It’s Been a Busy Week

I have one last thing to do before I go take a much needed nap: write this blog.

Why do I need a nap? It’s been an exceedingly busy week.

It started out with Mother’s Day. No explanation needed there for those of us who are mothers. However, my day included the fact that my daughter traveled up from the Valley to take me to dinner in town. I was to meet her and her housemates at 3 p.m.

I did learn in the course of the day’s events that the extra button on my armrest in the car DOES have a purpose. After church I tried to wind up my windows, and only the driver-side one worked. I use the word “wind”–long i–in the sense that I hit a button and tiny servo-motors in the doors do the actual work. This time, they didn’t work! I sighed, wondering what on earth was going on, and dreading the drive to town with the wind-noise assaulting my ears. Yeah, it was as bad as I imagined it would be.

I happened to mention that I probably needed to visit the car dealership to check out the window problem, and my daughter’s housemate said he’d take a look at. I’d located the various fuse boxes already in my ownership manual, and pointed them out. All the fuses looked good.

While my daughter was showing me their new van–which, incidentally, got totaled in an accident this week!–the housemate continued checking things out. I heard a whirring sound behind me: the window going up. Housemate had located the problem.

That extra button? It’s a child lock. It locks windows so children can’t operate the automatic buttons and roll the windows down. Somehow I accidentally tripped it.

That was Sunday. Monday was busy with preparing for a Book Signing the next day, as well as updating various web pages.

Tuesday was the four-hour-long book signing. Afterward, I went home and crashed after finishing preparations for the presentation on Dialogue that I was to give to a writers’ group the next day.

Wednesday I was prompted to go to the Valley after my presentation and attend another writers’ meeting. I grabbed my suitcase, which always has “travel” things in it, put in a change of clothes, and set off. The presentation went well, the drive was nice, and the meeting that evening was super. I even survived the night without my CPAP machine, which I had prepared to take along, but missed getting into the car.

I did several errands on Thursday, and went safely back home.

Friday was catch-up day, preparing for an American Night Writers Association Board meeting on Saturday. Printing off materials used up most of an ink cartridge. News came that the hostess was ill, so the meeting was moved to another home. I emailed that I was coming the next day, and to give me directions via phone by 8 a.m., my departure time.

After I got to the Valley, I checked my phone (which I had forgotten to turn on!!!) to learn that two other members of the Board woke up sick, so the meeting was postponed to another day. I ran several other errands (including getting passport photos taken), and met with family members to decorate the graves of my husband and daughter. Then I returned home, somewhat hot from the temperature in the Valley. I crashed for a nap, but when it was time to wake up, decided to just go back to sleep for the night.

Today was another busy Sunday, with choir practice before church. I think I’m wiped out now, so it’s nap time. I don’t want to fall ill like my fellow board members!

~Marsha Ward

FAIR Conference 2009

The FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research) Conference for 2009 is coming up soon (August 6-7 in Sandy, Utah). If you live nearby or plan to be in the region at that time, come! I’ve attended three times and plan to go again this year (alas, I missed last year due to a cross-country move just beforehand). I’ve enjoyed every one. My write ups for each are here: 2005 pt 1, 2005 pt 2, 2006, 2007.

Visit the FAIR website to register.

What awaits us this year? Continue reading

Can you imagine if a General Authority said this:

ARCHBISHOP BURKE: If a Catholic knowingly and deliberately votes for a person who is in favor of the most grievous violations of the natural moral law, then he has formally cooperated in a grave evil and must confess his serious sin. Since President Obama clearly announced, during the election campaign, his anti-life and anti-family agenda, a Catholic who knew his agenda regarding, for example, procured abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, could not have voted for him with a clear conscience.

That quotation was taken from this interview here.

As a non-Catholic, I have a few questions.

Continue reading

M* welcomes Marsha Ward!

After a careful criminal background check with local law-enforcement (you can’t be too careful these days), we have determined that Marsha is indeed not a criminal, but rather the newest M* permablogger.

From her personal web site:

 Marsha Ward was born in the sleepy little town of Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up with chickens, citrus trees, and lots of room to roam. An avowed “tomboy,” Marsha began telling stories at a very early age, regaling her neighborhood chums with her tales over homemade sugar cookies. Visits to her cousins on their ranch and listening to her father’s stories of homesteading in Old Mexico and in the Tucson area reinforced Marsha’s love of 19th Century Western history.

After fifty+ years in the city, Marsha now makes her home in a tiny hamlet under Central Arizona’s magnificent Mogollon Rim. When she is not writing, she loves to spoil her grandchildren, travel, give talks, meet readers, and sign books.

Homemade sugar cookies will be passed out in the foyer immediately following the seminar on “How not to break a window with a flashlight“. 🙂

Welcome, Marsha!!

Part III Sephardic Jews and the LDS Connection: The Ottoman Empire

It is from the Sephardic Jews that the ethnic slur of Wandering Jew was coined. The tale is told of the Wandering Jew, who was sentenced to wander as punishment for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I, however choose to view my Sephardic Jewish ancestors as amazing survivors in a hostile world. As the Jews meandered, searching for a place they could safely practice their religion, it was if they were caught in a revolving door as they gained converts and lost members to Islam and Christianly. This is why Hebrew DNA is often difficult to find, as it has been largely unstable through the centuries (here).

Continue reading