A MESSAGE TO MYSELF

Regardless of the blood tests,

    The vitals;

        The ultrasound

            The pathology report;
               Even the MRI;

All that really matters is

IF I CAN

Get out of bed in the morning

Walk

Stretch and wiggle

Do yoga

Swim

Ride a bike

Do house and yard chores

Visit with friends and family

Travel

SURE  I HAVE

incessant pounding in my ear;

pain in my knees;

bleeding hemorrhoids;

so on and so forth.

TOUGH.

CAN I

get out of bed in the morning?

Walk?

Swim?

Ride a bike?

Do Yoga?

Stretch and wiggle?

Do house and yard chores?

Visit with friends and family?

Travel?

CELEBRATE

DOWNWINDER COMPENSATION

Bottom of Form

     How would you like

To go to your mailbox

      And pick up a $50,000 tax-free check?

Only in your dreams.

      Right?

Not necessarily.

      That’s what the United States Government

Would pay you

      If you get cancer.

Deal?

     UNEQUIVOCALLY NO!  Insult me not.

My health can’t be measured in dollars.

      Why did the Government

Only test the atomic bomb above ground

     When the wind was blowing north

Towards a sparsely populated area

     If they didn’t know the inherent dangers?

Betrayal.  Heartache.  Anguish.

     Leukemia.  Miscarriages.  Birth defects.

Eventually a whole array of cancers over

     A 50-year-plus span.

Loved ones.  Young and old.

     Infinite suffering.

How do you compensate for that

     My Country Tis of Thee?

Warriors Over the Wasatch - May 26, 2012

  When Ed was little, he always said he wanted to grow up to be a pilot.  He loves to fly.  Two of his first cousins went to the Air Force Academy and are commercial pilots now.  He greatly admires them.  All week he had been telling us about the Air Show at Hill Air Force Base this weekend.  We weren’t sure we wanted to fight the crowds but, well, you know, we’d do anything for him.  So we psyched up for the big day.  Saturday morning, he insisted he did not want to go.  He didn’t even want to get out of bed.  “What do you mean, you don’t want to go?  We’re going.”  He resisted tooth and toenail.  What is going on? 

With our handicap pass we were able to park right by the planes – right next to the building where DeRay used to work so we were fortunate enough to hear all his “war” stories.  “These kids guarding the gates and directing traffic were not even born when I retired from the Base,” he reflects. 

Our timing was perfect. 

 We had time to walk around and see all the planes and walk through the huge cargo plane before the show started. 

DeRay & Ed in cargo plane.

Off to war.

  We carried chairs and had ringside seats.  This is the first Air Show in three years so it featured some big name draws, including Dave Erickson dazzling the crowd with aerobatic flying in a Zlin Z-50, along with Mark Peterson piloting an old P-51 Mustang, the 3.5-ton aircraft flown during World War II.

Wings of Blue Jump Team from the Air Force Academy introduced the flag; then we sang the Star Spangled Banner, which always bring tears to Eddy's eyes.

The Wings of Blue Jump Team jumped with flares.

They land standing up.

 "Time is eventually going to work its magic and silence these great old warbirds," said Mike Berriochoa, Saturday’s announcer from Pasco, Wash. "But for as long as they fly, we’re going to enjoy them."  Pasco, Washington?  We should have asked him if he knows John and Marilyn.

Red Eagles (Pitts & Talon Eagle)

"Diamondback"/Mark Peterson P-51.  WW II Fighter Plane.
Came out in 1945, according to DeRay.

Dave Erickson Zlin Z-50

Red Bull's Kirby Chambliss (Zivko Edge 540

MiG-17 Russian Fighter

 Truthfully, it was breathtaking. 

After we had been there a little more than two hours, it started to sprinkle.  We were prepared with umbrellas and raincoats but DeRay thought it was really going to pour.  They invited people to go in the hangers if they desired.  Of course, they wouldn’t hold everyone, but some.  We headed for the car and got inside just as it started to rain hard.  “Good thing I watched the weather,” Ed exclaims jubilantly.  So that’s why he didn’t want to go.  Seventy percent chance of rain.  Sometimes it pays to be naive.  Think of what we would have missed if we had worried about the weather like Eddy. 

We ate lunch at home; messed around for a couple of hours.  It rained fairly hard here and snowed on the mountain tops – actually about 1/3 of the way down.  The Thunderbirds were scheduled to perform at 3.  At a quarter to, we decide to drive back up and watch from someplace close.  Grateful to find one empty spot, we park somewhere south of the base.  Very close.  Hang on.  What can we see from here?  The family in the next car was very obnoxious. 

We could tell where they were on the program from the performers.  DeRay figured they were running about an hour behind so we decide to drive back on base.  We parked even closer this time.  The rain really scared those handicaps off.  They searched our chair bags but didn’t have us spread eagle and run the magic wand over us front and back again.  “Weren’t you here earlier?”  “Yes.  We’re repeats.”  “Go on through.”  How could they remember us after scanning 100,000 people?  Are we that weird?  DON’T ANSWER THAT. 

We were even closer to watch the F-16 Thunderbirds in a precisely choreographed series of moves that included the neat diamond formation, knife-edge passes, maximum-performance turns, crossovers, inverted rolls and more — thrilling us half to death.

Catch the Radar Towers and the snow on the mountains.

 

"Those noisy buggers," Ed says.  The element of surprise.
This solo Thunderbird flies 1000 mph; coming in low he could break your eardrum.

 WOW what a show.

Warriors Over the Wasatch.

It’s a good thing Eddy watched the weather.  He can tell you what is happening in almost any city in the world and what the temperature was on this date, according to the newspaper, several years ago.

He’s our information center.

Frenemy

Listening on my Ipod to Googled:  The End of the World As we Know It by Ken Auletta, I kept hearing the word “frenemy”.  Each time I heard it, I was reminded of the talk Jeanne gave at Brent’s Missionary Farewell in 1986.  “If it had been coined when she talked about her brother, she would have used it,” I thought to myself.  Actually, unbeknown to me, it first appeared in print in 1953.

"Frenemy" (alternately spelled "frienemy") is a poartmanteau of “friend” and “enemy” that can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or someone who's both a friend and a rival. The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical, and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions.--Wikipedia

When some of the world's biggest media and advertising companies talk about Google Inc., they borrow a term from the teen flick "Mean Girls."  Google, as they see it, is a "frenemy" -- an enemy who acts like a friend, or part friend, part enemy. Martin Sorrell, chairman and chief executive of advertising giant WPP Group, is among the media executives who can't decide whether Google is trying to help their business or kill it.

In her remarks, Jeanne talked about what she says when people ask her what it’s like to be Brent’s sister.  She read the profile on Brent from the Temple Square Concert Series program, concluding, “That’s what it’s like being a sister to Brent.”  She closed with this ode that has stuck with me these 26 years: 

MY BROTHER, MY ENEMY, MY FRIEND

You have moved through my life

    Consistently;

--My Brother, My Enemy, My Friend—

And your movement takes many forms:

I hear you on the click of the

  computer keys

and in the voice of endless hours

  on ivory piano keys.

I hear you in the sound of turning pages

  as you read some more.

I hear you on the other end of the line

  because lately we’re always far apart.

I hear you teaching and laughing; and

  yelling at the dogs.

I hear you through memories when

  I was allowed to tag along;

And I hear you in the future because

  I’ll always be tagging along.

My Brother, my Enemy, my Friend.

 

                Brofrenemy?

Jeanne 1987

Brent 1986

My favorite quote of Jeanne's was given at her own missionary farewell:

"You can use any color you like,

As long as you stay in the lines."

 It’s her birthday today. A year after Brent left for his mission, she served in France.  He had no opportunity to retaliate. 

Temple Square Concert Series

BRENT HUGH IN RECITAL

May 24, 1986

Brent DeRay Hugh graduated from Brigham Young University in December 1985, receiving a bachelor of science degree in mathematics and science with a minor in German. He was enrolled Winter Semester in the Master’s program in mathematics at BYU.  He is a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society; a National Merit Scholar; and is listed in Who’s Who Among American High School Students and America’s Outstanding Names and Faces.  In 1983, he accompanied the BYU Study Abroad group to Austria.  They traveled through Europe—including Russia, East Germany, and other Iron Bloc countries—and also in Israel.  He played the first movement of the Grieg Piano concerto in A Minor with the Davis High Symphonic Band at Weber College, performed in the “Young Artists in Concert” and the Fine Arts Ball at BYU, and has presented a concert in Steinway Hall in Salt Lake City.

Sweet Spot

Ed wanted to come home to attend Stake Conference.

A broadcast.

As it turned out,

they were having the same broadcast (probably church-wide)

right in SunRiver St. George.

He didn’t want to go there.

It’s not the same.

I had my heart set on watching

the solar eclipse in Southern Utah

The best place for viewing in the whole world
as it turned out

with the monsoons in Asia and all.

DeRay searched the Internet to find out where to

purchase the special solar-viewing glasses.

We invited Jerry and Lana Gale over

to share the experience with us.

Since we weren't planning to stay, I didn't take my camera or we'd have pictures of Lana too.
Jeanette, DeRay, & Jerry, talking to Todd on the phone.

We are set.

Bring it on!

Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012 Wikipedia

An annular solar eclipse took place on May 20, 2012 with a magnitude of 0.9439. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide. This is also known as Ring of Fire.

It was the first central eclipse of the 21st century in the continental USA, and also the first annular eclipse there since the solar eclipse of May 10, 1994 which was also the previous eclipse of this series Solar Saros 128. The next one is not to occur until 2023.

You can almost see the crescent through the pinhole in tinfoil on our kitchen bar.

Ring of Fire

Catch the eclipse on my left leg.  Photo by Lana.

Exactly the way we saw it.

Thrilling.

The wonders of the universe exposed

In stunning glory.

Like Wordsworth whose heart leaped up when

he beheld a rainbow in the sky,

my heart leaped up.

And paraphrasing,

"So was it in 1994;

So is it now I’m almost four-score."

Or to quote Helen Keller,

We were “burned up with beauty”.

“This is on a level with watching

the First Man Land on the Moon

when we were all together at Mama’s in Orderville,”

we exclaimed

'ere  Jerry and Lana Gale drove out of sight.

We also hiked The Wave together

to celebrate the anniversary of Daddy’s 100^th birthday.

A shared experience doubles the delight.

Oh yes.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
          --William Wordsworth

BRENT’S BIRTHDAY AND MOTHER’S DAY

When two great occasions collude,

you get a

BIG BANG.

YES!

Correspondence with Brent (in St. Louis on bike business):

On 5/13/2012 8:44 AM, Brent Hugh wrote:

Happy Mother's Day!

Hope you're fully enjoying your traditional annual feelings

of guilt and inferiority!—Brent—

“and,” I add, “remorse, regret, inadequacy, . . .”

“yet THANKFULNESS for beautiful children

who are better than I am,

so I have not lived in vain.

Oh yes, and

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

The day you were born was the happiest day of my life.

The others added upon immeasurably.

I love you, Mom”

Mother, Grandmother, long-awaited (7 years, two weeks, and 36 hours) for baby, Brent on his blessing day.

Brent, 9 months.

Brent, 9 years old, Grandma Esplin.  March 1972

I'm also in awe of my own mom on this day.

I know of no one who had more courage and valor than she.
I think of the responsibility of rearing eight kids alone

with no formal education and no opportunities.

Except for a miracle of sorts.

And the brief wonder years with Uncle Ed.

Suffering with a brain tumor for over twelve excruciating years;

with medical help 300 miles away.

How lonely that must have been for her.

Thank heavens she had us, eh?

Especially now, I think of her often;

Marveling how she did it.

By nature, she was fun loving.

However, by the time I knew her,

she had so many heavy burdens

that I didn’t grasp her playful nature

until we started working on her life story.

Still, she took the time to do the things that matter most –

Visiting the shut-ins.

Taking treats to every widow in town on holidays.

Tending two gardens,

bottling, hoeing, scrubbing, quilting;

especially her beloved calling

as Orderville Ward’s first Junior Sunday School Coordinator

in the last years of her life.

She was always there for us

even though she worked as Postmaster full time,
attending high school basketball games,
plays, and like most adults in town,
was a spectator at the dances.

How did she do it?

Everyday is Mother’s Day when I think of her.

Incredible.

On the Night of the Super Full Moon

Photo by Karla used without permission

The Invisible Entity is selfish.

Selfish is not good.

The Invisible Entity thought:

I am going to disinherit my family.

They do not know I exist.

I send them gifts.

They do not bother to thank me

Or acknowledge the gift in any way.

Sometimes I make a fool of myself and say,

“How did you like the gift?”

The little ones mumble something.

I CAN’T HEAR YOU.

Maybe they cannot hear me

Because I am invisible.

Maybe I just think I talk to them.

The gifts are tangible but

Maybe I am not.

Recently I had surgery.

The nodules they were concerned about

Were benign but they found another small tumor:

Thyroid Carcinoma with Focal Tall Cell Features, 0.8 CM.

We were not prepared for this.

Shock.

No words of comfort.

No hot soup.

Barely a “How are you doing?”

Very few.

What would an invisible entity expect?

Come on.

They do not see me.

They do not hear my heart beating.

I mull this over and over and over.

I should say something.

I should tell them I am hurt.

Then something happened.

And I though,

The Invisible Entity is selfish.

Selfish is not good.

They have their own struggles;

Their own conflicts;

Far bigger than thankless gifts

and cancer.

Forgive me family.