HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This past week we had our first snowfall down here in Utah Valley. My weeks are really seeming long right now. I site down and think about Monday and it honestly seems as though it were two weeks ago. The Mayans believed that time was not linear, but circular; Virginia Wolf said that time was like the radiance of light rather than a line of motion; the scriptures say that past, present and future are before God at all times. Every now and again Becca wakes up late on a Thursday and wonders what I’m doing still at home. I haven’t had Tuesday or Thursday classes since we’ve been married. Seeing as time is truly relative, I suppose that it’s okay for Becca and me to get a little disoriented.

WARNING!

Ryan is about to tell a story about South American History. Those not interested should skip the next three paragraphs!

In the late 1800’s Paraguay fought a war against Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. They realized that without an outlet to the sea their nation would never be great, so they marched their formidable army to the south and robbed territory that belonged to the other three nations. This would allow them to ship their national goods, like pineapples and spider monkeys, to Europe without paying export taxes.

Brazil had only ever been attacked from the sea so all they had was a cost guard to make sure that the slave traders made it into port okay. Uruguay is puny and weak; they always have been and they always will be. That left Argentina who, to this day only really cares about Buenos Aires. It was one of those ideas that probably looked great on paper, kind of like that whole Bill Clinton talk show that was going to go on the air a few years back.

Brazil got really mad, got together an army and beat the Paraguayans back and then, to make sure that Paraguay never attacked them again, they went onto Paraguayan land and killed thousands of people. Paraguay lost twenty percent of its population during those ten years of war; most of the dead were young men so for a long time Paraguay was a country of women, children and elderly people. Paraguay never got over that loss. They are, and will probably continue to be, one of the poorest countries in the world.

I got a call from a school district in Arizona last week that wanted a translator for the Ethiopian language Hadic. I was doubtful that I would be able to find someone to translate into Hadic, but I decided to look. I looked up Ethiopia on wikipedia.org and found that their national language is Amharic. It sounded to me like the lady from Arizona was just a little confused so I took the initiative to find a couple of translators who could possibly do that job. I called the lady back and gave her the info, which she seemed quite pleased with, and then she asked if I could get people to come to her school to provide oral translation. I then had to explain to her that oral translation is called interpreting and that what she needed were interpreters and we only provide translators. I was thoroughly annoyed.

Just so everyone knows, prosecutors try to throw you in jail, defense attorneys try to keep you out; there’s a difference. Pediatricians take care of your children and podiatrists take care of your feet; there’s a difference. Personal computers stay at the office but laptops can come home with you; there’s a difference. Actors are men, actresses are women; there’s a difference. An interpreter stands next to you and tells you that the little Japanese man sitting across the room wants his car factory in L.A. to be more productive and a translator takes an instruction manual from the same car company and rewrites it in English; there is a difference.

I’ll let the lovely Becca fill you in on a few of the other things that we’ve been doing this week.

Well, there isn’t much to say on my end. I have been working like always.

We went to a haunted forest yesterday. It was pretty creepy. They did a good job. I didn’t want the actors to focus on me, so despite my desire to scream, I forced it into laughter, and said things like “how clever! ...that was done well”. It worked pretty well. The chainsaw men, goblins, ghouls, aliens, closet monsters and swamp monsters focused on my screaming, run for your life friends instead. I was still holding tightly onto Ryan’s arm with fear. Even though I knew it was fake, they did a very good job at playing on the fears of people (small, lightless and damp enclosed spaces decorated just right, sometimes all three of those things together along with the actors, and things popping out of the walls, hanging bags of who knows what and aromas to fit the atmosphere). I have told Ryan that I never want to go to something like that again. The props are becoming too real. The scary things you see actually still happen to people. The main reason is that I walked out wanting the Holy Spirit to be with me again. I would rather not feel the loss of it in the first place. Also, your preconscious mind doesn’t work in the imaginative; In other words, it doesn’t know that what you are seeing isn’t real. For all it knows, all of those things really are happening, and they aren’t fake. That type of stress on your body just isn’t good. The fear of death in a concentrated form like that of a really realistic haunted forest just isn’t good for you. So I’d rather not stimulate that kind of stress in my body- Even if it is to hang out with some friends that we haven’t seen in a year.

Ryan continues to be my bug slayer. That makes me happy.

Well, that is it for today. We hope everyone is doing well.

PS- Here is a picture of the cute little Elderly couple that got married in our ward:

Alex and Doretta