Found Treasures IX: Guardian Angel

This is one of several stories I've written that are based in part on a dream that I've had. Reading it now, I find it a little heavy handed. Had I the inclination to rewrite this story, there are parts of it that should definitely be more subtle. By the title you can guess that it concerns a guardian angel. I personally do not believe in guardian angels, but I saw no problem using one in a fictional setting.

Rosharan Glyphpairs

I resisted starting Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive for a long time because 1. he hasn't finished the series yet, 2. he says it's going to be 10 books long, 3. each book is over 1000 pages, and 4. it takes him 3–4 years to publish each one. The fourth book is set to publish this year (2020), which means that we can expect him to finish the series by 2038. 2038! By that time I'll be 58 years old. (And Brandon will be 63!) Brandon's books are so intricate that I don't think I can keep track of all the characters and plot details for that long. So my plan was to just wait until they were all published and then read all ten in one go. But then Leann started reading the first book, The Way of Kings, and I couldn't fall behind, so I started reading it along with her.[1] In the story we learn that men who follow the religion Vorinism are forbidden from learning to read.[2] Men will still use marks, called glyphs, to identify themselves or signify a particular idea.[3] The glyphs are formed from actual letters, but the letters are calligraphically stylized. Glyphs are often combined into a glyphpair. I decided to create glyphpairs for the members of my family.

Mayan Hieroglyphs, Part VII

It's been a few years, now, since I posted anything to this blog. Looking back I can see that the time I had available for blogging decreased with each new child. We now have three children, but I've only drawn Mayan hieroglyphic names for two of them.[1], Our third child is already three, but I've always had this nagging desire to draw a Mayan name for him so that everything will be rounded out and complete.

Lincoln's First Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year

My apologies for not posting these sooner. I didn't have enough material for Thanksgiving to post by itself, so I waited for Christmas. We signed up for a free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime so we could take advantage of the free shipping for Christmas presents…and then I didn't have time to prepare this post because we were furiously watching shows on Amazon Prime before our free trial ran out.[1]

Mayan Hieroglyphs VI

It's been a few years, now, since I last drew Mayan hieroglyphs [1], but now that we have a fourth member of our family [2] it's time to draw another. A quick glance at the archives will show that my posting frequency has been in decline. So even though Lincoln was born three weeks ago, it's taken me a while to actually post about it. I finished the drawing for this post several days ago, but I'm just now posting the description.

Book Review: Ishmael

[This is a guest book review from my dad. The footnotes are mine.]

I read the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, at the suggestion of a colleague of mine who had read it. The quick-and-dirty substance of the book is the angst of a lost child of the 1960s whose desire to change the world was not realized. In a hard-to-believe scenario, he falls under the spell of a telepathic gorilla.[1] To wander further down the path of unbelievability, the monkey has been educated by a wealthy Jew who has purchased him. The Jew dies and his surviving spinster daughter continues to be the monkey’s patron until she dies, at which time he is sold to a circus. The storyline, as dictated by the gorilla, is that through the evolutionary process, from the lightning strike in the primordial ooze to present day, everything was all right until a faction of the Homo sapiens line decided to abandon the wandering tribal life (the “leavers”) to form an agrarian society. This society then proceeds to destroy the whole system in their quest for stability. The endgame of the book is that the unfulfilled, lost, 60s throwback fails again to find fulfillment in saving the world and the bad guys (the “takers” [2]) win again, only to face the specter of the telepathic monkey’s prophecy that they will self-consume as a society.[3]

Easter 2013

Well, I must apologize. I had every intention of posting about our Easter this year within a few days after it happened. But for some reason I forgot. I only just discovered the pictures and videos on the camera. So I've quickly thrown together a little post showing some of the highlights of Easter this year.

Many Movie Reviews I

Well, dear readers, things have intervened in my life here and there and I now have a huge backlog of review posts. In order to trim this down I'm posting several at once. This saves me time because I'm not writing a full intro for each one. Hopefully you can still get something out of them. In this post I'll share my thoughts on Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is about a kid who is just starting middle school and wants to improve his popularity—at almost any expense. After that is Driving Miss Daisy, a movie about an aging woman who has to start using a chauffeur even though she doesn't want to. Incidentally, it is also the last PG-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (in 1989). This is followed by a review of L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist), a 2010 French cartoon about an out-of-luck magician (not to be confused with the 2006 American live-action film about an audacious magician). Then I review I.Q., a romantic comedy about Albert Einstein's neice and an auto mechanic. This is followed by Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, a road-trip comedy about incompatible traveling companions. Next we have Pries☩, a 2011 post-apocalyptic film about vampirse and the Catholic priests who hunt them, based on a Korean comic book. After that I review the 2010 film RED, which is based on a comic book about a retired CIA black ops agent (the title of the movie stands for "Retired, Extremely Dangerous."). Next up is S1m0ne, a film about a down-and-out movie director who tries to pass a digital actress off as a real person. Then there's The Social Network, which tells the story of how Facebook came to be, followed by Unstoppable, which is based on the CSX 8888 incident of 2001.[1] The last review is for Yogi Bear, a live-action/computer-animated version of the classic cartoon show.

Book Review: The Master Mind of Mars

The Master Mind of Mars retreads the "super brain at the expense of everything else" vs. "average at everything (but really super brawn)" theme from The Chessmen of Mars.[1] In that book there are creatures, called kaldanes, which are little more than large-brained heads that can switch bodies (which they call rykors) at will. The kaldanes didn't care what gender of rykor they assumed; it just had to be humanoid. In this book, a mad scientist has been experimenting with swapping brains between the bodies of different creatures, but he has no reservations whatsoever—a woman's brain into a man's body, a man's brain into an ape's body, two halves of different brains into the body of a third, and so on. An Earthman (not John Carter, this time [2]) discovers this scientist and helps him with his gruesome work for a while until he falls in love with one of the female subjects. He inevitably defies the mad scientist and the rest of the novel ensues.

The Thorny Crown

Leann and I were asked to speak in Church Last Sunday.[1] Leann was asked to speak on how the Atonement of Jesus Christ helps us to overcome our trials and I was asked to focus my remarks on how the Atonement of Jesus Christ helps us to love other people. What follows is the bulk of my talk with a few improvements made here and there. I've also included references and some annotations.

Reading (with Help)

Lillian is really quick to repeat new words.[1] And more often than not she's able to remember them. When we read books to her, now, we can leave out the last word on each page and she'll fill it in. Since she's so willing to repeat what we say, we've started teaching her how to pray. We say something to ask for or be grateful for and she repeats the last word. (Sometimes she does this in Church or when we have guests, too, which is adorable.) We also recently started reading a verse or two from the Scriptures with her before she goes to bed. An example follows. The text is 2 Ne. 4:28–29.[2]

The Brother of Amaleki1

In the Book of Mormon [1] there are two men named Amaleki.[2] Amaleki¹ was one of the Nephite record keepers who inscribed on the small plates of Nephi (Omni 1:12–30; WoM 1:10).[3] Amaleki² is mentioned only once as part of an expedition headed by Ammon¹ (Mosiah 7:26).[4] Despite the brevity of his record (just 19 verses) Amaleki¹ introduces some interesting developments in the history of the Nephites. Up to this point the Nephites dwelt in a place they called the Land of Nephi. Amaleki¹ records that a man named Mosiah¹ was warned by the Lord that he should leave with as many as would follow him (Omni 1:12). So he and his followers journeyed into the wilderness and eventually came upon a city called Zarahemla (Omni 1:13–18). The followers of Mosiah¹ and the people of Zarahemla joined together and were thence considered Nephites (Omni 1:19).[5] Amaleki¹ never says why Mosiah¹ was commanded to flee the Land of Nephi, but Mormon², writing several hundred years later, lets us know that the Land of Nephi has been overrun by the Lamanites (WoM 1:13). Thus it is likely that the people who did not flee with Mosiah¹ at that time were destroyed or enslaved.

Peach Days 2012

I grew up near Brigham City, Utah, but I only made it to the city festival, Peach Days, a couple of times. This last weekend was Peach Days, and Leann has wanted to see it for the last several years, so we drove up on Saturday. We also wanted to go through the open house for the new Brigham City Temple, which is going on from August 18th to September 15th of this year.[1]

Movie Review: Constantine

When the trailers for this movie came out [1], I thought it looked like it was going to be pretty much the same movie as The Matrix, just with different characters. This was probably mainly due to the fact Keanu Reeves stars in both films as a 'chosen' man who fights demons (or demon-like entities) with unnatural skill; both feature dark, gritty camerawork; and because Keanu Reeves' acting is the same as ever. I'm sure more comparisons could be made, but I think there are more differences than similarities. For example, Neo, in The Matrix, is a reluctant hero while Constantine, in this film, is an antihero.

Birthday Party!

It's kind of hard to believe, but one year ago yesterday Lillian came into the world. We didn't expect her so soon (she was two months early [1]), but we're so glad to have her. On Saturday she had a birthday party with the Crook side of the family (her party with the Martin side is coming up later). Most of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with her grandparents came down from the north end of Utah for the party. (Not shown: her Aunt Melissa and her cousin Katie were sitting behind me when I shot this picture.)

Book Review: On Becoming Babywise

On Becoming Babywise [1] was originally written by Gary Ezzo, an Evangelical Christian who has no pediatric experience except for raising his own two children with the help of his wife, Anne Marie Ezzo. In fact, the only formal education he has is a few semesters of study at a community college and a Master's Degree from the Talbot School of Theology.[2] After that he and his wife began teaching parenting classes at a megachurch in Los Angeles, California, where they eventually published the first edition of Babywise.[3] Even at this early stage it met with resistance and engendered controversy, eventually leading to their exit from that church. Rather than treat the book as a whole, I'm going to address each chapter separately, listing things that were good, things that were bad, and things that would've been bad in our situation because of Lillian's health problems.

Eventful Weekend

Besides all of the things we normally have to do on the weekends (play with Lilli, clean the house, water the garden, feed Lilli (and ourselves), wonder where all the time went, etc.), we had some unique and exciting activities this last weekend. Let's start out with Lillian's NICU graduate party on Saturday. Every year there is a party to celebrate all of the lives that the staff at the Provo IHC NICU have helped to preserve.

Movie Review: Mobsters and Mormons

The film Mobsters and Mormons starts out with the following 'what if': what if a hardened member of the Mafia was sent to the heart of Utah as part of the witness protection program? Carmine Pasquale is vying to become a caporegime (a position roughly equivalent to captain) in his crime family but gets caught by the FBI. He turns evidence in return for witness protection for himself and his family. Much to their chagrin, they're sent to the Jell-O Belt.[1] All of their neighbors are Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormons). Various moments of comedy ensue as the two cultures clash.

Conference Weekend Walk

A little over a week ago, between sessions of General Conference [1], Leann, Lillian, and I went on a walk. Lilli and Leann are quite relieved that (with the exception of a rogue snowstorm here and there) the weather is warm enough to allow daily walks. Now we don't have to worry about Lilli getting cold, we have to worry about her getting a sunburn! We put sunscreen and a hat on her, but she doesn't usually tolerate the hat for very long. She also has trouble sitting still while we walk around. She likes to lean forward and watch the ground going by under the stroller. Here are some of the highlights from our walk.[2]

Lillian's First Easter

Saturday morning Leann and I hid each other's Easter baskets.[1] Well, Leann didn't want to bring her Easter basket up from the storage unit, so she just had me hide her bag of candy. I stuffed it inside the recliner. She had to ask for several clues to find it. I had several errands to run, so Leann went easy on me and put my basket in a fairly simple hiding place. Saturday evening Leann and I dyed eggs. Like last year [2] I added some oil to the dye for some of the eggs. The next morning Leann creamed the eggs and we ate them over toasted English muffins with a side of bacon.