A bizarre week

What a strange week it has been. The weird stuff just kept coming! Bears, cat circus, murderers, handcarts. So unusual.

Last Sunday, my nephews came in town, after the rest of my family had gone to pick them up. My dad got sick, and it spread to several others of the family, but I have been spared. So far.

On Tuesday afternoon, I ran up Mueller Park Canyon. When I was two and a half miles up the trail, some people told me they had seen a bear! So I whistled the rest of the way to scare the bear away. It wasn't easy. But I didn't see any bears. I'm surprised anyone saw one, because that's a high-traffic trail, and I've never heard of bears there. I did, however, see some sego lilies.

When I was done, I felt tired and accomplished, even though Mueller Park is an easy run. It was probably the heat. Then I spent a while picking cherries at my sister's house, one of my favorite June activities.

On Wednesday, I was doing gospel study and I was amused at the psychedelic picture of President Kimball. I showed my mom and she said something like, "I wonder if that's what we'll look like when we're resurrected."

Then on Wednesday night, I made cherry salsa. Though I have an incurable sweet tooth, this salsa is my very favorite thing to make from cherries. It's the best salsa I've ever had.

Then on Thursday, I took my mom to an event for her birthday. I inherited my love of cats from my mother, so when I first heard of the Amazing Acro-Cats, I thought it would be a fitting birthday gift. So off we went that evening to see a cat circus.

It was a small venue with four or five rows of chairs and a stage at the front. The primary cat trainer said she had the idea to start the show when she realized that no one had ever made a show with trained cats. "Then I figured out why," she said. I expected the show to be cats doing tricks and sometimes doing their own thing, but most of the time they were doing their own thing and occasionally doing their tricks. They would jump from raised platforms, jump through hoops, climb poles, and other random acts. She started out by showing some of her cats with lesser talents. So I thought the rest of the show would have more talented cats. But not really. They just did other tricks with the same level of inconsistency. It's apparently very difficult to train cats, because they have their own things they want to do. One cat just wandered through the crowd. 

 One of the "tricks" was for one of the cats to climb up a tall pole. But that cat did that repeatedly, even when it wasn't supposed to be performing. Can it really be a trick if it's what the cat likes to do?

For the end of the show, they had a "concert" with cats manipulating instruments. They had a cat banging on drums by using drumsticks on hinges, a cat pressing a keyboard, a cat playing chimes, and a cat banging a cowbell (again with a hinged drumstick). As you can imagine, it was mostly just noise. (In college, I once attended a super weird "experimental music" concert, which was mostly just an eccentric woman making noise on instruments, so the cats weren't much worse than she was.) They also had a fake saxophone and trumpet, and they would put food on the mouthpiece so the cats would lick it and make it look like they were playing it, then they would play prerecorded trumpet and saxophone sounds.  That was dumb. I preferred it when the cats were making their own noises.

 All in all, it was a ridiculous experience. You can interpret that either in a good way or a bad way. You would absolutely have to love cats (like I do) in order to enjoy this show. The cats weren't all that skilled, and the presenters' own shtick and presentation could use some improvement to make it a more entertaining experience. Sometimes I even questioned the ethics of the show, even though its purpose is to rescue shelter cats. This makes it sound more negative than I intend. But if you're a dog person, don't go to this.

I had been following the story of Mackenzie Lueck, because it was so strange. I was shocked on Friday when I learned that the murderer had previously been in my ward! He had a family history calling when I also had a family history calling. He also had a calling to help set up sports activities for the elders, but he didn't really do it. I think I talked to him a few times, including a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house. I seem to remember thinking he was a bit troubled at one point—but only troubled in the sense that his life didn't seem to have much direction, not because I suspected him to be a murderer or criminal. I didn't know him super well, so it's not like I've lost a friend or anything. I hold him with the same contempt that I hold all psychopaths—dip him in boiling oil, etc. Sometimes I feel bad that Adele, Kacey Musgraves, and Taylor Swift are my age, and they've done much more with their lives than I have. But at least I'm not a murderer! Twenty One Pilots was right: "You'll never know the murderer sitting next to you."

My superiors at work might not want me to tell this next story, but it's an important part of my week. While I was sitting in shock at the news of the murderer, at least two ambulances and three firetrucks were driving through This Is the Place, which contributed to an eerie ambience. The park holds day handcart treks for youth groups (as opposed to long week treks) on a steep trail just outside of the park. A few of the kids had gotten dehydrated, even though there were at least a dozen full jugs of water. NBD, they were fine. I don't know who called the ambulances, or why, but it was overkill. It was a nonstory. But the EMTs told the youth that they couldn't bring the handcarts down.

That meant that we employees had to go get them ourselves. So we marched up the steep trail to retrieve them. (I ran up that trail in October, and it was quite difficult to run up. I was able to walk up it, but it was still hard, and it was hot.) The scene made it look like some disaster had happened, as there were abandoned handcarts, hats, trail mix, water jugs, and more spread out. I assisted with moving four handcarts (but not the entire length of the trail). My stake never did trek when I was a youth, so this was my first time ever using handcarts. It was difficult to hold on to the carts downhill without slipping. But we made it. I often question the wisdom of the whole idea of trek. I was super hot and thirsty when we were done.

Also this week, someone was using my debit card at a Puma store in Las Vegas. I hope a real puma mauls and maims them. Now I have to get a new debit card.

Then, as June is coming to an end, so is my obligatory month of pulling up goatheads. This year wasn't as satisfying. Somehow I didn't find as much time to seek them out, but I also didn't find as many of the plants. I think the cold, wet spring delayed them, and all the other weeds grew in their place. (Every other weed is better than goatheads, except for mayyybeee myrtle spurge. Maybe.) So here is my bag of goatheads from a gas station, right before I threw them away.

You might remember last year when I wore my America suit to church on July 1. I wore it again this year. But my friend Shane joined in on the action to celebrate July 1, Canada Day.

Another week of small vignettes.

Another week by myself. Another week of small vignettes.

 Since my dad usually gets the mail, I forgot to. After a few days, I pulled out the mail, and a wasp flew right in front of me. Then I found that it had built a nest on the mail!😬

Jimmy the cat has been extra affectionate, since I'm the only person around to pet him. Even though he's a shorthair cat, he's somewhat prone to matting. He had some especially bad matting on his back, so I worked to get it off. He doesn't like being brushed in general, so I was really happy when I finally got the lump of fur off him!

On Monday, I found Marshmallow Moon Oreos, which I reviewed. They are in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing. I figured they work for the Fourth of July, since it's an important event in American history, and they also work for Pioneer Day, since the astronauts splashed down on July 24. Also, I'm especially suited to review them, because I took a planetary geology class, I saw Apollo 11 at Sundance, and the splashdown plays an important part of a project I'm working on.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to go on a mini hike so I could take a picture of the cookies with the full moon in the background. I thought the moon would rise around 9:00, but it wasn't until 10:30. So there were no cookie pictures. But it was still a fun excursion on the trails I usually run. It's the season of sticky geraniums,

 Utah sweetpea and the end of mulesears,

 tufted evening primrose,

 and sego lilies. There are more sego lilies than I can ever remember. It makes me mad to see something like this where people pick them. They are special flowers! If you pick them, they die! And when you leave them on the trail, it's not even like you're bringing the beauty home with you. What a waste! How about this: for every sego lily you pick, I get to pull out a clump of your hair. Sound fair?

On Wednesday, I ran up Mueller Park, but I didn't take any pictures. I met some colleagues for lunch to ask them for advice. And in the evening, I was finally able to engage in my June activity of pulling up goatheads. But I didn't do as many as I would have liked before I had to get home to mow the lawn.

On Thursday, I went to the Capitol. I hadn't been inside it since preschool. For the Fourth of July season, I wanted to see the replica of the Liberty Bell.

Friday and Saturday were the beginning of astronomical summer, yet the temperatures were more like fall. I love the long days of summer, and when they have fall temperatures, it's a fabulous combination! I was able to run up North Canyon in the evening. The long canyon runs really are better in the evening, but I don't usually have time before it gets dark.

Thimbleberry plants!

I haven't seen these violets before.

Caterpillars!

A random lilac bush.

Every year, it's the same. I never have time to do all the things I want to do: pull goatheads, pick cherries, bake pies, spend time with family, spend time with sego lilies, find Fourth of July candy, watch patriotic shows. Oh well. At least I don't have time to be bored.

Mormon Miracle Pageant

I'm mostly alone in the house, because my family has all gone on vacation. But I can't say I'm completely alone, because of course I can't forget Jimmy.

On Saturday, a friend who grew up in Manti invited me to see the Mormon Miracle Pageant in that town. I didn't have plans for Saturday night, so I took him up on the offer.

I had never seen it. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but I thought it would be nice to. This is the last year they are having it. I have been doing research for a personal project, and it has come up a few places in my research, so I thought it might be nice to have some context.

When I visited every county seat last year, Manti might have been my favorite one. I love its clean, quaint Main Street and the temple on the hill.

I had heard some not-so-favorable things about the pageant from another friend, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

The verdict?

Well, I did enjoy being there. It was fun to watch on a June evening with a full moon behind me. But I might have enjoyed it for the wrong reasons.

This pageant portrays the story of the Restoration from the First Vision of 1820 to the settlement of Manti in 1849. The bulk of the show, however, has Book of Mormon scenes, presented in the context of the book's translation. Like the Palmyra pageant, it consists of prerecorded dialogue and music while actors depict the story on the hillside below the temple.

This pageant debuted in 1967—and it shows. Most of the dialogue and music was old. Pageants themselves are an old-fashioned medium; my research has shown their popularity picked up (and possibly peaked) in the 1930s. This show was a curious piece of 1960s kitsch. I'm a fan of 1960s kitsch. And as an amateur Mormon historian, it was enjoyable to see this blast from the past.

There have been some updates through the years. Much of the old material had fuzzy background noise, and I kept noticing where the fuzzy sound would break off suddenly where they had removed material. (My friend confirmed to me that much of the original material had been changed.) The scene of the Savior's ministry among the Nephites had a noticeably newer sound.

This was a major community event. Tons of people were there, and there was an amazing amount of traffic for late at night in a small town. It was impressive that such a small community could have so many participants for the performance. I can't be too nitpicky about some of the historical elements. It was full of handcarts, even though the story ended before handcarts were used. But it really would be impractical to have a livestock-pulled wagon on the hillside during the pageant.

But...although I enjoyed seeing it, and I can understand why Manti is so proud of the performance (perhaps rightfully so), I think the time has come for it to end. I think I would be embarrassed to bring a member of another faith to this show; I only appreciated it because I'm familiar with the story and the niche. The emphases of the 1960s are different from what we would choose to emphasize today, and the dialogue and voice acting were very dated. At times, it was charmingly campy, but at other times, it was cringeworthy. I thought the First Vision was done tastefully, but the martyrdom was so corny that it made me very uncomfortable. It would have been better to leave it out than do it the way they did it.

Will it be missed? I'm sure it will. But, just like the Ringling Bros. circus, it's time for it to go.

Rewind five years

I had a busy week! On Monday and Wednesday, I headed to the Woodbriar Trail and enjoyed all the June wildflowers.

Here, a mulesear is photobombing a sticky geranium.

I love the blue of Wasatch penstemon.

Utah sweetpea!

On Tuesday, I was off work, so I ran up North Canyon, my favorite trail, where I hadn't been since October. I was glad to see heartleaf arnica

 and a Nuttall's violet.

As I was running up, I was thinking how I missed pink springbeauties this year; since it was so rainy, I didn't do much spring running. But near the top, I saw some mixed with some glacier lilies! Glacier lilies first come out in March, so I was surprised to see them in June!

This weekend was the conference of the Mormon History Association. I didn't go, but I did some things this week that made me feel like I was still part of that academic community. Three years ago, a book I coedited, A Historian in Zion, was released. It was a reprint of the autobiography of Andrew Jenson, Assistant Church Historian at the turn of the twentieth century. For this book, I wrote the epilogue about the closing years of his life. He had a custom-made gravestone, an obelisk with a globe on top. The globe showed the route of his first trip around the world. His name was on one side of the obelisk, and his three wives each had their names on a side. At the time I wrote the epilogue, my boss told me that the gravestone had been stolen. But more recently, he told me he heard it was still there. I decided to go check it out for myself.

Now, finding a tombstone in the Salt Lake City Cemetery is surprisingly nonintuitive. The cemetery itself has no database, either online or on site, to tell you where people are buried. There might have been records in the sexton house, but it was closed. Findagrave.com does not say where in the cemetery he is buried. Wikipedia had coordinates, but they took me to the wrong spot. The Salt Lake Cemetery is huge, so just combing through it is not practical. I was ready to give up, but I finally just had to Google "How do you find someone in the Salt Lake Cemetery?" And a tourist website directed me to Names in Stone. Bingo! I finally found it, but it shouldn't have been that hard! I had looked at pictures on Find A Grave, but apparently the marker was moved at some point, because the surrounding landscape was different from the pictures.

Well, the obelisk is still there, but the globe is gone. If someone stole it, I hope they drop it on their foot, and then their foot never heals, and they have to limp the rest of their life, which will hopefully be short.

My old boss from the Church History Library is leaving to be a mission president this month, so he hosted a dinner for me and his two current research assistants. When I went to his house, he gave me a copy of a newly published documentary history he edited, The Annals of the Southern Utah Mission. I spent the summer of 2014 looking at PDFs of handwritten nineteenth-century documents, making sure they had been transcribed correctly for this book. Five years later, it's finally published.

With nearly nine hundred pages, this book is huge! I will have to make room for it on my "I edited this book" shelf.

Today I attended his farewell. It was a large church building, and all the overflows were full. They had four young men blessing the sacrament and sixteen passing it! I have never seen that before. Elder Snow of the Seventy commended their efficiency.

The 2014 nostalgia continued on Friday night. In 2013 and 2014, when I was in Provo, I loved attending the Rooftop Concert Series, free concerts during the summer months. They are a fun atmosphere and wonderful ways to spend summer evenings. (How can you prefer winter to summer? Winter doesn't have outdoor concerts!) This year is the last year, and this month the National Parks were playing. I hadn't been to the Rooftop Concert since I moved from Provo in 2014, and I wanted to see TNP. I first heard them in May 2014 at the Rooftop Concert.

I missed most of the first act, but the second act was Mindy Gledhill, whom I also saw at Rooftop back in August 2013. She is a talented musician, but I've grown a little tired of her. Also, her latest album is about leaving the Church. I'm glad for her to do her thing, but her thing is not my thing. The audience was surprisingly apathetic about her. 

But the National Parks never disappoint. It's always so enjoyable to hear Brady's voice and songwriting, the fiddle playing, and the contributions of the other band members. It's fun to be around fellow fans who know the words to every song. As far as local bands go (as opposed to individual singers), they are probably my favorite. I bought a new T-shirt and their Until I Live album on vinyl (even though I don't listen to records that often).

They mostly sang their own stuff, but they also played Clean Bandit's "Rather Be." That song (which I love!) was popular back in 2014, during my last months in Provo. The nostalgia had come full circle.

Toward the end, they said, "This is the part of the show where we go off stage and you awkwardly wait for us to come back on, so we're just going to play two more songs." I appreciated that, because encores are always awkward. During their last song, "As We Ran," they told everyone to get low, then they had everyone jump while they played one of the more upbeat parts of the song. They really put on a fantastic show. I highly recommend seeing them live.

(no pictures)

It seemed like a long week. Not because it was a bad week. I just keep thinking, "Really? Memorial Day was just this week?"

I had to work Memorial Day, and it was busy at the park. Most of my coworkers dislike slow days, but I prefer them. I got stressed out this week with guests who went around touching everything. You, teenage girl! Why do you feel a need to slide that tied type around, even though there's a "Don't Touch" sign, and when I tell you not to, you pick it up, making it fall apart? One very touchy young boy, probably around four, came and put his hand directly on ink in the print shop, getting ink all over his hand. I don't feel bad at all when that happens, and I also wouldn't feel bad if he stained his clothes with ink, because that's what you get for touching everything (or letting your kids touch everything, or halfheartedly "stopping" them)!

Since everything was still too wet for trails, I hopped on my bike in the evening. I heard about a trail in North Salt Lake called the Foxboro Wetlands Trail, and since it was paved, I thought I'd try it out. It really wasn't special. It was just a paved path among vacant lots. But I did see an unusual bird, and since it was behind houses, I saw two cats, which are always a bonus in my book.

I did have a few pictures to show you, but Blogger is not uploading them. Blogger is owned by Google, and I feel like it's a very low priority for them. They don't seem to care about fixing bugs, and its functionality seems to have deteriorated. I hope it's only temporary, otherwise I might have to change my platform!

On Tuesday, I went on another bike ride along the Legacy Parkway Trail, but it was extremely buggy. I will probably stay away from there for a while.

Wednesday was my day off, and the timing worked out well for my family. My niece had her last day of school, so I picked her up early. My dad has been constructing a deer fence, and it arrived that morning, so I was able to help get it off the FedEx truck. There were a few incidents last summer that made my dad want a deer fence. First, we had a deer die in our backyard. (It died right where our cat Jenny is buried. Coincidence?) Later, a deer charged at my dad in our yard. And then apparently some deer were eating plums off our tree, and they broke a branch off. (It looks like we will have a good plum crop this year, but I don't know if we'll be able to reach them.) So this week I have done some helping of the fence. I really know nothing about being handy. I'm also very lazy.

On Friday, I had to help out in the livery at work, because they were shorthanded. They don't pay me enough to be around animals, but it's good to learn new skills. My coworker also was helping out, and he ended up sneezing and getting hives after being around the ponies. So the next morning I had to take his spot in the drugstore at the park until he had washed his clothes. It was my first time at that site.

And now it's June. I like spring and fall more than summer, but increasingly I like summer more than I used to. In June, I look forward to popsicles, eradicating goatheads, picking cherries and baking with them, sego lilies, visiting nephews, and more. June 1 is the beginning of meteorological summer, which I really think makes more sense than astronomical (which only has to do with the length of days). Bring on the summertime!