Dear Elder Davidson No. 6

Dear Isaac,

As always, good to hear from you.

I wish I had exciting things to report. I do not. Life continues to be boring, which I guess is a good thing.

When I left for work this morning, it was still raining. It had rained all night. The street up the road from our house was flooded curb to curb – we know now the house right on the curve is where our new stake president lives. John Adams was also flooded a bit, and the geyser at John Adams and Curlew was bubbling away. I hit a lot of standing water all over town as I drove to work. We may have to start figuring out what a cubit is and building an ark.

I’m sure Lexi told you that she and Keaton had a waterfall flowing into their basement from one of their windows. I went over and looked at it (that was about all I could do; all anyone can do until the rain stops, except for manning the pumps). Keaton and I think there’s a French drain in the window well that’s collecting water from somewhere else and is overflowing. Once the rain stops, he’s going to dig around in there to see what’s going on. I’d say not to worry too much about it as we’re getting some exceptional rainfall, except for they had some minor flooding in there in May after a few rainy days. Keaon caulked some, but the water was really flowing in, this time through the gaps around the window.

It did inspire me to go home and check our window wells. Everything looks good, but I do need to get up on the tall part of the house to clean gutters out. I either need a really big extension ladder or to borrow some scaffolding from Albert. That or Liam will have to hold the ladder for me as I climb up onto the house from the garage. But I gotta do something because the gutters overflow even in a moderate rain. Wish you were here to go up there for me. I promise to take pictures if I end up falling off the roof or through the roof into the house. I told Liam maybe he should stand on the ground with a mattress he could throw on the ground if he sees me falling and can estimate where I’ll splat on the ground. That or set up the trampoline again . . .

What I need to do is clean them out and then put some kind of lath over them to let the water in but keep the leaves out. Worst thing is that they’re really not our leaves, but leaves from the poplar trees next door.

This is:

1. The kind of high-quality Old Man Whining you’re missing out on.

2. Going to happen to you when you get hit by the Old Age Truck.

So, as Ernest says, “Yuk it up.”

This was part of our view on Saturday, in the rain, from the Conant Creek trestle on the Ashton-Tetonia trail. Up high where we were, fall had already passed, but in the gullies and valleys like this, there was still some color. When I look at places like this I think it might be fun to live there – but don’t catch me there in the winter. Way too much snow and wind.

But wouldn’t it be fun to own that property and build a little cabin on the flat with an outhouse and just a log stove for heat in the winter. Until you went mad having to dig your way to the privy after every snowfall.

I’m a fair-weather homesteader, to be sure.

We’re headed to Pocatello tomorrow for Randy’s sentencing. I’m grateful he’ll finally know what lies in the future for him, but I’m sure he’s nervous. I’m nervous too. I’m going into this not knowing what to think. Anything could happen.

We (Albert, Serena, Maaike and I) aren’t heading out until 11 am, so I’m debating going in to work for a few hours beforehand. I probably should, because I forgot to activate my out of office email and remind my boss I’m going to be gone. But frankly I’d like to go in so early I could disappear before the bulk of the others arrived. Maybe the dogs will have me up at 3 am again. 

That’s my ideal job right there.

Well, I can’t keep my eyes open any more. This old man is going to go collapse on the basement floor and start drooling.

Love, Dad

Way too Late at the Movies: Mr. Hulot's Holiday

I've long been aware of Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot character, and the "modern silent" films he made, but I'd never seen one start to finish.

Remedied that this weekend by watching "Les Vacances de M. Hulot," or "Mr. Hulot's Holiday," on YouTube.

I want to watch more full films. Had this been my only Tati experience, I might not have bothered with any more. It's slow, the visual jokes come and go, but many of them are subtle; but not near as subtle as some of the jokes based on sound, and the story - such as it is - felt a bit choppy.

Nevertheless, glad I watched it. It's primed me for more Tati.

I marve4l at visual comedy, particularly that done without computer-aided special effects. Everything in the film is done practically, and I'm sure through a lot of effort. Watching that paint pot drift in and out with the tide then come back makes the film worth watching.

Hey, Donothings . . .

Sent to Sens. Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, and Rep. Mike Simpson

Please tell President Trump, and remind yourself, that you can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

President Trump seems to think he can fix the fuel problem by making a deal with Russia and sell out Ukraine, rather than stopping the idiot war with Iran he should not have started in the first place.

If you do nothing, you are complicit in shaking the devil's hand as well.

Fully expecting you to do nothing but toe Trump's line, I remain an unsatisfied constituent.

Sincerely yours,

Brian Davidson

Ammon

Soggy Hiking

Today as the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel began dumping its load locally, we went on a hike.

We tagged along as the support vehicle for Troop 1010's 20-mile hike to finish up the Hiking merit badge. They opted to hike the Ashton-to-Tetonia Rail Trail State Park, which is a favorite of ours.

Michelle and I decided at one point to hike from Drummond to the trestle bridge over Conant Creek. It was a great hike, though we hiked during a pretty good downpour from the storm and got soaked.

Still, even in the rain, the views are spectacular.

Though fall is mostly over along the upper elevations on the trail, but down in the hollows and gullies there was still some color to be seen.

Begone, Bag O' Wipes

Story time with Brian.

See that bag of wipes flopped over in the hallway? We've had it since Covid Times. The hallway is where it lives. Though I know that is where it lives and occasionally use a wipe from the bag, I am also constantly tripping over it or kicking it and having to put it back into place.

Also, the wipes have dried out a bit, so they're more of a slightly abrasive pad than a wipe, but we do not throw things away in this house.

Today I took a wipe out of it, and noted there is only one wipe left.

I will be glad to see it go.

Super Intelligence?

I want to talk about the trickle-down we got at work today about having to say "super intelligence" rather than "artificial intelligence" but I'm still hung up on the fact that one of the forwarders of the message included what looked like a Donald Trump emoji in the email chain.

It's an Affront to not Use Affresh, and other Linguistic Musings

I've been amused of late reading the product names for various items coming out of Asia. I know they make fun of Westerners - and rightly so - when we get tattoos of their word characters that mean something along the lines of "giraffe pimp" and not what the tattoo artist says it means, but I think it's just as fair to mock their mangled English as they try to sell the output of their factories.

Here are some of my favorites:

I remember watching Bob Ross put paint to kamvas in PBS. I guess this is a digital thing.

This might be my favorite. My first thought is toxin, but if you feel it's more in the medicine field you're not far off, as the -oxin suffix is, in Greek, related to the heart. So maybe this is either heart-friendly or poisonous stuff.

Comedian Daren Streblow talks about a son with a speech impediment, who added -oy to a lot of words. I guess he's working in marketing Chinese products now.

It's an affront not to use Affresh. Some of the ad copy just writes itself.

Jackery. So close to hackery. And given this is Chinesium, the name is probably chillingly ironic.

 

From the Hudson's Bay Company to Parachuting Beavers

History, of course, is written by the victors.

And, in some cases, by researchers and writers who don’t hesitate to deliver a few delightful, backhanded gallantries at events big or small, at personages eminent or obscure, and at enterprises holy and grotesque.

Thus I read in Elizabeth Haroldsen Lovell’s “Benjamin Bonneville, Soldier of the American Frontier.”

Lovell takes some jabs at the Hudson’s Bay Company in the book.

On Page 66, this:

In their own bailiwick in Canada, the policy of Hudson’s Bay Company was to harvest judiciously, but of areas open to both Great Britain and the United States, company officials wrote “The country is a rich preserve of Beaver, which for political reasons we should endeavor to destroy as fast as possible.” Peter Skene Ogden and Joh Work with their Snake River brigades had obeyed orders, and by 1833 the results were painfully evident.

She also elicits a jab at the American mania for progress, seen today in the likes of SpaceX and Silicon Valley and such ilk. On Page 118:

The country had gone mad with railroad building. Earlier, it had been canals, but even before many waterway projects were off the drawing boards there was talk they would soon be made obsolete by the railroads. To get somewhere quickly was an obsession which grew in America as naturally as hickory and maize, only faster. It was a stylish thing to “go by the cars.” Engines glistened with bright paint; passengers cars made up a “brigade.”

Lovell tells Bonneville’s tale well, intermixed with an excellent smattering of history much more broad than the soldier/adventurer’s life.

I picked up this book at a local thrift store and enjoyed reading it, seeing as I live in a county that bears Bonneville’s name. The book may be a little dry at times, but Lovell does her best to bring in livelier bits and to help us see one man’s story in context with the growth and growing pains of a nation.

And her stabs at Hudson’s Bay Company were comic.

Puts the parachuting beavers of the 1940s into some interesting historical context.

 

That Devil Weed State Legislature

We're coming up on the November election, and I'm seeing some interesting things online.

One of the things to consider: A proposition to allow the state legislature - and the state legislature only - decide whether to legalize marijuana.

I might be in favor of medical marijuana. I'm not thrilled with the prospect of recreational marijuana. I'm totally against the state legislature getting any more power than they already have.

Earlier this year, they slashed budgets and, in part, cut mental health funding for in-home care. At least three people died as the result of this cut in funding, which they hastily restored after the deaths and the associated brouhaha.

What they want to do is carve out part of the citizen initiative process to allow only the legislature to make decisions on marijuana. I don't trust them. All it really is is a foot in the door in shutting down the initiative process, consolidating more power in a state legislature that's already pretty power-hungry.

Yes, we can contact our representatives to let our thoughts be known. I've done that a lot. But there is no guarantee they'll listen to anything but what they already believe or what they want to hear.

Handing this power to the legislature rather than keeping it within the direct purview of voters adds a level of gatekeeping I'm not comfortable handing over.

There are many in the legislature who are openly hostile to the initiative process. Give them a little power and they become emboldened to take a little more.

Who cares if the initiative process wasn't part of how the state set up its laws originally? That's a pretty weak argument to make. "Gee, you didn't have this power before you asked for it, so let's just take it away." That's all I'm hearing in that quarter.

Dear Elder Davidson No. 5

4 October 2026

Hello Isaac,

Do you know what’s fun? Taking a car in for an alignment and after it’s done having two of the dashboard warning lights that’ve been on for a very long time turn off.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or what, but after the Red Herring alignment was done, the light for the VTM-4 and the evap system turned off. Maybe without the alignment and the suspension parts that got replaced it was just enough out of kilter to trigger the sensors to light up. But now I’m just down to the airbag light and, occasionally, the TPMS.

Also, we’ve had the Blood Brother to Kevin and back as well. There was an ABS warning light on the dash, and a message that the all-wheel drive system was, as a result, not operational. It seemed important to get that looked at before winter sets in, so when we had to pick up the Red Herring we left it there. As Kevin was looking around, he saw a sensor that had been taped up. He poked at the tape and the wire it was on crumbled under the pressure. So he replaced the wire and got things fixed up.

And hey, here’s some excitement: I finally found the part I needed to fix the Camp Chef. Behold:

I know. This is exciting stuff. And I’ll tell you the story. Liam and I went to Lowe’s to see if we could find what we needed. We found something we thought would work, but when I got it home I realized it wasn’t going to work. So the next day I went back to Lowes and got a different item. But when I got it home, it also no worky. Third time back to Lowe’s and I couldn’t find what I needed, so left defeated. I decided to try Home Depot one more time before I gave up. What worked there was finding a very helpful young man who knew right where to find the part I needed. AND IT WORKED. So the Camp Chef is now completely reassembled, just in time to stow it for the winter. What I’m actually going to do is store it in the garage so maybe we can use it later in the year. I still have the other one to repair, but as I’m not really sure what’s wrong with it, that may take a while. I’d like it to just disappear, but that’s not going to happen. By the way, some of my Facebook friends said I was making a bong.

I hope you’re enjoying Conference. We never got to see much of Conference when I was in France. It did get broadcast to certain chapels in our mission area, but they were typically pretty far away from where I was serving so we didn’t get to see much of it. Sometimes we got to see recordings of it months later, and that was nice. But mostly we had to wait for the magazines to come so we could read the talks. I’m sure missionaries and members all over get to see them a lot more live than we ever did. Technology has marched on.

I really liked Timothy Farnes’ message – he’s the Young Men’s President. He talked about ministering, of course, but what he said at one point really hit me: We just have to see the person God puts in our path. Seeing enables compassion. I’ll try to remember that as God puts people in my path.

You may need to brace yourself for this: Mom did a dog toy purge and Dottie’s tequila bottle is now in the trash. She (Dottie, not necessarily your mother) loved it to death, but it’s really dirty and slightly stinky. So I’ll be on the lookout at TJMaxx for a replacement.

Also, for some reason the clothing bar in your closet broke into three pieces. You’ll remember it was made of wood and they kind of stitched it together out of different piece of wood. The seams popped in two places. So I’ve replaced it with a metal bar. Hopefully that’ll hold up better.

As you can see, you’re missing a lot of high-level excitement around here.

For fun on Friday (speaking of excitement) I made a long chore list and thought I’d see how much I could get done from it. It mostly involved moving stuff from one place to a different place, but stacking things more strategically so I could cram more stuff in the same space. I swear people are smuggling things onto the property because I came across some stuff I’m not sure I remember ever purchasing. That did include clearing off your workbench so I could put Mom’s dragon mask back on it. I need to get it wrapped up in plastic again because it’s been moved around a bit this year and parts are starting to fall off. I tried clearing enough stuff I could get it put on a shelf in the garage, but that didn’t work. I’ll probably have to stow it in the utility trailer with Mom’s Jeep this winter . . . I am making efforts to preserve it, though. She put a lot of work into it, and it has been used a few times since she made it.

We had Lexi and Keaton over for games tonight. One of these days we’re going to do a game day on Monday and we’ll call you up so you can whoop us all at Five Crowns. I don’t know if that’s kosher with your mission president, so maybe don’t give him a heads up first.

I should probably end this letter now. It’s after 9 pm, past my bedtime, and I still have to prep my BYUI class for the new week.

So, be a good missionary. I know you will be.

Love, Dad