My youngest’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. We asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go to a hotel to swim and then play a game as a family, so Nellie and I went to work. Nellie got the game. I got the hotel. Both were great.
The game was Last Word by Buffalo Games Inc. It’s fairly simple. There are subject cards with categories on them like “vegetables,” “breeds of dogs,” or “places you find water.” Then there are letter cards. Each player gets a subject card.
The round starts when someone flips over a letter card. If you can think of a word that starts with that letter in your category, you shout it out, slam your subject card down, and then everyone else tries to come up with words that start with that letter and fit the category. Or you try to think of words in someone else’s category if they beat you to it. There’s no order to it–you just shout out the words as they come to your head. The last one to come up with a word before the timer buzzes wins that round. The twist that makes it so fun, however, is that the timer is random.
You can play individually, in teams, or some mix (our youngest and I teamed up). Because of the random timer, anyone who can think up a word can play, which means our daughter who is eight could compete with the one that was seventeen.
We had a great time. One of the funniest things about it is that everyone is desperately trying to come up with words. Some fit, some don’t. Some don’t even exist. For example, when we did the category “male names,” number 3 shouted out “Mancake.” We couldn’t stop laughing. I think that one is going to enter the family vocabulary.
We also had a great time at the Park City Peaks hotel. As far as rooms go, they were good rooms. The bed was a bit too soft for me, but perfect for my wife. We got them for $65 a night, which isn’t bad at all. But it was the pool that made the experience.
The pool is an actual pool, not the big bathtubs some newer hotels offer. For example, the deep end is six feet deep. But the cool thing is that half of it is indoors and half of it is out. And the outdoor portion is heated. There’s also a large heated hot tub outside as well. In the picture it’s the thing producing the long row of steam in the back.
It helped that we didn’t have much snow so the place wasn’t crawling with skiers. In fact, we had the pool mostly to ourselves. So imagine: there we were on a November night in this alpine setting, the steam rising off the water, swimming and horsing around underneath the winter stars. It was marvelous. You can be sure we’re going back.
BTW, we had Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. Let me recommend this to you. It makes the day a breeze. You can still have your homemade turkey dinner, but picking up the turkey a few days after the holiday allows you to get them for cheap, cheap, cheap.
I recently watch Woman in Gold with my family, and we loved it. It has delightful characters, a suspenseful plot, and moments of both humor and deep poignancy.
The movie is based on the true story of Maria Altmann, an elderly Jew living in Los Angeles. When she was a young woman, the Nazis took over Austria. She fled, narrowly escaping. In addition to all the horrors committed against her people and family that couldn’t get out, the Nazis stole artwork and other precious items. The problem is that after the war, many of these items were then appropriated by individuals or the countries of Europe and not returned to their original owners.
The movie is about Maria and her young lawyer who fight the Austrian government to have a famous painting called Woman in Gold that was legally and rightfully hers returned. It’s a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in 2004. But this isn’t about someone wanting a painting. It’s about so much more.
If you enjoyed Mr. Holmes, Saving Mr. Banks, or Bridge of Spies, I think you will love this movie. You will love the dynamic between the frank-speaking Maria and her lawyer. And you will be moved.
Most of the time when you go to hole-in-the-wall restaurant, it’s a hole-in-the-wall.
But sometimes you strike gold.
And my youngest daughter and I struck big-time gold last week two miles east of Morgan, Utah, in the canyon between Morgan and Henefer off of exit 108. I’ve driven that stretch many times and never knew anything was off that exit. Literally, if you blink, you’ll think nothing is there.
It’s nestled in some trees up against the northern slope. The first thing that strikes you when you get out of the car is the delicious aroma. Then you notice the peacocks running about. And then you enter the diner and see a display case of tantalizing, large desserts such as cheesecake, carrot cake, and huge pink-frosted cookies.
The diner itself has a wonderful airy feeling with a high ceiling and lots of windows that offer views of the grove and garden surrounding the diner. There are seats outside in an area with a small waterfall. But we sat inside with the walls of log-cabin wood and the stained glass panels hanging in the windows.
They serve a variety of dishes from sandwiches and soups to pizza, burgers, and fancy plates of salmon or tenderloin. And while the views and setting is awesome, the food is where they really shine.
The beef stew was thick and amazing. The battered fries perfect. The sandwiches were wrapped in thick and soft flat bread that was delicious. And speaking of bread, they asked if I wanted a roll with the stew. I said yes. They didn’t bring out a roll–they brought out a small loaf of what appeared to be freshly baked bread. We of course had to try one of the desserts and opted for the
carrot cake. It was lovely with a hint of almond in the cream cheese frosting.
The portions were huge and so we took enough home for another meal for three.
We’re going back.
I want to try one of their burgers, the halibut, and the BLT.
If you like great food at a great price and are anywhere near Morgan, don’t blink at exit 108. Just pull off and enjoy an awesome meal.
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Parents of Rich Middle School students, what if I told you that researchers have uncovered a secret activity that teens enjoy that has the side benefit of actually raising their grades in all of their classes.
But that’s not all. This one secret thing will help them get better jobs years in the future.
It will help them make more money.
And they won’t even know that it’s doing this for them. They won’t care. Because they won’t be doing it for the grades or money. They’ll be doing it for the enjoyment it brings. They’ll be doing it just because they like to do it.
One little surprising thing.
And it’s backed up by lots and lots of research.
Do you want to know what this activity is?
Do you want to open up opportunities for your child?
If you do, come to the meeting Mrs. Brown is having at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 12 at the Rich Middle School.
Radio and TV have incredible power. But until the last decade they were always constrained by time and signal power. You had to listen when the station broadcast it, and you had to listen where you could pick up the signal.
Living out in the boonies we don’t get good radio or TV reception (no I don’t subscribe to satellite). Which is why the internet is so wonderful.
You can listen and watch almost anything when you want from almost any location–yes, even in Laketown, UT, Boonie Central. Millions listen to music, conservative talk, or libral talk (NPR) via the internet. I enjoy all three depending on my mood. But there’s so much more out there than music and blah blah blah, as much as I love it. For example, you can listen to the British BBC. You can listen to the Dutch. See what’s going on in Australia. Doesn’t matter that they are a number time zones away and all asleep when I’m working. I love the internet.
One of the best programs I’ve heard in the last six months is the three-part “Parasites” presented by Radiolab. In a fascinating hour they address the following questions:
Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?
Should you get infected with hookworms?
Can parasites exercise mind control over their hosts?
Along the way they tell a number of amazing stories. Listen now. You won’t be able to stop.
I have read few books more interesting than Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode AnimalBehavior.
In it she describes her world of autism and how it helped her a perspective into animals unlike any other expert in the field. She can literally see what we block out. It’s part of what helped her make a huge impact on the meat packing industry.
And it’s had an impact on her. When she was visiting her grandparents once in Arizona, she saw a squeeze chute in operation on a ranch. She saw the cattle calm, for the most part, in the chute. “Watching those cattle calm down,” she says, “I knew I needed a squeeze chute of my own.” So when she got back home she built a human-sized one with the help of her teacher. “I got through my teenage years thanks to my squeeze machine and my horses.”
Grandin is not a vegetarian activitst (she eats meat herself) or a brutal slayer. She has taken the middle ground between the fantatics that want to prevent the consumption of all meat, on one hand, or totally disregard the life of animals on the other. She writes, she says, “because I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. I think we owe them that.”
Temple has dozens and dozens of insights into animals, which she shares here. You’ll learn about rapist roosters and the problem of one-trait breeding, whether prediators find it “fun to kill a groundhog” (yes, she says, they do), whether animals have true cognition, and so many other things it’s impossible to list them here. I was fascinated on every page. If you have anything to do with animals, you’re going to LOVE this book.
Get the book. Read it. In the meantime, watch a 27 minute interview of Temple by Doug Fabrizio on Utah NOW. I caught this on TV flipping through the channels and couldn’t look away. This is a fascinating interview of a fascinating woman.
The joy of music. Pure, unadulterated joy–this is what I recently stumbled across on YouTube.
I was watching the The Piano Guys and thought I saw something new from them. I clicked, but it wasn’t The Piano Guys. It was Simply Three doing a cover version of the popular “Wake Me Up” by Avicii.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a “cover” or “cover version” is a reworking, updating, or interpretation of an existing song. And this cover simply blew me away.
Simply Three is an electrifying trio made up of cellist Zack Clark, bassist Nicholas Villalobos, and violinist Glen McDaniel, although they have switched in other violinists, including Alex Weill and Olivia Lemmelin. But don’t let the instruments fool you–this isn’t some stuffy classical music gig. And it’s not muzak in the elevator. Not even close.
They are doing what Lindsey Stirling and The Piano Guys are doing: taking modern songs in wonderful new directions and, in the process, making these classical instruments cool again.
I went on to watch a number of their other covers, and then I had to purchase the songs because I simply had to be able to listen to their great beats and interpretations on the road.
Here’s their cover of “Wake Me Up.” The joy Zack Clark (the cellist) exhibits sells the whole thing for me.
Here is their cover of “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.
And finally their cover of “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic.
If you like them, you can get each of these on Amazon for less than a buck with these links:
Buying them not only supports the artists, but it lets them know there’s a demand for it and encourages them to make more. And I hope they make more.
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By the way, “Counting Stars” has some interesting lyrics. Ryan Tedder, the songwriter, is a professed Christian. He grew up in a Charismatic household and graduated from Oral Roberts University.
However, you might look at some of the lyrics and think he’s given all that faith up.
I feel something so right
Doing the wrong thing
I feel something so wrong
Doing the right thing
I could lie, could lie, could lie
Everything that kills me makes me feel alive
But you need to look at the lyrics in context of the rest of the song and the artist’s statements about the song to see he’s singing about something totally different.
Some poets, and songwriters are poets (song is where poetry lives these days), think being obscure is cool. Tedder follows that more obscure approach in this song, which is unlike the immediate clarity he put into the lyrics of the fantastic “Halo,” performed by Beyonce, or his own OneRepublic’s “Apologize.”
Sometimes the artist writing gnomic lyrics doesn’t want to pin down a message for the listener—they think it’s cool for each person to make up their own message (I prefer clarity). Other times they do have a message, but they want the listener to work for it, and so they try to be subtle. Or sometimes they simply goof and don’t realize their lyrics are being so vague.
I have no idea which path Tedder was trying to take with these lyrics, but I do know that he’s made statements about the song. And these statements give us a guide.
In an interview with 5280, the Denver magazine (Denver is where Tedder lives) we get the first glimpse.
At 15, he began writing his own songs. “I obsessed over music and just loved it,” Tedder says. “But I never considered it as a career. Where I grew up you go to high school, you go to college, you find a wife in college, you get married, you have 2.3 kids, and if that hasn’t all happened by the time you’re 24, some people think there’s something wrong with you—or the assumption is that maybe you’re not into the opposite sex.”
But he couldn’t keep away.
Back in Oklahoma, at Oral Roberts University, the largest charismatic Christian university in the world, Tedder majored in public relations and advertising. At least that’s what his diploma says. Based on the time he put into sneaking into the Timko-Barton Performance Hall’s piano rooms, he probably could have been a double major. He spent hours on the piano and the guitar deconstructing his favorite albums—like Eric Clapton and B.B. King’s Riding with the King—figuring out the chords and then trying to write new songs using those same chords. He was skipping classes—even meals—to write songs.
No one knew. Not friends. Not his roommate. He sang in secret. He was in the school choir, but his friends always thought it was odd that a person who didn’t seem overly musically inclined would be taking a singing class. When he was in one of the piano rooms he would tape a piece of notebook paper over the small window in the door so that no one could see him.
Tedder says there were two reasons he hid his passion. The first was that he believed there were so many bad singers and bad songs in the world that he didn’t want to add to the noise. He wanted to be certain he would be successful before he revealed himself. The second reason was more deep-seated: Being raised in a religious home, Tedder had been taught that there was a purpose for his life, and that because God had ordained that purpose, he should live the life expected of him—one that was pious and humble. “Deciding you want to go into the music business is about the most narcissistic thing in the world,” Tedder says. “I had this constant battle—and to some degree I still do.”
So Tedder felt “wrong” about songwriting. But he eventually began to see it as his gift to share.
Billboard: Given “Counting Stars”‘ uplifting, faith-based message, it must be gratifying to be connecting with such a meaningful song.
Tedder: I think it’s our responsibility as a band, and what separates us from everyone else. I took that from being a fan of U2 for two decades now, since “Achtung Baby.” To this day, they might be the only band on that level who sings about things other than just boy-girl troubles or the kind of selfish, “I’m a badass” stuff. I’ve spoken with Bono about this when we toured with him, and he said the same thing. I felt a responsibility to actually write and sing about things that have a level of human gravity to them. If everybody else sings about sex and love and lust and money, then somebody’s gotta be singing about life and faith and hope and things of that nature.
So if “Counting Stars” isn’t about sex, lust, and money, what’s it about?
In another interview with Radio.com, he indicated that the whole counting stars bit was for anyone who loses sleep wondering how they’re going to be able to afford their rent or provide for their family. When he was first starting out, things were rough.
“A lot of time I just lay in bed awake, stressing out,” Tedder said. “Everybody does it. And I just thought, I can’t wait until I’m counting stars and not counting dollars anymore. Things will be so much better.”
To me, it’s clear that Tedder is singing about his story. And he’s singing for people like him who have a passion, but society says it’s not the practical thing to follow or dedicate your life to. Songwriting is what makes him feel alive. Furthermore, he had flashing signs indicating that if he sought, he would find—in other words, it was the thing God wanted him to do. And he just had to have hope, a four-letter word for those who are practical- and money-minded, and follow that passion.
We can argue the merits of that follow-your-passion message, but I think we’re all happy Tedder followed his.
***
And while we’re talking about the joy of music, how about this baritone saxophone and drum.
It’s interesting how many things we’ve added to the accounts we have in the Bible.
For example, nowhere does the Bible say that Mary rode a donkey. Mary might have walked. Or rode in a cart. Or gotten piggy back rides. We don’t know. We do know that there is no donkey mentioned in the record.
It also doesn’t say she had the child the night they arrived.
It only says she was “great with child” when they made the roughly 80-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And that “while they were there” in Bethlehem “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”
So she had the baby sometime while they were there. That could have been during the first hour. But it could have also been a week or month later. We just don’t know.
It doesn’t mention anywhere the word stable.
Christ might have been born in a stable, or he might have been born in a cave, or inside the house, or out on the porch, or on the roof (lots of those places had flat roofs where they hung out). We just don’t know. What we do know is that he wasn’t born in a palace. And that they laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room in the inn. An odd circumstance for a king.
Notice as well that there weren’t multiple inns.
It just says “the inn.” And if you look up that word in the Greek, it’s translated as “guest chamber” in the other spots where it’s used in Luke. So they could have been talking about the one guest room in the house where they were staying. Either way, we don’t have anything that says there was a mean innkeeper who later regretted turning the couple away or that Joseph went door-to-door looking for a place.
We have no record in the account of three wisemen.
It just says “wisemen.” So there might have been two of them. Or twelve. We don’t know. And it appears they came sometime after Jesus had been born because they first saw the star of his birth in the east and only then set out to find him. They might have been coming from Persia, hundreds of miles away. Or they could have been living in Bethphage, a mile to the east of Jerusalem. Either way, they didn’t know they should travel to Bethlehem because it says they went and talked to Herod first, in Jerusalem, and asked “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”
The question freaked Herod out (if you’re the current king, you kind of want to know who else is claiming your throne), and so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes to discuss it, and those guys said the prophecies said it would be Bethlehem. And so Herod met with the wisemen again and told them to go there. And only then did they go down to Bethlehem. So it doesn’t appear the wisemen were there the night of the birth.
There’s no record of camels hanging out with the baby either. Or sheep. Or goats. There’s not a lot there. But what is there is interesting.
Now, I want to go on record stating I have no problem speculating about the event and imagining what it might have been like. I love to do it. Good grief, I write fiction.
In fact, for many years I figured I needed to get in on the Christmas noun gig. You know what I mean. Every year we get heart-warming books about new Christmas nouns. We’ve had Christmas sweaters, Christmas jars, Christmas boxes, Christmas candles, Christmas carols. This year I see there’s one about Christmas fudge and other about a Christmas train. So I figured I’d do one. Mine would be about the Christmas rat. A little fellow who decided to snuggle up with the babe instead of giving him a nibble. One of these days I will get that hungry rat story written.
In the meantime, while there’s a lot of good stuff we’ve added to make the event special, it’s also nice to know what the record actually does say. Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s helpful when dealing with others to know what was recorded about this event that is so significant to the largest religion in the world.
And so the last bit of good stuff I recommend this month are the two brief accounts we have. The first one is in Matthew 2:1-16and tells the story of the wisemen. The other is in Luke 2:1-20 and features some shepherds.
My youngest’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year. We asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go to a hotel to swim and then play a game as a family, so Nellie and I went to work. Nellie got the game. I got the hotel. Both were great.
We also had a great time at the Park City Peaks hotel. As far as rooms go, they were good rooms. The bed was a bit too soft for me, but perfect for my wife. We got them for $65 a night, which isn’t bad at all. But it was the pool that made the experience. 
Most of the time when you go to hole-in-the-wall restaurant, it’s a hole-in-the-wall.
Radio and TV have incredible power. But until the last decade they were always constrained by time and signal power. You had to listen when the station broadcast it, and you had to listen where you could pick up the signal. 
