder Nebeker explained it to our Mission President, Paul D. Morris, the mansion would make a wonderful chapel for our members in northern Bangkok. In fact, he guaranteed that if President Morris gave the okay to rent the place as missionary barracks, they would have it filled with newly baptized members in a matter of months.

The mansion was rented, and 3 sets of Elders set up housekeeping there -- myself with Elder Lang; Elder Nebeker with Elder Ah Ching; and Elder Wright with Elder Reidhead. The mission office paid for a maid to cook and do laundry for us, so we could concentrate on bringing in the sheaves. Back in those days all the food had to be bought at the local outdoor market, with much time-consuming haggling. There were no supermarkets. So a native maid was a necessity, not a luxury.

Elder Lang was the senior companion, meaning that his two years of service were just about up, and he made all the decisions about where and when to go proselytizing for us. And he was pretty trunky. This is LDS jargon for a missionary who has already arrived back home, in his own mind, even while his corporeal body is still knocking on doors in the mission field. A trunky missionary tends to be rather laid back and unambitious. And a shopaholic.

Each morning after our prayers, scripture study, and language study, Elder Lang would survey a map of our district tacked up in the dining room, and decide which street held the most gold and gem shops. We would then spend the morning and early afternoon traipsing among the red-lacquered gold shops, with their somnolent guard posted by the front door and Chinese girls in corriscating silk cheongsams hustling gold chains behind the glass counters. These places were lit up with flood lights and played an excruciating loop of Chinese opera music that was all gongs, bells, bamboo flutes, and what sounded like soggy bongos. I was terrified of these loud, garish places -- since my Thai was not all that good. But Elder Lang would greet the guard in fluent Thai, find out about his family, give him a pamphlet, then start flirting with the Chinese gals behind the counter. He had a fair amount of Mandarin at his command. And he had an expensive Leica camera that he took along to snap photos of everyone in the store.They’d show him a dozen or so supple gold chains while he told them the Joseph Smith story. Sometimes he’d pick out a modest gold chain for his mother or aunt or girlfriend back home. He’d leave the simpering clerks a few pamphlets and we’d walk to the next gold shop. Or a gem emporium -- these places were rather dim and looked like a feed store, with burlap sacks lying about, and indolent Thais scattered around with no apparent purpose besides sticking their legs out for me to trip over. Elder Lang had an unerring sense of who actually ran these places, usually an older Thai woman who sat in the back endlessly eating pumpkin seeds. He would cotton up to her with flowery compliments about her dismal store and her youthful looks, until she would smile and tell him to beware -- the ants would soon be crawling up him to reach his ‘sugar mouth.’ And again, while he would narrate the story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, she would bring out sapphires, emeralds, and polished jade pieces for his inspection. If he liked the price, he’d buy ‘em.

What did I do during all this? Stood around gawking, for the most part. Elder Lang would let me bear my testimony about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon at the end of our visits -- but by then the clerks were ringing up his purchases and they paid little, if any, attention to me.

This was engaging work, at least for Elder Lang, and so we often came home very late in the afternoon, long after the maid had served lunch to the other Elders. Our plates were left on the table, under coarsely woven rattan baskets to keep the flies out. And there was always supposed to be a big fat fish, bathed in a delicious tamarind and kaffir lime sauce, waiting for us. But someone started to eat our fish before we returned -- so all we had was rice, klong weed soup, pork balls wrapped in Thai basil leaves, and cold glass noodles. When we quizzed the maid about who ate our fish, she only shrugged her shoulders and said “Ling.”  Monkey? Monkey, my foot!

We quizzed Elders Nebeker, Ah Ching, Wright, and Reidhead about the theft, but they all pleaded innocent. I had my strong suspicions about Elder Ah Ching -- a former quarterback at BYU-Hawaii who could wolf down a dozen skewers of chicken satay in the blink of an eye.

Well, we never caught the malefactor, which is probably why I was so prickly to Elder Lang when it came time for him to go back home. I dropped him off at the Mission office in Soi Asoke, where I shook his hand and said “Now I can get back to some real missionary work!” He just gave me a sleepy smile and asked to take one more photo of me with his Leica.

Elder Nebeker’s promise to fill that mansion with new church members on Sundays never panned out -- but darned if several of those Chinese clerks that Elder Lang had chatted up on our shopping trips didn’t come out to our services and eventually joined the Church. I sent him a postcard telling him about it, but never heard back from him. He was probably too busy surfing out at Malibu, which is what he told me he planned on doing for the rest of his life once he got home. He invited me to join him there once I finished my hitch -- maybe I should have done just that . . .  

Dyed in blood

. . .  and they had a lamb-skin about their loins, and they were

dyed in blood, and their heads were shorn, and they had head-plates

upon them . . .

Third Nephi. Chapter Four. Verse 7.

Extremes in modern fashion are barbaric and obscene;

These trends degrade the body, and the spirit much demean.

A modest style of dressing is a sign of calm belief

That garish ostentation brings no beautiful relief.

Looking like a robber or a goblin on a spree

Reveals an inner turmoil and a lack of certainty.

Be modest and be comely with a decent self restraint,

And you will feel like acting in the manner of a Saint.

Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not

Plastics and papers from dozens of American cities and towns are being dumped in landfills after China stopped recycling most “foreign" garbage.  NYT

Oh, we sent our trash to China but they didn’t want the mess.

They told us they were sorry, but they’re planting watercress.

Our dirty rags and paper were too filthy for their taste,

So we’d have to find another dump to take our poison waste.

We sailed the seven oceans looking for another hole,

But no one could we threaten, bribe, or smilingly cajole.

The nations turned their backs on us, refusing Uncle Sam --

We were in a pickle, not to say a rotten jam!

When nobody was looking, all our garbage ships released

Their stinking cargoes in far waters that were not policed.

But Neptune came up foaming, wroth as only gods can be,

To send our garbage sailors back unto our own country.

And so the rubbish piled up in our cities and our lanes,

Until we shipped it all out to the desolate Great Plains.

The prairie dogs expired and the wheat fields wouldn’t grow.

Our garbage tainted ev’rything from trees to buffalo.

We shot it into space so Mars would have to clean the dreck;

The Martians sent it back again, and boycotted Star Trek.

We burned it, churned it, turned it into soylent green to eat;

But even hippie vegans did not find it such a treat.

Finally, we shrunk it with atomic accelerator --

Creating antimatter (and a freaking big ol’ crater.)

And now the world is pure again; the clouds go drifting by.

Of course, mankind no longer grows up more than two foot high . . .

The Pothole That Conquered the World

Potholes across the U.S. are flourishing, with aging roads

pummeled by harsh weather and larger-than-average temperature

swings. Repair crews seem to exit each winter deeper in the hole

. New York City last year had more than triple the number of

reported potholes compared with the mid-1990s.     WSJ

A pothole, looking innocent, appeared on my fair street.

I called the city to come fill it up all clean and neat.

They never came, despite the calls I placed with many folk;

I only got the runaround -- they thought it was a joke.

And slowly that wee pothole grew; twas gaining too much depth,

And slowly did it widen to a most disturbing breadth.

And so I got some filler of my own and mixed it thick,

And laid it in the pothole, thinking that would do the trick.

Imagine my dismay the morning after when I saw

That pothole still wide open, with its asphalty great maw!  

It gaped like something living -- a black monster on the prowl;

Waiting to devour cars while giving a low growl.

In panic I mixed up another batch of filler, which

I loaded with some wolfbane, garlic, and even barber’s itch.

The pothole simply sucked it down, then gave a vicious belch.

Twas now a creature I alone could not pretend to squelch.

The SWAT Team came a runnin’, and the bomb squad paid a call;

In too much of a hurry, they into the hole did fall.

They never made it out alive -- we took it pretty hard.

The Governor decided to call out the National Guard.

They fired off their cannons and they threw in hand grenades.

They charged it with sharp bayonets and hoes and rakes and spades.

But all their puny efforts could not stop this pothole fiend;

The Feds came in at last to say my street was quarantined.

NASA brought in gizmos and the Pentagon surveyed

All the landscape round about, while Mike Pence loudly prayed.

A jet swooped in to drop atomic weapons on the pit.

That did not stop it growing, not a single little bit.

A refugee, I fled the scene -- now homeless and a pauper.

The pothole swallowed half the state, a cancerous deep whopper.

The scientists say that it will soon devour the East Coast,

And then, with global warming, all humanity is toast.

The stock market has tumbled and the riots never cease.

Ev’ryone is jaywalking and razzing the police.

But what care I what happens -- I’m a vagabond and lout.

But, say, I’d better tell someone that streetlights are burnt out . . .

the hidden beauty

the hidden beauty

of a thing interrupted

emerges slowly

the drifting daybreak

the drifting daybreak

hints at more excellent things

for those with chaste eyes

Uganda passes tax law on social media users to discourage ‘gossiping’ online

Uganda’s parliament has passed a law to tax those

who use social media platforms like Facebook,

Twitter, Viber, and WhatsApp . . . The controversial

tax was first introduced by the country’s president,

Yoweri Museveni, who wrote a letter to the treasury

stating that social media encouraged gossip that was

costing Uganda time and income.

The tax will come into effect on June 1st, imposing a

200 shilling ($0.05) levy per day on those who use

social media platforms . . .

The Verge

Uganda has passed a fine law

For citizens who like to jaw

On internet sites

In large megabytes,

Neglecting their bricks without straw.

Private Charitable Foundations Give Lavish Rewards to Insiders

A mutual-fund manager earned nearly $5 million

over eight years from a lucrative side gig. He

was trustee of his business partner’s private

charitable foundation. Another charitable foundation,

set up by a carpet merchant, has millions of dollars

in loans outstanding to the man’s carpet company.

A third paid out more to companies owned by the

foundation president’s family than it gave to charity

in a recent year.   WSJ

I dropped a coin into the cup of some poor soul today,

Standing on the corner like a pitiful old stray.

And straight away a fellow in Italian silk appeared.

“Don’t be a fool!” he said to me. “You’re acting mighty weird!”

He grabbed me by the arm and led me to a coffee shop,

And there he told me private charity was such a flop.

“The poor do not appreciate the finer things in life”

He said while spreading marmalade on muffins with a knife.

He then explained that charity is just another name

For gouging money from the suckers, like a carny game.

“I set up an endowment for some trendy thing” he crowed,

“And you should see the shekels that come in by the carload!”

“Once I have a bundle I begin to loan it out,

Or buy a hundred acres with a stream that’s full of trout.

I get away with murder cuz the tax laws are inept;

So if you are nonprofit, then the books are barely kept.”

“My brother takes a large slice, as a consultation fee;

My sister gets a hunk for serving us warm herbal tea.

And if there’s any leftovers, or crumbs we do not need,

We give it to somebody who has got a good newsfeed.”

My eyes were opened by this man’s approach to giving alms,

And I intend to get donations in my sticky palms.

For charity begins at home, but once you think expansion

Then you can keep on stealing till you’ve got yourself a mansion!