Freedom Landing - a gem within our community

A couple of years ago, shortly after a transitional housing unit owned by the Salt Lake City Housing Authority opened on 1900 W and North Temple, I had an opportunity to tour it and see how it was being used.  The site had formally been a Days Inn and was sold at a good price to the Housing Authority, who did some renovation to it and used it for Veterans who need housing as they transitioned through some tough times, often related to medical or other needs.  The alternative for many, would be homelessness, which is not the way we should be treating those who sacrificed to serve our country.

As we we went down one of the hallways and knocked on one of the residents doors, I was unprepared emotionally for what I would experience.  Behind the door was a Vet, who had fallen on hard times and was being visited by his daughter, who at the time was the same age as my Sarah.  Because of his previous housing situation, this Vet was unable to have any visitors and it had been eight months since he had been able to have his daughter stay with him. His little girl was obviously excited to have the opportunity of being there that weekend and as we thanked him for the inconvenience and I struggled to hold back my emotions, he said to me, to "tell the rest of them thank you for providing us a place to stay".  Later as I got in my car, I started to cry and think how grateful I was that on a daily basis, I can go home to my family, hug my girls and enjoy the blessing of a beautiful home.

Fast forward to last night, and I again visited Freedom Landing.  However this time, it was courtesy of the Airport Trax Line Contractor, Stacy and Witbeck and their workers who had decided to make sure these men and women had a great Thanksgiving meal.  They started to pass the hat, and pretty soon the contractor invited sub contractors to participate and with every dollar raised, Stacy and Witbeck offered to match it.  What was hoped for being enough to pay the meal, ended up being enough to not only do the meal, but furnish a room with furniture, a big screen TV, money to provide turkeys for needy families in the area and some money to go towards the new Fisher House at the VA Medical Center for family members of injured Vets who are being treated at the Hospital.  I had the opportunity to help serve dinner last night to these men and women who had served their country, paid a price in health and other challenges and just wanted to make the best out of their circumstances. 

I had the opportunity after serving to sit down with half a dozen of the residents and hear their stories of where they came from, how they got there and what current challenges they faced.  The stories were varied but in the end, I again realized they were just like you and me, but with an extra burden and challenge.  As I sit down for dinner today with my family in our beautiful home, and we pray, I know I have even more to be grateful for in my life and included in it, is my experience with the residents of Freedom Landing.

See the KSL Story at:  Freedom Landing Thanksgiving for Vets

Collecting those Leaves

As the evenings are getting darker and the weather is turning cooler, it seems like fall is coming quicker than we want. If you have a house that gets more than its fair share of leaves, here is a reminder on the ins & outs of the brown yard waste bins.

The Yard Waste bins will continue to be picked-up weekly to collect your leaves and other compostable items. The weekly pick-up may require that you do leaves in stages or, based on last year, you may have noticed that two cans would be a big help. If you would like to request a second can, a limited number of extra yard waste bins (approximately 450) will be made available free of charge during leaf season. They will be available one per household while supplies last. The City started taking requests October 31 and bins will be delivered within one week of request. To request an extra leaf bin email your name, address and phone number to: slcstreets@slcgov.comor call 801-535-6999. (At the end of the season, remember to place your extra leaf bin at the curb on January 3 so it can be retrieved.)

Please also remember a few “Leaf Rules” – please do not  place leaf bags in the yard waste bin – these cannot be composted, and they contaminate the reusable materials.  (This even applies to “compostable” or “biodegradable” bags – these are not able to be processed by the compost facility at this time.)  Also, please take precautions to clear gutters of fallen leaves. Clearing the gutters helps greatly with the storm drain system and prevents pooling of water or ice during a storm.

For the soon-to-be-approaching Holiday season, the city will be collecting trees in the Yard Waste bins as well. Since the bin collection will continue weekly throughout the Winter, you may put the tree out in the bin whenever you are ready. If the tree will not fit in your bin, or is too cumbersome to trim, cut & stuff, City crews will also be collecting trees from the curb for two weeks beginning January 9.

Happy Birthday Cathy!

Cathy and I are 10 months apart, which seems to always work in her favor.  Either I'm much older and she always claims to be younger than me (and she looks it) or if I try to claim the older and wiser argument, she reminds me we are only 10 months difference in our age.  Either way, I'm always grateful to her parents for bringing her into this world and she is without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me.  If you get a chance, stop by her Facebook page and wish her a Happy Birthday: Cathy's Facebook Page.

So today, October 29th, Happy Birthday Cathy!

Honoring my Ancestors by Doing their Temple Work - Sarah participates for the first time!

Friday and Saturday, we were able to attend the temple and perform ordinance work for my our ancestors.  In my faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe not only do you have the opportunity to make sacred promises with God, but you can vicariously, in acting in behalf of others who have died, perform similar ordinances for them.  Those individuals still have the option of accepting or declining the work done for them, but we have the obligation to try and give them that chance.  The beauty of it all, is that everyone has the chance of returning to our Heavenly Father and they get the opportunity to make that choice themselves. 

My mother and her sisters are really the only members of the Church on her Father's side.  My Grandfather, a dry farmer from the Chicago area (Elgin) had gone up to Canada to get inexpensive farm land and met my grandmother a nurse from the Benjamin area of Utah County, who was staying with relatives in the small farming community of Barnwell, Alberta, Canada.  They fell in love, had six girls with my mother being number 3.  At the age of six, my mother lost her father unexpectedly and her youngest sister was born after my grandfather died.  He never joined the Church, but was supportive of my Grandmother and his girls.  He was a good dad and loved his girls and it would strike me as unfair in the Kingdom of God, that he never get the chance of being with his family again or enjoying all the blessing the Lord has in store for him.

The temple provides that opportunity and it is one of the reason my faith encourages us to work on our Family History.  Not only does it give us a sense from where we have come, but it helps also in performing ordinance work for those who have passed on before us.  In the two days, we attended the Salt Lake Temple, performing baptisms for 30 ancestors and then on Friday, we attended the Logan Temple and performed ordinance work for another 30 ancestors.  Included in the group we did, were my ancestors, Maria Bach, born on the 10 February 1856, Elisabetha Frey, born abt 1770 and Maria Carolina Glaser, born 26 March 1812.  We owe nearly all the success of finding these ancestors to my brother-in-law, Warren Bittner of Ancestors Lost and Found, LLC. who has worked tirelessly over the last decade helping us to piece together some gaping holes in our family research.  Thanks to the generosity of other family members we have found nearly 4,000 names of ancestors that 10 years ago, we never knew existed.  

Perhaps one of the best parts of the experience was being with my family and attending together.  Sarah, who recently turned 12, can now go and perform "Baptisms for the Dead" or the vicarious act of being baptized for her ancestors.  It was sweet moment being able to perform that work and have her be part of it.  In addition on Saturday, my mother-in-law, Lois Nielsen joined us and helped us perform another ordinance work for Barbara Krapff, who was Christened, 24 Jan 1653.  Opportunities like that don't come very often, and I'm glad we had the chance.  It was a beautiful day, some of the leaves were still turning and the food at the Bluebird Cafe afterwards was great! 

Maureen Haltiner - Poet, Author, and Teacher

A good friend of mine, Cal Noyce passed along to me the other day, an invitation to a poetry reading by my former AP English Teacher from West High, Maurine Haltiner. The flyer brought back a lot of memories, mostly good about my experiences with both her and literature.  Having grown up in a home where my mother held a Masters Degree in Creative Writing with her Bachelors in English and Theater, poetry and literature flowed abundantly in the walls of our home.  I've always enjoyed it but not exceptionally good at either reading it or writing it.  In fact, in most of my advance testing for college, including my AP exam, I never could test very well and despite much higher scores in other areas, it always brought me down in my overall score.

However the lessons I learned in Ms. Haltiner's AP English class were more than simply learning the advanced pieces of literature from around the world.  It had a lot to do with keeping commitments, meeting deadlines, and living with integrity.  In fact, the only incomplete I received in High School, came from her because I had failed to finish an assigned reading in her class during the peak of basketball season.  I eventually finished the book, did my report, and received an A- or B+ for that term.  My siblings have often remarked that it was really Ms. Haltiner that prepared them for college, where all too frequently if you missed deadlines, failed to turn in papers, it was only you who really paid that price, not the teacher.  Of course Ms. Haltiner's lessons were much more civilized and compassionate than college, and we will often be grateful for it.

Maurine Haltiner retired a number of years ago, and I occasionally run into her from time to time.  To her credit, while my hair seems to be going white, she looks about the same, perhaps a little more of life shows, but always courteous and interested in my well being.  Cal showed me some of her works which demonstrated her continued interest in literature and using her own talents in the expressions which tell of life's stories.  If your schedule permits, you should set aside the evening of October 20, 2011, a Thursday evening to attend her Poetry Reading at Alpine Art, 430 E South Temple.  RSVP to susan@alpineartinc.com.  Unfortunately, I may have a conflict, and can't make it, but I would like to be there.  While I'm interested in hearing her materials, it is the quality of the individual which is the real draw for me.

No more comparison's to George Costanza's wallet

OK, so I probably shouldn't be so paranoid about this issue, but a few years ago, Cathy and I were at dinner with some friends and I pulled out my wallet.  The husband of my colleague on the council and a well respected lawyer in town, started laughing and said my wallet looked like George Costanza's wallet.  I'll have to admit that I really hadn't watched many Seinfeld episodes, so it hadn't fully hit me what he was saying.  However since that time, he hasn't been alone in his assessments and I've increasingly become self conscious about both the appearance and size of my wallet.   Not to mention the physical discomfort in trying to get it out of my pocket. You see, it goes back even further.

I grew up, like any other kid, with my wallet in my back pocket.  However it was while serving on my LDS mission to Japan, and the realization that the Japanese Yen would not fit in my standard back-pocket wallet, I went to a billfold wallet.  It really wasn't a problem, since most of the time, I was wearing a suit coat anyway.  After two years of that, I got to to like the fact I didn't have to sit on it, but when I was dressed casual, it was hard to find a place for the billfold.  One day, I went back to a regular wallet, but refused to put it in my back pocket.  It sort of fit in my suit, or I would put it in my front pocket.  I was not always prompt in taking out my receipts and things tended to grow in it.  I tried to hide it at lunch when I was with friends and everywhere I went, I knew people were likening it to George Costanza's wallet. 

Fast forward to this last August and I was walking through the Outdoor Retailer's show and came across a vendor who proclaimed they had the World's Thinnest Wallet! (http://www.thinnestwallet.com/ - 800-642-2226).  For the show price of $18, I was going to be liberated.  I would literally, not be the butt of any wallet jokes again.  Just to show you how bad it was becoming, I had a meeting with some downtown interest after I purchased the wallet.  While waiting for the meeting to start, I was explaining to one of the gentlemen present, my wallet and about this wallet challenge.  He also didn't really know who George Costanza was, and then in walked Senator Ben McAdams.  Without saying anything to preface it, I held up my old Wallet and asked Ben, "What does this remind you of?" to which he replied, "George Costanza's wallet".

A month has come and gone, I took my new wallet on a 7 day cruise to Alaska.  It fit in many different pockets, including my shirt pocket at times.  I can put it in my suit coat (still don't like sitting on them) but I even put it into my back pocket once.  It holds some receipts, most of the cards I need and even some cash, when I have it.  I'm not quite sure life will ever be the same for me, but I just want you to know that I have the "World's thinnest wallet!"

Link to YouTube Video with the Seinfeld episodes and George Constanza's Wallet.

Sunday in Seattle

While we had intentions to the contrary, Church Services for us today was too far away for us, in order to effectively arrive to the dock in time for our cruise.  In the absence of that opportunity, we decided to hold our own family/church experience here in our hotel room.  While we didn't have the chance to partake of the Sacrament, we did listen to a great talk by President Uchtdorf off my laptop.  Sarah organized everything, including a program, announcements and work assignments.  It more than reminded me of Church and the spirit was present.  I miss being at my own Ward, partaking of the Sacrament, but so grateful for the opportunity of being with my family, soon to be my extended family on board, and to know of my Heavenly Father's love for me and my family.  I was remind of what a great talk President Uchtdorf gave.

I want others to know that I do have a testimony, that giving of my own service to others helps me realize that my lot is not as bad as I would think and that often the answers I'm searching for are in the needs and helping of others.  The most discouraging thing of watching some in public service is watching their selfish reactions and games for political gain.  Instead of trying to find solutions, they look at how to undermine others and so often, I don't see the Christ-like actions I would hope to find.  I'm far from perfect and it reminds me that I have room for improvement.  Others may not be ready to accept the gospel and doctrines in which I believe, but I do want them to know that I know the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and hoping that one day, my life reflects it.

President Uchtdorf's Talk