A new week and a new direction ... whereas last week we were coming down off our two weeks of traveling, this week we seems to be caught up in a different kind of traveling. Time Travel. Lets us tell you all about it.
It started sweetly with Dad and I installing our new pump organ top shelf in the dining room. Then I was able to dig out what I had in the way of Valentines' decor, last displayed, according to the note on the storage box, in February of 2016 ... Whoa!
I added a few other touches around the house too.
I also headed to the antique mall to fix a display problem. Not sure what I was thinking when I put a cupboard on top of a low stand, and placed it in front of my booth, a few months back, as it blocked the view of the entire front, isle view, to the extent of about half the view. I took the shelf down, by about 30 inches so you can see over it now, and created a new low island, without, surprisingly, loosing much in the way of display space.
I also took the time to do a bit of shopping at the north mall. I thought this old girl scout scrap book was entirely charming. Perhaps my first dip into history for the week.
I then stopped to get some goodies for a project I was doing, at the Dollar Store, and saw history in the making. It finally happened. Items at the dollar store are now $1.25, I wondered how long it would take to happen.
When I got home I helped Dad get the reclining exercise bike up the stairs to the conservatory room, which we had decided to make into a small gym room ... the direction of history, however, changed the next day. Whoa that thing is heavy.
Ann and I walked the Spanish fork River trail on Tuesday. We usually do about a quarter of the trail, the upper quarter, where there is a parking lot, and we head north, the second quarter we can go about a mile and a half to the south before turning around for a 3 mile hike. The lower quarter begins at a parking lot south of state street in Spanish and we walk about a mile and a half south/west. Or we can walked the other way, to the north east. All four sections are about the same length. But this day we decided to walk the entire middle section, 3 miles each way. I was exhausted by the time we were done, as I am not accustom to the distance. Anyway, someone has spray painted around the holes and damage in the walkway, so they can be repaired. All the markings are roughly round, but this followed the interesting shape of the hole!! Yes, tis the season.
I loved this rainbow light on one of my motherhood statues that afternoon.
Later that afternoon we met up with the Crumps for dinner. When we got together last month they were talking about their next mission, and were considering doing a church history site in Mosida. This month, they are on that mission. Crazy.
Here are some pictures of the trek site from their website that Dad found.
For the Crumps its just a 20 minute drive ... and for us it would be a half hour ... yep, we're thinking about it. They told us if we are interested we should go on line and find out if we have any ancestors who were hand cart pioneers.
When we went on a trek in Wyoming with our ward, twenty years ago, I had found this woman. She was not actually related to me at the time of the original trek, but after Brigham Young had asked established SLC families to take in the survivors of the Martin and Willey handcart companies, my Great-Great Grandfather, Benjamin Thomas Clark had taken her in with her surviving four children. Her husband had died at Devil's Gate, and one of her sons had died two weeks later. After being a part of the house hold for a while, she ended up marrying him, as a plural wife. You may recall that essentially polygamy was the church welfare system.
Now for the fun part ... Dad's closest connection is John Briggs, who is Ruth Butterworth Briggs' first husband. He and Dad are second cousins 6 times removed.
Later one of her sons, who was raised in the household with his three siblings after their mother died from a scorpion bite, ended up marrying one of the daughters of Benjamin, so we do have a real connection.
Anyway, it was fun to dive into the past, and consider the pioneers. It was also fun to check out Mosida's history. It turns out that the same year my father was born, 3 men bought the land from the Utah State Land board, and planned to subdivide it to sell for peach orchards. They named it after the first two letters of each of their last names, Morrison, Simpson and Davis. Unfortunately the project went broke (Dad remembered hearing this) when there were a couple of years of high rainfall and Utah Lake rose and covered the land. Not sure how, why or when the church bought the land.
That afternoon a bit of our personal history came to visit me at the mall. Dad had seen that Claire Crump, one of our first mission missionaries was selling homemade sweet rolls. Dad ordered some, but didn't have time for her to deliver before heading up to watch Becca's kids, while they went to see Hamilton. The solution was having her deliver them to me at the antique mall. The good thing is that just before she came, I had accidentally, locked the Propane delivery man in the yard, by closing a door, ooopps. He had to walked all the way around the building, and was not happy. I told him I was sorry and if he gave me his number I would bake him a cake to make it up to him. Then I remembered Claire was coming with sweet rolls ... Yep, she showed up just a minute after he walked out, and since he had to fill the tanks at the other store, I was able to give him a couple, Sorry Dad.
After work I ran up to Highland to relieve Dad, watching Becca's kids, as he was heading up to his Barbershop Practice.
Speaking of history, I really love this shoot that Charlie had done, where she's dressed as a version of Rosie the Riveter from the WWII era.
I love vintage art and ran across this representation of the armed service branches from WWII later in the day ... yep, more history. It is interesting that I have three books going right now ... Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, A biography of James Madison, and Team of Rivals, the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. So that's more history.
I worked again on Thursday, and Dad had his Temple Shift. He picked me up after work, and we both got to ...
Enjoy this fabulous sunset.
Then we headed up to Pleasant Grove to watch Eva in a version of Arsenic and Old Lace. Here we see Nell's folks and her grandmother, as well as Penny with a net bag over her head ... funny girl. I know it looks like a plastic bag, but no worries. Davin and his family came as well, and Penny is clowning here as Nenna watches.
The play was styled as a radio show, and was a lot of fun. Here Eva plays with her 'nephew' Teddy, who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, who goes into the basement to dig 'locks' for the Panama Canal. He also buries, the 'Yellow Fever' victims ... I've seen the play many times, but never knew the connect between these plot points and history. Now, thanks to our Panama Canal trip, I do. It definitely made it more fun.
All characters were dressed in character and the minor character's double as sound effects people.
Here's an old radio in the front with an 'On Air' side blinking above it. They suggested that we sometimes close our eyes and try to imagine the story.
The cast takes it bows.
Here we are with one of the Brewster sisters, aka Eva.
And its kind of fun the the girl she played in Mulan with back in Elementary School, as the dragon to this gal's Mulan. Now they were cast as the two leads once more, four years later. I know, that is pretty recent history, but still fun.
This is the picture of some of Eva's supporters.
To celebrate, we all went for ice cream ... and given the theme of our week, what could be more perfect than ...
Founding Father's ice-cream, where the workers dress in period clothing.
and where Nenna can reenact a bit of history for herself.
and a thumbs up for getting together with family!!
And here's a thumbs up for Ann and being a good sport. For our exercise on Friday morning, she suggested the dripping rock trail, at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. It has the upside of being a paved trail that actually climbs in elevation, so great for winter weather if its not too cold. On the other hand, sometimes the winds, as you might imagine, make it too cold to walk. That morning, it was cold enough to freeze the water draining across the parking lot, but by the time we got back, it had all melted
As we were hiking Ann told me that they had just gotten a sauna for Christmas. She also mentioned she had a spare elliptical. Crazy, eh? We had thought that if we took the bed down in the small bedroom, we could put an elliptical in the space, so perfect ...
But when I saw her kit built three person sauna, the wheels started turning, and I thought that if we got one, and Dad could give up his plan of putting a second bedroom in the basement to make the apartment bigger, we might just have a basement gym, with a sauna a shower and room for an exercise bike and an elliptical. YES! Fortunately he agreed, so our project in the basement just did an about face!! And I am sooo excited, I get my tiny guest room back. Dang, why didn't I find out about the sauna last week, before he heave hoed the super heavy bike up the stairs ... hahahaha.
After dropping by Ann's I headed to the DI in Springville, thinking I would not find much, since it gets picked over so fast. I had seen a piano for sale earlier in the week that was in beautiful condition visually, but there was every thing wrong with the keys, that stuck, and sounded bad when the hammer did strike strings. They had brought the price down to 45 dollars, but it was not a functional piano. I had looked at it on Wednesday and had considered buying it to take apart for the beautiful wood elements. I gave it up as an overwhelming task. Then on Friday I was standing there when one of the workers, came out rolling it off the floor. I said, "Oh it finally sold", and he said, "Nope, its going in the garbage, we just put it out because its so pretty, but other than that, its junk" I asked if I could buy the front board, and he said he doubted it but would ask. Yep. $15 later I have this wonderful nearly architectural piece.
Here I am with Kevin. How nice is he?
Such great details, walnut, and in great shape.
I got home in time to go with Dad to meet his cousins Jerry and Karen. It was Karen's birthday, and the three of them were all born within two weeks of each other, back in 1953. Its always fun to get together.
Then we put together a care package for this cute family whose in quarantine. You probably heard that Cam tested positive. A child in Van's preschool had gotten Covid, so they were asked to have the whole family tested, and strangely, Cam was the sole positive test. Thankfully she's not been very sick.
The Frozen bag is full of Dollar.25 store goodies, along with our favorite Macey's sushi, cookies and some homemade vegetarian 'Ham Fried Rice', for the kids.
Next it was onto the U of U, for some more history review. Here I am with my cousin Steve Larsen at his brother Dave's memorial service. Steve is the son of my Dad's youngest brother, Tennis, or Tenny as he was always called. Tenny and Milly had 3 children. Dave, the oldest, is a year younger than my sister Julie, then Steve is three years younger than that, or between Clark and Emory. The youngest is Mary, who is two years older than me, I was sad to hear, she passed away last year. I'd actually thought of her as I got ready, and was looking forward to seeing her. We had no idea.
\Here we are, Debbie Larsen Sager, my cousin Brent's daughter, Brent, me, Joyce, Shirley, Doug and Bruce. I thought we were well represented, having 4 of the 6 of us who live in Utah.
There were lots of displays, and I thought I'd save a few bits. Dave loved all sports and owned the ski shop at the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon.
Here are Doug and I with Steve and two of his daughters.
Dave's beautiful wife Marlene, is shown here with Doug and Shirley. She and Dave actually lived in our Cottonwood Heights ward before we ever moved into it. They stayed in the Stake area though, so we saw them on and off during the 14 years we lived there.
Here's another random show stopper from Charlie's Insta page.
And Saturday found me going to the Acorn Antique show with my friend Wendy.
We met up with Cindy, the surviving widow of our long time friend Noel. she pulled up a couple of historical pictures of herself and Noel on her phone. He was 20 years older than her when they married, but they were together for 32 years. He just passed at Christmas time, and she was still feeling fragile, but since there was no service for him, it felt good to be able to hug her and tell her how much we love them both. Of course Dad and I have been exploring a couple of different books about NDEs and I honestly can't help but feel happy for those who pass on now. I know its kind of crazy. We especially loved the book After by Bruce Greyson.
When I got home, I made a salad to take to a dinner and movie night with the Homokins ... or The Heuers, Moes and Perkins. On Marco Polo we girls have been discussing whether or not we can consider historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and BrighamYoung to have been 'prejudiced' individuals ... this is of course where the quote the title comes from comes into play ... "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." which is actually a line from a novel written before I was born.
So we watched the movie His Name is Green Flake, which is about a particular slave who served both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in furthering the work. The movie also exposes abuse by members of the early church who were slave owners, and whom did not deserve to be called Saints. I guess even in history some things never change about the foibles of human nature. In many ways it was painful to watch, but on the other hand, there were many honest and hard working individuals who were portrayed, especially the main character.
The other pictures in the collage, of course are books I am reading or have read. Robin and Trevor are both currently reading the very painful, The Devil in the Grove, about the developing career of Thurgood Marshall, in the not very hospitable south. In all honestly the events in the book sickened me, but its important information of which we should all be aware.
So today there was church, as usual. The Relief Society lesson was exceptional. The young woman who gave it has lived in the ward all her life and she grew up here. I didn't know her as a child, because her home was not in our ward boundaries until recently, but you could tell that many of the ladies, who had watched her grow up, just adore her. I always feel good about the future of the church when I meet young people like her.
When we got home we watched the English ward in Helsinki's meeting. This speaker is Jason Grant, who is in the bishopric. He grew up in Sweden, and though he married a Finn, he doesn't speak much Finnish, so this English speaking ward is a blessing for them. BTW he previously served as a bishop in Sweden as did both of his brothers. His mother and father divorced and she raised them on her own in Sweden, where she met the missionaries. Their Dad is American (She had been serving as a Nanny in NYC) and it was fun on our last mission to see Jason baptize his aging father, who had traveled from the US to be taught by his son and the missionaries. Great memories, we just love this family.
Well, I hope the history you made this week makes you smile as you look back. We love you all and pray for your happiness and success.
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