Nutcracker's Suite

I went to the Civic Center in Bristol this afternoon to usher for the performance of the Nutcracker's Suite. It was very nice. The children (and there were lots of them) knew their parts well and the costume and scenery were very well done. The guest performers from the National Dance Alive program were exceptional. One of the schools from the Twin Oaks group make 1100 cookies that were served with punch to the guests during the intermission. People were very friendly and nice, all seemed to be having a good time. I was ticked to see all the fathers and grandfathers carrying around roses or other flowers to give to their chioce little performers after the show. It was time well spent. If you had told me that the people of Liberty County would be so supportive to a ballet performance, I would not have believed it. I think it was a sell out, I know there were 500 tickets printed and as of last week all were sold but the last 50 or so. People did not dress up, but their cheers and claps showed that they enjoyed the show.

Clear and Crisp

With the diping temperature comes some of the most beautiful clear and crisp days of the year. Some of our most beautiful days are during the winter...especially January. The daytime warms up and the air feels so clean. These are the days when exploring in the woods is so much fun, especially just before spring when the violets are just beginning to bloom. Today feels like one of those days. I hope you will enjoy the day...especially since many of the fall colors (we do have a few) are in full showing. Why not take a walk in the woods or park.

Thanksgiving Day

We ate lunch at our son David's home. It was a quite nice day with not a lot of people there. We enjoyed quite the American feast of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, yeast rolls, pumpkin pie, chocolate pie and lemonade. Sherri's father, Charles Howell was there and Mama Doris, Becky, David Sr., Me (Minnie), Rachel Davis, David Jr., Sherri, Andrew, Melanie, Emily, and Sarah. Melanie played the piano for us...she is so talented and well practiced. She also played a song she had written (not yet on paper) and it was fantastic. Sarah also played and made up a song for Rachel. Andrew had just painted the new barn...honey white..and had to show it off to his granddaddy. I think about many times as a child the way we celebrated Thanksgiving. We would go to Quincy to my grandparents (Woodbery) home and grandma had cooked dinner. There was always turkey, peas, corn, dressing and probably a Lane Cake or Sourcream Pound Cake for dessert. We crowed around their red (asbestosed surfaced) table. Mary and I loved the corn...we still talk about it a lots. They, of course, grew the corn and peas in their garden. She said she took a couple of packages of frozen field corn, put it with water in a certain pan (she always used that pan so she did not have to measure) with butter and baked it in the oven. I don't know if it was the kind of corn or just the memory but it had to be the greatest corn in the world. A Lane Cake is full of rasins and nuts. I loved the pound cake...I think that's why I still love pound cake so much. After dinner we would sit around on the patio outside...beautiful colored concrete squares(red and green that my granddaddy had made)...and talk. That was the best part, listening to them talk. Granddaddy never allowed talking about insurance, politics or religion....he said that those were personal. They certainly talked about everything else, we listened. I think it is probably the prevelence of family stories that helped me get interested in family history when I was so young...10. I remember Uncle Warren showed us how to take a lizzard and rub his belly with a pencil to make him absolutely go sound asleep. I would never touch the lizzard though, so I was content with him getting the lizzard to sleep. Mary and I would also play on the hugh concrete drain/platform that granddaddy had made around the house to catch the water that drained off of the house so it wouldn't mess up grandma's flowers. If you moved the flower pots, there was always little grey bugs that rolled up into a tight ball when you touched them...we played with them too. It was neet to see the backside of the flower bushes, sometimes grandma let us pick some of the flowers. We played in granddaddy's magnificent barn (two stories), in the garden, with the worm bed and I suppose when they had tired of us we went to the neighbor's house to play with a little girl there ...Nancy Drew....paperdolls of course. Nancy always played with paper dolls.
In later years we had Thanksgiving at 'the camp' on Lake Talquin. This held a whole new set of adventures from exploring the woods to fishing in the lake. Many of the family would come on varying years and it was a great deal of fun hearing about other places where they had lived or visited. I miss my grandparents and my parents. Thanksgiving brings back many memories of family.

Big Glass Window pains

I loved the windows at our home when I was a child. They were big low windows and just one solid pain (payne). My sister and I used them like light boxes to trace our drawings or anything else. When it was a stormy night I loved to sit by the window and watch the lightening light up the sky. When it was clear, we watched the stars. When it was a cold night, like last night, Jack Frost would invariably come and make the greatest patterns of ice on the windows. At Christmas, we used artifical snow and spray painted the windows to decorate. Upps! had to redo them several times. I wonder why. And there was always the big Santa that had a light in it that we put on the window ledge. I'm all but certain that Santa might have missed our house if we did not set him there. There were strings of cut out snowflakes and paper dolls that held hands that we strung across the window. It seemed that every holiday we could think of something to decorate our window space. Then there was pressing your nose against the glass and leaving a fog portrait or when the humidity and temperature were just right there was a film that made the greatest place to draw and write with your fingers of course. Then of course you could always use it like a bulletin board to tape up all of your posters and coloring pages. I don't know if a window counts as one of those calssic toys like a stick, a can or a doll...but it was certainly fun. Especially if you had a mother who enabled and encouraged....but she did make us wash them too. Oh, I wish today I could see the work of Jack Frost on the window again the way I remember it. You know the nicest thing about our window fun...it was as fun as it was cheap. Fun things don't always come in fancy packages and sometimes they are as simple and as complex and your imagination.

Strengthing Families

Monday Nov. 24, 2008
Katheryn, Nathan and children are here. We had a great get together yesterday. Many of the family were present. I can remember my own home as a child. Our house was the unofficial gathering place or 'home' for my mother's family who liked to visit home once in a while after my grandparent's had died. Liberty County was home for the large extended Henderson family. They always seemed to spend the night at our house. Mama would roll out the quilts on the floor as palets for us children to sleep on, let out the couch and make every inch of space available to family. Not all the memories were great...I remember a certain cousin, whose name is not available, who was about my age. She would get there and run over and hug me while at the same time pinching me. I would cry and mother just couldn't understand why I was crying, she was just showing her love by hugging me. When I got older, I eventually told her of my cousin's diabolical antics.

We had a great time yesterday and the children were especially joyful. I have sought to gather what of my family that will once a month to celebrate birthdays for that month with a nice lunch and just time together...presents are not given at these gatherings. I know that family traditions can do a great deal to strengthen families and build loving memories for the day when we cannot see each other. There are those who do not care for my efforts to build traditions and does that make a difference? Of course it does, all of the family matters. I'm thankful that they do participate. Katheryn mentioned pride in her blog this week. Funny little thing, pride...one of the seven deadly sins. I think it is much different from just being pleased with what her children do. Perhaps different meanings to the word. It still makes me feel good about my family when I see that they enjoy each other's company and a little sad when they have differences...sometimes differences based on misunderstandings. Pride is not always so easy to see in yourself and sometimes not even in others.
I saw a seminary tape once about pride and I think I finally understand it. A young woman was being taught what pride means. As she progressed through the day a voice would declare "pride" to her each time she engaged in pride motivated behavior. In one particular scene she and a friend approaced her school locker. Another young woman near them is opening her locker. The subject of the study, we'll call her Jane, proceeded to tell some bad things she knew about the other girl. The voice cried "pride". What? said Jane....but, they are all true. "PRIDE" the voice repeated.
Jane was putting the girl down to make herself seem better in the eyes of her friend, though she may not have recognized that she was doing so...the voice told her it was PRIDE. They were true things that she said, but unkind and hurtful to the young woman's chances to overcome them. And what about her friend, will Jane's words cause her friend to sin also in her future treatment of the girl at the locker? Probably.
Isn't that a major way Lucifer uses our pride? Why certainly so. While we're lifted up in pride over our 'great knowledge and superiorotiy' we are destroying another person. While Jane's friend may walk away with a little piece of useless, though be it true, gossip....she'll also walk away with the assurance that when she may fall short of Jane's criteria, Jane may and probably will one day talk about her weaknesses to someone else...even those things she learned in confidence. Suppose Jane gets mad at her. Will she find a way, true or lies, to put her friend down in the eyes of others? What chance does the young woman at the locker have of changing and becoming a better person? Does Jane's unkind words hinder the opportunity to repent and be forgiven by God? Of course not. What about to be forgiven by Jane's friend? Yes. What happens when Jane messes up and would that the rocks would cover her to hide her from the sight of God? Does the old, true, saying come into play and Jane will receive "as you sow, so shall you reap" or will Jane's conscience finally catch up in this matter...perhaps Lucifer will blind Jane a little longer until at last her sin is shouted from the roof tops....PRIDE! comes forth from her house rather than the faithful covering offered by Jesus for repentant sinners who will have "Jesus Christ" shouted from their roof tops. Imagine Jane's surprise when all her sins are shouted and the repentant young girl from the locker who was guilty of so much has no sin shouted. What do you suppose the effect on Jane might be? Will she be angry? Insist she was just telling the truth? Will she be hurt? Will she react by further estrangement to God or meekly repent? Meekness may not have a high probability with Jane who still thiniks she has done nothing wrong. It's hard to tell but her eternal welfare hangs in the balance and hopefully she will grow to understand the kindness and mercy of the Lord that is extended to repentant sinners and be able to overcome her weakness and repent of her pride to enter into his presence. Of all the sins, pride has the potential of halting or crippling the work and glory of God, in a manner that is hard to detect. The Lord has said, "Pride goeth before the fall".
I hope Jane listened to the voice. I hope I and you will listen. Every week we have the opportunity to go to the house of the Lord and repent, having our sins washed clean through the sacrament ordinance. Whatever is keeping you away cannot be good. Perhaps Jane even made it to a few sacraments, but didn't repent of her pride.
When you sit and watch me partake of the sacrament, know I have forgiven you and pray for your good and benefit. It can be no other way. And like the Savior I know someday I too will remember your sins no more...even though I am the young woman at the locker. I also sincerely repent of my own sins at the alter of the Lord and like the Savior will one day remember them no more...and when the sins are shouted from the rooftops, if my pleadings are sincere and honest and I forsake my sins, I will sleep through the night for I will know that Christ has me covered and I pray he'll have you covered too as well as Jane.
Sorry if you think this a little preachy...that's what parents learn to do...teach (always).