Some find it easier to bend their knees than their minds.

Neal A. Maxwell. 1926 - 2004,

(Some) find it easier to bend their knees than their minds. 

Neal A. Maxwell

The older I become in years

the more I'm governed by my fears;

inflexible when new things come,

my spirit of adventure's numb.

Oh Lord more pliable I'd be

to find fresh ways to worship thee!

Have mercy on my stubborn heart,

so from stale rote I may depart.

Choir Class with Mr. Sandusky: Memories of Marshall-University High School

Marshall-University High School, c.1969. Minneapolis, MN.

Like most Minneapolis teenagers, I spent a longish six years in high school back in the late 60's and early 70's. I can't speak to the architecture of high schools today in the Mini-Apple, but fifty years ago they were all built along the lines of Sing Sing and Alcatraz as seen in old Warner Brothers movies -- grim and battleship grey, exuding a repressive effluvium that extinguished joie de vivre like mustard gas. 

I entered the halls of Marshall-University High School each dreary morning, underneath a portal that read "ABANDON ALL HOPE AND CHEWING GUM YE WHO ENTER HERE." Hunkering down, I slogged from class to class in a miserable fug, dodging bullies and furtively ogling Nordic blondes. What was the purpose of attending algebra or print shop, when all I wanted to do in life was create spasms of nonsense like Jerry Lewis? 

I resented the pushy hormones that transformed my pudgy child's body into an adolescent automaton, subject to imperative chemical innuendos over which I could exercise little, if any, control. I was a shambling sitcom cliche.

There were very few classes, or teachers, that I enjoyed during that time. Certainly one of the least prepossessing teachers I came in contact with was the choir teacher Mr. Sandusky.

For reasons that remain as mysterious as Dr. Watson's Giant Rat of Sumatra, I had to take either band or choir. Since my efforts on the violin were a farcical disaster while in grade school, I elected to try out my pipes instead. 

The choir room reflected the faded glory of the Minneapolis Public Schools System. It was a large and airy space, with a knotty pine floor polished to a tacky glow; scuffing it with sneakers produced a piercing squeak akin to cartoon mice having their tails pulled off. The florescent lights high above on the stamped tin ceiling flickered dolefully, fitfully illuminating red plush folding choir seats that were faded to a tired pink and speckled with fossilized chewing gum.

Mr. Sandusky, a rolypoly specimen who looked like a Toby jug and nursed an incipient goiter on his neck, was known at as an "easy pass." One year away from retirement, he frankly no longer cared about teaching anything or attempted any sort of classroom discipline. He served out his time with the absolute minimum of effort by arbitrarily changing the emphasis from actual singing to mere 'music appreciation.' He put on choral records, something by Mozart or Gilbert & Sullivan, and then cradled his chin in his hands, elbows on his desk, with a faraway, dreamy look that slowly turned to catatonia as the hour proceeded and the students became more obstreperous by the minute. 

Displaying their Slavic upbringing, many of the boys from 'Nordeast' Minneapolis played uproarious rounds of durak -- the Russian version of 'Go Fish.' Others used the janitor's tall wooden rod capped with a black iron hook to unlock and open the cathedral-like windows behind the choir seats for a smoke break. Still others were plugged in by earphone to KDWB on their transistor radios, listening to endless repetitions of 'Black is Black.'

I actually attempted to listen to the records Mr. Sandusky listlessly played. Despite his stultifying efforts to ruin my appreciation of vocal music, it was in his class that I fell in love with such heavenly whimsy as H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado. I gave my parents the screaming meemies by constantly strolling around the house singing "My Object All Sublime"   

Not that I purposely tried to brown nose the man, but at the end of the school year I fully expected a good grade from him. Imagine, then, my chagrin when he gave me a measly B-minus! Deciding to beard the jackal in his den on the very last day of school, I strode into the choir room on that balmy June day -- only to find him gleefully shredding a yellowing copy of Carl Sandburg's "The American Songbag." His yellow face, fully animated for the first time in my experience, had the ghastly sheen of a pyromaniac let loose in a match factory. Luckily he never noticed my entrance, so I simply backed silently out of the choir room and fled down the hall.

I still have the feeling he spent his retirement as a creepy mime in Paris. 

Grounded, Rooted, Established, and Settled

Neal A. Maxwell. 1926 - 2004.

Events and circumstances in the last days make it imperative for us as members of the Church to become more grounded, rooted, established, and settled.

Neal A. Maxwell

Settled in my mind that Christ is Savior of all flesh,

I look to Him alone my damaged spirit to refresh.

Established in eternity before the world was built,

His redemptive love defeats a world sunk far in guilt.

The roots of Christian testimony, watered by good deeds,

protect me from the choking tangle of the devil's weeds.

I need to be more grounded and less prone to loose designs,

to take delight more fully in the Lamb of God's guidelines.

The last days as foretold by prophets shortly will appear;

I hope to face them with God's love and not dark worldly fear!

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The Perfect Breakfast

I was a pretty tough customer as a child when it came to eating. I did not enjoy most of the ordinary viands a home in the Midwest during the middle years of the Twentieth Century provided. Anything in a can was suspect. Elbow macaroni was made of arsenic. And my own overheated imagination populated every head of iceberg lettuce with silent green grubs, awaiting the opportunity to bore into my brain pan from the roof of my mouth.

The only food fit for an eight year old boy to eat was french fries doused in ketchup and hamburgers sans any hint of mustard but smothered in dill pickle chips. And a glass of milk. Anything else was slop.

My sainted mother made sure I got a lot of slop. We fought over her culinary child abuse hammer and tongs for many a long year, but her overbearing manner made it difficult for me to put her under my hypnotic sway with the Svengali-like passes I practiced so frequently in front of the bathroom mirror. She was immune to both reason and mesmerism.

Take, for example, her rude attempt at breakfast. Everyone and their iguana knows that little boys need waffles drenched in syrup for their morning meal. My mother only made them on Sunday mornings, and she spoiled the pleasure of the whole shebang by limiting the amount of Log Cabin syrup I could drown my waffle in to a trifling quart. The rest of the week I was stuck with cracked porcelain bowls of Malt-O-Meal in the winter and Kellogg's cornflakes in the summer. Flaccid stodge of the worst kind. I eventually swore on a white and red checkered copy of Better Homes Cook Book that when I was finally emancipated from my mother's doleful attempts at nutrition I would run riot, especially when it came to breakfast. 

And so I did. At age 17 I miraculously escaped to the Ringling Brothers Circus Winter Quarters in Venice, Florida, as a First of May -- a new clown. As my slender means allowed, I began patronizing the nearest IHOP up in Sarasota. Fondly do I recall glutting myself on Swedish pancakes with lingonberry syrup until it began slowly dribbling down my earlobes like pahoehoe. I haunted the innumerable greasy spoons that lined U.S. Highway 41, to sample their biscuits with sausage gravy; an oleaginous achievement guaranteed to clot the arteries of a bull moose. 

And then, once the show hit the road and my finances became even more parlous, I discovered sardines in Louisiana hot sauce. A can of those babies cost a mere thirty-five cents, and there was no need for a plate or bowl -- just a cheap white plastic fork. While my fellow clowns looked on askance I would tear into at least two cans each morning, wiping the greasy chum off my chin with my sleeve. 

Once the circus hit the metropolitan East Coast I became a slave to bagels, cream cheese, and gravlax. Eaten with slices of raw cucumber, it quickly became an addictive ritual that depleted my pocketbook so efficiently that I began cadging pizza crusts left over from clown alley blowouts just for sustenance. When the show moved west into the Corn Belt I had to go cold turkey in Des Moines, settling for an Iowa chop with scrambled eggs to assuage my hunger pangs. 

Huevos rancheros in Texas. Avocado toast in California. Wheatgerm with goat's milk in Oregon. Cheddar bratwurst nestling on a bed of hard boiled eggs in Milwaukee. My impervious stomach welcomed them all with equanimity. 

Then I married Amy, and we had her whole wheat pancakes, rain or shine, for the next fifteen years. They were good and stuck to my ribs, but as I grew older my innards relaxed their hold on the means of egress -- and whole wheat became too cathartic for me. So I switched to ramen noodles in the morning, which Amy took as a personal insult to her cooking . . . 

When I was single again I relapsed back into sardines, until I moved to Thailand, where I rejoiced over their tangy rice porridge each sunrise. It's chock-a-block with chicken broth, tamarind paste, galangal root, cilantro, and a host of other exotic botanicals, with a salted duck egg diced into it. Fortified with malt vinegar, crushed peanuts, fish sauce, fermented soybeans, and a soupcon of mouse dropping chili paste, it seemed a tropical ambrosia to me -- until I developed a severe case of Bangkok belly and was restricted to a diet of rice crackers and soda water by my doctor. By the time I had recovered, my visa was permanently expired so I left the country -- never to return.

The next several years were a sorry mixture of supermarket pastries or yogurt smoothies to greet the dewy morn. My taste buds attenuated until I couldn't tell the difference between a can of Hormel's corned beef hash and a bowl of Quaker Five-Minute grits. Breakfast, it seemed, had become a lost cause.

But then, five years ago, I moved into my present abode -- Valley Villas Senior Housing, in Provo, Utah. And cater-corner to me is the Fresh Market, an independent grocery store. They sell, among other things, pig's ears, fresh tripe, pickled okra, and fresh baked jalapeno/cheddar bagels. After some trial and error I have settled on a jalapeno/cheddar bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, and a slice of gravlax -- with whole scallions on the side -- as the perfect breakfast for my declining years. It's pungent, convenient, and goes down well with a cold bottle of chocolate whole milk. The gravlax at Fresh Market is hellishly expensive, and so I don't treat myself to this perfect morning repast more than three times a week. But on the days I do indulge in this delight I find the world is a better place for a certain pudgy, flat-footed, and dreamy Norwegian scion and Siamese refugee to live in.

My Flabby Faith

Just as reading and learning about muscles is not enough to build muscle, reading and learning about faith without adding action is insufficient to build faith.
Juan Pablo Villar

My flabby faith has troubled me for many laggard years;

as I have pondered on my lack I almost have shed tears.

Some day I must be up and doing what the Lord intends,

no matter what the sacrifice -- of course, that all depends

on Netflix shows I'm watching and the bunions on my feet,

plus whether I am on a roll while happily I tweet.

So if it is convenient I will faith so exercise

that angels will rejoice (or maybe drop dead of surprise.)

I think that humor is a very essential part of rich and radiant living.

Hugh B. Brown. 1883 - 1975.

 I think that humor is a very essential part of rich and radiant living.

Hugh B. Brown

The humorist provides a way

to help us face our trials each day.

To cause a smile or laugh instead

of crying over what we dread

is work that God esteems, I trow,

to keep his children safe from woe.

 And so a jester I would be,

to serve with angels (possibly . . . )

Aaron Bastani Believes in a Better World

Aaron Bastani writes books . . . 

The plummeting cost of information and advances in technology are providing the ground for a collective future of freedom and luxury for all.

Aaron Bastani in the NYT.

A writer young and hopeful sat before his keyboard white,

to figure out a future where most ev'rything was bright.

Meat and mashed potatoes would become so cheap that all

could eat until they busted, right at home or in the mall.

**************************

Technology would free us from the drudgery of toil,

and diplomats would triumph, freeing us from all turmoil.

Babies will be edited, becoming customized;

never having colic and with parti-colored eyes.

***************************

Fully automated and communally secure,
the future, says this writer, will be clean and safe and pure.
He'll make a million dollars when his epic hits the stores
(and just as quickly go extinct just like the dinosaurs.)

A Good Sense of Humor

Richard G. Scott

"A good sense of humor helps revelation . . . "

Richard G. Scott

So much of life is serious

that it makes me delirious;

and so when seeking revelation,

smiling is no aberration.

A loving God returns my smile

and helps me walk that extra mile.

Tis no folly to be droll

when I need to lift my soul;

Mortal life must be a place

where laughter is a saving grace.

Migrants in Custody at Hospitals Being Treated Like Felons, Doctors Say. (Headline in the New York Times.)

When you cross our borders to escape your country's ills/don't expect much doctoring or inexpensive pills/We would rather see you sick and loitering so pale/and maybe even want to treat you in the county jail/Healthcare is for citizens, and not for refugees/(you are likely faking it with some made up disease!)