The Book of Mormon

Today when the UPS guy delivered Carlos Fuentes book, Espejo Enterrado (I already have the DVD and the workbook), I also found a wet package on the porch--The Book of Mormon, the one by the people who created South Park, -which I plan to write about in a few days.  Right now I have a bloody right eye--not just the run-of-the-mill blood-shot eye, but a bloody eye, and it doesn't seem to be healing itself naturally with  tears.  So that may mean a trip to Kaiser, and my days are already too packed--mostly with fun.  Tomorrow after four hours of back-to-back classes, Shehla, Beth, and Nicole are coming over to watch Moneyball on my Netflix DVD, and we're having a theme:  ball-shaped food plus all the items (items, not food:  twinkies, french fries, ice cream and sorbet) he eats in the movie. Beth and I may nap to Bonfire of the Vanities before the others arrive.   The next morning Jonathan and I have our monthly meeting of the Jo-Mama Book Club, which segues immediately into lunch with Arturo and Mary, whose birthday we're celebrating.  After that I think I'll work in Kaiser for my eye.  Then we're taking Jeanne and Ken to Lavash.  In the meantime, Jennie has sent me her papers, which I really want to read, and Mariya Korotko has asked me for a letter of recommendation for USC.

Now, the reason I "came in" just now is that I keep coming across something my friend Linda gave me on the Articles of Faith of the Mormon Church.  There are two articles, #12 and #13 I'm going to quote here.

12  We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rules, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law.


13  We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul--We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.  Joseph Smith.




Coming soon:  The Book of Mormon, the Musical

Welcome, Jenny

Javier and I have just taken apart the mounted tapa cloth* to take it to the airport to welcome Jenny, who can step right onto it after she goes through security, something we didn't have to do back in 1988 or whenever it was that Andrea welcomed us in the Durango airport and had tapa as the red-carpet treatment along with champagne.  (We're taking Taittenger, a name I didn't know.  Someone gave it to me a while back, and I just checked it online just to be sure it's not the kind that like Daddy's staple Cold Duck, according to a bartender-psychologist friend of Daddy's--the Glass Crutch bartender-- gives people headaches.  The price of Taittenger, it turns out, goes into the hundreds, though on sale you can get it for "only" $90.00.)  We have Andrea on video, serving champagne and asking Jonathan whether he'd had a good trip.  "I threw up four times," he says.  "Only four times?" Andrea asks.  That was the trip when Jonathan and I were separated on the flight, but the flight attendant said, "Maybe someone will change seats so you can sit together."  The man at the window seat next to Jonathan ignored her and kept reading his newspaper.  Then, after we'd taken off, I looked back and saw that Jonathan was about to barf.  I reached for a barf bag but couldn't get it to him in time, and as soon as his breakfast had run its course, the man next to Jonathan asked me, "Would you like to sit next to him?"
"No, I wouldn't want you to have to give up your window seat," I said.  But I think I moved. 


I'm so happy that Jenny will have a stop-over giving us some time together.  I even sacrificed View and Chew, the French-practicing group of people who watch Un village francais together once a month.  In addition to the tapa cloth and champagne, I'll treat Jenny and Javier to brunch and load Jenny up with as much Trader Joe's treats as she can handle for her flight onto Detroit and Ithaca, New York. 

Jenny, by the way, is coming back after being in Bali, Singapore, and Thailand.

Now I want to write something in praise of Javier.

*I'll explain about the tapa cloth and what Suzy suggested when she was over with china from Mom.

My iPod and I

A few days ago I listened the books I've gotten from Audible.com and put on my iPod for good listening.  The one on my iPod today is Bonfires of the Vanities, not a recent book but a good one.  But I need to write about the iDreams I've had while being connected to the iPod IV.

October 2007

Last night I went to bed with my iPod playing Next to Normal, and I stayed awake through two performances!  Wrote this:

Stop!  Stop!  That’s enough.

If you give too much, you bury the good stuff.

Too many notes in a given measure

And they won’t know which note to treasure

Clutter

They’ll mutter.

In bed she held her iPod nano in her hand like a crucix, heald to hear heart with a line to go, who whispered in her ear—both of them.  God in stereo. 

The passenger seat was back, the way I hadn’t put it.  And there was pine straw on the floor.  I knew he didn’t love me any more.

It had been a log time since he wanted to go on a walk with me

Jan. 3, 2008

Dream:  I went to bed with my iPod tonight (A Tale of Two Cities is about 14 hours long.)  In my dream, I was trying to turn off my iPod, and sometimes I was confused about what I was hearing from other people and what I was hearing from the reading of A Tale of Two Cities.  For example, after I’d turned the iPod off, I thought, I still heard the reader, and I thought it was the English man I was with that I’d been hearing—very articulate, good with a spontaneous turn of phrase!—instead of the reader on the audible book I’d imported.  Then I realized it really was the iPod, but I couldn’t turn it off.  I went to a party or some kind of gathering, and I mentioned this to a woman who quickly disconnected the little cord from the iPod and seemed to think that was the solution.  The iPod was still on, and I was still hearing the reader.  So I approached the same woman, who was now tanning herself on the beach with another woman, and I said, “I know you probably think I’m belaboring the point—oh, I can tell you do by the exasperated glances you two have just exchanged.  But I still can’t get the iPod to turn off.  It’s still playing in my head.”  At this point there were pieces of iPod all over the place.  I’d never be able to get it back together again.  But it was still going on…the Tale of Two Cities was enmeshed in my brain, playing, playing, playing.            Then I woke up and turned it off.  No problem!

October 10, 2008 Dream:  I was with someone (Sarah Vowell) who just wouldn’t stop talking!   I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.  I needed to say something about the camera and wallet that disappeared.  I suspected her son.  (Later I found it in with David’s possessions.)  But she just kept talking!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009  7:00 AM

                                                                                                                                           My iPod dreams have been so interesting that I’m going to write to Susan Martin  Peeple about this (inspired by her mention of stopping by to see Charles and Anita) and then start a document on My iPod and my Id—thought I don’t think it’s really my Id.

Maybe the biggest change in my life, other than just growing old, is my iPod.  I’ve had it for more than a year, and even though I began using it for music, I now listen to books on it, so I’m catching up on my reading.  I also use it with my classes from time to time to play songs, passages from NorthStar, and the beginning of Kindred, the novel we’ll be reading and discussing.  But I still don’t like to use my cell phone, and I need to learn about Twitter.  Can you explain that to me?

Because I’m about twenty-five years behind in my reading of contemporary works, I listen to books on my iPod in a futile attempt to catch up.  (I did, however,  read you Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius the eyes-on-print way before I had my iPod.)  Listening to books makes it possible for me to “read” while I wash dishes and peel vegetables and fold clothes, but it also causes me to refer to What Is the What as Where Is the Where because my iPod doesn’t always resume in the part where left off.  I think I’ve wandered on the road with Valentino to Ethiopia three times, and I know I’ve been in the Emergency room waiting with him for hours and hours, over and over again.  I’ve learned the details of of Tabitha’s murder  repeatedly and then heard about her e-mail messages of amny moods (and many men?)  and her laughing at the salacious history lessons of Ms. Gladys-- not quite the sequence in the book.  I’ve been with Valentino while he’s met the four young girls and gone through ways to impress them, rejected their invitaion, and finally gone to lunch, which turned out to be much more than you’d think the parents would allow to go on, unsupervised/   (In addition to the repeated experiences I’ve had thanks to the skipping around of my iPod, I’ve missed hunks too.  I was there for the Lost Man’s comments more than once or twice, as I’ve gone through the robbery in Valentino’s apartment a lot of times.  I’ve finished the book once or twice in the sense of coming to the end, but I haven’t read all of it yet.  It’s been like Valentino’s conversation with his dad—emotional and essential and cut off several times.  I’ve left his mother  in Marial Bai, been with him as he became Noriyaki’s assistant, heard about his girl fried, and his comnet “but you’re used to it.  I’ve been with Noriyaki when he’s been taken for Chinese or Malaysian and after his death, but my iPod skipped the parat where he died.    Where is the where? 

Dream:  I went to bed with my iPod tonight (A Tale of Two Cities is about 14 hours long.)  In my dream, I was trying to turn off my iPod, and sometimes I was confused about what I was hearing from other people and what I was hearing from the reading of A Tale of Two Cities.  For example, after I’d turned the iPod off, I thought, I still heard the reader, and I thought it was the English man I was with that I’d been hearing—very articulate, good with a spontaneous turn of phrase!—instead of the reader on the audible book I’d imported.  Then I realized it really was the iPod, but I couldn’t turn it off.  I went to a party or some kind of gathering, and I mentioned this to a woman who quickly disconnected the little cord from the iPod and seemed to think that was the solution.  The iPod was still on, and I was still hearing the reader.  So I approached the same woman, who was now tanning herself on the beach with another woman, and I said, “I know you probably think I’m belaboring the point—oh, I can tell you do by the exasperated glances you two have just exchanged.  But I still can’t get the iPod to turn off.  It’s still playing in my head.”  At this point there were pieces of iPod all over the place.  I’d never be able to get it back together again.  But it was still going on…the Tale of Two Cities was enmeshed in my brain, playing, playing, playing.            Then I woke up and turned it off.  No problem!

April 2009

Dream that a little boy—the kid in Home Alone—had told me that he was going to commit suicide with his iPod.  I went into the room with him to watch him.  Pretty soon he was really dead, and I felt guilty for not trying to stop him.  I called the police, and then Javier and I went onto the porch to wait.  We didn’t think they had responded but then we saw a couple of fairly old women or maybe a wmoan and a man come out with mattresses and tea cups.  Were they the police?  Then we realized that they were thieves, stealing for the house.  The police were cleaning up, not asking questions or investigating.  I thought they’d talk to me, but they just kept cleaning up.  When they left, there was still some blood where the little boy had electricuted himself with his iPod.

June 2009

Dream:  Anyway, I went to bed with that in my iPod, but during the night, it switched to Then We Came to the End, and my dream struggled with whether or not the people (some from high school) we’d be sharing this with would relate and find it witty or just disconnect.  As I listened to Then We Came to the End, I kept trying to figure out how they’d respond, and they were getting closer and closer. Which parts would they hear?

Tuesday, June 30, 2009  7:00 AM

                                                                                                                                           My iPod dreams have been so interesting that I’m going to write to Susan Martin  Peeple about this (inspired by her mention of stopping by to see Charles and Anita) and then start a document on My iPod and my Id—thought I don’t think it’s really my Id.

Maybe the biggest change in my life, other than just growing old, is my iPod.  I’ve had it for more than a year, and even though I began using it for music, I now listen to books on it, so I’m catching up on my reading.  I also use it with my classes from time to time to play songs, passages from NorthStar, and the beginning of Kindred, the novel we’ll be reading and discussing.  But I still don’t like to use my cell phone, and I need to learn about Twitter.  Can you explain that to me?

Because I’m about twenty-five years behind in my reading of contemporary works, I listen to books on my iPod in a futile attempt to catch up.  (I did, however,  read you Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius the eyes-on-print way before I had my iPod.)  Listening to books makes it possible for me to “read” while I wash dishes and peel vegetables and fold clothes, but it also causes me to refer to What Is the What as Where Is the Where because my iPod doesn’t always resume in the part where left off.  I think I’ve wandered on the road with Valentino to Ethiopia three times, and I know I’ve been in the Emergency room waiting with him for hours and hours, over and over again.  I’ve learned the details of of Tabitha’s murder  repeatedly and then heard about her e-mail messages of amny moods (and many men?)  and her laughing at the salacious history lessons of Ms. Gladys-- not quite the sequence in the book.  I’ve been with Valentino while he’s met the four young girls and gone through ways to impress them, rejected their invitaion, and finally gone to lunch, which turned out to be much more than you’d think the parents would allow to go on, unsupervised/   (In addition to the repeated experiences I’ve had thanks to the skipping around of my iPod, I’ve missed hunks too.  I was there for the Lost Man’s comments more than once or twice, as I’ve gone through the robbery in Valentino’s apartment a lot of times.  I’ve finished the book once or twice in the sense of coming to the end, but I haven’t read all of it yet.  It’s been like Valentino’s conversation with his dad—emotional and essential and cut off several times.  I’ve left his mother  in Marial Bai, been with him as he became Noriyaki’s assistant, heard about his girl fried, and his comnet “but you’re used to it.  I’ve been with Noriyaki when he’s been taken for Chinese or Malaysian and after his death, but my iPod skipped the parat where he died.    Where is the where? 

(Girls=his date with Tabitha)  Gone passed the home of the people who wanted him in their card more than once. 

Departure from Marial Bai

Kakuma

SPLA

Ive also wandered with

All birthday’s will be on January 1, all boys called Dominic

Lost Boys, Lost Man, Lost Couple inAway We Go.

Tampon Box

Dinka words of wisdom

Achor Achor

Servitude with the Arabs who bought him, sale to other Arabs, who in their turn sold him to white rescue team

I will always keep my registration sticker current so no police officer has to do me the favor of not throwing me in jail while he tows away my car.

Darfour—not Sudan—not the current dilema

Valentino—favorite saint—“No miraculous deed goes unpunished.”    Most Christline? 

Education is your mother!

Men in Black!  That’s what my Tongan “fmily” was wtching last year when I dropped in o them unexpectedly 

Written account—

Pretending to swim in clean sheets

Thinng food was being dropped when it was cluster bombs.

at the Arab Culture and Community Center, where I referred to What Is the What as Where Is the Where, probaby because I’d been wandering with Valentino from Atlanta to Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya and back to Atlanta many, many more times than a reader of the printed word, not always being sure of where I was, had been, was going because my iPod does its own skipping.  I’m about twenty-five years behind in my reading of contemporary works of staggering genius, so I listen to books on my iPod in a futile attempt to catch up.  Listening to books makes it possible for me to “read” while I wash dishes and peel vegetables and fold clothes,  but it also causes me to refer to What Is the What as Where Is the Where because my iPod doesn’t always resume in the part where I left off.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched Valentino open the door to robbery and entered that emergency room to wait the 14 hours with him—but more than the number of times on the pages of your book.  Your book already has the movement from civil war on the continent of Africa (See?  I’m trying to show that I, unlike Palin, know Africa isn’t a country) to the civil war in Atlanta, but my iPod movement has increased my trips back and forth, and it’s also skipped certain passages, I’m afraid.  It’s been like Valentino’s conversation with his dad—emotional and essential and cut off several times.  I’ve left his mother  in Marial Bai, been with him as he became Noriyaki’s assistant and when he prompted Noriyaki’s comment “But you’re used to it.”  I’ve been with Noriyaki when he’s been taken for Chinese or Malaysian and after his death, but my iPod skipped the part where he died.   I had to buy your notes for $9.00 to find out that he died in a car accident.  So…it’s no wonder that I keep saying, “Where is the where?” 

            Have YOU listened to your book on you iPod?  I like the way that Dion Graham reads it—if only he wouldn’t skip around that way.

Dream:  I went to bed with my iPod tonight (A Tale of Two Cities is about 14 hours long.)  In my dream, I was trying to turn off my iPod, and sometimes I was confused about what I was hearing from other people and what I was hearing from the reading of A Tale of Two Cities.  For example, after I’d turned the iPod off, I thought, I still heard the reader, and I thought it was the English man I was with that I’d been hearing—very articulate, good with a spontaneous turn of phrase!—instead of the reader on the audible book I’d imported.  Then I realized it really was the iPod, but I couldn’t turn it off.  I went to a party or some kind of gathering, and I mentioned this to a woman who quickly disconnected the little cord from the iPod and seemed to think that was the solution.  The iPod was still on, and I was still hearing the reader.  So I approached the same woman, who was now tanning herself on the beach with another woman, and I said, “I know you probably think I’m belaboring the point—oh, I can tell you do by the exasperated glances you two have just exchanged.  But I still can’t get the iPod to turn off.  It’s still playing in my head.”  At this point there were pieces of iPod all over the place.  I’d never be able to get it back together again.  But it was still going on…the Tale of Two Cities was enmeshed in my brain, playing, playing, playing.            Then I woke up and turned it off.  No problem!

April 2009

Dream that a little boy—the kid in Home Alone—had told me that he was going to commit suicide with his iPod.  I went into the room with him to watch him.  Pretty soon he was really dead, and I felt guilty for not trying to stop him.  I called the police, and then Javier and I went onto the porch to wait.  We didn’t think they had responded but then we saw a couple of fairly old women or maybe a wmoan and a man come out with mattresses and tea cups.  Were they the police?  Then we realized that they were thieves, stealing for the house.  The police were cleaning up, not asking questions or investigating.  I thought they’d talk to me, but they just kept cleaning up.  When they left, there was still some blood where the little boy had electricuted himself with his iPod.

June 2009

Dream:  Anyway, I went to bed with that in my iPod, but during the night, it switched to Then We Came to the End, and my dream struggled with whether or not the people (some from high school) we’d be sharing this with would relate and find it witty or just disconnect.  As I listened to Then We Came to the End, I kept trying to figure out how they’d respond, and they were getting closer and closer. Which parts would they hear?

February 12, 2011
With my iPod in my ear, I dreamed of David, about eighteen years old, sitting at the table and eating too much too soon.  I was about to give him some sisterly advice about being more thoughtful of other people’s needs and not taking all their food, but then I suddenly realized he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress order.  When I woke up, I saw the world differently, the way I sometimes do after a nap.  That is, I see myself differently.  I was filled with regret for what I had meant as a gesture of good will—my message to the three of you when I sent the picture of Mom.  Suddenly I thought “That’s why Suzy hates me.  She won’t see this as something nice about one of my colleagues or a cute picture of Mom.  She’ll think that I am insensitive to her suffering in an insecure job when I talk about my campus and the people I like.”  I then wondered about my references to the cats.  Would she see that as trivializing or even bossing

Things are set up in my iPod in such a way (alphabetically) that as soon as I’ve listened to Tina Fey agonizing over whether she should have a second child (because, she says, she’s not all that easy to like and she doesn’t want to put the burden of liking on only one child) to Raskolnikov’s agonizing over whether he should kill his landlady—all because C (Crime and Punishment) comes after B (Bossypants). 

My iPod Readings and Dreams

Thursday, August 11, 2011 2:25 PM and back form lunch with Kathy after seeing Mom.  I’ll write about Mom right after recording last night’s deam:  I was breast-feeding someone, but with a stick?  (The wire monkey?)

I can’t remember the rest.

It’s 3:23 PM, and I just got the letter off.

             

Friday, August 12, 2011 2:34 a.m.

            Before going to bed last night (around 10), I finally remembered to buy and download The Alexandria Quartet, and I went to bed with Justine in my ear.  I had a really interesting dream, but it wasn’t necessarily connected to that.  I was an CCSF trying to get a “May” as in “May your life be what you’ve dreamed of” to scan with a particular tune that didn’t work.  I decided to do it with Andy Williams’ “May Each Day of Your Life Be a Good Day” and worried only about the “May the Lord keep and watch over you.”  After all, this was a public school.  I looked through my old record to find it.  Later I was going down Judah Street, which I think was really Ocean, trying to find a place to park and fearing that I’d lose my chance if I tried to get closer.  Then I was in the MUNI station—or maybe on the Chinatown/NorthBeach Campus.  A student and I exchanged a joke.  Then I needed to find my way out.  Karen Batchelor showed me from her window, but it looked really complicated.  I had to find a place to park and find my way there and back.

Mom in August: 

.”   She said she’d like me to get her an iPod, and I told her we could try it out and see how she liked it, which we can.  I doubt that it will work, but who knows!  She remembered that my birthday was November 15.

            So, she was in a really good emotional and mental state, and it was a very quiet, pleasant peaceful hour and a quarter!

I did let her listen to part of a French song on my iPod, and she asked, “Why didn’t you bring me something I could do something with?”  Then she wanted to write something, so I gave her the back of my notebook, and she said, “What do I write?” and I said, “Anything you want to.”  She wrote, “To whom it may appeal.  I’ll be glad to go to any elderly shut in facility.  Honest!  Nadine Martin.  The best for me I know it.  I’ll be good & helpful too.  Nadine.”

I’m going to clean up just as soon as I get Camelot onto my iPod.  I have 2 lps but think I’ll just buy again from iTunes.

took them to my place so Suzy could choose more books for her iPod and they could pack up some cookies I made and they liked.  (Suzy is eating more these days.)  Suzy was warm and friendly and not defensive, rejecting,  or insulting at all.