For several years there has been a sense that our ward would likely be divided. But having survived one set of ward divisions with only a name change and then the stake division, we seem to keep dodging bullets. Until today...
The lines were as expected: with Beautiful view becoming its own ward and Verdant Hills keeping the central areas and students.
We are losing a lot of good friends during the division and will especially miss the vitality that comes from having the singles in the ward. Plus most of the scientist ended up in the other half. The upside is that the ward had become far too big to know everybody and our nursery was already in three classrooms and was looking to expand to a forth. Not sure if we will be much smaller, but at least a little.
For those of you interested... The old bishop of Verdant Hills became the new bishop of Beautiful View, the old bishop of the Andrew Jackson ward (Sonic Triathlete) became the new bishop of the Verdant Hills ward, and Lift the Earth became the bishop of the Andrew Jackson ward. BVB, the cycling Chinese expert, became the second counselor in the Verdant Hills ward and Music Man Adams became the second counselor in the Beautiful View ward.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sun Beams
To continue the theme of reunions with old friends, another set that had moved to Logan came back to TN for a visit. We had a dinner at our house for some of their closest friends here. It was great to have them back. We had several lively discussions on the topic de jure, which is what I miss most since so many of our friends have moved away.
For reasons that I'm not sure of, we have never been able to spend the energy to rebuilt the "circle of ten" (to use MTN's phrase) that was the bedrock of our friendships for so many years here in TN. What had been for a period of five years or so that it takes to finish graduate school, etc... this strong and intimate group, rapidly got smaller as people finished and moved away. Meanwhile, we just haven't really made very many new ones to take their place. Maybe living in student wards for some many years have caught up with us and we just don't have the mental energy that it takes to form deep attachments anymore, I don't know. But I miss those times and having the Sun Beams back (a bit of play on their sunny disposition) if only for an evening.
Memphis
Next stop on AM's magical mystery tour was Memphis, to visit some more of our friends who moved there somewhat recently.
AM was especially impressed by the size of their house. She made a feature length movie extolling its virtues, but it is too large to load here.
I would tell you more details about what they did, etc..., but since I wasn't there, I will post this with the hope that AM or JPD will take some time to fill it in.
AM's version of the trip to Alabama and Memphis. The travel time to Alabama is a few hours (SD's warned me not to reveal the exact travel time, exact location and names of our friends that we are visiting, because we are in the FBI witness protection program) so this is for your eyes only. We went to Alabama for a baby blessing for our friend the "BEE KEEPER". While the kids have a day off from school, I thought it would be great to visit our other friends who live near Memphis. As SD mentioned I videotaped the inside of their mansion and I was in awed of how big the house and how beautiful it is to have a big house. We had a great visit with them and the next day we drove to the Memphis Zoo to see some animals. We had fun visiting with our friends and the kids had fun playing and seeing each other again. It is very nice to be able to visit friends.
Blessings in Alabama
While I was in San Diego, AM took the rest of the family road tripping. The first stop was to Alabama to see some of our old TN friends bless their baby a few weeks ago, so I thought we should post a few pictures for y'all to see. We used to have more kids than most of our TN friends, by the end of this year, pretty much all of our old TN friends will have at least as many as we do.
Here are some of the kids from these families.
Proud Mamas
Here are some of the kids from these families.
Proud Mamas
Saturday, October 25, 2008
If we had to lose...
As hard as it was to watch the Bosox go down after once more rallying from being down 3 game to 1, making it harder was that they needed to rally against the Ray's relief pitcher, David Price, a local product who we have been cheering for for many years. Price was impressive and I'm cheering for him to continue to do well thru the Series. Then maybe Boston can pick him up next year...
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Camporee
This weekend my troop (me jd)went to a district camporee at Monkey Bell Park. The theme was Great Adventure Race. We left Saturday and set up camp. The temperature was surprisingly chilly. Our dinner took a while to cook but it was nice and hot( Kielbasa and potatoes). For breakfast we had burnt bacon, scrambled eggs, and half-done biscuits. Then after a while the camporee people gave some quick brush-ups on orienteering, gps-ins, and canoeing. We would use these skills on a 10 mile, 15-point, orienteering course. My group of me and 2 other scouts left early and we started bush-whacking. As we tried to get to our first point we veered of a little and ended up at point 4. So we tried to find the road that led to points 1,2,and 3. But the road was nonexistent. So we ended up bush-whacking to get there. We found point 1 and tried to reach point 2. We couldn't find it, but ended up a a cool look out tower. After eating a quick lunch we started bush-whacking again for point 3. We never found it. It turns out the first group to go had taken some of the markers. So at that point we were a little frustrated. We had been out there for at least 2 hours with almost no success. So we decieded to head north to the lake were we knew there was canoeing activity we could do. So we bush-whacked up to the lake and got a canoe in. We canoed to the other dock on the opposite side. There we completed a fire building challenge and continued to the next station. There we did the GPS station. We had to find 2 flags using the GPS. It turned out that the origonal coordinates were wrong. So the teams before us had spent hours tring to find flags. Fortunately, on our turn we got the correct coordinates and successfully found them. Then we canoed across the lake again. By the time we got back to camp we had hiked for 7 hours and 11-12 miles. So needless to say, we were pretty tired. Before dark we broke camp and headed out. We all had had fun and felt accomplished from our adventure.
Favorite Uncle
On my trip to San Diego, I was appointed favorite uncle (on my family side) for my newest nephew. (I suppose that this appointment was primarily based on my being the first uncle to see him, but I think it was my gentle touch and reassuring voice that put me over the top.)
He looks a lot like his older brother, who is doing well as well.
Our time together was unfortunately shortened by the San Diego fires, which I never actually saw, but heard about on the local news reports. There was a period from 11:30 to 4 pm on one of the conference days that was scheduled in the conference for a break. So my brother had planned to drive down from LA to pick me up and go over to La Jolla to see the aquarium at the Scripps Institute and then to hit the beach at La Jolla shores. He called at 12 pm to say they were running a bit late and were about 50 miles away. Then I waited and waited and around 1 pm they called to say they had moved 3 miles from where they had been previously. It turns out that I-5 had been closed down to fight the Camp Pendleton fire. So they didn't make it to San Diego until 2 pm. But we still went anyway.
Hopefully I can post some pictures of the aquarium and of the beach. The Birch aquarium is quite small, but it did have two nice tanks with small sharks. Nephew M (4 yo) was more obessed with cranking the arm on the penny smashing machine than on seeing the fish. We also had a good time at the discovery area were you used blocks and things to change the river channel, then float small toy boat down i to see what happens.
Although time was running out, we took a quick visit to the beach. Unfortunately, due to my overeagerness to hit the nearest section of beach, we landed on a portion of the beach that turned out not to have any bathhouses, so we just had to get wet in whatever we were wearing. But it was lots of fun to go body surfing in the waves and I would recommend La Jolla beach over Mission Beach.
He looks a lot like his older brother, who is doing well as well.
Our time together was unfortunately shortened by the San Diego fires, which I never actually saw, but heard about on the local news reports. There was a period from 11:30 to 4 pm on one of the conference days that was scheduled in the conference for a break. So my brother had planned to drive down from LA to pick me up and go over to La Jolla to see the aquarium at the Scripps Institute and then to hit the beach at La Jolla shores. He called at 12 pm to say they were running a bit late and were about 50 miles away. Then I waited and waited and around 1 pm they called to say they had moved 3 miles from where they had been previously. It turns out that I-5 had been closed down to fight the Camp Pendleton fire. So they didn't make it to San Diego until 2 pm. But we still went anyway.
Hopefully I can post some pictures of the aquarium and of the beach. The Birch aquarium is quite small, but it did have two nice tanks with small sharks. Nephew M (4 yo) was more obessed with cranking the arm on the penny smashing machine than on seeing the fish. We also had a good time at the discovery area were you used blocks and things to change the river channel, then float small toy boat down i to see what happens.
Although time was running out, we took a quick visit to the beach. Unfortunately, due to my overeagerness to hit the nearest section of beach, we landed on a portion of the beach that turned out not to have any bathhouses, so we just had to get wet in whatever we were wearing. But it was lots of fun to go body surfing in the waves and I would recommend La Jolla beach over Mission Beach.
California Dreaming
This past week, I (sd) went to a interesting conference in sunny San Diego. The conference hotel was right on Mission Bay, so I spent a lot of time looking out over the water at sail boats and other water craft, as well as surfers on the ocean. I've decided that learning to sail a boat and surfing a big wave definitely need to go on the bucket list.
From what I understand, my dad was a pretty good sailor when he was growing up, and one of the hardest things for him and his family when he converted was his not going out with his family on their Sunday sailing trips, which was one of their big family past-times.
I suppose the love of the sea is something I inherited from my dad's side of the family as my general impression from my mom over the years (she may correct me on this) is that she is not much of a water person. (Although she attend our swim meets faithfully for many years.) I learned to love swimming from my dad, with his early morning sojourns to lap swim at the pool. But I think the pull of the sea is something that is not taught, it simply burns deeply and inconsolably within you as a natural inheritance.
For those of you who know my phobia of sharks, this may seem rather strange, but the two go hand in hand. My obsession over sharks comes from my utter fascination of the way that they can rule the ocean with their perfect adaptation as hunters. To stalk silently, stealthy their prey and they to unleash in a split second one of the most lethal killing attacks in all the animal kingdom. Of course, mostly here I'm thinking of great whites and tiger sharks, not sluggish ones like nurse and leopards, but even have that cool, calm poise of a top of the food chain predator. The only real threat to my all-time favorite animals, the dolphins and whales.
So sitting by the bay and on the beach also led me once more to consider how to find a good paying gig close to the ocean. The conference I was attending was called Beneficial Microbes, and most of the conference was focused on the role of gut commensal/symbiotic bacteria in human health and disease. But a portion of the talks were on the role of commensal/symbiotic bacteria in other systems (this is part of the one health initiative from the NIH, which finally recognizes the human health is intimately tied to healthy relationship between microbes, animals and humans.) Apparently one of the oldest branches of symbiotic bacteria studies looks at the role of commensal bacteria and sea sponges. Since most studies of human and animal commensal bacteria involve studying fecal matter, the speakers studying sponges took great delight in pointing out how much more attractive it was to go SCUBA diving to collect samples than it was collect poop. If only I had known earlier! Maybe I can convince the NIH that studying obesity/atherosclerosis in dolphins is a better model organism than mice. But of course, that would necessitate keeping dolphins in cavity, which would not be very soothing on the conscience.
On the subject of bacteria, one of talks that might be of interest to some of you was a talk on the role of H. pylori in the rise in asthma and allergic diseases. H. pylori is the only major bacteria that colonizes the stomach and is the major disease pathogen in stomach ulcers. But this speaker showed very interesting data which suggests that H. pylori eradication is a two-edged sword. For thousands of years, H. pylori used to be completely endemic in all human population with nearly 95% of human having it. In the past one hundred years or so, H. pylori presence has fallen to about only 5% of population. In the studies this person showed, the absence of H. pylori in a number of studies with twins and other matched population correlated with greater risk for asthma and other allergic diseases. Then in animal studies they were able to show that H. pylori tipped the response of immune cells from a Th2 response which favors allergic responses to a Th1 response. So he proposed that we need to consider that H. pylori is beneficial in the early years of life, to about 30, after which its benefit begins to wane and then become harmful. This hypothesis, a part of the "dissapearing microbe hypothesis" has replaced the "hygeine hypothesis" as the most favored explanation for the rapid and precipitous rise in allergic disease.
From what I understand, my dad was a pretty good sailor when he was growing up, and one of the hardest things for him and his family when he converted was his not going out with his family on their Sunday sailing trips, which was one of their big family past-times.
I suppose the love of the sea is something I inherited from my dad's side of the family as my general impression from my mom over the years (she may correct me on this) is that she is not much of a water person. (Although she attend our swim meets faithfully for many years.) I learned to love swimming from my dad, with his early morning sojourns to lap swim at the pool. But I think the pull of the sea is something that is not taught, it simply burns deeply and inconsolably within you as a natural inheritance.
For those of you who know my phobia of sharks, this may seem rather strange, but the two go hand in hand. My obsession over sharks comes from my utter fascination of the way that they can rule the ocean with their perfect adaptation as hunters. To stalk silently, stealthy their prey and they to unleash in a split second one of the most lethal killing attacks in all the animal kingdom. Of course, mostly here I'm thinking of great whites and tiger sharks, not sluggish ones like nurse and leopards, but even have that cool, calm poise of a top of the food chain predator. The only real threat to my all-time favorite animals, the dolphins and whales.
So sitting by the bay and on the beach also led me once more to consider how to find a good paying gig close to the ocean. The conference I was attending was called Beneficial Microbes, and most of the conference was focused on the role of gut commensal/symbiotic bacteria in human health and disease. But a portion of the talks were on the role of commensal/symbiotic bacteria in other systems (this is part of the one health initiative from the NIH, which finally recognizes the human health is intimately tied to healthy relationship between microbes, animals and humans.) Apparently one of the oldest branches of symbiotic bacteria studies looks at the role of commensal bacteria and sea sponges. Since most studies of human and animal commensal bacteria involve studying fecal matter, the speakers studying sponges took great delight in pointing out how much more attractive it was to go SCUBA diving to collect samples than it was collect poop. If only I had known earlier! Maybe I can convince the NIH that studying obesity/atherosclerosis in dolphins is a better model organism than mice. But of course, that would necessitate keeping dolphins in cavity, which would not be very soothing on the conscience.
On the subject of bacteria, one of talks that might be of interest to some of you was a talk on the role of H. pylori in the rise in asthma and allergic diseases. H. pylori is the only major bacteria that colonizes the stomach and is the major disease pathogen in stomach ulcers. But this speaker showed very interesting data which suggests that H. pylori eradication is a two-edged sword. For thousands of years, H. pylori used to be completely endemic in all human population with nearly 95% of human having it. In the past one hundred years or so, H. pylori presence has fallen to about only 5% of population. In the studies this person showed, the absence of H. pylori in a number of studies with twins and other matched population correlated with greater risk for asthma and other allergic diseases. Then in animal studies they were able to show that H. pylori tipped the response of immune cells from a Th2 response which favors allergic responses to a Th1 response. So he proposed that we need to consider that H. pylori is beneficial in the early years of life, to about 30, after which its benefit begins to wane and then become harmful. This hypothesis, a part of the "dissapearing microbe hypothesis" has replaced the "hygeine hypothesis" as the most favored explanation for the rapid and precipitous rise in allergic disease.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Debate
By now I'm guessing that y'all figured out that we didn't get to be one of the undecided Middle Tennessee voters in the "Town Hall" on Tuesday. I'm not really sure how any one got to be picked, but we found out very early on that it wasn't going to be open to the public. Still I would have liked to have at least hung out outside where all the activists and newspeople were, but instead ended up watching the debate on TV like everyone else.
I thought there were some really good questions posed, but unfortunately, we are at the point in the campaigns where candidates are pretty much reverting to stump speeches. It would have been nice for people to have been able to keep asking following up questions (as with Katie Couruc) in order to really get an full answer.
Some of the questions that I liked:
Who would you pick as Secretary of Treasury? I actually think that it would be nice to have candidates commit themselves to a full cabinet or at least a top two pick for each position, because I think it would give an awful lot of insight into how the candidate planned to govern.
Here might be my some of my choices for cabinet for the next president:
Secretary of State: Bill Richardson
Secretary of Defense: Jim Webb or Colin Powell
Secretary of Treasury: George Soros
Secretary of Interior: Robert Kennedy Jr.
Secretary of Health and Human Services(includes NIH): Jim Cooper or Phil Bredeson
Secretary of Homeland Security: John McCain
Secretary of Education: Gordon Gee
Secretary of Agriculture: (oversees FDA and USDA): Alister Wood?
Attorney General:?
Department of Commerce: Mitt Romney
Department of Labor:
Department of Transportation: Me
Department of Veterans Affairs:
Department of Housing & Urban Development:
What would ask American to sacrifice in order to work together to rebuild our nation during this time of crisis?
I would ask each American to use 10% less gasoline and energy. This would get us half-way to independence from Middle Eastern oil which is about 20% of our oil consumption. I would also ask each American adult to spend 5 hrs a month in the classroom of their community schools.
Is health care a right or a responsibility?
Every American has a right to affordable health care, to clean water and air, to well-regulated prescription drugs, and to a secure place to work and live. Every American has the responsibility to maintain their health and their children's health, to not pollute the resources of the community, to drive safely and to respect the rights and properties of others.
I thought there were some really good questions posed, but unfortunately, we are at the point in the campaigns where candidates are pretty much reverting to stump speeches. It would have been nice for people to have been able to keep asking following up questions (as with Katie Couruc) in order to really get an full answer.
Some of the questions that I liked:
Who would you pick as Secretary of Treasury? I actually think that it would be nice to have candidates commit themselves to a full cabinet or at least a top two pick for each position, because I think it would give an awful lot of insight into how the candidate planned to govern.
Here might be my some of my choices for cabinet for the next president:
Secretary of State: Bill Richardson
Secretary of Defense: Jim Webb or Colin Powell
Secretary of Treasury: George Soros
Secretary of Interior: Robert Kennedy Jr.
Secretary of Health and Human Services(includes NIH): Jim Cooper or Phil Bredeson
Secretary of Homeland Security: John McCain
Secretary of Education: Gordon Gee
Secretary of Agriculture: (oversees FDA and USDA): Alister Wood?
Attorney General:?
Department of Commerce: Mitt Romney
Department of Labor:
Department of Transportation: Me
Department of Veterans Affairs:
Department of Housing & Urban Development:
What would ask American to sacrifice in order to work together to rebuild our nation during this time of crisis?
I would ask each American to use 10% less gasoline and energy. This would get us half-way to independence from Middle Eastern oil which is about 20% of our oil consumption. I would also ask each American adult to spend 5 hrs a month in the classroom of their community schools.
Is health care a right or a responsibility?
Every American has a right to affordable health care, to clean water and air, to well-regulated prescription drugs, and to a secure place to work and live. Every American has the responsibility to maintain their health and their children's health, to not pollute the resources of the community, to drive safely and to respect the rights and properties of others.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Sports Miracles
My teams are a collective 17-0.
It is with amazement and deep satisfaction that I look over the following standings.
East Division SE conference
team conference overall
Dores 3-0 5-0
Gators 2-1 4-1
Bulldogs 1-1 4-1
Gamecocks 1-2 4-2
Wildcats 0-1 4-1
Vols 0-2 2-3
MWC
team conference overall
Utes 2-0 6-0
Kitties 1-0 5-0
Horned Frogs 2-0 5-1
Rams 1-0 3-2
Falcons 1-1 3-2
Lobos 1-1 3-3
Rebels 0-2 3-3
Cowboys 0-3 2-4
Aztecs 0-1 1-4
AFC South
team division overall
Titans 2-0 4-0
Jaguars 2-1 2-2
Colts 0-1 1-2
Texans 0-1 0-3
AL LDS W L
Red Sox 2 0
Angels 0 2
It is with amazement and deep satisfaction that I look over the following standings.
East Division SE conference
team conference overall
Dores 3-0 5-0
Gators 2-1 4-1
Bulldogs 1-1 4-1
Gamecocks 1-2 4-2
Wildcats 0-1 4-1
Vols 0-2 2-3
MWC
team conference overall
Utes 2-0 6-0
Kitties 1-0 5-0
Horned Frogs 2-0 5-1
Rams 1-0 3-2
Falcons 1-1 3-2
Lobos 1-1 3-3
Rebels 0-2 3-3
Cowboys 0-3 2-4
Aztecs 0-1 1-4
AFC South
team division overall
Titans 2-0 4-0
Jaguars 2-1 2-2
Colts 0-1 1-2
Texans 0-1 0-3
AL LDS W L
Red Sox 2 0
Angels 0 2