Your Corporation Will Never Love You

From Peter Stark's "Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire:"

"Captain Thorn had trained in a military and naval tradition in which lives were sacrificed in the name of a mission for the good of the country. He remained an officer in the U.S. Navy, on leave with permission to pursue Astor's hugely ambitious enterprise in the Pacific. He burned with an unrelenting determination and patriotism to carry out his mission per his orders from Astor -- in this case, to cross the Columbia Bar as expeditiously as possible and land the first American colony on the West Coast. But Astor's great expedition served at least as much a commercial as a nationalistic purpose. Captain Thorn appears not to have reflected on this: What cost in human lives was a commercial mission worth? Or if he did reflect on this weighty issue, he kept it to himself. He may have felt unsure of himself in this, his first command, but sealed it off with his outward toughness. The more perceptive passengers might have sometimes caught a hint of a softer Thorn. Franchere reported that when those aboard the Tonquin realized that Fox's whaleboat was lost, Captain Thorn looked as distressed as anyone. Was this for the loss of human life, or the setback it represented to his mission?"

Like Starks, I can only speculate.

But as we look at the world of employment, as much as business decries the lack of loyalty in workers, there's a more than sufficient lack of loyalty among employers to make their laments ironic.

Nevertheless, men must be governed, it seems.

This Taxpayer is Tired

We've seen our property taxes double since we moved to Ammon in the early 2010s. Voting yes on a larger levy for School District 93 means another increase.

I get that the schools need the money. Thing is, everybody needs the money. I know we could use it. I'd love to pay off that mortgage that much sooner. Build a shed or a shop. Repair the porch roof that's sagging. So many other things.

If we had a state legislature that was doing something to help schools instead of frittering tax money on vouchers and tax cuts and only restoring some of the cut funds after the cuts literally killed four people, maybe I'd feel differently.

That's a big if, I know. So I'll probably vote for this levy. Just like voting for legislators that actually care about education, it's part of the bargain. But I'm tired, boss.

2013, we paid $976 in property taxes. Same year, about $740 in state income taxes on income of about $75,000.

Last year, $2018. This levy vote will put that up another $150 a year. Same year, $4,200 in state income taxes on income of about $110,000.

ARIZONA GILBERT!

Isaac opened his mission call.

He's going to Gilbert, Arizona.

Before he opened his call, I had three predictions:

1. New Zealand.

2. Quebec/France (somewhere French speaking)

3. Mongolia.

At the last minute, he guessed Flagstaff, Arizona. So I was way off and he was really close.

And of course as his guests are here, right before the call reveal he's out at his therapy wood chopping area:

He's out there still chopping with Josh, one of his buddies.

Yes, in his Sunday duds. Getting ready to serve like a missionary.

Finally. And "Tighten" is Apparently Invited

 

Messin' With the Bots

 

This is either a bot account or it's run by someone whose English is rudimentary, or they're just plain lazy.

Anyway, it was fun to mess with them.

Mothership

 

Spotted these lenticular clouds on the way home from scouts tonight.

The one on the bottom had the best, long-lasting definition, but like the one on "top," it was changing shape pretty quickly.

Looked at in a larger format, even the top cloud has those tell-tale lenticular characteristics.

No mountain underneath, though, which I thought was a prerequisite, but I'm certainly ignorant on a lot of things, so why not lenticular clouds?

EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE LISTEN TO ME!

Certain people around here don't know how hard it is for me to sit on news of the magnitude I'm sitting on and not rupture something 

Not that I know *all* the news, just that news has arrived and its reveal is imminent but it's not my place to announce the news so here I sit, looking right girly in Rick's dress.

I Capture the Castle - It *Is* A Kissing Book

 

So here's the deal: This book is indeed a soppy romance story featuring, at the end, an English Ignatius J. Reilly who gets locked in the dungeon of an ancient castle tower until he writes the second book of his genius career and the family is set back on kilter, or at least as much on kilter as the family could be.

I liked it. It felt a little ponderous and wandering, but at least it had a plot, unlike John Crowley's "Little, Big," to which I compared the book earlier this year.

If you want eccentric rural with a lot more humor, pick Stella Gibbons' "Cold Comfort Farm," but this book had a slow charm of its own, and built nicely toward the end when I suppose we should be cheering that someone connects with someone else. And they do, in ways you expect because that's how the expectations were set up waaaaaay at the beginning.

Dodie Smith does keep the story going, however, something Crowley didn't seem bothered to do. But it could have used a lot more of Gibbons' humor.

A Love of Words

As I sometimes to at church as and after we sing hymns in Sacrament Meeting, I looked up the history of the lyricist or composer of one of the songs we sang.

We sang for Sacrament "In Humility, Our Savior," which has long been one of my favorite hymns, and is in fact one I became most familiar with as I served a mission in France, as the hymn is one the saints there love. In fact, the three songs we sang today were very popular in France.

Anyway, this lady is Mabel Jones Gabbott, born in Malad, Idaho, as part of a colony of Welsh Mormons who settled the area. She grew to have a love of words, fed in part by Welsh traditions of singing and storytelling. More of her story here.

She spent a life with words, crafting hymns, poems, and editing many works for various church magazines. In her life is proof that one doesn't have to have widespread recognition to contribute to the greater good.

One of her most recognized works is the poem "Eve and I," which she wrote as she realized there was little told from Eve's point of view in the creation story. It's a lovely poem:

Declampetting

Matchpoint Drive residents will be glad to know we declampetted our front porch. The broken-down toilets are finally gone.

Neighbors have indeed chimed in:

Isaac, looking for things to do as he waits for the mission call, split up a ton of the wood we have left in the front yard from the pine tree, probably almost half of what's left, so the yard is looking excessively bare tonight.