His Sacred Name

Halleluiah

View more Easter videos here

He Is Risen

Halleluiah

View more Easter videos here

Tabernacle Concert & The Temple

“Land That I Love - The Immigration of Irving Berlin"

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir gave a concert for people attending the RootsTech conference. The concert was held after the choir's regular Thursday evening practice. It’s really something to watch a conductor work with 360 choir members on individual notes and parts. 

The concert was magnificent. What a sound they make - a joyful noise unto the Lord. Almost every time I’m in the Tabernacle and hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I feel the Spirit very strongly - and I did so that night.

 “God Bless America”  was awesome - I do love this country. 

We are indeed fortunate to be Americans.

One of the choir's selections was sung to "Toccata" which features the organ (and organist). You'll enjoy listening to this & watching the organist play. Remember his feet are playing pedals too. The concert in the video is in the Conference Center, not the Tabernacle.

Here is a great article about the concert. This blogger talks about a behind the scenes tour given to RootsTech bloggers. 

Temple Square from the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building

The angel Moroni is on most temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He symbolizes preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. 

Read more here.

Beautiful doors on the Salt Lake Temple

The doors with their carvings and hardware are full of scriptural symbolism.

Click on the "Utah" label to the right to see more pictures of the temple & other sights in Salt Lake City.

More posts about my Salt Lake City trip

Salt Lake City Gatherings
Salt Lake City Visits & Adventures
City Creek Center
Old & New

Salt Lake City Visits & Adventures

Michael Todd & I had several nice visits over dinner and lunch

It was wonderful to spend an evening with our dear friends Laurel & Denis. They are enjoying their new home in the Salt Lake City area & love being so close to many of their children & grandchildren

Salt Lake City at night - looking towards the temple 

from in front of Abravanel Hall

Nordstrom storefront lit up at night; it's white during the day

Abravanel Hall, a concert hall in downtown Salt Lake City, has a Chihuly sculpture in the lobby. It's pretty impressive at night. See Nordstrom blue reflection

Click on any of the photos to see a larger image

It snowed many of the days I was in town

Many spring flowers were blooming, including these miniature iris 

One day in the elevator, I caught my reflection and noticed my backpack. 

I took this picture for a future story on the places that backpack & I have been.

This magnificent building was originally the Hotel Utah, built in 1911. In 1993 it was totally renovated and reopened as the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It is a grand building, especially the lobby. 

 The flower arrangements in the lobby are always beautiful

More posts about my Salt Lake City trip

Salt Lake City Gatherings
City Creek Center
Old & New
Tabernacle Concert & The Temple

Click on the "Utah" label to the right to see more pictures of Salt Lake City

City Creek Center

City Creek Center is a year old shopping 

center in downtown Salt Lake City

"City Creek Center features Nordstrom, Macy’s and more than 90 stores and restaurants, one third of which are new to the Salt Lake market. Some of the center's notable architectural features are a fully retractable skylight roof, a skybridge over Main Street connecting the east and west sides of the center, two waterfalls, a 1200-foot creek, three electronically controlled fountains, and a 5000-space underground parking structure." source In connection with the project condominiums were built next to City Creek. A new grocery store also opened downtown.

Salt Lake Temple is across the street

Check out the individual drops of water in this photo

The water features of the shopping center were interesing

These fountains made wonderful water shapes

It was fun to watch children playing in the fountains

Waterfalls & a creek provided soothing sights & sounds

 A retractable roof over part of the mall 

allows for pleasant shopping no matter the weather

More posts about my Salt Lake City trip

Salt Lake City Gatherings
Salt Lake City Visits & Adventures
Old & New
Tabernacle Concert & The Temple

Click on the "Utah" label to the right to see more pictures of Salt Lake City

Old & New

1868 ZCMI 1999

Macy's

Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution was established in Salt Lake City in 1868 and operated until 1999 when ZCMI was purchased by the parent company of Macy's. The store was demolished as part of the City Creek Center development. The facade is now part of the Macy's storefront. Read more here.

Planning for a three day conference sure has changed.

Used to be you'd receive a printed program in the mail.

Then program planners moved to providing the program online & you printed off what looked interesting. At the conference itself you might get a print program or the syllabus on a flash drive. Printing stations would be available to print information on sessions of interest. 

This conference had an app for smartphones. You could see the schedule and mark sessions that looked interesting. Those sessions then appeared on an hour by hour daily calendar. By touching the session title, you could get more information on the presentation as well as the speaker - then you could rate the session when it was over. 

Transitions make life interesting

More posts about my Salt Lake City trip

Salt Lake City Gatherings
Salt Lake City Visits & Adventures
City Creek Center
Tabernacle Concert & The Temple

Click on the "Utah" label to the right to see more pictures of Salt Lake City

Words of Wisdom

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus”   

Martin Luther King, Jr.

quoted in the Montreal Gazette

****************

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has 

and the thing he can least afford to waste or lose.”

Thomas Edison quoted in USNews.com

*********

These quotes published 

in The Week, March 20, 2013 

caught Joe's eye

*********************

In addition to the ones above, I liked the following thought 

which was published in the same list. 

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; 

they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

Marcel Proust

quoted in Woman’s Day

Family - Central to God's Plan

The family is central to God’s plan – “It's no stretch to say that a person has a serious advantage in life if they come from a loving, supportive home. Many people still succeed though they come from less-than-ideal family situations, but having our basic needs met, knowing that our parents love us and learning life lessons at home make all the challenges of day-to-day living that much easier to face. 

.... God organizes us into families so that we can grow up in happiness and safety, and so that we can learn to love others selflessly—the key to true joy. Within the family is the best place to learn to love others the way Heavenly Father loves each one of us.”  mormon.org/family

Salt Lake City Gatherings

This post could be titled "the road not taken" or converging at the "Crossroads of the West" or any number of other clever phrases. 

When I walked into the Salt Palace Convention Center Saturday morning, I was greeted with this sign for the Salt Lake City International Tattoo Convention. This explains the many elaborately tattooed people I've seen at the Radisson hotel. The other day I saw a man whose shaved head was covered with tattoos. Having just finished rereading Dan Brown's, "The Lost Symbol," I was tempted to ask to see the top of his head. As you can see in the photo, an arrow pointed to the tattoo convention and another arrow pointed to RootsTech. Guess which road I took? 

I followed the signs to RootsTech. The conference started Thursday with 6,700 people preregistered. Almost 2,000 youth have signed up for special classes on Saturday. Statistics announced on the first day - participants from 49 states (no one from Delaware) and 15 countries. The exhibits are free so hundreds are coming to the exhibit hall. Read more here. 

To add even more excitement - the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament is happening at the Energy Solutions Arena just down the street from the Radisson where I'm staying. Harvard is in the tournament. The basketball team, cheerleaders, and band are staying at the Radisson. Spirits were pretty high when the team beat New Mexico. Evidently it was quite an upset. Comments we've heard remind me of Mom's and Dad's comments about Northwestern whenever the university did well in sports. 

In this picture the band and cheerleaders lined up in front of the door into the hotel. We went in through a side door. A number of us assumed they were waiting for the basketball team to come through the lobby and out the door. There was a lot of hoopla and music for quite a while. I waited, thinking I'd get a picture of the team to send our grandson who is studying at Harvard. Periodically a cheerleader or band member would prance and dance down the middle of the column. Eventually they all went back into the hotel lobby (it was very cold outside). I don't know if the team just didn't come down or if the idea was for hotel guests to join in the revelry and dance in and out of the hotel door. If that was the case, no one got with the program! The students brought a lot of energy to the hotel (I'm saying that in the best way possible, not sarcastically). It's quite a surprise for the elevator doors to open and reveal someone carrying drums or another large instrument. 

More posts about my Salt Lake City trip
Salt Lake City Visits & Adventures
City Creek Center
Old & New
Tabernacle Concert & The Temple

Click on the "Utah" label to the right to see more pictures of Salt Lake City

Chocolate & Fungus?

These sure are good

Whole Foods even had a coupon for them!

Organic & dark chocolate - does that make it any more nutritious?

*************

What's the relationship between chocolate truffles and fungus truffles? 

*************

"According to legend, the classic chocolate truffle was invented by accident in the 1920s in France. One of Auguste Escoffier's apprentices poured boiling hot cream over chopped chocolate instead of tempering it into an egg mixture. Not wanting to throw out the expensive mistake, they whisked it together and discovered that, when it cooled, it could be rolled into little balls. They then dusted them with cocoa powder.The resulting lopsided balls looked very much like the fungus of the same name, and the chocolate truffle was born. This is an apocryphal story, but it often makes us feel better to know that our mistakes can turn out to be real gems!" source

*************

There are some places online where you can purchase chocolate truffles that contain the fungus truffes!

*************

The word truffle probably comes from Latin term "tuber" meaning lump. 

In French it became "truffle." 

Now you know!

Family - Prayer

FAMILY – Family prayer can be a sweet, sweet experience. In family prayer, a family stops, puts aside the things of the word (if only for a moment), and reconnects with God. This is a time to express thankfulness, express love, express concerns and needs, and feel the love of and for each other and our Heavenly Father. 

“If you ask me where I first received my unwavering faith in the existence of a God, I would answer you: in the home of my childhood—when Father and Mother invariably called their children around them in the morning and at night and invoked God’s blessing upon the household and upon mankind. There was a sincerity in that good patriarch’s voice that left an undying impression in the souls of his children, and Mother’s prayers were equally impressive. I ask tonight that every father ...  see to it that in all sincerity he impress his children with the reality of the existence of God and with the reality that God will guide and protect his children. You carry that responsibility. ……….

Are you following Christ’s admonition to pray to the Father and teach your children to pray, that godliness, reverence for God and his work, every day may be impressed upon the hearts of your children? That should be in every home. ….

Parents, if you do not do anything else, kneel down in the morning with your children. I know your mornings are usually busy, … but have some time when you can kneel and invite God into your home. Prayer is a potent force. …. 

Through family prayer let parents and children come into the presence of God.”

David O. McKay

Uncle Dick - Happy Birthday

Richard Henry Holton

March 17, 1926 - October 23, 2005

about 1936

Richard was the middle of the three Holton boys, 

Bill (my father), Richard & David) - 

children of Caryl and Celia Cathcart Holton

about 1939

Bill & Dick Holton

September 2001 in London

This article in the online UC Berkeley News gives an overview of his career. 

Read more about Uncle Dick in this blog post. 

**********************

Some Memories of Uncle Dick

When I was young (probably in elementary school), I went on a road trip with Grandpa and Grandma to visit Dick and Connie in Boston. This must have been when Uncle Dick was doing his PhD at Harvard. Some memories of that trip - Grandpa and Grandma kept telling me to look out the window and see the scenery (I must have had my nose in a book). We stopped in antique shops so Grandma could look for a certain kind of glassware she collected. There was something about the George Washington Bridge in New York City. Were we lost and did we go over it several times? This was in the day before freeways. My Boston memories - riding in the swan boats in Boston Public Garden and the cemeteries. I was fascinated by the cemeteries - so old, so full of people and stories - a hint of my yet-to-blossom interest in family history. 

We have pictures of our family vacationing at a lake with Dick, Connie, and the girls back in the early 1950s.

When I was living in Hamburg, Germany in 1962 with Uncle David and Aunt Dorothy, I took the train to Naples, Italy (I think it was Naples) to visit Dick, Connie, and the children. One of the places we toured was Pompeii. I was fascinated with the ruins. 

In 1974 or 75 Michael and I flew to California. Michael stayed with Dick and Connie in their Inverness cottage while I attended a conference. After my conference Michael and I stayed with Dick and Connie in Berkeley. One day Michael and I took the BART train into San Francisco and walked all over town.

Over the years I enjoyed a number of visits to Dick's and Connie's in Berkeley. On a clear day you could see the Golden Gate Bridge from their balcony.  

Uncle Dick did not come to London very often. It was always a special occasion when he did. Of the three Holton "boys" he looks the most like Grandpa. Uncle Dick was kind, gentle, and down to earth.

Good Ideas

A while ago I was looking for toothpaste tube "winders." We had several different types and I was trying to find more of a certain style. While doing a search on the Internet, I came across an image like this. What a wonderful use for binder clips. It does the job - very well! P.S. I remember the day when toothpaste tubes were made from some sort of metal. You could roll up the tube and the coil would hold. The metal tube would sometimes spring a leak. Read more here.                 image 

A cookie package with a clever closing & one that keeps cookies fresh. 

Now that's a good idea!

Shelves with wheels - a fantastic idea!

In our 34 years at West North Street, we had a variety of shelves for our food storage and miscellaneous stuff stored in the basement. We tended towards the relatively inexpensive gray metal shelves. They bent under too much weight. Moving them to dust, paint or for other reasons was a major hassle. When my sister and her husband moved to Columbus, I noticed the shelves in their garage. The shelves had wheels! What a wonderful idea. Sam's Club was selling them so we made the investment. Over the years we replaced all our gray metal shelves. They were sturdy and they moved easily! The shelves crossed the country with us and now fill up one of our garages. 

This week our hot water heater was replaced. It's in the side of the garage with all our storage. All we had to do was move the car to the street and wheel the shelves to the empty garage - a piece of cake!

So - if you're wondering if good shelves, with wheels, are worth the investment - they are!