Reminiscing a little about (not) being DH

During Covid, our department head was called up to become associate dean. I recalled when I was interviewed in 2014, I was asked if I would be willing to be department head. At the time I had said yes, but give me some time please to get to know folks. Well, I'd certainly had some time, so I volunteered and was taken in. That happened about the time I stopped blogging (#not a coincidence?).

I think of being department head much like a calling at church. It's a service. You take it up for a time, do the best you can, then return to normal life when you are released. Folks take turns bearing the weight. Somebody's got to do it, and my (brief, unscientific) observations lead me to believe that I do a passable job with lower mental/emotional costs than it would give many others.

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the first two years or so of my term in office. Dean Shao was an outstanding mentor who gave me some clear expectations early on that happened to fit very well with my predispositions. The other department heads, associate deans, and I got along really well. Several said they had never been in a group as well-functioning and happy as ours. We laughed a lot and we made good progress together. The college became AACSB accredited, for one thing!

The faculty in the Accounting, Finance, and Economics department have all been wonderful to work with. I admire them. I trust them. They, each of them, care about the students, take pride in the work they do, and are reasonable people to work with who rarely let ego get in the way. Both I and the fellow who followed me as interim DH said we were willing to do this because the department really is filled with wonderful people. The three women who worked as administrative assistants for the department were a delight and I appreciated everything they were able to do for the students, the department, and me. Really, a great group of people to work with!

One part of the job I did not expect to love as much as I did was interviewing and hiring new faculty. When they came up for a fly-out interview, I told them that I wanted to conduct things as if they were the one we were going to hire, and it was my job to help them. Taking that attitude made otherwise awkward interactions much more gratifying! I appreciated each of the folks we interviewed and I am so pleased about the folks we did eventually hire. I think they are genuinely great hires and I have every confidence in them.

Joy and the Accidental Miracle

Joy was driving to the Dallas temple in the very early morning tenish days ago (as we start writing this post). She was nearly at the temple, still on the freeway. She saw a chunk of metal on the road ahead, but there were cars to either side of her, which made avoiding it rather difficult. It attached itself to her car's underbelly and she dragged it for some distance until she was able to get it dislodged and move to the side of the road. She parked on a narrow shoulder and started calling people.

J: After I pulled over, the first thing I did was see if I could put it in gear again. It wouldn't even rev, which meant it wasn't really in gear. It was more like in neutral.

She called her temple coordinator first, to let them know she might be a little late. She called me next, and I had woken up by that point to get her call as soon as it came in. She reported that she was okay, no injuries, and not even particularly rattled. I was very impressed with how calmly she was taking the situation. But it sounded quite clear that she could not continue driving just now.

After me, she called a friendly tow truck, that took her first to a mechanic who said he couldn't repair that.

J: That's when I saw - because the mechanic looked underneath - all three of us could see that the transmission was hanging down that had been broken off of the casing. He only repairs them, but that one needed to be replaced. So the tower took me to another place that was recommended by the first place.

They hadn't opened just yet

J: So I had my key, we left the key at the gas station next to it

Because there was no room for them at the inn

J: I mean, really, all the parking was stuffed with cars in different directions! Like, on their property there was no space. We could maybe fit the nose of the tow onto the property.

And then the tow drove her to the temple, which was only a few miles away. She called me again from the temple, and we spoke with tearful gratitude about her safety and now being at the temple. We both had the odd feeling that this accident happened with deliberate timing - that having something go wrong now was much better than it happening later. She was safe and completely uninjured. She felt peace!

J: I would go as far as to say that I felt joy bubbling up inside me.

... time passes ...

It's been three weeks since the accident. Insurance decided to replace the transmission, but conversation between them and the mechanic has been exceptionally spotty, so repairs haven't really started yet. We have been very thankful that we inherited my great aunt's car a few years ago and that one can take care of us. In another post we'll probably talk about how this week my parents drove up from California to gift us their car (same year and model as ours, but with 130k FEWER miles on it) (!!!!). We are indeed very most fortunate and blessed!

Nia and the Box of Medicine

Favorite song: Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat

 Our dear Nia now has a small box filled with medications she is to take every day, and every day. The most recent saga began 4-6 weeks ago, when she got what we suppose was strep. The strep gave her a cough, which sounded absolutely terrifying.

N: It WAS terrifying!

The doc gave her some antibiotics, some steroids, and a new friend. Georgina is her medical assistant turtle. Put the medicine in the turtle, and the turtle helps her breathe. It takes maybe half an hour to very slowly breathe in all the medicine. Nia likes her friend, the turtle.

N: I wanted to dress her up in doll clothes, but Mom said no. It would be a bad idea because it would clog her pores, or something like that.

J: It shouldn't cover the filter anyway.

N: Yes, but "clog her pores" sounds funnier.

She was getting better during the week, just like she should. We were hopeful that all would soon be well. 

One week later on Saturday evening, she started to cough. She kept on coughing. She couldn't stop coughing. Anything we did to help her, seemed to make it worse. She tried one of the breathing medicines, and that seemed to make it worse. So we called the missionaries to help me give her a priesthood blessing. She had been coughing for 45 minutes by that point. The blessing told her that she would be able to breathe and commanded her lungs to open. Within moments, the cough had stopped and she was breathing easily and normally. She continued to improve over the course of the week.

One week later was General Conference. Saturday during the evening session, she started to cough. 

N: That was the one where I choked on the cookie! Of all the dumb ways to die, choking on a cookie is not how I want to go, just saying.

She kept on coughing and everything we tried seemed to only make it worse. I gave her another blessing, but this one told her the doctors would know what to do. Unfortunately, the only doctors available in the later evening on a Saturday, are in the ER. So Nia got her very first trip to the emergency room!

They got her settled in the bed and confirmed that she WAS getting enough oxygen, which was our primary concern. They gave her some medicine for anxiety and had her breathe some lovely mist using a plastic mask.

N: It was really hard to read my book. Really hard. Try reading a book when you've got something in front of your face! And reading through the mist was not the easiest either.

Nia talked to her grandmother on the phone, which always helps her feel loved and calm. They took x-rays, did all the lovely tests, and decided that the breath medicine had worked well enough. She could go home again. Here's some more breath medicine and two new steroids to enjoy. She seemed to get better.

N: And then the Fire Nation attacked!

She's running out of her steroids again, and felt her throat tightening and the cough starting to get just a little bit worse, in preparation for another wonderful Saturday evening surprise in two days. So Mommy took Nia to the doctor and got something that ISN'T a steroid. Several somethings, in fact. Nia organized them all prettily in a little box.

She's working on a Little Mermaid parody, centered around the idea that if you want steroids, she's got twenty!

Memories of ImaigNiff

We have a board game called ImagiNiff (imagine if). You write the names of people everyone at the table knows on a board. You roll a die to select which name comes up and draw a card that asks a silly hypothetical, like "Imagine if ______ were a book. Which book would he/she be?" or "Imagine if ____ received a prestigious prize. Which one would he/she win?" There are 6 options. Everyone votes for the one they think the most other people will vote for and score points accordingly.

We've learned we can't play this game with our kids. I tested JT on one yesterday and asked who he would have over for dinner: Mother Teresa, Mohammad Ali, Groucho Marx, or several others. He could identify Mother Teresa, but none of the others. It's a game designed for our generation and our common knowledge, and just doesn't work for the family. Since there are other games we prefer playing with company these days, we're finally letting this one go.

But once upon a time in Ithaca, we would play this with friends. I delightedly remember one game in particular when we all decided to put the names of a senior missionary couple in our church on the board. He was known for being a golf fanatic. If you could come up with a way to further God's work through golf, he was your man!

So one of us drew the card: Imagine if [his wife] had to select a way of dying. Which would she choose?

1. Peacefully in sleep
2. Hit by a golf ball
3. Fighting in war
4. Murdered by a jealous lover
5. TV falls into bubble bath
6. Overeating

And we laughed uproariously, because of course she'd want to go by being hit by a golf ball. It would ensure that her husband was with her when she goes!

As we were getting rid of the game, I found that particular card and needed to write down the happy memory.

Thoughts on Pres. Oaks' comments on the family

At the October General Conference yesterday, Pres. Dallin H. Oaks - now the senior apostle - described a few points of how family life has changed from when he was a child. To summarize, he contrasted how it used to be an economic necessity for families to have a highly organized structure, with all members pushing towards a common goal. There was much more family oversight of children, and therefore also time for real connections to be made and instruction given. In today's urban environment, he contrasted, families tend to be units of economic consumption, rather than production. It is too easy to treat home as a boarding house, where people share a common address to eat and sleep, but where children receive little guidance, direction, or connection.

In his comparisons, I do not hear him wishing that we all went back to those poorer times, but rather that we need to take proactive thought and consideration for how to create "consistent, family-centered" activities, to make time together, to create a vision of what we want our family to be like and work together towards those goals. 

I was a missionary in eastern Germany shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I cannot recall a day going past when some middle+ aged person would recite the same litany of miseries East Germany had experienced since reunification, most especially unemployment (which was 40% at the time) and the lack of connection between neighbors. Under socialist rule, there was such scarcity that it was an economic necessity for you to know your neighbors and work together. If I had a hardware store and you had a grocery store, I might offer that the next time I got a shipment of nails in, I'd set some aside for you if you would set aside some oranges for me next time you got a shipment. With the arrival of capitalism, nails and oranges were in such abundance that being connected was no longer an economic necessity, and communities fell apart.

It seemed to me then that the solution was not to go back to the poverty and repression of the socialist state, where secret police without showing identification grabbed people off the street who were never heard from again, but rather to make deliberate, proactive choices to get together with neighbors and form community activities. 

In both cases, some very important things that used to be supported as natural and normal necessities of survival, fell by the wayside as the urgency for them fell off. "It is vital that Latter-day Saints do not lose their understanding of the purpose of marriage and the value of children." He urged us to follow Jesus' example by giving ourselves in service, and to create meaningful family activities that build family relationships and ties. 

Reminiscing a little about being EQP

Not-quite three years ago, I was invited to be the elder's quorum president here in Stephenville. When I was set apart, I was told this would be a "short" time, which I had interpreted to mean I wouldn't serve the full customary three years. I guess I did miss three years by 2-3 months, but I thought of a shorter "short" time than it turned out to be.

I was most concerned when I was called because I felt like I didn't know most of the men in the ward. I had been working with the youth for six years as seminary teacher and deacon's quorum advisor, and before that I was doing institute with the young adults, so I hadn't been with the older adult men in some time. I spent the first few months trying to get to know the men, their families, and understand what challenges they were facing so I could better adapt lessons and activities to their needs.

At the time, folks talked about how they also felt like they didn't know the other men in the quorum, so we spent time in the quorum sharing testimonies with each other and having small-group conversations. I hadn't really planned to be a "ministering president," but if people feel alone and like they don't know each other, well, going out and ministering to each other is one great solution, and it was something the Spirit kept emphasizing to me.

I'm really thankful for the brethren who served in our presidency. I'm especially thankful for Francisco Alonso, who stuck it out for the full 3 years with me. He did a lot of work on his own initiative to strengthen the Spanish-speaking members. His example throughout has really been golden.

I also appreciated Sister Dipple who took over playing prelude for me each Sunday so I could spend the time greeting everyone and helping folks feel welcome at church. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world for me, but I eventually grew to really enjoy and look forward to it. I'm very thankful she has agreed to keep on playing prelude so I can keep greeting people, even though I'm not in the presidency anymore. It's important to me that everyone know that we legitimately and honestly care about them, not "just" because it started because I wanted to do it as part of my calling.

When the stake president told me about my release a few weeks ago, he assured me that we had done a really outstanding job together. He also mentioned that it might be several weeks before a new presidency was called, so just keep marching on until then. Surprise! The release was made public the very next week as a new presidency was called. I hadn't even had time to warn my counselors!

I have enjoyed setting down the backpack. I was very quick to say to myself, "Okay, so I used to be responsible for doing that, but that's not my job anymore, so I'm just going to sit here with my family!"

Then today when I went in for my temple recommend renewal interview, I received a new calling instead, to teach Sunday School for the adults once a month. That's one of my dream callings just because I love teaching the gospel every chance I get. So I'm really looking forward to it. Bro. Harmsen said, "We couldn't leave you without a calling for long." I quickly reassured him that I already have one: I'm the organist still. And now that we have a choir, I'm the choir accompanist too, though that one isn't an official calling. But I'm delighted just the same.

What a week

At the end of last week, Nia had a bad cough and a couple strange symptoms. I talked to Dr. ChatGPT and we agreed that this was more than a usual cough and she should see a doctor on the soon side. Next day she was diagnosed with strep and bronchitis, making her asthma really bad. She was put on multiple inhalers and some other appropriate medicines. Her turtle nebulizer (seen below) is named "Georgina".

Nia and Georgina play Mario

Joy and I didn't get sick, but we spent the weekend SO tired and basically spent our time trying to prevent the infection from taking hold. We succeeded, but everyone's sleep schedules have been absolutely destroyed. We haven't had a single night when all four of us slept through the night. We keep switching between 8-12 hours of sleep one night followed by 2-4 the next and multiple naps and ... it's been a doozy.

... Joy happily corrects me! We all slept through the night last night!

----

A few weeks ago, we were voluntarily haunted by several "ghosts" - HVAC, electric, plumbing, etc. giving our house its irregular checkup. They identified a number of areas in the house that need improvement. We decided on a few that were high priority and set up an appointment for the plumber to come over. 

Our water pressure is way too high, so for $1500 they'll install a water pressure valve. Maybe some of the plumbing problems we've been dealing with for the last few years stem from this.

So the plumber pops in and says, yeah, we'll have to dig a 4' deep trench and replace the 60 year old rusted pipes outside so we have something to attach to. That'll run you another $5500.

He checks a couple more things, scratches his head a bit and says, Actually, it may be a LOT worse than that. With our plumbing luck, it probably is. Long story short, it is worse. So we're going to get an entire plumbing overhaul done this coming week for the internal water, and we may be without water for a little bit.

So to relax, Joy and I assmebled a couple wooden puzzles. Fun little date. How is y'all's week?

Big Family Vacation 2025 part 4 - southern Utah

Payson - the road not taken

Saratoga Springs

Fri Aug 1 was the day of changing plans. We had, like, four different plans for what would happen before the day came. Our original was to go Friday night to the temple in Payson and stay at a new AirBNB that night. But we got everything done in the Provo area we needed to early. So then I found temple baptisms at, like, 6:30am for the kids in Saratoga Springs, so we didn’t have to stick around in Provo for the whole day. We could do baptisms and while they were doing baptisms, one of us would come back and pack the car, then return to pick up the kids and head off to Washington. Then the night before we decided that was a mess and we were all too tired. Even the teenagers were too tired!

JT: Yeah, I wasn’t too tired!

There were 1-2 other plans in there somewhere. So this is what actually happened:

We got a baptismal time around 9am or so, some reasonable hour of the day. We packed up the car all together and went to Saratoga Springs. Hy and Nia performed baptisms and then Joy and I did an endowment session. I used the temple microwave to reheat our Brick Oven pizza for lunch. We tried to do some banking at AFCU to set Hyrum up, but they have problems giving checks to people who are technically still minors. #He’sOnHisOwn

We finally made it on the road to Washington, UT, in the early afternoon, which gave us a foretaste of what driving cross-country without AC was going to be like. Also, one of the rubber/plastic thingies that attaches to the roof of the car had a meltdown. For some time, it’s been coming loose on long drives, but only a couple inches. This time, more than a foot peeled off and it started slapping the car at high frequency – fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap….

Nia: While I was trying to nap! It woke me up!

Got really old really fast! So we got some duct tape and taped it down, which had to be reapplied every couple hours because it melted in the heat and peeled off too! It was during this trip that we also lost a metal Chrysler side-strip, whatever it’s called, on the driver’s door. Just last week, we lost the one on the passenger side. I’m hoping this car makes it to a full 200,000 miles, but we’re at 197,000 right now and we’re driving it pretty hard…. Anyway.

Easter 2025

I care about Easter. I also care about Passover. On the years when the two celebrations don't line up, we spend a week talking about the children of Israel being freed from slavery, watching Prince of Egypt, and talking about how Moses and Elijah came to the Kirtland Temple at Passover to restore the keys of gathering Israel. We also spend a week reading about what Jesus taught and did during His last week of life, His atoning sacrifice, and His resurrection. We usually separate the sacred celebrations on Sundays from the Easter bunny and egg hunts on Saturday. This year we also bought an Easter creche.

This year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invited congregations to also make a bigger effort for Easter. Because of my calling at church, I was the point person for our celebration. We spent an hour one January Sunday as a congregation gathering ideas of what people would like to do, and it was pretty ambitious!

We set up a community service project, mostly involving the youth, who worked in a soup kitchen. On April 12 there was a miniature Passover Seder (dinner) for the congregation, and right after there was a concert where we invited musical groups from all across the community to participate and sing about Jesus and His divine mission.

Nia's Temple in Bountiful

A lot of people pitched in to help, obviously. I focused on the decorations for the building and setting up the concert. Different organizations took charge of a room which they decorated to represent an event from the last week of Christ's life or witnesses of His resurrection. Folks were encouraged to tour the building and experience what happened at that pivotal time. Starting at one end of the building and going around in a half-circle, we had:

• The triumphal entry
• Teachings, such as the parable of the Ten Virgins and rendering unto Caesar
• The Last Supper
• His suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross
• His burial and ministry in the spirit world
• His resurrection in the New Testament
• His resurrected appearance in the Book of Mormon
• His appearance to Joseph Smith
• Modern prophets and apostles bearing testimony of Jesus
• His prophecied Second Coming

Gethsemane

Yeah, it was a big to do! I really enjoyed setting up the art. Joy and I borrowed the plastic plants from work to set up Gethsemane, and she put together a costume to read The Living Christ - the testimony of the Twelve Apostles written around 2000. Nia drew a temple for the Book of Mormon scene. I put up large sticky pads with quotes and pictures all over the building. Lots of people put in a lot of effort to make it work. The missionaries set up a podium and flowers so it looked like General Conference backdrop for the modern witnesses.

Then we had the concert. I was emcee and also sang a medley of hymns that all fit the same meter. I sang them to the tune I know as "If you could hie to Kolob": I heard the voice of Jesus, Upon the Cross of Calvary, Welcome Home, and one or two others. Joy and Nia sang "Risen". A group led by an adjunct law teacher did some fun gospel music. We had a good 60-90 minutes of music and praise of Jesus from a bunch of different styles. It was a really good program and I am very thankful to everyone who shared their talents.

Joy: I really liked that each organization took charge of a different room. I was alone in my room. The missionaries helped do some of my setup, which was cool. I don't usually feel very creative, but I went out into the great expansive of creativity and didn't break my nose... It was nice to get to meet the people who sang. A couple people brought real palm trees, and that was cool! 

Big Family Vacation 2025 - Part 3 - Provo and BYU

[Derrill's narrations are in black, Joy is in blue. This is an excessively long post, sorry.]

Our AirBNB in Provo was an older home owned by a fun host who set up a scavenger hunt for the kids. The electricity did shut off in the middle of the first night, but we were able to fix it in the morning. Nia slept upstairs in an attic room with four beds all to herself. 

Joy: It was so nice to have central air. I think it was the coolest place we stayed. There was an AC upstairs that we needed to leave on all the time and the labels on the cupboards were helpful. It had a nice dinning area in the living room and some great toys and books for kids that we used latter.

Since our car’s AC wasn’t working the entire trip, such considerations were high on our list. Joy: We had our car checked before we left and the AC in the car had needed to be charged for the second time this summer in hopes of it working for at least the trip, alas.

Nia: They had a welcome sign that mentioned us by name. The scavenger hunt told us to find the rest of the letters and leave them a message in return. Daddy found the letters. I wrote “Thank you for letting us stay” and then put a smiley face using two 1s for eyes and a parenthesis for the smile.

Fri 25 – Today was devoted to touring BYU.  The visitor’s center gave us a tour, then I showed the family around the student center and library. Joy: We had scheduled the tour in advance and the cool thing about it was that it was on a golf cart, not walking.

We got Hyrum his student ID card, then Joy and the kids had lunch at home while Hyrum and I joined the economics faculty for lunch. I really enjoyed getting back together with friends and former teachers. As I gave Hyrum the rundown on the faculty, he was amazed at how many of them had attended Cornell. Joy and co rejoined us to tour the Museum of Art and explore the rest of the campus a bit more. 

Mary and co. leaving the cross

They of the Last Wagon. I particularly liked this painting, based off the tribute by J. Reuben Clark, Jr., to the forgotten, struggling pioneers in the back of the wagon trains.

A sculpture made of hangers

Delicate rainbows made with very thin strands.
Joy: I really loved that.