The Rule of Law Must and Shall Prevail

Public domain photo of U.S. Capitol by the National Park Service (not implying any endorsement)

What a relief to see Steve Bannon indicted for contempt of Congress for failing to answer a constitutionally legal subpoena to testify and produce documents. It is very good to start with the easiest case. Bannon was not a member of the Executive Branch at the time of the insurrection of January 6 and the planning leading up to it. He is also, perhaps, the most disgusting of the former president's inner circle in his political philosophies and personal demeanor. I will spare you any photos of him here.

Flash of Possible Prophecy

 Jolted by a photo this morning of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

From Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.O International

This is one of those thoughts of potential prophecy that is not a fixed, future point in the time continuum, but an opportunity for thought, choice, agency, and responsibility.

My Handcart Ancestor and Her Traveling Companion

 he evidence is pretty solid that our Elinor* (1789-1861) was the traveling companion of Mary Taylor Mayo (1791-1856) in their travels to America and on the Pioneer Trail. Mary is the one who died just short of South Pass on the Overland Trail. She died September 13, 1856, in Nebraska Territory and was buried in Oregon Territory when the Ellsworth Handcart Company stopped for the night at Pacific Springs.

There are two contemporaneous lists of the members of Ellsworth's Company that departed Iowa City on June 2, 1856. Neither one is in alphabetical order. The people are generally grouped by families. Interestingly, Elinor is not grouped with her daughter, Jane Vaughan Lewis (1827-1890) and her family. They travelled from Britain to the United States in different ships within weeks of each other. However, Elinor and Mary Mayo are listed together on both lists.

RHYDDID!

It seems important to state today if only to reassure my few readers, much less myself, that I still believe in God and in the United States of America. This is true even if I go to church today without a blazingly bold tie in red, white, and blue. I'm thinking of the one my Dad gave me some time ago with the Frank Lloyd Wright designs on it. That's a more subtle homage to the American Spirit as well as his Welsh ancestry.

"Negroes Attack Bothell, Washington!" Didn't Happen!

1968 riots in Washington D.C. after MLK,Jr. Assassination
 Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress, Public Domain, 

1968 was a really bad year, Assassinations, Riots, War in Vietnam (my uncle was there), and really bad politics. I was an elven-year-old kid in the suburbs and it was a little scary. My Dad was talking with a friend on our front lawn. The friend said that he was buying a gun for his wife for when the Negroes come.

To my Dad's credit, he wasn't really going along with this. He didn't buy my Mom a gun. But, he didn't push back too hard with his friend. He just sort of winced and said something like, "I don't know if that's ever going to happen."

Returning to Church - or not....

An email drafted for my Bishop and EQ President that I'm not sure if I should send. Comments?

I just got my second Covid shot and I'm feeling pretty good about that.

I posted on Facebook that I'm looking forward to meeting with friends again in a couple of weeks as long as they were also vaccinated and still wear a mask in public places (-pretty much the standard of my mission to be in the Church History Library). But if I were to apply that standard to meeting with the ward how long would it be? Am I wrong to assume that it's probably never?

Art Comes Home from the Sea

My Dad's art is still in a bit of homelessness as he is with my Mom in assisted living and much of it is in storage. We are trying to help him decide where his art should go believing that it should be passed down through his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to be preserved through generations to come and not wind up in somebody's garage or a rummage sale. I mean, he signed his name on completed works and that should be respected down the generations and not forgotten. My wife recently came by a mountain landscape done by a great-uncle that has a family surname on it and the date of 1956. It will be preserved in family.

My sister had some pieces divided up for safe storage by display among our brother, herself, and me. We are trying to care for those and I had several pieces framed by the studio that my Dad prefers here in Salt Lake City. We found a lot of art in the dusty, mice-infested attic. One piece broke my heart a bit as I blew the dust off and passed a paper towel over the surface. I had the art dealer clean off the marks as best he could and frame with the closest to driftwood we could match:

I remember the day.

Punch to the Gut

 Stunned since January 6.

The pressure had built from the election up to that point with the monstrous lies too ridiculous and too outrageous to laugh too long.

I honestly don't know if our America will survive. There was so much unfinished work yet to do and now it seems to be in vain.

I can't trust the people who supported the horrible man who caused this. Well, it wasn't just him but all his enablers. Does that include us all? I don't know who all of them are. They are all around and I am brokenhearted. 

There are people I greatly love and have even respected who seem to betray me now. The hard truths I have been dealing with in my own brain have been ground into dirt.