Commonplace Book

A Commonplace Book. “Commonplace”, from the Latin 'locus communis', meaning “a theme or argument of general application.”  For me, it is a collection of thoughts, ideas, anecdotes, poems, observations, and quotes that stood out and caught my attention, some with comment, some without. Essentially a scrapbook, a repository of thoughts too good to just pass over and let go.

“Life must be understood backwards. But . . . it must be lived forwards.”

(Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, journal entry, 1843) 

“The Lord doesn’t put us through this test just to give us a grade; he does it because the process will change us.”

Henry B Eyring, Waiting Upon the Lord, BYU Devotional, September 30, 1990) 

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

(Fred Rogers) 

“If you choose not to find joy in the snow you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of snow”

(Anonymous) 

“James Madison was, as wise people usually are, an accomplished worrier who rarely worried about the wrong things. It turns out, however, that he did when, in Federalist 48, he worried about Congress “drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” For generations, Congress has been a centrifugal machine, spinning off powers. Limited government requires a limited president, which requires limits on what Congress can give away.”

(George F. Will, What’s next, a tariff on peanut butter?, Washington Post, 8 February 2019) 

“Do not confuse reverence with being quiet. Of course there are times and places when reverence is shown by not speaking or by using hushed tones. Also, in the correct setting and circumstance, being boisterous and reverent are not conflicting. Real reverence is simply not doing anything disrespectful, demeaning, or degrading to the Godhead. It has to do with how we think, how we act, and how we speak. It relates to our integrity and the way we treat one another. The level at which we keep the covenants made in the holy ordinances is a powerful indication of our reverence.”

(Donald L Hallstrom, of the Presidency of the Seventy, Living a Reverent Life, BYU Devotional, February 12, 2013)

“Joseph Smith declared that the mother who laid down her little child, being deprived of the privilege, the joy, and the satisfaction of bringing it up to manhood or womanhood in this world, would, after the resurrection, have all the joy, satisfaction, and pleasure, and even more than it would have been possible to have had in mortality, in seeing her child grow to the full measure of the stature of its spirit.” (President Joseph F. Smith, GD, 453) 

“Recently I heard a chorus of children sing the beloved song “I Am a Child of God.” I wondered, “Why haven’t I heard that song rendered more often by singing mothers or faithful fathers?” Are we not all children of God? In truth, not one of us can ever stop being a child of God!”

(Russell M Nelson, Decisions for Eternity, October Conference 2013) 

“Priesthood means service; bearing the priesthood, I will serve.”

(Recited each week by the members of the Aaronic Priesthood of the Fourth Ward of the Pioneer Stake in Salt Lake City, Utah, under the direction of Bishop William F. Perschon, as recounted by Elder Joseph B Wirthlin, April Conference 2007) 

“Divine covenants make strong Christians. I urge each one to qualify for and receive all the priesthood ordinances you can and then faithfully keep the promises you have made by covenant. In times of distress, let your covenants be paramount and let your obedience be exact. Then you can ask in faith, nothing wavering, according to your need, and God will answer. He will sustain you as you work and watch. In His own time and way He will stretch forth his hand to you, saying, “Here am I.”

(D Todd Christofferson, The Power of Covenants, April Conference 2009) 

Keeps on Going

The last few weeks the garage door opener in Brombeere's car has been getting harder and harder to get to work.  You push it over and over and over again and maybe it would work after several tries.  Maybe not.  But getting less and less so.  So I finally decided to bring it and and change the batteries. I wasn't sure we had any the right size but its worth a look.  So I pulled down the tub where we keep the batteries and, low and behold!  There was a package of coin shaped batteries! 

The first thing I noticed was that it was labeled with my Mom's handwriting.  Not sure what the "fake candles" meant, but the "batteries" was right on track. So I'm thinking, if they're the right size, will they still have any juice left in them?  My Mom died nine years ago and a lot of the odds and ends from her house made it into my house.  But batteries don't last forever.  What the heck, it was worth a try.

There was an unopened package of the right size so I got one out and put it in the garage door opener.  From where I was sitting I could see into the garage so I gave it a squeeze to see if it worked.  And sure enough!  The garage door began to raise!  It worked.  I was amazed!  So there's a plug for Energizer batteries!  They just keep on going!

An Old Companion

I've been trying to remember how long I've had this scripture case.  I know its been a real long time.

I don't think it was on my mission with me.  We used to keep a bag that we always called "the tasche", which is simply "the bag" in English.  It probably took me a little while to feel the need for a scripture case after I got home.  I think I was married when I got this case.  At any rate, I've had it a very long time.  It is probably one of my oldest possessions.

This hole is from when I set it on top of the car and then forgot about it and drove off with it still up there.  Of course, it fell off and landed in the road, bouncing and rolling a bit.  Luckily I saw it in the rear-view mirror and stopped.  This hole was the only sign of the episode it got.  Its a pretty tough old scripture case.

But gradually it has begun to show the age and wear of constant use.  Lots of handling.

Finally the zipper began to come unstitched so that I could no longer zip it from both ends like I like to do, so that the two zippers meet in the middle.

Even though its a big, roomy case, over the years I have accumulated enough stuff in it that its gotten pretty crowded inside.  All these years, whenever I was at church, it was a pretty convenient place to stuff things. I began keeping a small note book in it when we first moved to Wisconsin. That 's still there, along with a bunch of other stuff.

I carried my scriptures from my mission around in it until they got so worn I replaced them.  I still have my mission scriptures but they sit in a box with a bunch of other stuff from my mission. They are no longer the set I use all the time.

But its been long enough that the "new" set is no longer pristine, its getting pretty marked up and worn, too.

All kinds of study guides and little handbooks have lived in my scripture case over the years.  The church, for the longest time, had what they called the correlated study program that worked through all four of the standard works every four years.  I have the little study guides from all four years.  I've been through them at least three or four times.  There were two versions of For The Strength of Youth in it, both outdated.  A Duty to God handbook from when that program got updated to correlate more closely with the scouting program, which the church is now getting out of.  My, how times have changed.  I know for a while I had a Personal Progress handbook in there but it isn't there anymore.  Maybe that made its way into my briefcase that I've used off and on for church.

This has also been the place where I put the programs from funerals I've been to.  Both my parents' funeral programs are there.  A couple from services I conducted back when I was branch president over twenty years ago. A number of others from friends and others I've known, funerals I've attended over the years. Lots of history there.

My scripture case and my scriptures fell into disuse the last few years as I have begun using the electronic scriptures on my phone.  Also because when I was at my unhealthiest, carrying a scripture case was a lot of work.  But I'm healthier now. And, while there are a lot of advantages to using the electronic scriptures, there is also something nice about the books, as well.  I've been wanting to get back to using them more.  So I bought me a new scripture case.  I'm not sure this one is real leather.  The old one must have been to have survived so long and take all the abuse its had.  So I recently moved all my stuff from the old case into the new case.  I actually threw a few things away.  But not much.  I am my father's son, I am a bit of a pack-rat on certain things.

I think the Come Follow Me for Families and individual comes in a smaller size, one that would fit quite nicely in my brand new scripture case.  I ought to see about getting a copy.

Trying Something New

Brombeere brought home a new kind of bread the other day.  Irish soda bread.  I like heavier bread, I liked this bread.  So I wanted to add it to my recipe book.  I found one that looked pretty good and when I got looking at it, it looked like a very simple recipe. I really liked that it didn't call for spending time letting the dough rise, then kneading it down, then letting it raise again, and then kneading it back down again.  Some breads take hours going through that cycle and I've never been excited about going through all that.  This recipe didn't call for all that.  Fifteen minutes from start to oven.  Now that sounded like something I could do.

So I got to it.  And it was easy. Even for me, who had never made bread before without a bread machine.  The recipe said the dough would be "shaggy", and it was.  Pretty rough looking. 

But pretty soon it was on the stone and ready to go into the oven.  I had to use craisins because we didn't have any regular raisins.  The recipe said the cross cut into the top would help it cook more evenly.  So into the oven it went.

It took longer to cook than it did to mix and get ready.  After 35 minutes it was done.  I think our oven cooks a little hotter than normal so the bread was just a little more done than preferable but it still turned out well.

Nothing like fresh, warm, buttered bread.  Just like all the times my Mom made bread when I was growing up. 

There Will be Bacon

The other day I was rooting around in the back of the fridge looking for something when I stumbled across a head of red cabbage hiding back there.  I'm not sure if I'd just forgotten about it or if I hadn't realized we had it.  In any case, it was unexpected.

Well, I couldn't just leave it there; it was already looking pretty aged for a cabbage.  And I had a recipe for a really yummy side dish I had come to really like when I was in Germany, years ago.  The Germans called it rotkohl, red cabbage.  But there's more to it that just cabbage.  Anyway, I pulled out my recipe and made a quick check to see if I had all the ingredients.  I did!  Well, all but one.  We didn't have any bacon. Still, I decided to go with what I had.

Another job made easy by my Cuisinart.  Cabbage, onion, and apple, all chopped up quite nicely in just a few minutes.

Pretty soon everything was in the pot simmering.

It didn't take long before it was ready.  Some recipes involve a steam cooker, or you could do it with a slow cooker.  Or even an instapot.  But I think just letting it all simmer in a pot on the stove works just as well and is a whole lot simpler.

The rest of dinner was left-overs.  Yeah, I know spaghetti and rotkohl don't necessarily present well together.  But it was pretty good.  And the rotkohl turned out really well, even without the bacon.  Of course, next time there will be bacon.

Caught on Camera

This car we bought a while back has a back-up camera, a parking assistant, as the owner's manual calls it.  So one day last summer I jumped my car and put it in reverse, which turns on the back-up camera, and just at that instant, a mosquito landed on the camera.  He stayed long enough that I got a picture of him.  Actually, he stayed for as long as I was backing and was still there when I got out of where  I was parked and put the car in forward, which turned the camera off.  Made for a funny picture.

Anyway, today, as my car was getting warm but still had a lot of snow on it, the snow was melting and making icicles that were hanging on the car.  Hanging on the car and growing into view on the back-up camera.  The back-up camera had gotten pretty dirty from all the ice, snow, and residue so I had cleaned it off a few minutes earlier so I could actually see with it again and here are these icicles growing down, blocking the view.  So when we got to church, I broke them off.

Then, a little later in the day, I was over visiting a friend and when I put the car into reverse to back out of my park, there were more icicles.

Pesky little things!   But I guess that's a first world problem, not something to get too concerned about.  Struck me as funny, though.  My car tells me when the parking assistant is blocked with ice or snow, or just so dirty that you can't see out - I get a little warning on the dash.  But the bug and icicles never set it off.  Guess they're not significant enough.  Too funny.

So Close!

You know how laundry is a never ending chore? Well, the other day an amazing thing happened at our house.  We saw something we don't see very often.  Rumor has it, lots of families don't see this very often.

The bottom of the dirty clothes hamper.

We have two hampers at our house.  They were both empty.  While that does happen at our house from time to time, it never lasts more than a couple of hours.

This occasion was made a bit more amazing by the fact that the washer was also empty.

And what was even more incredible, the dryer was also empty!

Alas, it was not quite perfect.  The basket still had a few things in it.  But it was, oh, so, close!  Even if only for a just a little while.

Since There's Plenty of Snow ...

We've had a lot of snow in February, a record setting amount of snow.  We just had a storm that left 7.7 inches and that's on top of more than 37 inches we had before that.   I'm not sure what the total is so far but it's got to be getting close to 50 inches. And there's another storm coming that's supposed to leave up to 3 more inches.

We have more snow in the yard than we've had for quite a while.

Our snowfall got off to a slow start this winter but then it really picked up and we're more than caught up now.

So I'm thinking, hey!  Snow makes the best homemade ice cream.  Smooth, creamy, delicious.  I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about snow that makes better ice cream.  Maybe its because it's finer than ice, I don't know.  But it makes much better ice cream.

So there was plenty of snow but we didn't have any heavy cream.  And we couldn't go get any because it was Sunday.  But the internet came to the rescue and I found a substitute that called for ingredients that we did have so it was full steam ahead!

So I threw everything together, found the rock salt, and got the churn going.  As I worked the snow and salt while the thing churned away, I'd look through the lid now and then and see that it wasn't setting up very much.  That was a worry.

But after about half an hour it began to set up and by the time I stopped it at an hour it had set up very nicely.  I was really glad we had an electric churn and that the power was back on.  We had started the day without electricity because of the storm. All that cranking by hand would have been an awful lot of work.

When it was all done I set it out on the back porch to stay cold until we were ready for it.  Some recipes call for setting the ice cream aside to "set", to firm up.  But each time I've made ice cream with this maker it really hasn't needed that. We were just waiting while we finished up getting dinner on the table and eaten.

Then it was dessert, some really yummy blueberry ice cream.  Another success.  I like that! We might have to do this more often!

Winter Wonder Land

A big ice storm was predicted for Saturday and into Sunday, today.  The snow isn't so much a problem.  Its the ice.  It gets on things, like trees, bushes, the road, and power lines. Power lines are the thing.  Ice gets on them, they get heavy, and they break.  Early this morning the power went out.  It was about 2:00 am when it went out.  I sleep with a machine and when the power goes off it wakes me up because I can't breath anymore.  It woke a few of us up this morning.  You could hear lines and trees snapping, in the front of the house you could see blue electric light flashing out front somewhere, and hear the electricity sizzling.  Kind of exciting for a few minutes.  Then it was quiet.  We all hoped the power would come right back on but no such luck. So Bombeere took a couple of pictures outside and we all eventually went back to bed and to sleep.

It started getting light around 7:00 am.  The bedroom window had frosted over a bit.  The house had cooled off some but I couldn't tell what the temperature was because the thermostat is electric and was dark.

I had slept kind of fitfully since the power went off.  One of the things that my mind had grabbed a hold of, and got stuck on, was the fact that our space heater was out in the garage, along with the kerosene to run it, but that meant I had to find it.

That was a daunting task, especially without the lights to be able to see with.  So I got dressed, grabbed a little camp lantern, and took it out to the garage to start looking.  I was able to see the heater right away. It was getting to it that proved a challenge.  You can actually see both the heater and the kerosene can in this picture, they're just behind everything and up high.

It took me a few minutes to dig a path to them, but I was able to get them both out.  The can proved to be empty but it felt like there was still some kerosene in the heater.  So I brought it up to where I could work on it and went in the house to get some stuff to clean it up.  The plan was to clean it up and get it fired up and working and then go back out and find the other kerosene cans to see if any of them had anything in them.  The power company was estimating that the power would be back on around 10:00 am. Happy thing, though.  While I was inside getting some stuff to clean with the power came back on.  So I traded my cleaning tools for my camera and took some pictures.

It was hard to tell just how much new snow had fallen because it was still blowing pretty hard.  The snow was still falling, too.  We're supposed to get winds over 50 mph today.  Blizzard conditions.  All the emergency services and law enforcement agencies are saying travel is extremely dangerous, don't go out in your cars; they can't come rescue anyone that gets stuck.  This time, a little more extreme than the towing bans that have become so common around here recently.

Out the garage back door, where we haven't shoveled all winter, it looked pretty deep.  These stacks of tires are four tires tall.

Lots of snow piled up on everything.

Ice coating the branches and wires.  But it wasn't all that cold, as winter around here goes, about 33 degrees.

The thermostat was back on, the cheerful sound of the furnace quietly heating the house back up could be heard.  The house was only a few degrees cooler than where we usually keep it.

I went around to reset clocks but only found two that needed it, the microwave and stove.

All the rest were either battery clocks or had reset themselves.  I like that kind of clock, the kind that reset themselves.  After giving our hot water heater a little time to get back up to its usual heat, everything was back to normal.  And that was the end of our adventure into the world of no electricity.  I like that our community has a reliable power system. In the ten or twelve years we've lived here this is only the second or third time we've lost power in a storm.  That's a happy thing.