Parker Living the BYU life

So this looks like good college fun. Around 4,000 of Parker's closest friends gathered together last saturday to throw balloons at each other, It looks like grand fun - it needed a helicopter view

Sunday Dinner

Scone Sunday at its best.
The temperature was in the low 80s, light breeze, no bugs! It demanded that we eat out on the deck and enjoy the evening - which we did with Robert, Evan, Mac, Rindy, Marie, Joseph and Michael. We enjoyed a potpourri of jams and scone, good company and then Wits & Wagers in which I scored a stealth come from behind victory. Ah - the glories of Sunday.

Family Reunions

Summers are made for and of family gatherings and the grandest family gathering is the reunion. Every five-years my father's grand-parents descendants gather. The gatherings have ranged in location though usually focusing on SLC

Aug. 7-10, 1970

Salt Lake City

June 15-18, 1973

Salt Lake City to Snowflake, Arizona

June 19-27, 1977

Independence, Missouri; Nauvoo, Illinois & Omaha, Nebraska

June 5-7, 1987

Portland, Oregon

July 21- 23, 1990

Park City, Utah

Aug. 8-11, 1995

Ocean City, Maryland

July 20-22, 2000

Salt Lake City

July 21-23, 2005

Salt Lake City

July 22-24, 2010

Salt Lake City

It is comprised of the normal activities you imagine and it is an incredible organizational feat of the chairs - hats off and thanks to them. Due to other pressing summer demands Parker was the only attendee from our family this go round. Yesterday he drove up with his cousin Mary and joined in the festivities. Our other involvement was assembling and editing the 122 page reunion notebook which cover is shown here ( by jennifer darger). At this point I probably know more about my extended family than ever before - they are an impressive group. Regrets that we could not be there.

Music in the Park

Central Park Band Shell The Naperville Community Concert Center is a city-owned facility located in the heart of downtown's Central Park at 104 E. Benton just a few blocks , a brief walk from our home. On Thursday nights they have out-door concerts (think Lake Harriett Band shell without the lake). The city band was performing a 'march' concert - think john philip sousa. So Rindy and i walked down, scored a park bench, bought some home-made pie from the women's league and enjoyed the warm evening with a bug free breeze. It was delightful - come join us next thursday

Cat In The Hat

Tough to see in the picture while driving the car but the Cat welcomes all to the Naperville library. Today, he welcomed - Rindy and Eden who met up with Laura, Annie, Peter, and Kate for a puppet show, the beach hokey pokey and story time.

Does it get any better.
We think not.

Sweet Corn

Continuing our food theme
- what indeed defines summer more
- what indeed defines the necessity of teeth flossing
- What indeed is sweeter than
Summer grilled sweet corn

(ok so maybe our grand daughter is sweeter)

Jam

Rindy is truly one of the most broad-ranged, talented, diversely-skilled people I know. The range of finance - mergers / acquisitions to needle point - to parenting - to cars - to construction - to gardening - to good old fashion canning and preserves. We've spoken of scone sunday and its pleasure but clearly part of the delight is the home-made jam. Pictured above you will find Denver Peach - my favorite.

This week we were favored (flavored) by some new strawberry, raspberry, strawberry-rhubarb, strawberry - raspberry - mango jams. The later a new incredible addition to the collection. The jam, I think was the main reason mom and dad loved to eat Sunday dinner with us for so many years. Drop by and put it to the test.

thoughts to ponder - eco

Umberto Eco is known by most as an engaging author of historical fiction such as The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, or The Island of the Day Before; all books which I have enjoyed and can recommend. Additionally, like one of my other Italian favorites, Primo Levi ; Eco is also an engaging essayist and at times finds his best voice in an essay where he is never bereft of ideas.

Scouring the library for a read I came across “Turning Back the Clock – hot wars and media populism”. And though I don’t always align with his conclusions I find them thoughtful or provoking – some of which follow. I appreciate the opportunity to wrestle a new thought, to look at something I take as basic and go a thought deeper, or simply admire the eloquence and turning of a phrase of one who can link a few bon mots more gracefully than I.

Local Peace. “the work of reducing local conflicts inspires us with the confidence that one day it will also be possible to solve global conflicts.” A succession of local peaces might lead to a grander reconciliation. I might not be condie rice or hillary yet I can individually strive for peace, it can begin with you and me. Perhaps stopping one act of road rage can, in fact, have a snowball effect... Let it begin with me

Play vs. Carnival. "play, as a moment of carefree exercise, which is good for the body … removes the tristitia of labor, and certainly sharpens our mental capacities, must be parenthetical if it is to be true play. .. Now one of the characteristics of the culture we live in is the total Carnivalization of life.” Think of how work, TV, Sunday school, mobile phones, politic, even sporting events must provide continual engagement, constant entertainment. Not carnival as a break or respite in a temporary catch your breath fashion but a non-stop carnivalization. We have lost some of the dimension of simply play, simple pleasure in the intensity of carnivalization. Do you work and then play or must you continually be on carnival. “But we need to reflect on the fact that total carnivalization does not satisfy desire, it sharpens it”

Loss of privacy. “It is precisely the behavior of exhibitionists that tells us how much the assault on privacy has become – a social cancer". The assault on privacy accustoms everyone to the disappearance of privacy, and so we say everything openly – email, the cell phone call at the restaurant, the tag on face book – little by little we become exhibitionists – nothing is confidential – no behavior is scandalous as corollaries apologies and confession are not needful for everything is transparent and nothing causes offense. Moral erosion. We need a reinvigorated sense of reserve of boundaries for ourselves and for others.

And some miscellaneous thoughts:

On political correctness.” let us at last agree that it is politically correct to use words, including pc terms, in their proper way and in accordance with common sense. And let us stick to the fundamental principle that it is humane and civilized to eliminate from current usage all those words that make our fellow beings suffer.”

The chrysanthemum and the sword by Ruth Benedict 1946

One element of confusion is that we often fail to grasp the difference between identifying with our roots, understanding those who have other roots and judging what is bad or good’

Instead of telling our children all people are the same we should tell them all children are different and explain what those differences are to show they can be a source of richness.

Try to understand and accept the customs and traditions of the host country. And an invitation to the hosts: make sure that your customs and traditions don’t turn into the imposition of your faith

The beauty of growing and maturing is in realizing that life is a marvelous accumulation of knowledge. We call this experience. The challenge is in not having it all pass away t your death. To share it so others can ‘remember” your learnings, your experiences, and your knowledge so they are not lost – leaving messages in bottles for those who wall come after

CS Lewis

Mackey recent re-discovered The Chronicles of Narnia by cs lewis and so I ever the mindful father re-read them with her. Last night I finished and felt refreshed, though too tired to type much.

I'll note my favorite quote:

"you do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be"

Team of Rivals

I realize I am a little late to the game in reading the book, nonetheless this weekend , i finished the wonderful tome by Doris Kearns Goodwin entitled: TEAM OF RIVALS : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.. For a meaningful review check the NYTimes Review here.

Someone in a talk at worked referenced the book so I dropped in the library and picked it up. It took me awhile to plow through the 750+ page, but I totally enjoyed this unique view into history and the marvel that was president Lincoln.

The Gettysburg address is there:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

His 2nd inaugural address is there - "The address sounded more like a sermon than a state paper" (Autobiographies, 802).

"And the war came."
"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other"
"The Almighty has His own purposes"
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. …In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party "
"Woe unto the world because of offences"
"until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."
"With malice toward none, with charity for all."

Some wonderful quotes as well:

• He saw laughter as the joyous, universal evergreen of life
• adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power to keep any resolution, and will regret it all your life
• no man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention
• Lincoln was the most truly progressive man of the age, because he always moves in conjunction with propitious circumstances, not waiting to be dragged by the force of events or wasting strength in premature struggles with them
• as in religion, so in politics, it is faith, not despondency, that overcomes mountains and scales the heaven

But mostly the tribute to a man of vision, integrity, of insight, conviction, graciousness, forgiveness, open-minded and open-hearted. A man for the ages, a model for all and clearly a standard which few of us, and unfortunately fewer politicians measure.


From left to right: Edward Bates, attorney general; William H. Seward, secretary of state; Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war; Salmon P. Chase, Treasury secretary.

Bags

Since moving to chicagoland Parker and I have frequently commented on the high number of spottings of people playing bags in their driveways, yards, bars. Though intrigued we had not acted until a couple of weeks ago when at a work lunch someone invited me to play. I was hustled, they knew the game and dominated my partner and me.

imagine my delight when for Father's Day/ birthday I was gifted one by Blair, which he had made himself. (Though a labor of love i think it took a bit longer to build than he imagined) So we got the bags out and played. Things we learned:
1) Rindy is a natural - 3 of her first 4 throws were in the hole
2) Mac - was the common denominator on the winning team
3) Evan - needs to learn the concept or Arc
4) Tim - ready for all comers


please note the custom paint job.

world Cup - More

So I'm sure I was at work during this game being televised. But a lovely thought - eh?