April adventures

During Easter dinner with my mom's family last week, I asked my grandma if I could take pictures of my grandpa's journal, which they had put on display at his funeral last June. In March I learned about Kindex software and signed up for an account. I took pictures of the pages of the journal, and then I was able to upload them to Kindex and pay for the software to transcribe the handwritten text. And I was amazed at the job it did! Now I have to go through and clean it up. It uses AI to help with the transcription, so it guesses some things wrong—for example, it transcribed Fillmore as Illinois. But I was astonished that my grandpa drew a picture of one of those WWII banners that hung in people's windows, and the software described it as "_[drawing of a scroll with stars]_"!

On Monday, I had some extra time because of the way my jobs work, so I wanted to go try out a new trail. On October 26, I went on a fourteen-mile run and saw they were building new trails in North Canyon. Then the snow came, and I haven't been back. But Monday I was able to try some of the new trails out. They took me to the top of Cave Peak, which I have heard of, but there haven't been good trails to take me there. But now the trail took me there easily! The climb was gradual, so it wasn't too difficult. I climbed about 1,100 feet in seven miles round-trip. But it wasn't very shady, in part because the trees don't have their leaves yet.

That night I began taking down Easter decorations. This set of Peeps novelty lights finally died. I believe I got them on clearance after Easter in 2001. They had a good run. 

Tuesday was Earth Day, and I ran on Wild Rose. I felt a little guilty that I didn't really do anything to help the earth on Tuesday, especially as I passed all this myrtle spurge, which is visually striking but ecologically destructive. Sometimes I go on the trail to pull it up, and last year I organized a church service project for it. But it isn't my job to save the world. And I did pick up a couple of pieces of litter (one of which had been there awhile) and threw them away in the park's trash cans.

Thursday I attended a lecture at Signature Books about queer joy, where I bought The Book of Queer Mormon Joy, which has some short essays by some of my friends.

Then on Friday, I got up early to drive to Logan to attend the Juanita Brooks Utah History Conference. (Juanita Brooks was a twentieth-century historian who was the first to seriously publish about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.) Unfortunately, it was one of those nights when I was awake for two hours, which often happens when I have too much sugar, but I thought I had been careful about sugar. That meant I was tired all day.

As I was heading north on I-15, I noticed that there was a car that got next to me as though they were going to pass me, but instead of passing me, they slowed down. What is going on!? I finally looked over, and it was my BYU boss! He was on the way to the same conference (where he was presenting), and he just wanted to wave at me. He later told me he honked at me as well, but I didn't hear it. (I didn't think my podcast was that loud!)

As is typical of any conference, some presentations were more interesting than others. There was one interesting one that showed how antipolygamy laws prevent people in polygamous communities from accessing needed healthcare and other resources. And one presenter is a seminary teacher—I was jealous that those kids get a nuanced, scholarly teacher instead of the teachers I got with fundamentalist views of the scriptures. It was good to meet some of the scholars whose names I have seen but not met in person, and it was good to catch up with some of my colleagues from the Church History Library.

Then yesterday (Saturday), I went back to the new trail, because it looked like there was another portion of a trail near the top of Cave Peak. I started on it, but it began to go on a north-facing slope, which meant there was still a lot of snow, so I turned around. I want to go back when the snow is gone, but you have to go through a lot of less shady portions to get there. So it might be better for the fall, when the snow is gone but the sun is less harsh.

The rest of Saturday was low-key and relaxing. I have a busy May coming up, so it was nice to have some time to myself.