Twelve Evening Stars

 

The Ward Clerk

He kept the minutes, typed each note,

And put them in the file.

The membership he knew by rote;

He labored with a smile.

The ordinations, births and deaths

He faithfully recorded

For forty years, until at last

He went to be rewarded.

The people he had known so well

Turned out to shed a tear,

And pay respect to this good man,

Gone to another sphere.

But as the choir rose to sing,

They saw with consternation

The good man from his coffin step

To count the congregation!

 -Author Unknown

Hovering Hawks

 

“Today many feel lonely and isolated. We want to hear each other’s voices. We want authentic belonging and kindness. There are many reasons we may feel we do not fit in at church—that, speaking figuratively, we sit alone. We may worry about our accent, clothes, family situation. Perhaps we feel inadequate, smell of smoke, yearn for moral cleanliness, have broken up with someone and feel hurt and embarrassed, are concerned about this or that Church policy. We may be single, divorced, widowed. Our children are noisy; we don’t have children. We didn’t serve a mission or came home early. Mosiah 18:21 invites us to knit our hearts together in love. I invite us to worry less, judge less, be less demanding of others—and, when needed, be less hard on ourselves. We do not create Zion in a day. But each “hello,” each warm gesture, brings Zion closer.” – Elder Gerrit W. Gong

Fantasyland Ticket Booths

 

Last week I mentioned four 70-year-old ticket booths still standing in Disneyland’s Fantasyland. We found them all! The first – a medieval circus tent – is between Fantasyland Theater and It’s a Small World. It blends in with popcorn stands and gift shops, so you could look right at it and never notice. The second is a mushroom at the entrance of Alice in Wonderland. The lighthouse ticket booth is at the entrance to the Storybook Canal Boats. This ride was closed for maintenance during our visit, but luckily the lighthouse is outside the construction site fencing. The fourth – a cottage – is near the Dumbo Circus Train, which is also down for maintenance. I assume they’re replanting the succulent “quilt” and upgrading Storybookland miniatures. It was hard to get a shot, as the cottage is completely shrouded in fences and scaffolding. I’m taking that as a good sign. If Disney had decided to get rid of it, it would already be gone.

Nine Sheep Folds

 

When I was a kid, it was common for breakfast cereal to come packaged with a toy in the box (as if all that sugar wasn’t addictive enough). In 1963, Cap’n Crunch came with a piece of plastic that looked like a bosun’s whistle. It produced a 2600-hertz tone, coincidentally the same sound used by AT&T to control its phone network. It unlocked a loophole in the system, allowing people to hack into AT&T and illegally get free long-distance calls. These early experimenters, dubbed “phone phreaks,” laid the groundwork for what would later become modern hacking culture. Hackers built “blue boxes” that more precisely reproduced the tone. Even Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built and sold blue boxes during their college days. So, if you’ve ever watched the 1992 movie “Sneakers” and been puzzled by the character Whistler and his criminal background, now you know. If you didn’t know long-distance calls used to be very, very expensive, I can’t help you.

Balkan Puzzle

 

We visited Disneyland last week, after a year’s absence. Here are the biggest changes we noticed: Splash Mountain is now Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (though we’re having a tough time using the new name). We tried riding our first day, but it broke and we were evacuated from the very top. We loved the new verse of It’s a Small World, but the change we didn’t expect is the whole queue is now wheelchair-friendly. We feel so SEEN! And the sinks in public restrooms (at least the ones we used) are now mirror-free. When there are mirrors above sinks, women stop to fix their hair and makeup. They actually spend more time there than in the loo. It creates a bottleneck, and there’s a temptation to just walk out without washing hands. Instead of a lot of little sink mirrors, there’s one full mirror by the door. Women look (they always look) but don’t stop. Two thumbs up!

Thirteen Leap Frogs

 

“I was sitting in the waiting room, for my first appointment with my new dentist. I noticed his diploma on the wall, which showed his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome boy who'd been in my high school class some 40 years ago. I thought, ‘Could this be the same guy a had a crush on way back then?’ Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. The balding, gray-haired man with a deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate. After he examined my teeth, I asked if he attended my high school. ‘Yes, I did,’ he beamed with pride. ‘When did you graduate?’ I asked. He answered, ‘1959, why do you ask?’ ‘You were in my class!' I exclaimed. He looked at me closely. Then, that ugly, bald, wrinkled, fat, gray, decrepit old son-of-a-gun asked, ‘What class did you teach?’” – Source Unknown

Nine Evening Stars

 

In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II hosted Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia at her Scottish estate, Balmoral Castle. The queen extended a casual offer of a car ride, leading the prince to a waiting royal Land Rover. Abdullah sat in the front passenger seat, while his interpreter sat behind him. The queen, an experienced driver, was known for the military-grade driving skills she’d learned during World War II. Despite the prince's initial hesitation, he agreed to the tour, and the queen took him for a spin around the castle grounds. As the story goes, the prince spent most of the ride clutching his seat in white-knuckled terror, pleading with the British monarch to slow down. I’ve heard at the time Her Majesty was unaware that it was illegal for women in Saudi Arabia to drive at all. Personally, I think it would have been an even funnier story if she’d known.