Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

This last month, after spending sweat, tears and $14.00 in supplies to make a tiny jean picnic quilt, I realized that it's just not worth it. Which is a hard thing to realize when you consider that I've carefully saved, cut up, and moved my t-shirt squares to Texas on the hope that finally, finally I was going to make my sentimental college t-shirt quilt. This is the face of my BYU physics professor. Someone in class did the art and collected quotes for the t-shirt. Aw.....Divine Comedy t-shirt. The big pink one. Hell Run t-shirt Plant museum at the Bean museum Summer statistics camp at UT. They gave us models and cookies Run for Kiva--"teleraces" are terrible. Turns out sentimentality is a pain. So I took pictures of the squares I cared about and then {wince, grimmace} threw them away. My great aunt Dona would maybe be disappointed, but probably not. I have a good job, I can buy blankets, and I get frustrated when they don...

Once I was crossing at the light and overheard a conversation ahead of me. "Do you remember Sean Maher?" "Who?" "That hot guy from Firefly--the doctor." "Oh yeah." "I had such a crush on him and would totally be his girlfriend--but he's gay!" "Oh no way! Dang it!" I smiled to myself, but I really wanted to tell these girls: I don't think the thing keeping you from being Sean Maher's girlfriend is his sexual orientation. I'm not sure exactly which circles she runs in, but from the conversation, it doesn't sound like she is hanging out with Sean and his friends on the weekend, going to the fro-yo place, and playing Mario Kart in the dorm lobby. But then, we talk about celebrities, I think, as types. Pink is the party girl with the heart of gold, the best friend from junior high you stick with even after you've become radically different people. Kate Middleton is the bratty, but beautif...

(I wrote a long email with friends about the Prodigal Son. It was so long that I'm repeating it here.) Why are we talking like the prodigal son got shafted? He never got shafted; didn't his father tell him "Son, thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine"? This is huge because: (1) "Son" --the Prodigal wanted to be a servant and was flummoxed that he got to be a son. Here the father reaffirms to the Other Brother that he is a Son; he's still got that honored role (2) " thou art ever with me" There's a talk by Eld Eyring (I can't find it online, but it's in his "to draw closer to God" collection of discourses) where he talked about his mission companion. He had a companion who was, like, 70 years old, had been inactive for something like 50 of those. Little Eld Eyring was teaching a lesson on repentance and said something like, "you can repent and be just as good--isn't my companion jus...