After a long day of meetings at the office it is nice to be home with an almost-empty agenda! There was originally going to be a church meeting tonight, but it has been postponed until Sunday. A marvelous gift is an evening with a fair amount of free time available. So, I’ve caught up on the e-mail, handled some minor work stuff, and after this post, will wind down the night. Nina just finished watching a move Two Weeks Notice. It must have been a pretty good movie as she chuckled several times. I wasn’t much interested in a movie tonight.

We’ve just finished a very stressful week at work. Last Wednesday the company I work for not only released it’s first quarter earnings, but it also did another reorganization. The figures released to the financial community were that 11% of the workforce was impacted. My arithmetic suggests that’s around 500-600 people, but I don’t know the real figures. A few people in my organization were "impacted", the euphemism for loosing their jobs. I think that the hardest job a manager has to do is to lay someone off.

I remember vividly the first time I was laid off. In September, 1980 a good friend persuaded me to transfer from the Automotive Worldwide group and a pretty good job into another part of TRW and take an inside sales job. It’d look good on my resume to have sales experience and all that. The job was to sell Datapoint computer hardware into TRW. I was reasonably good at this job, but within a couple of weeks of joining this group, TRW announced that they had sold the business back to Datapoint Corporation. The sale would be consumated in August, 1981.

For about nine months there was no further word on what this sale was going to mean. Then one day I got a phone call from a fellow in Personnel (what we used to call Human Relations) in California. He was going to be in the area the next day and wanted me to meet him for breakfast at a nearby hotel. I arrived, quite naively ate a good breakfast, while he extolled the virtues of working for TRW. After the check arrived and he put it on his room bill, the axe was lowered. Datapoint Corporation was buying back the business, alright, but none of the people were going with it. On September 1st, I would be without a job. I would be paid through the end of August, could look around the company for another opportunity, but on September 1st, my job ended. There was no severance package; I guess they thought the three-month’s lead time was sufficient.

I left the hotel and as I walked to my car in the parking lot, I sicked up the entire breakfast, the previous evening’s dinner, and lots of meals before that. Then I had to go into the office and tell the folks working for me that they would be out of a job on September 1st. We then locked up the office and all went home for the day.

In the end, as they usually do, things worked out. I did find two other potential jobs within TRW, but turned them both down to take a consulting position with Systemation, Inc. I was able to close up the office at TRW on August 31st and show up for work at Systemation the next morning. Never-the-less, I still have the name of the idiot who laid me off and hope to meet up with him in the hereafter! Maybe it won’t matter then, but even today some 22 years later, I still bristle at the remembrance of that day. I’m still not ready to discuss the second time I was laid off. Lots of anger remains over that event. Oh well! Time to wind up the day.

On Friday morning, our local paper The Colorado Springs Gazette carried a story on the first page of the Metro section about a hiring decision made by the Acadamy District 20 school board. The story, by Jeanette Jackman, headlined: Kids, parents protest D-20 decision. A couple of excerpts from the story are in order:

Academy School District 20 officials faced a roomful of protesters Thursday night over the decision not to renew the contracts of two popular Rampart High School teachers.

About three dozen students, former students and parents told the Board of Education that Tom Stout and Rosemary Taylor should not have been among the probationary teachers whose contracts were not picked up for the fall semester….

Before hearing the protests, the board voted unanimously not to renew the contracts of 84 probationary teachers, including Stout and Taylor, angering many of those who attended the protest….

Board President Richard Valorose declined to give a reason for the decision on which teachers would be returning.

"I hope you will continue your level of involvement with your school no matter how it goes," Valorose said….

Rampart senior Kimberly Hartsfield obtained Stout’s evaluation from the teacher.

According to the evaluation, Hartsfield said, Stout apparently lost his job because he has a hard time relating to authority figures and grades harder than most teachers.

That last really got my goat. I know Rosemary Taylor and think she is an outstanding teacher. I’ve heard of Tom Stout several times and would consider him to be an excellent teacher as well. So, a letter to the School Board copied to the newspaper was certainly in order:

April 26, 2003

Board of Education

Academy School District 20

7610 N. Union Blvd

Colorado Springs, CO 80920

Gentlemen:

I read with shock and dismay in the Gazette about District 20’s decision not to renew contracts with two probationary teachers. The Board’s actions further solidify the public’s dismal opinion of the state of education in the public school system. Both Mr. Stout and Mrs. Taylor have been outstanding teachers, worthy in every way of the title "Educator."

I am particularly disturbed at the report that Mr. Stout’s evaluation criticized him because he "grades harder than most teachers." If true, that statement is a serious indictment of Rampart High School’s administration and management. Grade inflation is a significant concern throughout this country’s education community and the eroding of educational standards is a serious concern of citizens in the State of Colorado and in Colorado Springs. In my employment, I make hiring decisions about high school graduates being considered for employment in our call centers and customer support systems. I am appalled by the number of graduates who cannot spell, cannot write, and cannot think logically, all the while touting their 3.0+ grade averages in high school.

The Academy District 20 Board of Education had an opportunity to do something worthwhile and to take a stand for quality education in the district. Instead, the Board has taken the low road once again and bypassed excellence in favor of mediocrity. Shame on you. The pity is, all of us in Colorado Springs are the worse off for it.

Regretfully,

Roland Smith

cc: Editor, The Gazette

And mediocrity wins once again. Why is it that School Boards never strive for excellence?

Today is Easter Sunday. That brings up the question, "When is Easter?" The rule is fairly complicated:

Prior to A.D. 325, Easter was variously celebrated on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In that year, the Council of Nicaea was convened by emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. However, a caveat must be introduced here. The "full moon" in the rule is the ecclesiastical full moon, which is defined as the fourteenth day of a tabular lunation, where day 1 corresponds to the ecclesiastical New Moon. It does not always occur on the same date as the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical "vernal equinox" is always on March 21. Therefore, Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday between the dates of March 22 and April 25. (see The Easter Page — Traditions, History, and Dates of Easter

The dates for Easter for the next five years are:

• April 11, 2004
• March 27, 2005
• April 16, 2006
• April 8, 2007
• March 23, 2008

Today is a beautiful day with clear skies and a bright sun — very different from yesterday which was cold with rain or snow most of the day. It was nice of the weather to move out so we could have a lovely day today! Our son Jared drove down from Denver yesterday afternoon to spend the day with us as well. This is a very good day!

Nina and I are singing in an Easter Cantata. For the past twelve weeks we’ve been going to choir practice at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and having to leave a half-hour early at 10:30 to go to Denver to work in the Temple. Yesterday was Dress Rehearsal so we made arrangements to stay for the entire practice. The 90-voice choir sounds wonderful and it’s exciting to sing beautiful music together with so many people. Sally DeFord (Web Page) wrote the music and is conducting the choir. My favorite music in the cantata is titled "In the Silent Garden:"

Come at the dawn to the silent garden; brightly beams the morning sun

Come at the dawn to the silent garden; see what wonder the Lord hath done!

Come to the tomb in the silent garden; Lo! the stone is rolled away

Linger in awe, for the tomb lies empty; see the place where is body lay!

     He is risen! He is risen! Risen unto endless life

     Weep no more in the silent garden

     Death is swallowed up in Christ!

Seek him no more in the silent garden; seek him not among the dead

Find him in glory among the living; risen even as he said

Victory is wrought in the silent garden; joy is born of an empty tomb

Sing for the morning of our salvation; Christ hath brought us life anew!

We sang the cantata last night and the final performance is this evening. Music has such a wondrous effect on our souls. He is risen. I add my witness on this beautiful day, a day when we celebrate the most wondrous event in the history of mankind!

The other day Stelton University shut down the university’s student newspaper. The students had published their annual April 1st issue laced with foul language, pornography, racial slurs and stereotypes, and just plain filth. The edition contained a number of absurd phony advertisements including one full of profanity, "Because we are allowed to print it."

Because we can. What a crock of nonsense. We live in a country with as much or more freedom of thought and action than anywhere else in the world and probably more than any other age in the world. The problem is, each generation is disposed to push the envelope. When that happens, things don’t get better, they always degenerate. Along with freedom comes responsibility that we in the Church call agency — also said as "just because we can doesn’t mean that we should."

"Because we can" cannot lead anywhere that enlightens, beautifies, or enhances our quality of life. It suggests that there are no moral or ethical absolutes, that anything has to be allowed, and that the right of the individual trumps the rights of the group.

It’s also a sign of immaturity, of being unable to relate actions to consequences. When the school shut down the student paper,

Staffers said they were disappointed they were fired without warning and that even people who had no say in the paper’s editorial content lost their jobs.

Of course people would complain loudly and bitterly about that edition of the student newspaper. Of course the University would have to take action. Of course that action would have consequences far beyond anything the students had envisioned as they gleefully took their childishness to press.

In 1970 I was going to school at Purdue University. The Vietnam War was in full swing and there was no end in sight. I had recently finished my time in the U.S. Air Force and was going to school to earn a degree. A small group of students, in the name of protesting a war about which they had no real knowledge and no experience took over the administration building and shut down operations at the University for several days. The administration building was simply an easy target of opportunity for their protest. They caused thousands of dollars of damage and forced the University to implement a myriad of security precautions to prevent future damage. They also cost me a week of classes. I considered their actions childish beyond belief then and even today I’m somewhat incredulous that they would undertake such an action. The one place that was open and available to them to learn moral and ethical behavior, to learn how to apply principles of logical thinking, to learn what history has to offer so that we can make the future better, that was the place they shut down and trashed. There were far better and much more effective ways to express their feelings about the Vietnam War but those would take a little maturity and education to exploit. Shortly thereafter, another protest at Kent State University resulted in the National Guard opening fire on the students, killing some of them. "Because we can" had degenerated into death.

In General Conference last week, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland talked about the responsibility of parents to provide this moral baseline for their children:

Not long ago Sister Holland and I met a fine young man who came in contact with us after he had been roaming around through the occult and sorting through a variety of Eastern religions, all in an attempt to find religious faith. His father, he admitted, believed in nothing whatsoever. But his grandfather, he said, was actually a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "But he didn’t do much with it," the young man said. "He was always pretty cynical about the Church." From a grandfather who is cynical to a son who is agnostic to a grandson who is now looking desperately for what God had already once given his family! What a classic example of the warning Elder Richard L. Evans once gave.

Said he: "Sometimes some parents mistakenly feel that they can relax a little as to conduct and conformity or take perhaps a so called liberal view of basic and fundamental things—thinking that a little laxness or indulgence won’t matter—or they may fail to teach or to attend Church, or may voice critical views. Some parents . . . seem to feel that they can ease up a little on the fundamentals without affecting their family or their family’s future. But," he observed, "if a parent goes a little off course, the children are likely to exceed the parent’s example."

To lead a child (or anyone else!), even inadvertently, away from faithfulness, away from loyalty and bedrock belief simply because we want to be clever or independent is license no parent nor any other person has ever been given. In matters of religion a skeptical mind is not a higher manifestation of virtue than is a believing heart, and analytical deconstruction in the field of, say, literary fiction can be just plain old-fashioned destruction when transferred to families yearning for faith at home. And such a deviation from the true course can be deceptively slow and subtle in its impact. As one observer said, "[If you raise the temperature of my] bath water . . . only 1 degree every 10 minutes, how [will I] know when to scream?"

There are moral and ethical absolutes. I firmly believe that just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. If it doesn’t improve the quality of life, lift up mankind, make things a little better and brighter, then it is a waste of time. How much better the students at Stelton University could have made use of their time! They could have set a new high-water-mark for April Foolery. They could have done something that would have resulted in a flood of phone calls, e-mails, and letters praising their work and delighting in their creativity. Instead, they selfishly sank to a new low in student journalism. And we’re all the worse off for it. Shame on them all.

One of my granddaughters is sure that she has discovered a Faerie Circle! She’s been corresponding with faeries for some time now. She writes a note and puts the note in a faerie house in her room. The next day or so, almost by magic, a reply from the faeries appears in the faerie house. She is very fascinated with faeries and really wants to visit the faerie world.

Of course, to visit the faerie world, one must find a faerie circle. She has been searching the neighborhood and is certain that she’s found a faerie circle in the neighbor’s back yard. After some discussion with her mother, she decided that she needed to go stand in the faerie circle at twilight and the faeries would invite her into their land. The other night, with a favorite stuffed animal in hand, she went out to stand in the circle. Daylight turned to twilight. Twilight turned to darkness. Finally her father had to convince her to come in the house. She was devastated!

For my part, I’m glad she didn’t visit the faerie world. The definition of a faerie circle found on a website says:

Faeries often dance in circles in the grass which are called faerie rings and this spells danger for the human passerby. The wild enchantment of the faerie music can lead him inexplorably towards the ring which can lead to captivity for ever in the land of Faerie. If a human steps into the ring he is compelled to join the faeries in their wild prancing. The dance might seem to last only minutes, or an hour or two, or even at most a whole night but in fact the normal duration would be seven years our time and sometimes longer. The unfortunate captive could be rescued by a friend who, with others holding his coat-tails, follows the faerie music, reaches into the ring (keeping one foot firmly outside) and pulls the dancer out. (Faerie Rings)

Now that sounds like a particularly dangerous place for one of my granddaughters! She’s far too fun to loose forever into the world of the faeries.

We arrived back home on Monday evening just in time to watch the NCAA Basketball Final between Syracuse and Kansas. It was an exciting game where Syracuse managed to hold on long enough to win the game whereas Kansas did a marvelous job of giving the game away by not being able to shoot free throws. It’s been a curiosity over the years how often a basketball game is lost due to the inability to consistently shoot free throws. Syracuse was able to foul almost with abandon knowing that Kansas was shooting only about 30% from the free throw line. Being able to execute the basics is key to winning in the really big, important games.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Military has shown they definitely know how to execute the basics. The war in Iraq is wrapping up and turning now into a law enforcement activity. I’m very impressed with how well this action has been prosecuted by the Military.

We had a good, uneventful trip. Although we ran into a fair amount of weather, for the most part it was no issue. Everything in the trailer arrived in good shape and fits nicely into a corner of the garage. Returning the trailer was easily accomplished on Tuesday evening. The Suburban was filthy outside, so I ran it through the car wash on the way home after dropping off the trailer. The next task is to complete our taxes.

It’s very good to be home again and getting back into the routine. There was a lot of stuff to catch up on at work. I’d sure like to finally get rid of this cold … maybe by the end of the week? Bradica (the dog) has settled back down now that she’s pretty sure she’s really home. The trip was fun, lots of driving in a very short period of time, successful, and gave us the opportunity to visit with family. We’re Home Again!

We’re hauling a U-Haul trailer around. So, a picture is in order:

We’re in Orem, Utah, spending a couple of nights at our daughter Heather’s home before returning to Colorado Springs on Monday. The weather is fairly unsettled with intermittent snow squalls. The snow isn’t sticking on the valley floor, but hopefully is adding a lot of snow in the mountains. The drought in this area of Utah is more severe than it is in Colorado Springs.

We’re on our way back home. We left late Wednesday afternoon and drove as far as Rawlins, Wyoming. The last hour of that trip was quite miserable driving through a very intense snow storm. There are a lot of truck drivers who have no fear! They were barrelling through the storm even though the road and road markings were not visible at all. They made the driving more dangerous for the rest of us (and I’m sure, in their selfishness, they’ve given no thought to that aspect of their driving). On Thursday we drove the rest of the way to Soda Springs, Idaho.

We spent Thursday night visiting with my parents. They are both doing quite well and we had a delightful visit. Dad has lost a significant amount of weight — so much so that the doctors have told him he can now stop losing weight. As we arrived in Soda Springs there was a major snow storm going on. In the past twenty-four hours almost a foot of snow had fallen. On Friday morning the temperature was about 4 degrees! It was mighty cold and very much reminiscent of the Soda Springs that I grew up in.

Friday we drove to Spokane, Washington, the destination for this trip. When our daughter Dawnmarie along with her husband and family moved to Pennsylvania, they had to leave some of the outdoor stuff behind. Nina and I decided to go over to Spokane, pick up the stuff, and then we’d take it with us when we go out east in July. We had a reservation for a U-Haul trailer. The reservation turned out to be west of town towards Fairchild AFB. After picking up the trailer, we then drove over to Dawnmarie’s inlaws to pick up the furniture. We spent the night in a Shilo Inn in Couer d’Alene, Idaho.

Saturday we drove from Couer d’Alene to Orem. The drive through Montana was spectacular. Overnight there had been a light snow followed by very cold temperatures. The trees were spectacular and the drive was very interesting. Whenever we travel somewhere, we take a guide book with us, or buy one if we’re going somewhere we don’t have the book. Mostly we like the books published by Moon as they’re organized by the way you drive through the state. It is a lot of fun to read about the places along the route we’re driving. As we drove south from Butte, Montana, we read about Virginia, Nevada City, and Banack — gold towns in that region where lawlessness reigned until people finally became fed up and finally took their towns back from the crooks and criminals.

It’s a twelve-hour drive (driving the speed limit) from Couer d’Alene to Orem, Utah. The terrain along the route is varied and interesting. We found the drive very interesting but were happy to get to Orem where we’d spend two nights before driving the rest of the way back to Colorado Springs.

I’m finally beginning to feel better. Nina has done all the driving on this trip while I’ve been a map reader, guide book reader, and snoozer. We’ve had a good trip, but feeling lousy isn’t helpful. But, I think by about Wednesday or so, I’ll be completely back to normal. I’m really looking forward to that day!

But someday we want to return back to Montana and do some sightseeing. It is definitely an interesting place!