MMM

Tuesday morning at 8:30am we did an inspection of the apartment of the Sorelle beneath us. With four of them now, it seems they were inspired to arrange things a bit better, and it was very clean and well organized. We were able to fix a few things, such as burned out light bulbs in the bathroom mirror (I gave them mine and then Dee bought me replacements later), some newer pillows to replace a couple of lumpy old ones (we gave them some from our guest bedroom), cementing on a piece of marble baseboard that had broken off, and snaking out a bathtub drain. It was definitely a productive visit.

Having free time for the first time in several weeks, Dee went out to buy me a few things at the Chinese store and also to the open market to look at yarn :) I was home for what was left of the morning after all the handyman stuff (including some in our own apartment), working on my lesson. We got to the Institute in plenty of time to prepare for Taco Tuesday. After a few weeks of crazy attendance numbers, we're down to more normal levels, still up a good bit from several months ago. Alkmini, our nonmember from Greece, brought her sister, visiting from Luxembourg, and a friend from Malta. We love that.

After lunch, I holed up in the library for the rest of the afternoon, finishing my PowerPoint slides for the Institute lesson on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It is always a lot of work translating, trying to get the language right. I even had to skip choir practice because I wasn't quite done, but there was a pretty good group singing.

 

The Institute class went pretty well. Ugo took the first half hour or so, finishing his lesson from the prior week, and then I took about 45 minutes to discuss the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I started out with the statement that I was going to discuss the ugliest incident in the history of the church, then read a few paragraphs from the introduction to Juanita Brooks' biography of John D. Lee, where she didn't get around to interviewing one of the last surviving participants in the massacre when she was young. It's a complicated and horrible story, a perfect storm of tragedy, even though you can kind of understand (though not excuse) how it happened, given the historical context. Everyone seemed quite engaged, with a number of good questions and comments afterwards. I tried to give some examples of lessons we can learn.  For example, I recommended that, when you are in a group and somebody suggests doing something dumb or cruel, you should speak up forcefully and say "that's stupid!" and/or just leave. They really liked my quote that for every (young) man you add to a group, the collective IQ drops 10%.

When we got home, the SSD for Sister Magnanti's laptop had arrived, so I installed it and restored the image from a backup of the prior hard drive. Wednesday we are going to lunch at their place again, and I will give her the much faster (SSD-powered) laptop. Pretty fair trade for a good meal!

Dee writes: I tried a couple of new recipes. I like to have a treat after choir to help the young people hang around and socialize. First, I made a mixture of melted butter with parmesan, garlic powder and coarse salt and tossed it with a bag of potato chips, then baked it. They couldn't believe the hot chips and ate every crumb.
Then, I made Sunburst Lemon Bars, with a few modifications. They have a lemon glaze, and are soo delicious. Choir was very fast. We barely go over our individual parts, and I enjoy the challenge. It's just too bad we don't have enough girls. We usually have one young woman singing soprano, but who should probably be an alto. I sing the alto part alone. Five tenors, three bass. We need some females here, and not just for choir!