On Monday, the State of Utah was off for Juneteenth, so it was nice to have the day off. The state holiday is the third Monday of June, but the federal holiday is June 19. When I worked for the Church History Department, they observed the state day, so I assumed BYU did as well. But this week I learned they have the federal day off. It doesn't matter that much, since I'm not actually a BYU employee.
Since I've been busy so many Saturdays, it was nice to have a free Monday. I went up North Canyon, which of course is my preferred spot when I have the day off. It's such a well-shaded trail. After I got to Rudy's Flat, I decided to go down via the new trail, which I learned that day is called the Mahogany Ridge Trail, because there are mahogany trees there. I have gone all the way up it but not down, which is a different experience. That trail is not very shady at all, and the summer is only going to get hotter, so I knew that if I didn't go down it then, I would have to wait until the fall. It was lovely, though it was annoying not to have more shade. I stepped off the trail to let some cyclists pass, and one of them said to me, "You're way out here! Good for you!" I was probably four miles away from the trailhead at that point. The entire run was a little over nine miles.
Namesake mahogany trees
I just love sego lilies!
Snake tracks
For my BYU job this week, I've been looking at transcripts of old articles and updating their footnotes to align with modern citation conventions. That can be frustrating, especially when the authors were sloppy with their citations, and I have to track down information. But Reggie often likes to sit on my lap while I work, which is a morale boost—but it makes me less efficient, especially when he puts his paws on my hand and I have to type one-handed.
I was also frustrated doing some Utah Historical Quarterly work this week, because there was one author who introduced a number of mistakes into an article we edited, and he did it without Track Changes. And he used the word "pollution" when he evidently meant to say "population."
On Thursday evening, PBS Utah hosted a special Juneteenth event, and since the forecast was in the 100s, I thought it was a good night to do something indoors. And I haven't done much for Juneteenth. They had mini sweet potato pies. Of course I'm into holiday-themed desserts, but I don't know what's culturally appropriate for a white guy like me to have on Juneteenth, so I'm glad they provided them. And there were some people there that I know, so I got to talk with them.
Then they had a panel of five Black people talking about Juneteenth and various issues. One is a physician (who hosted the Juneteenth 5k I did last year), and he is worried that if the CDC no longer recommends vaccines, then insurance companies will no longer cover them. (I am so sad for children who will be contracting measles and anyone who legitimately can't be vaccinated, but it is very difficult for me to feel bad for antivax parents.) And there was a woman there who said she knew her great-great-grandmother, who had been enslaved. The first entry in the great-great-grandmother's family Bible was from 1872, when it was illegal for her to read and write. It blows my mind that there are people alive today who knew people who were enslaved!
On Saturday, my ward/stake participated in My Hometown day of service. It was going to be my only free Saturday of the month (due to conferences and No Kings Day), but I volunteered to help out with this as well. My group was assigned to put together a vinyl fence, something I know nothing about. So I was only minimally helpful. Oh well, it's OK if I'm not good at things. Thankfully, it was cool enough that I was still able to go on an evening North Canyon run. I actually prefer evening lighting better, but the timing is less convenient in the evening for a longer run.
It's been a while since I've included my AI dream images (my dreams have been less interesting, and I've gotten a little bored of the concept), so here are some from the last month-ish.
a retired pilot with dementia thinks the grocery store is an airport
a senior woman steals a shopping cart, then a garbage can falls on her
angry Japanese people throw rocks at a tidal wave
Mark fits into an elevator that has a washer and dryer in it
the sandwich shop applies condiments with makeup brushes
a flock of pelicans spells out messages in the sky
a secret tunnel that goes under the house, and the opening is next to a cockatiel cage outside
Hi! I put this image at the top because I don't want the video thumbnail to be the default picture when I share the link to this post.
I suppose the most interesting thing about this week was that yesterday, June 14, I attended Salt Lake City's (first) No Kings Day protest.
Last month, I learned about No Kings Day to happen on June 14. June 14 is Donald Trump's birthday, and he planned a big military parade, ostensibly to celebrate the military's 250th, but how convenient for him that it also happens to be his birthday. June 14 is also Flag Day, and the organizers of No Kings Day want us to celebrate America and our flag—but not Trump. He tries to act like a king—trying to eliminate checks and balances, disregarding Supreme Court rulings, trying to do whatever he wants, pardoning criminals who support him and going after anyone who dares criticize him.
MAGA Republicans' support of Donald Trump is 100 percent baffling:
They say they support police, yet they attacked police on January 6 and support the man who pardoned the attackers.
They say they want states' rights, yet they support the man who wants to prohibit California from passing its own car laws.
They say they love God, yet they support someone who very obviously does not practice Christianity.
They say they love America and the American flag, yet they fly the Confederate battle flag—the side that literally fought against America!
They say they support veterans, yet they support a man who is not a veteran, makes fun of veterans, and now wants to cut off assistance for veterans.
They say they don't like taxes, yet they support the man who wants to implement lots of tariffs.
They say they support traditional family values, yet they support a man who has been married several times (and had affairs).
They say they love the Constitution, yet they support the man who says "I don't know" when asked if he needs to defend the Constitution and who has flouted it on more than one occasion
Remember when conservatives didn't like swearing and vulgarity? Yet now we have vulgar bumper stickers, the vulgar Gutfeld! show, and "Let's Go Brandon."
I had never attended a Flag Day celebration before (my cousin has a June 14 birthday, but those were birthday celebrations), so I thought this would be a good way to celebrate Flag Day.
On Tuesday, I was excited to make my poster. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, since I'm not an artistic person. I wanted it to be very patriotic to show that we oppose Trump because we love America.
Then Saturday morning, I kicked off the day by eating Trump-colored cereal.
My mom wanted to go with, and she also invited a lady from her water aerobics. So I drove two old ladies to the University of Utah campus. It was fun to be back and reminisce on the one semester I spent on campus there (fall 2021).
We got there an hour early, so we were able to pick a nice spot in the shade. It was a hot day, but we were nice and cool. I wore my flag socks, my flag shoes, my shorts with little flags printed on them, and my Statue of Liberty t-shirt.
A random woman gave us flag pins because we were dressed in red, white and blue.
We had to strain to hear the speakers, but we still heard a bulk of what they said. One was a Black author, and I was going to write what she said, but I realized that I don't remember it all that well, and I don't want to misrepresent her. One woman spoke about her immigrant ancestors (I think she was talking about Mormon pioneers) and the Title of Liberty from the Book of Mormon, since the Book of Mormon speaks against kings. And I forget what the other speakers said, but I liked what they said.
It was fun to see the various signs. I saw several that said "No Kings Since 1776," but mine was the only one I saw that said "King Free." There were signs that said "You know it's bad when straight white guys are protesting," "I hope this is the worst birthday ever," and "Schoolhouse Rock taught me No More Kings."
It was a perfectly peaceful day. There were people there who were obviously Latter-day Saints. And you know how alt-right protests have American flags and Confederate flags? This protest had American flags and Pride flags. (Speaking of Pride flags, my mom told me today that one of the speakers in their ward unfurled a Pride flag during his sacrament meeting talk!🏳️🌈)
It was a completely peaceful protest (unlike, sadly, Salt Lake's evening protest), and it was good to be surrounded by like-minded people.
My mom posted a picture of me on her Facebook, and one antagonistic "friend" of hers commented with laughing emojis. Then one of my aunts "liked" that comment. She liked a comment that was mocking us?! Kind of makes me not want to see her again. I also posted a picture of myself, and I was surprised to see a Trumper "like" it, but then later she unliked it.
***
That was perhaps the most important aspect of my week. But I will talk about other parts of my week, so if you're only interested in No Kings Day, you don't have to read the rest.
Last Sunday evening, I went on a neighborhood walk, which included eating some mulberries hanging over the sidewalk. When I got home, there was a peacock in our yard! This peacock was in our yard last August, and apparently it's been hanging out on another street in our neighborhood since then.
On Monday evening, I went to Hogle Zoo for the first time in fourteen years. The Utah Historical Society is part of the Department of Cultural & Community Engagement, and CCE had a work retreat at the zoo. So I was able to go for free. (They did this two years ago as well, but at that time I was working at the Church History Library and going to group therapy every Monday, so I didn't care to go.) It seems like we went to the zoo a lot when I was a kid, usually with my cousins. But now I'm mostly indifferent to the zoo. It doesn't seem that special to see animals if they're not in the wild. But there were a few things that interested or amused me.
I liked this display of insects and arachnids, which looks like it's been there since the '80s. I liked the caption that said, "How do you say TARANTULA? The correct pronunciation is TUH-RANCH-U-LUH, NOT "TRY"-ANCH-U-LUH, as it is often pronounced in this area." Is that really a regional thing? I took a lot of linguistics classes, and I don't remember this word ever coming up. (When I was in third grade, we were learning about prefixes, and the guest teacher asked for examples of words with "tri." Someone said "tri-antula," which of course doesn't have anything to do with "three.")
I've had too many close encounters with rattlesnakes, so it was comforting to see one safely behind glass. It kept yawning, so I saw its scary fangs.
And I was happy to see a kinkajou, only because it's mentioned in a Free Design song.
(The last time I was at the zoo, I took a friend on a date, and that was the last time I saw her [besides a chance encounter four years later], because I learned shortly thereafter that she thought I was "really, really weird," which I probably was. I am so relieved that I'm not dating girls anymore!)
Also this week, it was time to pick the cherries from my sister's tree. I picked them Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, filling up ten one-gallon bags (though I only took home nine, because one was for my grandma's friend).
But picking is the easy part. The real work is the pitting, which takes hours and hours. Luckily, my mom helped pit, so that was less for me. We have some pitting tools, but they don't always get the pits out, so you have to check the fruits, which makes it a slower process.
I was off work on Friday because I went to the Mormon History Association conference last week. It was also Friday the 13th, so I wanted to watch spooky Fourth of July shows while I pitted. So I watched Jaws, which is currently streaming for free on Tubi. All the red cherry juice seemed appropriate. I had heard it was a Fourth of July movie, but only the first hour-ish was about the holiday. Then the next day I watched the Fourth of July episodes of Stranger Things while pitting, but they didn't make sense to me because they're the only episodes I've ever seen.
We finished yesterday. Phew! My mom opted to can many of the cherries, since we usually freeze them but are running out of freezer space.
I made cherry crisp and cherry salsa. For the crisp topping, I added Peeps-flavored protein powder that I bought two years ago. I still haven't gone through it because it is ghastly to drink. But I didn't notice it in the topping, so that might need to be the way to use the rest of it.
And my mom made cherry pies.
Between the zoo and the cherries, I only went running twice this week. But the wildflowers did not disappoint!
sticky geraniums
Nootka rose
A bumblebee . . .
. . . flying towards me!
And today I taught Sunday School. I asked the class for ways they make the Sabbath holy, being careful that we are not prescriptive for what others should do. One person said she doesn't do laundry on Sundays, while one hilarious class member said she always does laundry on Sunday and had laundry in the dryer at the moment. I likewise had my laundry in the dryer at that moment. And I also had the class take a five-minute nature walk, an idea that was in the children's section of the manual. I thought a walk would change it up a little bit.
On Monday, I went to North Salt Lake's Pride night. It wasn't anything special: They have food trucks and vendors every Monday in the summer, and this time they also added a DJ and a few booths of LGBTQ+ organizations. I didn't feel a need to engage with any of the booths, but I asked the NSL folks if they received any pushback for hosting Pride events (I noticed that the marketing two years ago was bolder, and they had Pride flags two years ago but not since then). The woman said as far as she knew, there was no pushback. So that was good to hear!
With it being June, I once again began looking for goathead/puncturevine plants to eradicate. There are a few spots in the neighborhood that I have adopted to keep clear of goatheads. I do think I have made a substantial difference for these abhorrent plants.
My mom's garden has rhubarb, and she got some recipes from Pinterest for rhubarb cookies and rhubarb custard. I don't trust whoever made these recipes, because they just had rhubarb thrown in/on them. That wasn't great, and as the days went by, the rhubarb dried out and got tough. I don't recommend these recipes; rhubarb needs to soften up in some way.
The custard was good. It just wasn't good as rhubarb custard.
Then that evening I ran to the radio towers on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. In late May, there's a spot that is gorgeous and fragrant with lots of Palmer's penstemon flowers.
This is a picture from last year
I hoped I might see the bloom this year, since it was still early June. Unfortunately I missed the blooms, because I was on vacation during the end of May. But that's not the worst part. I have seen this spot posted on a lot of Facebook hiking posts. I was dismayed to see that a lot of the plants had been trampled, presumably from people taking pictures. Ugh, why can't you stay on the trail for your pics?!
I am so sad that there's no Summer Baking Championship this year to fill my Monday nights.
I went on additional runs Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and the wildflowers were spectacular.
sego lilies
tufted evening primrose
silky lupine
mulesears with Wasatch penstemon
I'm not sure what these are!
mulesears
On Wednesday, I hoped to go to bed earlier, but once I was done exercising, Reggie came and sat on me for more than forty minutes.
On Thursday, we employees of the Utah Historical Society got to tour the new building north of the capitol, which will house the Museum of Utah when it opens next May. They have installed a stained-glass ceiling with Utah iconography.
This is an active construction site (we had to wear vests and hard hats), and I was amused to see a protective plate with "Hole" written on it. That isn't amusing on its own, but one day earlier, the Nancy Bluesky account had posted this strip from 1955, which I love (and I want to save it in case I give another PowerPoint in which I tell authors not to use big words just for the sake of big words).
On Friday morning, I noticed the friendly neighbor cat crossing the street. All of a sudden, the cat had vanished, and I recognized that the only place it could have gone was in the storm drain in the gutter! So I went and looked in the storm drain, and I didn't see it. I took a picture of the drain as a reference point, and next thing I knew, it had popped out of the storm drain! You can see that I took a picture of the cat here, but I didn't realize it was in the picture until I looked at it today!
(Also, I rescued an injured neighbor cat from this drain about twenty years ago, but the grate has been replaced since then. Cats are just the most wonderful little creatures.)
On Friday and Saturday, I attended the Mormon History Association conference in Ogden. One of the perks of working for a history organization is that they pay for me to go to academic conferences like these. It was good to meet historians whose work I have long admired, and it was fun to see colleagues from various aspects of my career: BYU Studies, Church History Department, Wayfare magazine, and last year's Affirmation conference.
I won't tell you about all the sessions I attended, because it won't be interesting to most of my readers, and frankly, much of it wouldn't be interesting to me. But here are a few highlights:
My BYU boss indirectly asked me to attend the session he was presenting at, because he was talking about Latter-day Saints in prison, which is a book project I helped out with. As he read his paper, I recognized that I had written much of the material. He acknowledged me by name in his session, so two people I know told me it was nice for him to give me a shout-out.
A woman named Adrienne sat by me during the Saturday morning opening session. When I told her what I do professionally, she asked if I'm a runner. She had talked to my Utah Historical Quarterly boss the day before, and my boss told her that she has always worked with runners. (She might have said quiet runners, I don't remember.)
When I went to lunch, Adrienne happened to be there and invited me to sit by her and an older man who used to work with sugar beets. I asked if you could eat sugar beets like you do regular vegetables; he said they are too salty and act as a laxative.
The Saturday morning session was about pioneer monuments, by a woman who does not typically work in Mormon history. She talked about handcarts in historical memory, and she asked if anyone could help her with the chronology. After the session, I offered to send her my Pioneer Day article, since I do talk about that a little.
One of the folks with Wayfare asked me to sing in a choir for the closing Sunday session. Because it's Sunday, it's a devotional session. We sang "Amazing Grace" and "It Is Well with My Soul," which are simple songs, but these were really challenging arrangements. They're some of those songs where the different parts have different rhythms. I usually sing tenor, but I had to do bass for these, because the tenor just went too high. We only got to practice three times before performing, and I practiced a little at home. We got better over the course of the practices, but I still didn't quite get it, and I think we messed it up a little. But it's done!
This devotional took place in a 1930 building in Ogden. We met in the gym, and there were balls on the floor of the gym. I wore my rainbow tie, and someone told me it matched the volleyball on the floor.
After the sessions yesterday (Saturday), I decided I wanted to try an Ogden trail, since I've never been running in Weber County. I ended up going on the Indian Trail, which was fairly steep, and it was hot, especially at the beginning. I came across some big rock outcrops, and I guessed it was Cambrian-era Tintic Quartzite, and my Rockd app confirmed that! (For those who are newer to my blog, back in 2013, I had a geology field studies class in which we hiked through Little Cottonwood Canyon and made a geologic map, which was one of the most memorable classes I ever took. Ogden Canyon evidently has the same or similar geology.)
This was an outcrop of Tintic Quartzite.
And I believe this giant layer of tan rock is also Tintic Quartzite
I don't know whether this was Maxfield Limestine or Ophir Formation
It's nice to have eventful weeks. But also I hope to have some less eventful times.
