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I read an interesting article the other day that started me thinking (always a dangerous thing).  In any case, this was the lead paragraph in the article:

A Canadian MP is pushing parliament to denounce sex-selection abortions at a time when studies show women are using ultrasounds to determine the sex of unborn children for the purposes of sex-selection abortions.

So it appears that some pregnant Canadian women are getting ultrasounds to determine the sex of their unborn child, and then getting abortions if the child is not the flavor they want.  I’m sure this is particularly appalling to the thousands of couples who are trying to have children and cannot have them.  Terminating a potential life over something so trivial seems absolutely barbaric and evil to me.

The article went on to say that the man who introduced the legislation did so because this practice “discriminated against women.”  The statistics showed that these kinds of abortions were occurring most often when the fetus was female.  So this man was incensed that the practice was not politically correct, rather than because it was taking innocent lives.  I guess he would have no objection if it was being done equally against both sexes.

My reason for bringing this up has nothing to do with the whole abortion question, although I have obvious strong feelings about that.  But the article got me to thinking about what the developers of some of these technologies would think about how they are being used today.

I have had many ultrasounds when visiting the doctor and it is a marvelous technology.  It allows the doctor to peer inside you without using surgery and other invasive methods.  It becomes a routine diagnostic procedure that can be done during a lunch break, yet it opens up the human body in ways that doctors 50 years ago could never imagine.

I’m sure the scientists and doctors who developed these ultrasound devices could see the potential for how they could enhance life and save lives.  But did they also foresee that their invention would be used as the basis for a decision to end life?  Would they have been so enthusiastic in their development of these miracle devices knowing they would also be used for the exact opposite purpose?

Abortion is not the only example of using medicine for purposes that are contrary to life.  Think of the countries that allow physician-assisted suicide, or governments that have forced sterilization upon some of their citizens.

Consider these marvelous times that we live in, and how the blessings of our life can also become curses.  Television can lift, inspire and educate, but usually (in my experience) it can just feed us mindless entertainment or bombard us with negative messages.  The same can be said for computers, movie theaters, and books and magazines.

Think how the airplane has changed the world.  On occasion we fly across the country, and I always wonder what our ancestors would say if they could be sitting there beside me.  I think of those Mormon pioneers who suffered greatly and sacrificed much to travel to the hash environment of Utah.  What would they think of the idea of making the same trip in a few hours while watching TV and eating peanuts?

Yet the atomic age, several wars and September 11, 2001 taught us that these fantastic flying machines can also be the messengers of much death, destruction, and misery.

I suppose that technology is not in itself either good or evil, but that it can be used for either purpose based upon the motives of its owner.  The epic battle between good and evil has been ongoing since Adam and Eve, and probably longer than that.  Both sides will use all weapons at their disposal in this eternal fight.  Whether they are throwing rocks or hand grenades probably doesn’t make much difference.

What we can do is examine the use of technology in our own lives.  We may not be able to change the world, but we can change one family at a time.  I applaud those people who have the courage to set limits on technology when they discover it is being abused.

I noted with a little bit of interest that there was a recent lottery with a $550 million prize. I didn’t buy a ticket, because I don’t gamble on things like this. I cannot say, however, that I haven’t fantasized long and hard about what I’d do with a huge amount of money if I got it.

I once entered a contest where the prize was a billion dollars. That’s right — a billion of them. Oh, did I want to win that contest! I had no interest in winning it for me. What I wanted to do was to create a foundation that would take that money and use it to help the world. I even had a name for the foundation — The John Beresford Tipton Group.

If you know who the fictional John Beresford Tipton was, you are as old as I am.  He was the benefactor in “The Millionaire,” a show that ran from 1955 to 1960.  Tipton gave away $1 million every week to a stranger, and the show followed those strangers to determine whether they used the money for good or for ill.  (Fluffy says that $1 million in 1955 dollars would be worth $8,282,895.68 today.  I’d be happy with that amount!)

I wasn’t just going to give the billion dollars away willy-nilly. What a can of worms that would be! On the contrary, I had a friend, Dennis, who was really good at making things happen. I thought I could form this nonprofit corporation and have him run it, with the idea that he and his staff would dole out the money to groups that would raise matching funds to do worthwhile projects in their communities.

I didn’t care what the projects were. Drilling wells in Africa would have been one of them, because a lot of the people there are in great need of water. There are a lot of huge needs like that, all around the world. Dennis and his team could have made a big difference everywhere they went.

But there were little things too. At the time, Dennis’s wife Carla was incensed because a department store was about to be built on Mirror Ridge, a hill in our area that was so named because it served as a signaling place during the Civil War. I thought it would be nifty to buy the land and put a park there that everyone could use, preserving that little bit of history and making a picnic spot for the community.

After all my hoping, and even all my prayers, I didn’t win the contest. Nobody did. I guarantee you that the company that sponsored the contest was very glad nobody guessed the right numbers and they didn’t have to give that prize away. Even so, I fully realize that if God had wanted me to win, I would have done so and the company would have had to bite the bullet and dole out the money to me.

The John Beresford Tipton Group was never organized, and all the exciting things I planned never did get done. I never did employ Dennis, so he and Carla eventually moved to Colorado. He died a few years ago, and is now doing his good works on the other side of the veil.

Every time we drive by the big Kohl’s store today, I think how much prettier that hill would be if I had won that contest. Of course, most of our friends shop at that store. They are probably just as glad that I didn’t win the prize.

I still enter contests and think, “What if?” What if I had enough money to get the medical treatment I need that isn’t covered by our insurance? What if I had enough money to make our house handicapped-accessible so I could actually use the house the way it was intended to be used? What if I had enough money to help my sister who could use a little financial assistance, or buy us a used car that is big enough to hold my scooter and yet comfortable enough that I don’t cry from the pain of riding in it for more than an hour?

The thing is, none of the “What ifs?” matter. God knows what I want and what I need. If He doesn’t give those things to me, there’s a reason for it. I have to trust that He knows better than I do. So when I see other people — strangers — winning the contests instead of myself, I rejoice for them. I, who have the gospel, am getting greater blessings. They deserve the consolation prize.

The area of Virginia where we live is horse country, but not in the traditional American sense. Instead of wearing cowboy hats and blue jeans, our riders are more likely to be wearing traditional British equestrian gear, as their horses follow hounds that are in hot pursuit of a fox.

The route we take to the temple every week is dotted with horse pastures, many of which have white jumping fences so riders can train their horses to leap over obstacles in their path as they chase the hounds. The grass in these pastures is cropped short, and it isn’t unusual to see smaller animals sharing the pasture with their equine “neigh”bors.

As we were driving to the temple last week, Fluffy and I passed a pasture that had an amusing sight. A rooster was frantically chasing a chicken, no doubt interested in having his way with her. His plumage furled behind him like a flag on a windy day. The chicken was trying her hardest to escape, but the rooster was not going to be denied. We didn’t see the end of the chase, but we didn’t have to. No matter how reluctantly, the chicken was destined to be the girlfriend of the rooster Romeo.

Fluffy watched the scenario unfold and said, “You can run, but you can’t hide!” That was certainly true for the poor chicken, who had done nothing worse than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it’s also true for those of us who are human. For good or for bad, our actions will eventually catch up with us.

One of the most precious gifts we have been given in this life is freedom of choice, but that freedom only goes so far. We may be free to choose our words and our actions, but we are not free from the consequences of our choices. Sometimes a seemingly harmless action can have major repercussions. An act of kindness can change a person forever. An act of thoughtlessness can crush a spirit or — if the thoughtless act is vehicle-related — can end a life.

I am grateful that the Atonement washes me clean of the effects of the sins I commit. Nevertheless, the consequences of my actions on others are things I can’t escape. Like the chicken, I can run but I can’t hide. That’s an extra incentive to keep me from doing foolish things in the first place.

I awoke this morning with Elder Bednar’s talk from the last general conference on my mind. Every conference there is one talk (maybe two) that “sticks,” and in October that was the talk for me.

One reason that talk made such an impression was that the premise was something that had never occurred to me. This should come as no surprise to anybody, considering that Elder Bednar is an apostle and I live on Planet Kathy. I’m a spiritual hamster compared to him.

Nevertheless, the premise was so intriguing to me that I’m still thinking about it two months later. That is, it’s possible (and indeed, maybe even common) to have a testimony of aspects of the Church without actually being converted to the Church at all.

We often use having a testimony as a gauge to see how firm a person’s commitment to the Church is. A question that missionaries often ask potential converts is, “Do you have a testimony of The Book of Mormon?” In fact, our understanding that The Book of Mormon is inspired scripture is one of the things that separate Mormons from the rest of Christianity.

When we are interviewed for temple worthiness, the first three questions that are asked use the word “testimony” (referring to the Godhead, the Atonement, and the restoration of the gospel). If you can’t answer those questions in the affirmative, you don’t get the temple recommend.

A lot of emphasis is placed on having a testimony, and that’s a good thing. But even though testimonies are important, conversion to the gospel life is something we deal with every day. If we’re not converted to the way Mormons live, that’s a big, big problem.

As important as it is to have The Book of Mormon to guide us, you don’t have to be a Mormon to be inspired by passages from that book of scripture. In contrast, our understanding of the Law of Common Consent differentiates us from the rest of the population in a way that makes Mormons unique in a sea of otherwise-indistinguishable Christians.

In the narrowest sense of the term, the Law of Common Consent involves the way Latter-day Saints vote to sustain their church leaders. In a broader sense, however, what we are actually doing is holding up everyone around us. I firmly believe that the success of the Church can be traced directly back to the widest definition of the Law of Common Consent.

Because we do not have a paid ministry, each of us is expected to do our part to participate in the building of the kingdom. Members of the congregation, rather than paid ministers, preach the sermons in our sacrament meetings. This gives us poise and courage that we might otherwise never achieve if we were not forced out of our comfort zones to take our turns teaching the entire congregation through those Sunday sermons.

It isn’t just sermons we preach. Mormons perform all the other duties that are traditionally performed by preachers and priests in a paid ministry. We do not get to pick and choose our assignments, either. We are given those assignments by our congregation leaders, and we are expected to perform them cheerfully and to the best of our ability until we are reassigned to a different position.

This teaches us to adapt to different situations and to learn skills that may not even have been interesting to us when we were first given the assignment.  We learn to serve not in the ways that are comfortable to us, but in the ways we are needed.

We are put in congregations geographically so that the people worshiping next to us may not have the same level of education, or the same level of affluence, or the same level of prestige as we do. We may be of different races, and we may even speak different languages.

Working and worshiping next to people who are completely different from ourselves teaches us empathy and compassion. Church members who are less educated or less affluent than those around them can gain assurance that people from the other side of the tracks are human too — that all of God’s children have challenges, and that we are all equally loved by our Father in Heaven.

Our geographical groupings put us into communities with people who are not necessarily of our choosing. Some of them are not pleasant human beings. We don’t have the option of congregation-hopping to find people who are more compatible. Instead, we are expected to, as the old song goes, “love the one you’re with.” When we embrace this concept, we learn to work together with and even to love people whom we would not ordinarily choose as friends.

We take turns leading and following, often being put in the position of following someone who may not be as smart as we are or as socially adept as we are or even as insightful as we are. When we follow those leaders, accepting their leadership even when they don’t do things the way we think they should be done, we learn humility. There are few things more rewarding than working behind the scenes to make somebody else look good, and this is something that committed church members learn to embrace.

Until a Latter-day Saint has fully embraced the underlying principles of the Law of Common Consent, he has not been converted to the Church — no matter how much he may love The Book of Mormon or church history or even church hymns. Elder Bednar was right: having a testimony and being converted are two entirely different things.

You may have a rock-solid testimony of The Book of Mormon, but if you haven’t been converted you haven’t even gotten your feet wet as far as Mormonism is concerned. The Book of Mormon is a scripture that inspires us; the Law of Common Consent defines us as a people. We hold others up. We lead. We follow. We obey. We love, even when liking is hard. We are more than a community; we are a family.

This is who we are.

Several years ago, a new cable TV station premiered. It was called The Learning Channel, or TLC. As the name implied, the intent was to provide a destination where you could expand your boundaries and learn about all of the great things in the world.

Well, some time has passed and TLC is still going strong. A quick look at their web site will list some of their most popular programs:

• “Breaking Amish” (teens leave Amish country for NYC)
• “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”
• “Brides of Beverly Hills”
• “Extreme Cheapskates”
• “Long Island Medium”
• “Abby and Brittany” (adventures of conjoined twins)
• “Say Yes to the Dress”
• “Extreme Couponing”
• “Little People Big World”
• “Addicted”
• “Secret Princes”
• “Sister Wives” (polygamous relationships — and yes, until recently they lived in Utah)
• “19 Kids and Counting” (a show whose name changes about every nine months)
• “Toddlers and Tiaras” (young beauty contestants and their mothers)
• “What Not to Wear”
• “Hoarding…Buried Alive” (the best incentive you will ever find to get your teenager to clean her room)
• “My Crazy Obsession”
• “My Strange Addiction”
• “Extreme Cougar Wives” (older grannies preferring way younger men)

Now I have nothing against any of these programs. (Okay, that’s a bald-faced lie. I have written about TLC before, and I firmly believe that most of TLC’s programming is designed for the kind of people who gawk at traffic accidents and who go to carnivals just to see the freak show. I am also gobsmacked that so many people are willing to allow themselves to be ridiculed on national television just for their fifteen minutes of fame and a little bit of money. Don’t those mothers on “Toddlers and Tiaras” realize they are being portrayed as monsters?)

But in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that someone tinkered with our TiVo so that it regularly records some of less-odious fare.  Not Honey Boo Boo.  Even we have our standards!

Even though we may watch some TLC shows, I think it is a pretty sad commentary that a station that was launched with such noble intentions has been reduced to running shows about people with physical deformities, parents who live their lives through their children’s beauty pageants, and people with creepy compulsions and predilections.  (If you drink your own urine or have teenage girls change your diapers even though you are a 40-year-old man, TLC wants you!)

TLC makes no pretense of trying to teach its viewers these days. Nowhere on the TLC website do you find any indication of the original meaning of the TLC acronym. I guess they decided a long time ago that it was best to disassociate their content with any kind of learning!

I also remember when People magazine was launched back in 1974. The first few issues actually were about real people — the kind who lived down the block, and not just the ones who live in Hollywood. I was a newspaper reporter in Salt Lake City at the time, and when I saw that People was looking for writers, I sent the magazine a list of fascinating people who lived in Utah. I wrote that I was an experienced writer and would be excited to have the opportunity to showcase these interesting individuals.

This resulted in a rejection letter, where I was thanked for my submission, but informed that my suggestions did not conform to the editorial direction that People wanted to pursue. Within the next couple of issues, it was obvious from the content that the editors were interested in celebrities and not ordinary human beings.

I still look through People magazine while I am waiting in a medical office that doesn’t have Nat Geo or Smithsonian, and am saddened that what started out with great potential has just turned into another celebrity rag — albeit a very successful one. Am I the only person on the planet who doesn’t think that most so-called celebrities have done anything to merit our devotion?

Like many things in life, I guess that money is the bottom line. If Honey Boo Boo draws more viewers than Albert Einstein, she’s the one who gets the show.

Sadly, I wonder how many of us are the victims of diminished expectations in our own lives. How many of us started life with great promise and enthusiasm, only to get sidetracked into a rut from which there is seemingly no escape?

Fortunately, we as humans have great potential to change our situations, and history is full of men and women who have been able to make magnificent life transformations almost overnight. Sometimes they just need a little confidence, or someone who believes in them. Sometimes it comes from hard work. Sometimes people get a lucky break.

I’m also a firm believer in the power of prayer, and the potential it has to open our minds to the possibilities before us, and then open the doors to help us reach those possibilities.

If you’re one of those people who have been sidetracked into a rut, do not despair. It doesn’t have to be the end of the road. Change is possible. You may yet climb metaphorical mountains and slay dragons. Anything can happen, as long as you don’t give up.

When Fluffy and I were out of town recently, we spent our evenings either reading or looking (usually in vain) for something good to watch on television. Because we don’t go to movie theaters (we’re too cheap, there’s too much walking, and the chewing of everyone around me drives me crazy), we were delighted to see a Sandra Bullock movie, The Proposal, on television one night.

We set aside a two-hour block to watch the movie, only to realize when the two hours were up that we were still in the middle of the film. We looked at the television schedule, only to learn that this 1 hour 48 minute movie had been given a three-hour time slot.

You guessed it: The remaining 1:12 was allotted to commercials.

The commercials were not all lumped together and shown every twenty minutes or so. No, that would have been too civilized. The way the network did it was to show about three to five minutes of film and then hit us with commercials — the same few commercials, over and over and over again.

What would otherwise have been a cute movie ended up being a total waste of an evening. I can’t think of many things that would be worth enduring an hour and twelve minutes of television commercials.

This is why Fluffy and I are completely hooked on TiVo (or whatever DVR is your brand of choice). As long as a program we want to see is on the correct channel, we can start watching an hour program twenty minutes after it starts, fast-forward through the commercials, and finish watching the show at the same time as the rest of America. We extend our hour by twenty minutes and lose a whole lot of aggravation in the process.

Of course, Americans are accustomed to wasting their time. According to the itsokaytobesmart.com website, Americans spend 37 billion hours a year waiting in lines. That comes out to five years apiece during the course of an average lifetime, six months of which consists of waiting for traffic lights. During the course of a lifetime, we will spend nearly four more years waiting in lines than we’ll spend on the toilet.

That’s a whole lot of wasted time.

A century ago, people baked their own bread, washed their clothes by hand, and washed their dishes by hand. A lot of people had to make their own hot water on a hardwood stove, and of course somebody had to chop the wood to heat the water.

As the world became more technologically advanced, inventions were developed to save our time. These inventions have spared us a lot of backbreaking labor, and I’m glad we have them, but I’m not sure we have taken our new-found time and used it wisely.

As The Book of Mormon says, “all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men” (Alma 40:8). Right now, that’s what we are — men, or mankind, at least. One of these days, when we’re on the other side of the veil, we’ll have time to wait in line or to sit through an hour’s worth of commercials or spending several hours a day texting our BFFs. However, I’m betting that even when time no longer matters, we are going to be a lot less wasteful of it than we are right now.

Harvey MacKay had this to say about time:

Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

What am I doing to waste this most valuable of commodities? What are you doing? What time-squandering activities can we give up and replace with things that are worthwhile?

What are we waiting for? Time’s a-wasting!

While most of our friends were enjoying Thanksgiving leftovers in their respective houses, Fluffy and I were kicking back at the beach. We did not do it to go swimming or sunbathing, mind you. In fact, it was so bitterly cold that the one time we went for a stroll on the boardwalk, we almost froze our little noses off. There was no suntan involved in our November adventure!

A statue of Neptune overlooks the Christmas decorations on the Virginia Beach boardwalk. This was decidedly not swimming weather!

We had a nice hotel room overlooking the ocean, and we could go out on the balcony, or just open the balcony door and hear the sound of the waves in our room. It was a large room with Wifi access, plus a little refrigerator and microwave oven so that we could eat some meals in the room. The rate for the room was only about $65 per night, and that included free parking and free breakfast. (We didn’t eat the breakfasts, but we could have, and they would have been free.)

I’m sure the same room during the peak summer season sells for twice that rate, if not more. Plus, the hotel is probably filled to capacity during the summer, and would not give us the same restful experience.

Not everyone has the ability or even the desire to go to the beach in the winter. If you have school-age kids, or if your beach vacation has to include sunbathing or swimming in the ocean, then you are pretty much doomed to go in the summer months and fight the crowds and the high prices. But if you’re not tied down with kids and you can enjoy the cooler weather, then off-season beach trips are a good option. If you insist on swimming, some hotels have indoor heated pools that you can use even when it’s cold outside.

Both Fluffy and I are somewhat unique in that we have no problem listening to a different drummer, and sometimes we actually prefer that music over what others are hearing. In fact, sometimes we are so averse to following the crowd that we reject something just because everyone else likes it.

I mentioned in a previous blog that I stopped listening to the radio when the Beatles were popular. I guess I didn’t like them just because everyone else was telling me how great they were. The same can be said for the Harry Potter craze. I refused to get drawn into Harry Potter just because someone else was telling me how wonderful the series was. Only after the craze had died down and a friend gave me the whole set of books did I read them and enjoy them.

Sometimes belonging to the different drummer camp has its disadvantages. Often times we have ignored television programs that were just too popular, only to become passionately attached to them after everyone else moved on and we could catch the reruns on cable stations. But in general, we don’t like following the crowd, and we tend to be more and more that way as we get older (and hopefully wiser).

About 35 years ago, we had a Mormon bishop who gave us some good advice just before we got married. He said that when people are younger, they spend all of their time trying to fit in and trying to be like everyone else. Everyone wants to be the star football player or the head cheerleader. Not only do teenagers dislike people who are different, but the oddballs often become the object of ridicule.

Our own life experience at that time confirmed his point, because we still remembered many of the unwritten rules in high school that just had to be followed if you wanted to be accepted.

But then this bishop made an interesting statement. He said that as he grew older, he became tired of the once-popular people who were now just interchangeable. The friendships that he really came to cultivate were those with the unusual people who were intent on following their own path and not just the rest of the herd. Having these people for his friends really made his life more exciting and unpredictable.

We listened to that bishop. Perhaps partly because of his advice, we have cultivated an odd assortment of friends over the years, who have brought a great wealth of experience into our lives. We have one friend who was so obsessed with Princess Diana that he dragged us off to England with him just so he’d have company when he tried to shake her hand. (He succeeded, by the way, to the absolute horror of all the Brits around him.)

We have another friend who brought a dead terrorist’s passport to a white elephant gift exchange — a passport that he had picked up from a battle site immediately after the terrorist and his friends went off to meet their 72 virgins.  As soon as the military made sure the site was clear, Dale and his fellow journalists were allowed to go into the building and take souvenirs.

We have one friend who brandished a machete when he was speaking in sacrament meeting. (On a couple of occasions, we have turned on the Discovery channel and have seen him giving scientific information on a variety of things in a way that laypeople can understand.)  The machete-wielder’s wife has trained for the exploration of Mars.

Our friend Louise (front), suited up and setting foot on “Mars” in her first training mission.

We have another friend who used to be a psychic spy for the U.S. government. He even wrote a fascinating book about it, which I am in the process of reading.  And those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my hat!

That’s not to say that all of our friends are weird; some of them are pretty normal. But our lives are so much richer because every friend we have is so different from all the others. All of them, together, have added beautiful colors and textures to the tapestry of our lives.

It would be a big mistake to draw away from someone just because he is off listening to his own drummer. You never know what someone who isn’t like you could teach you, and how your life can be enriched by befriending people who are completely different from yourself.

When Fluffy and I checked into our timeshare last week, the first thing we did was to unplug the telephones. We did this from sad experience. You see, for reasons we know not, the people who administer the timeshare seem to think that the reason Fluffy and I go on vacation is so they can call us and try to sell us more timeshare weeks when we’re just there to relax.

Fluffy and I have fallen for this ruse on many occasions, probably because the timeshare people bribe us with valuable prizes (a dinner at a restaurant of the company’s choosing; a $50 grocery card, a $100 gift card) if we will submit to a one-hour “member update” telling us all the new features we could enjoy if we only sold our souls to the timeshare company.

Whenever our greed causes us to submit to the one-hour presentation, we deeply regret it. First of all, the “one-hour” presentation always takes, by actual watch measurement, exactly four hours (15 minutes for the member update and 225 minutes of high-pressure sales pitch). There’s a whole morning stolen out of our vacation, with not much to show for it even after they give us the valuable prize.  (One year when we went out for our “free” dinner I found not one but two hairs in my food!)

But that’s only the beginning. When Fluffy and I listen to the spiel and then tell the timeshare people that no, we do not want to upgrade our membership, the salespeople bring out the big guns. They actually call in their friends and gang up on us to tell us how stupid we are for not taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

It is not an exaggeration to admit that shouting invariably ensues and that Fluffy and I stalk (well, he stalks and I roll) out of the timeshare office in a huff. Pardon me if I don’t think this is something that enhances our vacation.

So when we arrived in the timeshare, we unplugged the phones and left them that way until we checked out. We never did plug them back in. If the housekeeper didn’t plug them in, we did the people who checked in after us a big favor.

This is not to say we had a telephone-free week. The people next door to us did not unplug their phones, and we got to listen to very loud telephone rings all week long. The volume on those phones was so high that Fluffy kept wondering if we had another phone in our unit that we hadn’t unplugged. No, the timeshare people just turn the volume up to “nuclear holocaust” level, so nobody will miss their important messages.

After Thanksgiving, we exchanged our timeshare for a hotel. The first thing we did after the grueling, fifty-minute drive from one property to another was to fall into bed and take a nap. Sure enough, we were awakened from our nap by a ringing telephone. It was the hotel concierge, wanting to welcome us to the hotel and asking if we were enjoying our stay.

Gee, lady. We were enjoying our stay, until you called us on the phone and woke us up from our nap to ask if we were having fun yet!

Here’s the bottom line: I can not think of one single thing that a person would be doing in a hotel room that would be enhanced by a telephone call from a hotel employee, asking if that person is enjoying his stay.

Think of all the things you do in a hotel room. Is there anything you would like to have interrupted by a ringing telephone with a stranger at the other end? I didn’t think so!

Even in the best of times, I am not a telephone talker. People occasionally call me, and I actually enjoy hearing from them if I’m not under a deadline, but it would never occur to me to call someone else on the phone just to chat.  Fluffy and I communicate by email (although we use it to exchange information rather than to chat), and we would probably get rid of our phone if it were not for that occasional important call.

I do not understand the whole cell phone movement. Part of the reason that Fluffy and I leave the house is to get away from ringing telephones, and a big part of going out of town is to get away from strangers who want to annoy us with “courtesy” calls that are anything but courteous.

Long before I was born, President Rutherford B. Hayes said the telephone was “an amazing invention — but who would ever want to use one?” When Fluffy and I are in a hotel, I can see exactly where Rutherford was coming from.

Doug Larson a gold-medal-winning runner in the 1924 Paris Olympics, said something about telephones that I can appreciate:

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three — and paradise is when you have none.”

When I’m on vacation with Fluffy, telephones shouldn’t even be part of the equation.  Even when we’re home, we have to suffer a dozen calls from strangers for every one call that results in a happy visit with a beloved friend.

For the most part, I feel extremely blessed to live in an age of instantaneous communication.  Our ancestors would be amazed at what we can do.  For that matter, even I’m amazed at the changes that have occurred just in my lifetime.  But when it comes to the telephone, I kind of wish that Mr. Bell had been flattened, oh-so-painlessly, by a falling telegraph pole.

Regular readers of this blog know my political leanings (conservative) and know that last November 6th was a real downer for me because of the election results.

I know from your comments that some of you hold polar opposite views, and that is fine too. But there is something that really disturbs me that I think should concern everyone no matter what their political leanings. What concerns me is the absolute ignorance of young voters, and what that means for the future of the nation.

I’m not sure if this is the case outside of the United States, but I believe our current high school and college graduates are the most ill-informed of any generation – at least in terms of understanding the fundamentals of government.

I do not blame the students for this, but I blame our so-called institutions of learning. Not only are students no longer learning the basics of civics and history, but some of the things they are learning are what I would classify as propaganda.

This feeling was reinforced by an article that I read by a gentleman who regularly gives lectures on government to public school students in Los Angeles County. As part of his presentation, he asks questions and regularly gets this kind of feedback from his audience:

• It is the government that provides jobs. (I have asked that question many times in classrooms or assemblies. “Who is it that creates jobs in America?” The answer is invariably, without hesitation, “the government.”)

• Corporations are bad, and profits are very bad. Business shouldn’t make profits; they should give any excess money they make to their employees.

• Taxes are good; they provide the money for the government to take care of people.

• Government should expand and take care of everyone in the country.

• America, rather than being a force for good in the world, has been a force for evil.

• Government has an unlimited source of funds. (When I ask, “Where is the government going to get the money to do all these things you want it to do?” the answer is “taxes.”)

Even realizing that Los Angeles is the heart of the bluest of blue states, I suspect these answers would not be that different if asked to students in most other states. Am I wrong to think that all of us, no matter what our political philosophies, should be alarmed that these students will become future voters who will make decisions based upon flawed logic and incorrect principles?

It used to be that potential U.S. citizens had to take a citizenship test, proving that they understood the history and operation of our form of government. This included information about the three branches of the federal government, the relationship between federal, state, and local governments, the differences between the public and private sectors, and an understanding of our founding documents such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

If these kinds of tests are still required, I suspect that new citizens have a better understanding of their responsibilities than 99% of recent graduates. Perhaps it would not be unreasonable to demand that passing a citizenship test should be a requirement for a high school diploma.

Because my church assignment allows me to regularly interact with the young women in our congregation, I have a real appreciation for the goodness and the potential of the upcoming generation. These are a group of sharp young ladies who will make a great contribution to the world as they mature and start their careers and their families.

Although I respect the right of all people to make their own decisions (not only politically, but in other areas), I want them to base those decisions on the best information available.

When asked how a leader should govern, Joseph Smith (the founder of the LDS Church) said “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.” This is good advice. I have full confidence that the rising generation will do a great job if we can only provide them with the correct principles on which to make their decisions.

Fluffy and I just returned from a few days in Virginia Beach, a quiet little town that is (as its name implies) on the ocean. On Sunday we took a trip up the boardwalk, braving the bitter cold to see the sights.

Most of the sights on this vacation consisted of Christmas decorations. Every year, starting on Thanksgiving, the town of Virginia Beach closes the boardwalk to foot traffic every night so cars can drive down the thoroughfare and people can see the Christmas displays. This year’s motif was the Twelve Days of Christmas, and our hotel room overlooked “Seven Swans A-Swimming.”

The view from our balcony at night.

During the day, the lights weren’t on and the displays were far from impressive. But at the end of our trip we stumbled across a monument we had not seen before. This larger-than-life bronze sculpture contained three figures — a white male, a black male, and a female. As we approached the sculpture we learned that this was a memorial to Virginia Beach’s fallen law enforcement officials.

Two of the three law enforcement figures in the Virginia Beach memorial. (click to enlarge)

There was a series of pillars surrounding the sculpture, and as we got close we saw that the pillars contained memorials to individuals who had lost their lives keeping Virginia Beach safe. The first one I read was dedicated to a man who had been deputized to arrest a man who had stolen a firearm. Within hours of being deputized, he tried to arrest the thief and got shot in the neck and the head for his efforts.

I wondered what kind of sheriff would deputize a man off the street to do, well, a sheriff’s work. Then I reread the text and saw that this event had occurred in 1898. That explained things. People got deputized more often back then than they do today. At least, I suppose this was the case because I’ve never heard of this happening in my lifetime, but it apparently happened at least once back then.

I went to the next pillar and read the second fallen officer’s story. He had died in 2006 — not from an act of violence, but from a heart attack suffered when he was doing a training exercise. In this case, it appeared that the man’s number was up, and he just happened to be at work when it happened.

I went to the next pillar to read the next story, but there wasn’t a story on that pillar. There wasn’t a story on the next pillar, or the next one, or the one after that. By the time I got all away around the sculpture, I realized that in the history of Virginia Beach, only two law enforcement officers had lost their lives on the job. The fatalities were 108 years apart, and they involved a man who really wasn’t a law enforcement officer and a man who was a law enforcement officer but who wasn’t enforcing the law at the time.

My first impression at looking at this big memorial to two events that were so far apart was one of amusement. The people who put up the memorial were obviously planning ahead when they included a black officer and a female in the memorial, because neither of the fatalities so far was female or black.

But then I understood it. The whole issue comes down to the meaning of “sacrifice.” You don’t actually have to give something up in order to sacrifice it; you just need to be willing to do so.

Two Biblical instances stand out. The first was Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac on the altar, back in the Old Testament. Abraham built the altar; he gathered the wood to burn the offering after he slew it; he trussed up his son and laid him on the altar. Then he raised his sword to slay Isaac.

As it turned out, God didn’t need Abraham to actually kill Isaac. The only thing God needed was to know that Abraham was willing to do it. Once Abraham had proven, however mournfully, that he would do as God commanded, God provided the “lamb in the thicket” to take Isaac’s place on the altar.

The second sacrifice was the sacrifice that Jesus made to atone for our sins. Most of Christendom believes that the sacrifice was made on the cross. We who are Latter-day Saints understand that the actual sacrifice was made on Mount Gethsemane, when Christ sacrificed His will to that of the Father and bled from every pore (Luke 22:39–44). The actual crucifixion only sealed the sacrifice that had already been made.

When I remembered those two scriptural examples, I realized it hasn’t just been two men separated by more than a century who have sacrificed themselves for the welfare of Virginia Beach — and for the welfare of every town and city and rural area across the land. Every law enforcement officer and every firefighter who has been willing to go into a burning building or pull over a car that may contain a felon with a gun has already made that sacrifice.

Every member of the military who puts on a uniform, not knowing whether he will live to take off that uniform at the end of the day, has made that sacrifice too.

It comes from an acceptance that you’re doing your job even if it means you never make it home at the end of your shift. It comes from a pact made with a God they may not even believe in that, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.”

This may be a little late for Veterans Day, but today I’m thankful for the people who have sacrificed their lives to keep me safe, both at home and abroad. I’m grateful for the ones who actually were killed in the line of duty, but I’m equally grateful for the men and women who were willing to be killed, if that is what it took, to keep the rest of us safe.