I like “cutsie” headlines, particularly those that say one thing and mean something different. I’m sometimes amused by what our local newspaper uses for headlines, such as “Police Car Wreck Was An Accident” that appeared earlier in the week. Anyway, occasionally the volunteers at the Pocatello Womens Correctional Center are allowed to bring their spouses along for special events. Last Wednesday the Idaho State University Institute of Religion was putting on a program at the prison and I had the opportunity to attend. Nina just loves her work at the facility and it is very evident when I visit. She makes sure to greet every inmate as they come in and as they leave. She jokes and talks with them and in every way treats them like normal, real people. I’m sure that much of what happens at the prison is not pleasant and the women really enjoy being with the volunteers who don’t judge them or put them down.

Of course, security getting into the prison is fairly tight. Empty pockets are the rule and everyone gets wanded before going into the facility. The Institute program was being put on by more than 40 young people, so their process of getting into the facility was somewhat lengthy. One young lady had a huge key ring with lots of stuff on hanging on it that hung from a band around her neck. She sat the keys down on the counter to get scanned and then picked up the keyset to go past the security guard into the pass-through area. The guard stopped her and asked to see the keys — he was going to tell her to put them in her pocket — when he saw that on the key ring was a small canister of Mace! That was definitely something he didn’t want in the prison or more particularly, for any inmate to get hold of. The key ring went into the guards office to wait until the young lady came back out….

I’ve put a few pictures from this week up in the Pictures! area.

It’s now time to put these creatures out of my misery. The picture on the left shows the little trails they eaten in to the yard underneath the snow over the winter. They snip off the grass at the roots and line these trails with the grass. After raking the dead grass out of the trails, the picture on the right is how much dead grass comes up. So, the plan of attack is (and I’m pretty sure the voles can’t read this, but who really knows?) : we’ve raked out the dead stuff and mowed the grass quite short, as recommended. Next is to put special poison down in to their holes. In the picture on the left up near the concrete is one of the big holes going down to their lair. Then we’ll be putting out about fifty traps — also the recommended quantity. We’ll have to keep the grass short to encourage the remaining critters to leave and go somewhere else. I’ll have to keep up the attack through most of the summer. Then, this fall I’ll be putting down a special spray that keeps them from coming into the yard. These are prolific little beasties — they have a litter of 7-8 every 36 days. I’d bet there are hundreds of them in my yard — but not for long!

“May 1st is a good day for a funeral,” remarked one of the speakers at Aunt Bernita’s funeral today. Indeed it was. We had a bright, beautiful spring day. Aunt Bernita loved to be outside in her garden and this was the kind of a day to be outside.

We started the day by driving to North Salt Lake and meeting Heather up at her new, under construction house. She showed us through what will be a beautiful home. It’s pretty much fully framed and most of the electrical and plumbing work is completed. There’s a guest bedroom just inside the front door with a fabulous view out over the valley. I can see that we’ll have to stay there from time to time, particularly on the return from overseas when it’s far too tired out to drive up north. Heather says that there is about two and a half months of work left on the house. That was the first time I’d been up there and I’m impressed, Heather!

From there we went downtown Salt Lake to a chapel on Evergreen for Aunt Bernita’s funeral. It was well attended by family and ward members. The service went just a little over an hour and was very nicely done. It was a fitting farewell to a good woman. The cemetery was a couple of blocks away and it turns out there were six funerals at the cemetery, all about the same time. After the dedication of the grave, Nina and I went over to Trevor’s grave and spent a few minutes there. The grave marker needed cleaning and clearing off, so Nina got down on the ground and did the job (I took the picture as she did the cleaning). Then it was back to the chapel for a nice lunch from the ward Relief Society.

After lunch we then went over to the nursing home where Aunt Marj is undergoing therapy. She had a very serious bout of pneumonia and after that was brought under control, she was sent from the hospital to the nursing home for further therapy. Now the question is: does she have enough cognative ability remaining to be able to be able to continue to live alone. The consensus from the staff at the nursing home is that her short-term memory is not working well and she’s not safe to be alone. The next step is to have a cognative evaluation done and then decide what to do. As has been said many times, getting old isn’t for the fainthearted.

We’re now back home. It was a full day with lots of driving. It was good to see some family members that I haven’t seen in many years. I’m glad that Aunt Marj is being well looked after. It was nice to visit with Trevor for a few moments. May 1, 2006, was a good day for a funeral.

My brother sent me information about two Green River Wyoming men shooting themselves in the hand on a dare (I’m not sure how long the link will be good). Just to show that Green River, Wyoming, doesn’t have the corner on people not functioning on all their brain cells, see the accompanying article from the Idaho State Journal on April 26, 2006. I grew up in Soda Springs but luckily escaped with most of my gray matter intact, no matter what anyone says.

We definitely have spring weather in Pocatello. We had delightful weather on Saturday and we spent a good part of the day outside working in the yard. We have a huge infestation of voles that have done some serious damage in the yard. It’s now eradication time along with somehow resurrecting the grass from their nefarious activites under the snow. Saturday evening mom and dad drove over from Soda Springs and we went to a Michael Ballam concert at the new Jensen Center. It was just him and his piano as he told us stories from his life and sang songs related to those stories. He has the ability to make it seem that it was just you and him and everyone else was just kind of listening in. We’ve decided we need to drive down to Logan for some of the performances of the Utah Festival Opera which he founded. It’s only about 90 minutes south of here and the lineup this year all look interesting to me.

Young men shooting themselves in the hand and kids trying to stage a jailbreak contrasted with the marvelous music in the Jensen Center. The paradox — highly contrary conditions — of these events is another thing that makes life interesting here in southeastern Idaho. Happy seventeenth birthday, Stephanie!

My aunt Bernita has passed away. She had been in failing health for a few months and while this isn’t entirely unexpected (none of us get out of this life alive, anyway), it is still sad. Aunt Bernita was married to my mother’s next older brother Art. He died of a heart attack when I was ten years old. School had just started for the year and my sisters and I stayed with our grandmother and grandfather Smith in Preston while mom and dad (and my kid brother) went to Utah for the funeral. Trevor is buried in the same cemetery — which is also the place where Nina and I have our burial plots.

Aunt Bernita married twice after that and the last marriage appeared to be a happy marriage for both her and Bryce. I have several memories of Aunt Bernita. She worked for many years for Utah Power and Light and I’m pretty sure she retired from there. She faithfully attended the Gillette Family functions whenever possible and it was fun to visit with her. I don’t remember going very often to her place except for a Thanksgiving dinner where I got scolded for spilling my water (some of my kids can relate to that…!!). She worked at being a part of the Gillette Family and she’ll be missed at the family events. I know that I’ll miss seeing her and visiting with her. Godspeed, Aunt Bernita.

I understand that the funeral will be on Monday in Salt Lake. We’ll be going down and hopefully will be able to take mom and dad with us so that they won’t have to drive down and back by themselves. We can also stop over and see Aunt Marj while we’re there. She’s now in a nursing home after a difficult bout of pneumonia and probably won’t be able to ever go back to living on her own. That’s another difficult transition as well.

Well, this post is all full of dour news! There are bright spots as well. Spring is definitely here and Nina and I are in the middle of building some garden boxes to be put out back. Nina would like to have stuff planted before we leave on vacation on May 12th. In preparation for that trip we’re also working on the motor home getting it ready to go. There are lots of little things to do around the house in preparation as well. I’m looking forward to the trip. Life is good.

I was able to work out a business reason to go to San Jose for a couple of days. I have some staff there that I needed to visit and as long as I was going to be there, I might as well attend the Maker Fair at the San Mateo Fairgrounds sponsored by Make Magazine. And, of course, as long as I was there, I could also make a trip to Frys Electronics just in case I needed something. I was pretty sure there would be an Apple Store somewhere that I might be able to visit. All in all, it was a very successful trip!

The picture is from the Maker Fair which was held in San Mateo on Saturday April 22nd and Sunday April 23rd. I set up return flight up in the late afternoon on Saturday so I could go to the fair. It was very interesting and pretty weird at the same time. I’ve put up a picture album from the trip that shows some of the sights at the fair. The idea is that there are people who are very interested in taking stuff apart and making something else out of it — or at least making something. The San Mateo fair was about third in the series. It was interesting looking at some of the exhibits. The fair was well attended and getting close enough to actually talk to people displaying their handwork was difficult. I did spend some time at the Parallax exhibit and took a class on microcontrollers. The $15 class fee included about $80 worth of parts. The project was a device to calculate distance. It was a lot of fun and I spent more money buying more parts…. There were some other microcontrollers on exhibit, but none of the rest had any kind of hands-on capability.

The mall where the Apple store was located had changed character completely from when I was there last. I was last in San Jose in March 2004, two years ago. At that time this mall was a standard, normal, uninteresting mall. There was construction going on when I was there last, but I hadn’t paid much attention to that. Today, this is a nice, upscale mall with at least four times the store space with all of the interesting stores. I managed to spend some money there (not a lot) at the Apple Store, the Discovery Store, Williams and Sonoma, and the Disney Store. It was fun to watch all the people (and on a Friday evening there were a LOT of people to watch!).

Frys also got a little of my money. It is fun to be in a store that has just about everything a person interested in computers would like.

I was also interested in what hadn’t changed! There is still a lot of building space for rent. While technology business has made a good recovery from the bust in 2001, much of the manufacturing moved overseas and there is plenty of inexpensive building space available in the San Jose area. The traffic is once again pretty intense. President Bush flew into Moffet Field on Friday afternoon (I saw Air Force One fly overhead as it was on final approach to the airport) for some kind of a visit to Cisco. All of the roads in the area were closed requiring pretty big detours. Cisco had recommended to their staff that everyone who could work from home to do so that day to reduce the security issues. That took a lot of folks of the roads as well. Nevertheless, there were still plenty of cars on the highway. There is a lot of road construction underway — and most of it was underway two years ago when I was last there. Road construction moves at a very slow pace in California! This is the pretty time of year to be in the Bay area. The hills are green, the trees in bloom, and everything is quite pretty. In a few weeks the hillsides will turn brown and the prettiness will be gone. My favorite Japanese restaurant in Milpitas has been sold. It is supposedly still a Japanese restaurant, but most of the menu is now Chinese food. I’ve now been to that restaurant for the last time. It was a quick trip — not much free time — so I didn’t attempt to get in touch with old colleagues in the area. I will do that next time. There are some people that I’d like to see once again.

I’m of course back home. I got into Salt Lake City about 8:30 on Saturday evening and drove back to Pocatello. It’s a full two and a half hour drive from our house to the SLC airport when there is no traffic. I’m glad to be home for a few days. We’ll be leaving about the 12th of May to go out to Pennsylvania and back (vacation). I’ll be home a few days before going to Manila for two weeks (business). There’ll be plenty to write about as these won’t be Quick Trips!

Google has a service where you can set up certain words or phrases and once a day Google sends along links to all the newspaper and magazine articles that came along in the past day containing the word or phrase. One of the words I watch is “mormon”. That Google alert lately has mostly been about the HBO series on the polygamists which isn’t even worthy of a further mention in my blog. Occasionally something interesting shows up … and this time it was a blog from a journalist for the East Valley Tribune published in Scottsdale, Arizona. Slim Smith, a forty-something, single, newspaper writer walked from one end of the Phoenix valley to the other end over a sixteen day period finishing a day or so ago. His Sidewalk Stories along with his own personal blog came up on the Google alert because he spent a part of his Easter Sunday with a Mormon family. That particular entry was interesting, so I went back to the beginning of his trek and read all the way through. It was worth the read — a very enjoyable set of entries.

Perhaps the Tribune is beginning to get it. Blogs have seriously eroded newspaper revenues just as podcasting is now seriously disrupting both TV and traditional radio. There is a significant change happening which is, in some ways, going back to the roots of American journalism. In the early 1700’s, for instance, there were close to thirty newspapers in Philadelphia alone. Each were one or two pages of small print. No advertising. The papers cost about a penny and were sold by kids on street corners. The content was primarily opinion pieces written by the people publishing the paper. If there was any news, it was printed in small boxes on the right sidebar. In other words, the newspapers of that day consisted of the writer’s and publisher’s view and opinion of the news. It was more than a hundred years later before advertising started appearing in newspapers and that’s about the time that newspapers started separating opinion from “news” in order to appease potential advertisers. The Internet has reintroduced that ability — everyone being able to publish their own view and opinion of the news. Some opinions are more valuable than others — but freedom of speech means more than just being able to hear other opinions; it means being able to publish and make known your own opinions. It’s a good change that’s underway. Slim Smith’s trek across the greater Phoenix valley is heartening. Thanks, Google, for bringing it to my attention.