A Shield and a Protection

I barely glanced up as the 40-something woman stepped onto the bus today: I was tired and trying to read without getting motion sick. So I was already glancing down again when she fell backwards through the folding double doors and landed in the snow. I might have doubted my eyes had not the driver and another passenger immediately sprung up to help the struggling woman to her feet.

At first I thought she had just slipped, but when the two men finally managed to push her limp but alert form back onto the platform, I realized something much worse had happened. The woman was completely non-responsive to questioning, and looked as though she couldn't - or wouldn't - move her legs. Was she embarrassed and wanting to avoid showing her face? Was she indignant and resisting help? Was she even aware of what was going on?

About five minutes passed with several passengers trying to elicit a word or two, when the woman suddenly stood on her own power, paced about the front of the bus a bit, and finally sat down.

"Are you hurt?"

"Do you need medical attention?"

"Are you all right?"

The answer to all these and many more questions remained nothing more than a blank stare with occasional flashes of confusion at all the attention. Finally, the mystery woman stood up and, to everyone's amazement, removed her shirt.

That was how I found out that she had been endowed in the house of the Lord, and how I finally determined that her mind was not fully cooperative at the moment. I think that's also what finally convinced the driver to radio for help. He had his dispatcher call 911, several passengers tried to convince the woman to re-dress herself, and I averted my eyes, grateful for the heads of the passengers in front of me.

That's about the time that it occurred to me that, had this woman not been endowed, she might have been considerably worse off. Suffice to say that some of the characters on the bus were far from kind. But she was protected by the promises associated with her honoring her covenants in a way that I hadn't really considered before.

Another bus on the same route arrived, and I felt compelled to approach the suffering woman. By this time, the woman had seated herself and draped a coat over her shoulder like a blanket so she was covered again, and the majority of the passengers were transferring to the other bus. Aside from the woman there were five of us left including the driver - all male.

I introduced myself and, to my surprise, the woman responded. She still looked confused when I asked if she was hurt, so I explained what had happened. She tried to tell me about a medical condition of hers, but couldn't remember the right words. Instead, she slipped her coat on correctly and zipped it up. When the paramedics arrived a moment later, we quickly determined that the correct term for her problem was "seizures." Although still taking her medications, the woman had experienced two seizures in as many weeks, with the latest coming as she boarded the bus. A side effect was that she couldn't remember anything that had happened during the last twenty minutes.

Apart from biting her tongue when she fell, she was unhurt and refused to go the the hospital because she couldn't afford it, having no insurance. So the paramedics left and I resumed my conversation with my new friend, whose name I will not disclose, but to whom I will hereafter refer as Julie.

Julie gradually became more lucid and I asked where she was getting off the bus, and if there was someone who could help her when she got there. By now Julie had discovered her shirtless condition and I explained it to her as delicately as I could. She gave me the phone number of a friend, and I called to make the arrangements. For the rest of the ride, we discussed the nature of Julie's medical troubles and possible ways to get her in to see a doctor, as the paramedics had strongly recommended. Because of what I had seen earlier I knew I could suggest that she talk to her bishop. She seemed to take that idea seriously although my mentioning it surprised her, perhaps because I hadn't asked if she was Mormon, perhaps for some other reason.

Julie got off at the appointed place, and her friend picked her up a few minutes later. That same friend later called to thank me and to clarify what I had said about the bishop. Apparently Julie had remembered that part of the conversation and related it to her friend, but without being totally clear on the details of my suggestion.

The bus driver, now almost an hour behind schedule, kindly called for permission to use a faster route to deliver his passengers to their destinations. The man in the back was sleeping, so I approached him to ask where he wanted to get off. He appeared to be homeless, although one cannot always tell, but his reaction when he awakened at least confirmed that he was in a sorry state, because he screamed at me to keep my "*@#$^&#*@#, homosexual, &@#^@ hands" to myself and stormed off the bus, stopping to yell at another man on the way. The driver claimed the man was obviously drunk, but I didn't smell any alcohol, personally.

I have no desire to ridicule this man, but I do feel that it was good that he slept through the incident with Julie. He might have caused quite a scene, and, although this is purely speculative on my part, his missing it might have been yet another form of protection Julie received by honoring her covenants.

What Happens When You Combine Very Dry Skin With Heavy Lifting

While I'm still working on the more serious posts, here are a couple of pictures that show what I've been up to. Because, honestly, what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't occasionally show you silly and/or inexplicable pictures of myself?

First - the results of my seasonal dry skin and a long day of lifting stuff. Actually, this looks considerably better than it did the day before this picture was taken.


Second, myself as the Cyber Ninja, featuring my patented (not really) SuperVisor, made from red lighting gel, the elastic strap from some swimming goggles, and old headphones. Ignore the shirt in the background. The bathroom just has the best light in my house.

Actually, minus the visor this is my typical getup for walking to and from the bus stop on cold winter days. Here's what it looks like ordinarily.

Still considerably more ninja than any other look of mine. I actually thing this is one of the better pictures of me, except that it accentuates the slightly off-center mole at the top of my nose that my kids love to poke. You notice that I could have photoshopped that out, but because I respect my readers so much, (and because I'm posting this from a computer that has no image editing software, but that's really secondary) I'm giving you a completely untouched photo here.

In the interest of far more personal disclosure than you wanted, in reality I have three facial moles - the one shown above and one on each cheek, roughly. They form an eerily well-proportioned triangle with my nose as its central point. Needless to say, I have no problem believing that God has a sense of humor.

I've eliminated the unibrow since my high school days, which is why my wife wasn't too embarrassed to marry me after all. That put me just on the safe side of the too-funny-looking-to-be-seen-in-public-with threshold. Thankfully.

Lots of Reviews Coming

As if you didn't have enough reason to sit on the edge of your seats frantically refreshing your screens every two seconds and checking your RSS readers every five in anticipation of what my next words might be - as I know you're doing right this moment - I'm writing this post to announce several exciting book and movie reviews that will shortly be appearing on this site. Gasp! Cheer! Swoon! Applaud!

Okay, maybe you're not that excited, but you should be because now that I'm out of school I'm going to really turn my attention to developing certain things, among which are my blogging standards and content. I'm going to return much more frequently (I hope) to Toward an LDS Cinema, starting with my interview with Ryan Spelts, sales manager at Living Scriptures and personal friend. I have lots of other interesting things planned as well. Hopefully that site will see a return to scholarship soon, and be less of an updater or hobbyist's blog. Speaking of which, does anyone know what happened to Trevor or Benjamin? I've been so alone for so long...

But here I'm stepping things up as well. I'm going to be featuring more of my own art as it develops and delving into some doctrinal explorations similar to my post on the joy of the saints and my early post on the beauty of the work of our own hands, which in my opinion are two of my very best.

But first I'm going to post some book and movie reviews. Partially that's because I've loved both the writing of and the response to some of my other reviews, notably the review of What the Dickens and the infamous Harry Potter post that nearly lost me a lifelong friend. Thanks for sticking with me, Tori.

:)

So here's what's up on the docket for now, reviews and otherwise as it relates to film and writing, in no particular order:

Veil of Darkness by Greg Park - This is in fulfillment of a commitment to my brother Jake to give this book a shot and issue my opinions forthwith. The novel is rife with Mormonism and I hope to explore some of that as well as other issues. I'll probably get this one up first.

Various works of Miyazaki - I'm going to take a look at Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and maybe Spirited Away. The idea is to consider the influence of these animated films on my own sensibilities and to explore common themes and other elements.

Joe Versus the Volcano - Looking into the depths of what is too often passed over as a stupid, shallow film, and doing it in a Mormon context. I probably will post this one on TLDSC.

Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven - How commonalities and differences in the two films affect their meanings.

Twilight and New Moon - I haven't decided for sure if I want to do this one. I have neither read the books nor seen the movies, but I may take Tyler up on his invitation to do one or the other and work up an essay on it. If I do, I'll submit it to his study on Reading Until Dawn, and post a link here if Tyler accepts it.

Also look for a link to a paper I've written for Brent Leavitt's Sun Swing Studies, whenever he in his own time and wisdom decides to publish it. It's an exploration of concepts of moral leadership in media production based on a Mormon Times article from some time ago about Mark Mabry's Reflections of Christ exhibit.

Also, I may or may not tackle Mormon elements in Mistborn and Leven Thumps as I've now finished both series.

So stay tuned!

Warm and Cold

Actually, we'll start with cold. -11 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact. That's how cold the wind made it feel (according to my AccuWeather.com iPhone app - no, I didn't get paid for that) when I was walking to the bus stop at 4:37 this morning. The wind was blowing 16 mph, and gusting at least 20, I would guess. The three most hated words of winter for me, by the way: Wind. Chill. Factor. I had to walk directly into it for about 15 minutes, then stand around for another five until the bus got there. Standing was the worst part. I don't remember ever feeling so cold.

Contrast that with the warmth I felt when I got home last Wednesday night after finishing my final class at the University of Phoenix. I walked into my bedroom to find this waiting for me:



Lousy image quality and not-as-bad-as-it-looks messy bedroom notwithstanding, that's real warmth. It only got better yesterday afternoon when I learned that despite being administered by the single most demanding professor I've ever had, my final class didn't rob me of my hard earned academic perfection (so to speak).

I think I said last time I posted on this topic that I would be okay with it if I did get a worse grade this time around, and I meant it. I prepared myself to be satisfied with my best effort, even if it didn't get me the best possible marks. But it turns out I got both. I'm not trying to be boastful, it's just extremely satisfying. I worked my tail off for it even when I knew I didn't have to. At times I even got frustrated because certain professors gave me good grades without requiring that I even turn in the work I lost so much sleep over. My wife can confirm that. Plus I got to finish up with two of the best guys I know. The three of us have been on an academic team for nearly a year, and we all finished our programs at the same time. The friendship we cultivated was even more rewarding than the excellence we achieved in everything. One of them is a sales manager for Living Scriptures, and I'll be posting an interview with him on Toward an LDS Cinema before too long. The other is a manager at Discover Card, and a great person. He doesn't get into the blogging thing, but I've included some of his comments from school discussions in previous posts.

So even though you'll probably never read it, congratulations Kevin and Ryan. And thanks Sara, Millie, and Jeannie, for giving me a warmth that can keep me going even on the coldest of days.

The Dragon, the Turtle, and the iPhone

Play-doh, small children, a built-in video camera - need I say more?



Voice talent by me and my oldest daughter, Sara. Camera "work" by me. Cute kid in the background: my niece Camry.

A (four-year-old) Child's Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father,

Please help us that the Joker won't get us.

And please help us to go speedy fast.

And, um...

Please help us that we can turn on the fire.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like.... Well, You Know.

You can tell me it's too early to decorate for Christmas, but we've been listening to Yuletide music since July (on and off, of course), and even that start date represented only a brief pause after we stopped listening to the stuff about a month before.

So you can tell me it's too early, but I won't listen. Our trees are up (a main one, plus a small one for the kids to decorate and redecorate as often as they please), our lights are twinkling, and, as you saw in an earlier post, we've broken out the eggnog.

It's not Thanksgiving hate. It's Christmas love.

Just to spread the love around a bit, here are some pictures from our annually expanding Christmas Village.

Note: these were taken with my iPhone, because it fits well in the spaces between the different pieces, but the quality is not the greatest. Only minor photoshopping (cropping and levels-tweaking) was applied to these images.