Writing: Chain Letter of the Soul

Here I am again, after many months' absence.  It is unsettling to count how many.  After the long political campaign of 2008, I deleted my heavy list of political and environmental emailings, and most other news from outside my tiny domain, and took a break from the internet machine.  

I've been gardening and sewing and collecting enough fabric for ten lifetimes.  I've also been watching the growth of a new addition on our house, which will include a well-lighted sewing studio and office for me--upstairs, a little eyrie, above a new living room with lots of windows, a wood-burning stove, and a place for musical instruments.  I've kept most of my reading to myself, to write about later on.  I've been choosing it carefully.

Yesterday I received in the mail the newly released book, Chain Letter of the Soul, by Bill Holm.  Over the years, since reading Boxelder Bug Variations, Holm's first book, I have anticipated Bill's next, and next, book.  He has never disappointed me.  Clear and concise, yet totally original, his books all bear re-reading.  I can't name a favorite.   From beginning to end, his oeuvre is meaty and graceful, windswept and close to the earth.  Totally true, totally pellucid.  Already the poems in Chain Letter have made me smile and sigh and think.  I am in a way the wrinkled owl to whom he taught English years ago.  Bill's message, that writings are simply chain letters of the soul that all writers add to, link together, and pass on, made me insert myself briefly into the chain, and write this.  

Chain Letter was published posthumously, by Milkweed Editions.  Bill died in April of this year of septic pneumonia, at the age of 65.  I missed notice of his death until today, but it came with the gift of his words.  Goodbye, Bill, and thank you for your chain letters and your life.

 

 

   

The Sears Catalog Song

We have our new refrigerator installed.  It fits perfectly and has an icemaker, our first.  We are not using the ice much these days.  We have more than a dusting of snow on the ground, and temperatures have stayed below freezing for a few days, so the snow remains on the ground, crusting and glittering as though it contains diamonds, and accumulating tracks from birds, cats, dogs, us.  

The cats go out, but come right back in through the cat door.  They have cabin fever, and Frieda finds herself confined to my office because she doesn't like the dogs and the other cats.  She sleeps on top of the piano, which we moved into my office (we cut a chunk out of the doorway to get it in), and she drinks from the fishtank.  She has also become interested in the computer's changing screen savers, and the arrow cursor, which she follows with her paw.  I finally cleaned the computer screen and covered it with a dishtowel.  The cats emerge primarily at night after the dogs have been put to bed on the enclosed porch, which has a heated floor.

Tigger is my TV lap cat.  Lionel is our wake-up cat (he knocks the clock, books and eyeglasses from the bedside table).  Tweazer is my sewing machine cat (she gazes out the window as though she just happened to be there, and it has nothing to do with me).  Frieda is the office cat.  

A strange large gray-and-white cat came in through the cat door when it was cold, a couple of weeks ago.  It was tame, and allowed me to pick it up and show it the way to go back out.  It must have been an outdoor cat, because its fur was thick.  When I adopted Cruiser in Logan, he was covered with thick fur. The vet, Dr. Johnson, told me that if I let Cruiser inside, he would drop that fur coat in a few days.

   The piano had been on the enclosed porch where the puppies sleep, and I was worried they would reduce it to toothpicks.  Rocky is working on one of the rockers on the rocking chair in the living room.  I hope the chewing stage eventually passes.  They are not discriminating about what they put in their mouths.  Rocky carries his food dish around, drops the ceramic dishes, eats the plastic dishes.  He chews on wrought-iron table legs.  Liza likes nothing more than a sock to carry around in her mouth.  They create house litter.

People must think we are crazy to live with six animals, but this is our fur-ridden life.  It became that way with lack vigilance on our part.  Who has the will to change it when we all call this little acre home?   We all accommodate each other somehow.  Ronn vacuums the dogs to keep down the fur, and has installed a pet barrier in the car to keep Rocky from insinuating himself into the front seat.  Rocky is no longer riding with his head on Ronn's lap, but we effectively have a two-seat car.  We make do, and our Polar-tec vests are nicely furred.  Compassionate fur.

Jerry and Sherree Roundy in Escalante asked me to write a song for their annual historical play, about the importance of the catalog to the lives of people in Escalante.  In the early days, the merchandise came by train to Marysvale, then was brought to Escalante by a team and wagon.  By the 1950s, the merchandise arrived on the mail truck, and was picked up at the post office, so Dad handled the packages, and put notices (boxholders, I believe they were called) in the post office boxes.  

We all ordered from the catalog.  I remember filling out the forms, and mailing forms for Mom.  The catalogs provided inspiration.  When I was 14 or 15, I saw in the catalog a yellow-checked coachman-style dress I adored, and Mom looked at it, cut her own pattern, and made the dress for me, complete with big white buttons.  I loved that dress.  We called the catalog the "wish-book."  Mom ordered wallpaper, upholstery material for the couch, and seat covers for the car.  We re-used the boxes the items came in.  The sturdy seat-cover box made a good suitcase.  Christmas items and school items came from the catalog.  

Every assignment has collateral benefits.  I relied on a reprint of the 1902 Sears catalog for ideas about items to include in the song.  The catalog items reflect close to the entire material culture of the United States at that time, and the prices are incredibly low.  A pump organ for only $22.  Items of clothing for less than $1.   The Sears catalog was like Garrison Keillor's Pretty Good store:  "If we don't have it, you don't need it."

Sears in 1902 required that cash be sent with the order.  They encouraged ordering "small and often."  In the 1950s, many catalog packages came to the post office C.O.D., and Dad collected the money.  I would like to know when Sears changed their cash-only policy, and why.  

This particular catalog was contemporary with my Grandfather Barney's mission to DesMoines and Chicago in 1901-1903.  He writes in his missionary journal about visiting a tailor, changing his shirt collar, etc.   Now I know something about the contemporary fashions of his day, when he was in his late twenties, and the prices he paid for some of the items he mentions.  

Musical Brains

I finished this book last week.  Ronn and I were both reading it at the same time.  I used the dust jacket flap to mark my place, and if Ronn picked up the book in the meantime, he of course moved the flap.  So I often lost my place, and sometimes I fell asleep while reading--my fault, not the book's, because I like to read in bed.  I read with my reading glasses all the time now--they make the type so much bigger, and I realize it has been shrinking for years, and will eventually dissolve into nothingness.  I also work crossword puzzles in bed, and need my glasses to read the little numbers in the crossword squares.  When I fall asleep, my glasses get bent skeewampus, and I have to take them in to Dr. Hicks' office to get them straightened.  

Therefore I don't have a totally coherent picture of this book.  If I were writing a review, I would need to read it again.  The nine chapters seemed to have been written as separate papers (perhaps lectures to a class?), and some sections were more interesting to me than others.  Dr. Levitin wrote this book for the layperson, and sometimes he seemed to be too much in my face, and I wished he would back off a little.  This is the pot calling the kettle black, I know.  He is "astonished," for instance.  And he is too interested in himself, but of course it is a memoir of sorts.  He loves music and refers to many musicians and compositions, and (I know this is asking too much, but) he might have persuaded Dutton to add a CD including some samples.  I have no problem with his insider status as a scientist, because science is my milieu, but I was annoyed with his insider status as a music aficionado.  I know the parts of the brain, but I don't know the songs of Creedence or the Police, or Van Halen or America.  He used too many such examples.  MEGO:  My eyes glazed over.

Sometimes I can take Levitin's word for it, but truth be told, there are many places I would like to hear the music he's talking about.  I took music appreciation  in seventh grade:  talk about Beethoven, listen to Beethoven, answer questions about Beethoven in the workbook.

Well, unlike what we are supposed to do in a writing class, I have presented my criticisms first. 

 This is actually a pretty good book, and I should probably read it again, ignoring the MEGO sections.  Levitin argues that music is not a "spandrel" (an architectural term that entered evolutionary biology courtesy of Stephen Jay Gould--I do know about this, and I'll write about Gould in a later post).  That is, music is not simply a meaningless byproduct of our other adaptations, chiefly language, but rather preceded language in our evolutionary history.  Music or various aspects of music are found throughout the brain, which would indicate music and rhythm are very old, and very important.  Levitin speculates that our ancestors who demonstrated rhythm and creativity would be differentially selected for.  Then he brings that speculation into the present and tells his readers how desirable rock musicians are as mates.  Whoa, says I.  How many women want to mate with rock musicians?  I am clueless about this.  What is the equivalent for my generation?  John Denver?  I don't think so.  However, I suspect he is on the right track about the evolutionary significance of music, but I would like a more convincing argument than the latter. 

It's late.  Ronn is home from the jam session, and the puppies are manipulating me.  Here's how it goes: I take them outside to potty, give them a treat, put them to bed on the back porch, and turn out all the lights.  In a few minutes, Rocky barks, so I turn on the lights to see why he is barking.  While I am looking out the window, Rocky and Liza run quick as scat, as if they are harnessed together, into the laundry room to see if there is any food on the floor (they don't realize that dear sweet appetiteless Lady died last week, and no longer is her uneaten food there for the taking).  They run around a little more.  Tonight they chewed up my seamstress' tape measure.  They ate six and a quarter inches and the metal clamp on the end before I took what was left away from them.  

Then I put them to bed again and give them another treat.  

I think it is amazing that I imagine I am in charge.  An evolutionary topic for another day.  Now I am off to find my reading glasses, and choose between crossword puzzle or Jon Meacham's new book, American Lion.  (Meacham is an alumnus of the University of the South, and has a house here.  He is signing his book at the bookstore this weekend, I believe.  He pronounces his name mee-chum.  Our cousins in Escalante pronounce their last name mee-kum.  There is also a Chenoweth in Sewanee.  She pronounces her name chen-o-weth.  In Tropic, Utah, it is pronounced sha-noth.) 

 

Stories as Spare as as the Landscape

Author Tony Hillerman died today at age 83.  He left behind an impressive oeuvre, including eighteen novels that feature Navajo tribal policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee.  His novels are a unique contribution to the literature of place.  I have a map of "Hillerman Country."  It's not a crowded map.  Hillerman's mystery stories are spare and clean.  Every one features traveling long desolate stretches of road in northern Arizona and New Mexico, the four corners area, and few characters, characters who are deftly painted.

I found it remarkable that Hillerman could, book after book, hide murderers and create mysteries in all that empty space and clear air, in a place with so few people who have so few material possessions.  I traveled this country back and forth countless times, from Utah to southern Arizona and New Mexico.  I know the sight of trading posts, a single hogan or trailer house, rusty pickups, empty spaces and grand redrock vistas, the paved navy blue or dirt roads transecting them, the colorful names of the small settlements.  

Sometimes Indian children attended school in Escalante.  Darlena Jake was dark and quiet.  Marie Ann Cooley, from Tuba City, lived with Uncle Rol and Aunt Mina Porter for at least two years.  Marie called Uncle Rol "Uncle Porter." She was quiet, yet gleeful and full of fun.  My Tibetan friend, Dawa, reminds me of Marie.  Once my mother mended a shirt Marie had torn while we were playing.  Once Marie and I were swinging on Laura Baker's porch swing, without permission, and the chain came out of its mooring on the porch ceiling, and we went sprawling.  I wonder what happened to Marie.  I wish I had asked her more questions about her home.

Hillerman's books reminded me of my Colorado Plateau, but they are more than regional.  They resonated with the entire nation, as well as with Westerners and the Navajos and Hopis whose reservation lives Hillerman portrayed with clarity and respect.  Leaphorn and Chee aged, and grew convincingly. The older more modern Leaphorn lost his wife and retired, the younger Chee struggled with his ties to ancient traditions and attractions to modern women, Anglo and Navajo.  Leaphorn and Chee always solved the mystery, they always got their man, deliberately, with calm, with acceptance, and readers learned about Native American traditions along the way.

I met Tony Hillerman briefly in the late 1980s, at a book-signing at the King's English bookstore on 13th East in Salt Lake City.  The line to his signing table trailed out the door and down the sidewalk.  When the woman in front of me reached Hillerman--a short, wise-looking, jug-eared man--she fluttered, "I've never been to a book-signing before.  I don't know what to say."  Hillerman didn't miss a beat.  Pen poised above the book, he said, "Tell me how much you like my books, and tell me how to spell your name."

Thank you, Tony Hillerman, for your life and your writing.

Civil Service, My Government

 

Election day frequently coincides with my birthday, November 5.  Voting was an important event for Dad and Mom, a civic duty.  Mom dressed nicely, because who knows which townspeople she would see at the elementary school, the Old El, where votes were cast.  Visiting was in order on voting day.  

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal had given Dad self-respect at a very tough time, when he was a young father with no job.  My parents liked old down-to-earth Harry Truman, too (as president he bought his own stamps for personal letters), but I wonder if/when they switched to voting for Eisenhower.  They didn't say whether they were Democrats or Republicans.  They liked Eisenhower just fine.  And Mamie, and her funny bangs.  The Eisenhowers were the first couple of my childhood.  The old General presided over post-war peace and prosperity and it was fine with all of us.

The walls of my Old El second-grade classroom, across the hall from the activity room where townspeople voted, were festooned with a big American flag and framed pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  We pledged allegiance to that flag, and we filled out a little flow chart of the branches of government, checks and balances and all that.  We made an organizational chart showing the president and his cabinet members.   Ezra Taft Benson, well-known to Mormons, had been appointed Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture in 1953, which undoubtedly solidified Mormon allegiance.  It seemed appropriate that Benson was secretary of agriculture.  Agriculture was important to Utah.

(Today, the recent film "King Corn" tells us just how crazy U.S. agriculture and food production have become.  Obesity, food safety, antibiotic resistance, overuse of pesticides, ecosystem degradation, farm subsidies--it's all of a piece.  We need a really good new secretary of agriculture.)

The current two-year political campaign has its craziness and ugliness, as well as its historical and critical significance.  I think Dad would be intrigued with Barack Obama.  He would respect his humble beginnings and his achievement, his equanimity and poise.  Obama might remind my family in some ways of the drive and sunny groundedness of Warren Woolsey, raised next door to us by a single mom, who sometimes was a recipient of "commodity" cheese from welfare.  Warren stepped out on the back porch each morning to brush his teeth.  He was always well-groomed, he was a basketball player, custodian of the seminary, an Eagle scout, valedictorian of the high school.  He went on a mission to Australia, became a dentist and a marathoner, and is now in Africa doing humanitarian work.   

Dad liked Warren, and sent him a little money when he was on his mission.  Dad might have sent Obama a little money, too.  I can imagine him saying, "Old McCain is too old."  My mother would like the pictures of Obama with the babies, and the photo of him talking on the telephone with his feet up, the photo in which you can see the holes in the soles of Obama's shoes.  She would laugh and say, "Those shoes have been resoled once."  She knew about resoled shoes.

It would not have been lost on Dad (who made $30 a month working in the CCC camps, under Franklin Roosevelt) and Mom (who helped Dad paint national forest signs) that McCain sneered about about "spreading the wealth around," while his wife Cindy, a beer-distribution heiress and old rodeo queen, stands beside him, worth $100 million, wearing thousands, with seven plus houses, a dozen automobiles and an airplane.  Dad eventually retired from a civil service job, a job he did honorably, and faithfully, and proudly, for the U.S. government.  During my childhood we had health clinics, welfare for those who needed it, and county and state hospitals for the down-on-their-luck and indigent.  The Mormons are known for taking care of their own, but the government did its part, too.

Because of VietNam, I wasn't crazy about Lyndon Johnson (although I liked Lady Bird, and can highly recommend the Johnson library in Austin), but the presidents I've taken a shine to have all been Democrats.  I remember the excitement of John Kennedy, and his speech about "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."  I was a freshman in college when he was assassinated.  Joanie called Dad in a panic, and he assured her that everything would be okay.

Nixon was sinister, maladjusted, and the Watergate hearings were one long nightmare.  Jimmy Carter again gave us intelligence and honesty.  I adored Jimmy Carter in his sweater, admonishing us to sacrifice a little, and I still adore him.  I remembered Ronald Reagan from the movies, and found him an out-of-touch embarrassment.  Remember David Stockman, trickle-down economics, closing mental institutions, and creating street people?  Even George Bush I thought it was "voodoo," but Reagan was a Teflon president without compassion, a celebrity living in a quasi-fantasy world, ignoring the least among us, perpetuating the myth that the poor were poor because they chose poverty.  I kept my head low and tried to forget who was president during those eight years.  Reagan morphed into the weenie of Bush I, a privileged Kennebunkportian, out of touch with hoi polloi.  Remember Bush's amazement at the supermarket scanners?  Remember he hated broccoli?  Did Bar make him eat it?  The Bushes had no commitment to public service like the Kennedys.  More dismantling of government.

I grew up loving the career civil service, public schools, public libraries, and the idea of everyone serving in the military.  Those were great equalizers, in a Democratic country.  When a politican says that government is not the solution, it's the problem, I cringe.  Government is necessary for the good of its people.  Ronn tells me:  "The business of business is to make money.  The job of government is to take some of that money, in the form of taxes, and use it for the benefit of all its citizens."  We are now seeing the effects of the systematic dismantling of government functions and controls by thirty years of Republican effort.  If we have a mercenary army, if we have Blackwater and war profiteers, I ask you:  what motivation exists for peace?

I got excited again about Bill Clinton and Al Gore.  Bill was a brilliant charmer, with a smart wife and a cadre of smart friends, and he got the government books in the black again.  Wooden Al is animated on his topics.  Davy Crockett said, "First be sure you're right, then go ahead."  Carter and Gore have had the courage of their convictions, and have proven to be great humanitarians, and respected citizens of the world.  What does it say about me that I fell in love with two Nobel Peace Prize winners in advance of their prizes?

Now Obama's words bring tears to my eyes.  During the Bush II oilmen administration, an administration of an even more privileged Yalie, a clueless, lazy, and unworthy legacy and his vile (rearrange the letters to spell evil) vice-president, I have squirmed like a bug on a pin.  How could we mortgage our future, and bankrupt the treasury?  How could we preemptively invade and destroy a sovereign nation and sacrifice untold numbers of lives for oil and war profiteers?  We have 6.7 billion people in the world, and hundreds of millions of people in the United States.  Is this the best leadership we could come up with?  We were scammed, big-time, by Bush and Co.

Finally, we have Barack Obama.  Democrats seemed on the edge of extinction, but after the Republican fiascos, we roused a bit.  Many good Democrats stepped up to the plate in the primary.  They were all well-spoken (what a treat; remember how Bob Dole could hardly speak a coherent sentence, in fact spoke of himself in third person?).  Kucinich made the most perfect sense, in a senseless world.  Hillary showed her mettle and endurance.  Now it's shaken out to Obama.  Colin Powell has called Obama a "transformative figure."  He has much to offer:  education at the best schools (admitted on merit rather than connections), an admirably even temperament, curiosity, humility, empathy, energy, youth, fitness, a loving and exotic and international family.  He is articulate and eloquent and grounded.  

Obama seems not to be an egomaniac or a dissembler, but rather is a philosopher.  He appreciates complexity, reality and wise advisors.  I believe, I hope, he will pay attention to voices such those Al Gore, and James Hansen of NASA and all the other scientists who have been petitioning him, and will bring science back from where it has been starved, ridiculed and disregarded.  Unlike the small minds of McCain/Palin, I believe Obama understands the value of a planetarium projector, studies of grizzly bear DNA, and fruit fly research--the foundation of modern genetics.  But it's much, much larger than that:  We need science and education to help us creatively address energy issues, and the looming and almost unimaginable threats of global warming, resource depletion, and global warming.

Obama's books are clear, crisp, and clean--indications of clear thinking.  He has demonstrated extraordinary "executive" ability in running his campaign. How lucky we are that he has come along at this time in our nation's history, and is willing and ready to serve us.  Small and vicious people have done what they can to derail him, but his incredible gift to us at this critical time in the history of our nation and the world is becoming clear to the majority of voters.  The election of Obama will enhance our standing in the world, and our ability to communicate globally, like nothing else might.  

Obama and his helpers have ginormous mess to deal with on many fronts, and I will be glad when the election is final, and I can leave a president #44 to it, a civil servant (I love those two words) rather than a businessman, and turn my attention to how I can serve locally.

Making the Earth Say Beans Instead of Grass

I have many excuses not to weed.  It's too hot.  It's too dry.  I'm not sure what that plant is--it might be something interesting.  Oh, look, a bee (spider, caterpillar, butterfly, bug) is on that plant right now.  So in August I didn't weed.  Instead I posted 21 entries on this blog.  In September I weeded a little.  Today I weeded a lot.  The soil is still damp from the last rain, the weeds are rank and spreading, some of them have gone to seed and started to dry or wither, the insects or other arthropods have raised their offspring and are not so numerous.

Weeding time is good thinking time.  

I Set My Pigeons Free

Cooperative work and water resources are subjects that apply to Mormons in the West.  These themes are reflected in song.  We often sang "Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along.  Do your duty with a heart full of song.  We all have work, let no one shirk.  Put your shoulder to the wheel."  I could envision the early pioneers with their shoulders to the wheel, pushing their wagons through difficult places on the trail to Salt Lake City.  And I have always had a great fear of, and guilt about, shirking any responsibility.

Until I entered seventh grade and was promoted to "Mutual" (short for the Mutual Improvement Society, also known as MIA), I went to Primary in the North Ward Church in Escalante.  The North Ward was a substantial red brick building, with white trim. In the chapel were polished oak pews,  with trompe d'loeil gold cord and tassels painted around the edges of the high curved ceiling.   High windows with green velvet drapes.   There was a glass-enclosed "cry room" at the back of the chapel for parents and their fussy babies .   I felt that the Church belonged to all of us, and we all were responsible for keeping it beautiful.  The town was divided by Main Street into the North Ward and the South Ward.  A new modern church was eventually built in the South Ward, but I always felt the North Ward was the loveliest and most church-like.  

Primary met once a week in the church basement, after elementary school was dismissed.  The church basement was utilitarian, not dank, but cool, with plaster walls, a kitchen and large dining area, and classrooms.  And--magical, like The Secret Garden!--an underground passageway led to the Seminary building, sort of a back-house to the Church.  One room, painted sky blue, held the baptismal font, a cement tank of sorts, with steps leading up to it.  My cousin Jerry Roundy, newly home from his mission, baptized me in that tank when I was eight years old.  I recall that that day I was playing at Utahna Liston's house, and Dad came to get me to be baptized; it was close to my ninth birthday, and it was imperative that I be baptized while I was eight!  I believe that Orland R. "Whitey" Porter, Dad's cousin, confirmed me.

For Primary, we all--children, Primary teachers, a pianist (it may have been one of the young mothers: Dawn Griffin, Geneal Shurtz, or Thelma Cottam, or our kindergarten teacher Ruth Griffin)--gathered in a room with benches painted white, and we had prayer, sang songs and celebrated birthdays, then to the sound of rousing piano music, a tune played over and over until the task was accomplished, we marched out into our individual classrooms for lessons or activities.  

He sang a Primary theme song:  "The Primary colors are red, yellow and blue..." As a group, we celebrated childrens' birthdays with a song that scanned nicely:  "You've had another birthday, a happy one, we know.  We join in celebration because we love you so.  Happy, happy birthday, we'll sing loud and clear.  May you have God's blessings through the coming year."  Then, in an act that turned traditional birthday giving on its head,  each birthday celebrant contributed "primary pennies" into the penny box at the front of the room, one penny for each year.  We counted aloud as each penny dropped through the slot.  Then the proud birthday girl or boy turned and walked back down the aisle, smiling, basking in special status.  I assume the primary pennies joined the fast offerings, or were used for supplies for us, or perhaps they were accumulated and sent to Church headquarters in Salt Lake City.  At that time, pennies actually added up.  

A few years ago, I told Joanie I was thinking about Primary and some of my favorite songs, and Joanie told our cousin Sandra Porter, who is a piano teacher, and Sandra acquired a Mormon children's songbook for me.  I looked for "Give, Said the Little Stream":

Give, said the little stream

Give, oh give

Give, oh give

Give, said the little stream

As it hurried down the hill

I'm small, I know

But where'er I go

The fields grown greener still

Singing, singing, all the day

Give away, oh give away

Singing, singing, all the day

Give, oh give, away

The second verse is "Give, said the little rain, as it fell upon the flowers."  

"In the Leafy Treetops" was another of my favorites.  How I loved the trees that lined the ditchbanks in Escalante, that grew along the creek, that shaded us at one place or another.  The fact that we had a formally named"Green Spot" on the road past the Red Rocks, where we had picnics, speaks volumes about the desert we lived in.    

In the leafy treetops

The birds sing good morning

We're first to greet the sun

We must tell everyone

In the leafy treetops

The birds sing good morning

These songs conjured up images of the life-giving crick, happy birds singing at dawn, the earth greening with the application of water.  

Also in the book is the song about Joseph Smith, my great-great-great-uncle, digging up the gold plates from the Hill Cumorah in New York:  "The golden plates lay hidden deep in a mountainside, until God found one faithful in whom he could confide..." Everyone loves stories of secrets and buried treasure.  Years later, my husband Kent took a televised geography course from H. Bowman Hawkes at the University of Utah.  I had known his daughter, Janice Hawkes, at Highland High School in Salt Lake City.  Hawkes said "The Hill Cumorah is a drumlin."  That phrase made us smile, and whenever the Hill Cumorah comes up, I remember that the Hill Cumorah is a drumlin.

This fall for the Oktoberfest celebration at the Community Center, Bazzania was responsible for the music, and we needed to add a couple of simple German songs that people could sing.  We had played "Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen" at Swiss Days.  Mary found "Muss I Denn," a German folk song with a date of 1825.  I hadn't heard the title, but the tune was eerily familiar.  However, I could not immediately find the words I knew for it.  Mary had the English translation:  "Must I then, must I then, to the city a-way..." But those were not the words I had heard years ago.  A few hours later, the words came to into my consciousness:

My pigeon house I open wide (open wide)

And I set my pigeons free

They fly so high they reach the sky (reach the sky)

And they land in the tallest trees 

And when they return from their merry, merry flight,

I close the door and say good-night

Coo-a-roo, coo-a-roo, coo-a-roo, coo-a-roo,

Coo-a-roo, coo-a-roo, coo-a-roo

This was not a Primary song, but rather a a lullaby that Joanie sang to her babies.  Mary had not heard the words about the pigeons.  Which set me to wondering where Joanie learned the song, and whether it might be a song that was passed down from the Shurtz family, who were of German descent (our grandfather was John, his father Don Carlos, and his father Peter), or from some other early Utah pioneers.  

I have often thought that communities in the early days of the Mormon church the congregation must have sounded like the United Nations--Germans, Welsh, Irish, English, all the different Scandinavians.  Dad's grandmother Barney, whose maiden name was Bone, had immigrated from England when she was a Primary-age child.  She came via a ship that landed at New Orleans, and traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, and thence to Utah.  Did she have an accent?  What songs did she sing?  Dad never said, and I never thought to ask him.