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!

For the past couple of days I haven’t had energy or motivation to do much of anything. Fortunately, that is beginning to pass and I’ll probably go into the office tomorrow afternoon after working from home during the morning. The result has been a lot of channel surfing to find anything at all worth the noise.

Saturday and Sunday had the NCAA Basketball games — eight teams being whittled down to four teams. A couple of the games were outstanding to the very last second. It’s about the only time of the year when basketball becomes marginally interesting to me. The women’s World Final Figure Skating was on Saturday night, but right now the American organization is disintegrating and that is overshadowing the grace, beauty, and athleticism of the sport.

There have been a couple of movies — mostly on the western channel — but mostly completely uninteresting. In the end, the TV has stayed tuned primarily to CNN with occasional switches to Fox. Aaron Brown continues to impress me with his style and sensitivity. Tonight he had a short segment from a reporter at the Pentagon. There was some kind of argument amongst some factions about some facet of the war against Iraq and the reporter said that words had been used "which can’t be repeated on family television." It was then time to cut to a commercial and Aaron remarked how bizarre it was that there are words we can’t use on family TV in the midst of broacasting a horrific war into homes across the entire world.

Peter Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize winning liar of a reporter was fired today after being interviewed on Iraqi TV. In that interview he praised the resistance of the Iraqi military, remarked that his reports were strengthening anti-war sentiment in the U.S., and that the U.S. military’s war planning had "utterly failed." This from a man who deliberately falsified reports of chemical warfare being used by American soldiers in Southeast Asia. NBC and National Geographic both terminated their contracts with Mr. Arnett who apparently has been offered a position reporting for a sensational tabloid paper in England.

Reporters are much more involved in this war than any since Vietnam (and perhaps not even then). Unlike the past couple of military actions where the government literally spoonfed the media, this time reporters have been granted complete access. They travel with the troops, eat with them, sleep with them, get briefed with them, and as long as they maintain operational security, they can report whatever they wish. Most of them are carrying videophones and can file incredible reports as the action is happening. CNN can literally stay with a group of planes leaving a carrier, catch photos of their bombing runs, and video of their recovery back on ship. It’s amazing and seems to be having an amazing effect. We know less and less about more and more going on in the war.

I’ve watched dozens of reports from these "embedded" reporters. It’s graphic, vivid, full color pictures in a microcosm with no context. There are so many of these reports that the news channels have hired lots of ex-military experts to attempt to interprete the information. That attempt to provide context and background falls short as well, as there just isn’t much real news — just nice little vignettes. So, the same stuff gets aired over and over and over again. The same reports on psychological operations being undertaken in Basra by the Brits were aired on Saturday, Sunday, and again today, each time as though they were new information. The story about the suicide bombing has aired similarly. You’d think that a dozen or more of these attacks have happened when in fact there has only one so far (but there will definitely be more).

Eventually the news channels will figure it out. Perhaps it’ll be over by then but I’m afraid that won’t be the case. The Iraqi’s have no intention of rolling over and they don’t yet have any sense of their defeat being inevitable. On the other hand, this cold is about finished and will soon be history. I’ll only remember it as I read back over this journal and then can look at what I’ve written today in the context of time.

I’m sure that in the next century or so, mankind will solve the problem of the common cold, contrary to what WebMD says. Today we can only attack some of the symptoms and then only at the peril of prolonging the time it takes for the body’s natural defenses to mount an effective counterattack. According to the medical web sites such as WebMD, there are so many different viruses that cause the cold, a vaccine will never be invented. Perhaps not in the way that’s been done before, but now that we can sequence the genome, why anything can happen!

It’s around midnight as I write this. I can’t sleep. I was quite exhausted last night, fell into bed around 9:30 and didn’t get up until around 11:30 this morning. Now everything except my stuffed up head thinks I’ve had enough sleep and can’t figure out why I’m trying to lay around in bed. That is most unhelpful as I’d really like to go to bed, sleep for many, many hours, and wake up feeling as much better from today as I now feel from yesterday. That’d be a real treat. The reality however will likely be that I’ll drive myself nuts trying to get some sleep, be an absolute bear all day tomorrow, and make no real progress on this dumb cold.

I did stay home today. Nina drove up for choir practice and then for our afternoon shift at the temple. She says we were very short staffed this afternoon on both the male and female sides of the temple. I would really rather have been there myself. For some reason they don’t have electricity into the temple and haven’t had any since Thursday. Everything is being run from generators. Hopefully that’ll be fixed real soon now!

I will be staying home from Church tomorrow as well. There’s no reason to be hacking and coughing up the chapel spreading this wealth to all who’ll come near. I think I’ve infected more than enough people last week while I was in California. I suspect the person who sleeps next in that bed might be in for real treat. Those germs weren’t very worn out when I left that hotel room.

So, I really want to get to the good drugs — the kind that actually treat the disease, not mask the symptoms — and dramatically reduce the length and severity of a cold. There’s an over-the-counter nasal spray Zicam that seemed to be effective if taken within 24-hours of the onset of the symptoms. Maybe I’ll go buy some for the next time!! A shorter cold cycle would definitely be a blessing. Before I die, I’m hoping we started to get to the good stuff!

For about 2 1/2 months out of the year, the area around San Francisco Bay can be considered verdant. The rest of the time, it’s called the "Golden State" as that’s the color of the hillsides once the June Grass dies in early May. But, right now the hillsides are a very lush green, which is the definition of the word "verdant". The flowering trees are just coming into bloom and the month of April will be the most pleasant time to be in California.

Which is all well and good, except I feel absolutely crappy. I went into the office for a few minutes this morning and finally hung it all up and came back to the hotel room to crash for the rest of the day. I got up around 5:30 p.m. and watched the news. I’ve not been very hungary, but I did go out and pick up a hamburger and fries from McDonalds. It did taste good. I certainly haven’t been very hungry and perhaps that’ll bode well next week when I weigh in. Actually right now, I don’t really care very much.

So here I am in California at the prettiest time of the year and I don’t feel particularly "verdant."