The Grandma Jar

Farm hand—Picker I started my work history as a farm hand. I picked cherries in Orem and raspberries for our neighbor Pete Christiansen. Raspberries are delicate and fall apart easily; especially when they’re warm so we picked the berries at 6:00 am. I don’t remember minding the berry picking but I hated the early hours. Pete Christiansen was a small lady from the Philippines. She had a green thumb and could grow anything. She watered her berries with irrigation water and once chased a water poacher with a large Philippine machete! Westwood Mink Ranch—Fleshing machine loader When I was growing up in Highland, Utah mink ranching  was a flourishing industry. Mink ranchers raised mink for their fur; mink coats were a coveted luxury purchased and worn by the world’s elite. Political correctness and animal rights advocates diminished mink’s popularity in the US in the 1980s but there is still a healthy mink fur market in China and Russia. Mink ranching is a year-round opera...

I was born April 18, 1954 on Easter morning. What was the world like the year I was born? Government: Dwight Eisenhower was president. Richard Nixon was Vice President.  The Supreme Court rules in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka to end segregation in public schools. Transportation: General Motors produces its 50 millionth car . Eisenhower proposes an interstate highway (freeway) system. Medicine: Harvard doctors perform the first kidney transplant operation. Life expectancy was 68.2 years. Sports: Sports Illustrated published its first issue. The Giants win the World Series. Religion:   David O. McKay was the prophet. His councilors were Stephen L. Richards and J. Rueben Clark. There were 1, 301, 240 members of the church; 219 stakes, 1,993 wards; 42 missions, 4,644 missionaries; 8 temples; 23 Book of Mormon translations.  The Pledge of Allegiance was modified; the line One Nation, Indivisible" beco...

What do you consider your greatest academic achievement? I thought long and hard about this question. I love academics. I earned an Associates degree from Salt Lake Community College in 2000. Steve and I graduated together and received our diplomas from Elder Dallin H Oaks. Elder Oaks was the keynote speaker at graduation but he didn't hand out the diplomas. Part way through the awards he stood up, delivered about 10 diplomas and then sat back down. I'm not sure why we were so luck. It may have been because Steve was the President of the college institute but never-the-less, it was a thrill. I graduated with Samantha from BYU in 2002 with a Bachelor's of English (Sam's degree was in History so she made me walk with the History department). In 2005 I graduate from BYU with a Master's Degree in English. I'm very proud of this accomplishment but the academic accomplishment I'm most proud of is passing math 105. My math love/hate re...

Every year I challenge myself by making New Year's resolutions --and every year I . . . But it's January 8, 2017, this year I resolve to be a better grandmother. I have lots of plans and one of those plans is to post every week to the grandma jar! Last week I was rifling through some family history material and found a pink notebook. I opened it to find a treasure beyond measure. Several years ago Mariann's girls gave Grandma Black (Eyvonne) a grandma jar. A grandma jar is a bottle filled with questions about one's life. In this notebook I found 66 pages of gold; 66 pages of mom's answers to these questions. She addressed the notebook to Marin, McKaida, and Marjorie but we are all blessed by her answers. As I typed up her answers it was as if God had given me a little more time with her--I felt her presence as I typed her words. I can't describe how much this notebook meant to me and so, once again, I'm renewing my effort to leave that type of legacy for...

Question for today: "What jobs have you had?" I start every semester explaining to my students that I've taught Writing at BYU for for 11 1/2 years. Working at BYU is the second best job in the world. The best job in the world is the one I had before that (and technically still have)--I was and am a mom. Being a mom requires a complex skill set. A mom is a chef, a chauffeur, a nurse, a teacher, a cheerleader, a psychologist, a philanthropist, a personal trainer--you get the picture. Nurse: Several years ago our family vacationed at Disneyland. In the middle of the night Stacy woke us complaining of severe abdominal pain. Sheldon and I rushed her to the nearest hospital (big mistake, but that's a story for another day), and John stayed at the hotel with Mylee and Tyler. After a long night, and some strong arming from Sheldon, the hospital performed a CT scan where they discovered that Stacy's intestines were leaking and she was clear full of infection. She wa...

This semester I'm teaching Freshman again after a break of several years. Freshman are very different from upper-classmen. Freshman are new to the University experience and unsure about expectations. In many ways they are unspoiled, less jaded, and more enthusiastic than upper-classmen. Most upper-classmen are a bit "trunky," they have their trunks all packed and they are ready to move out of the education realm and into the "real world." Anyway, I believe that the best way to learn to write is to write. I've assigned my Freshman students to take the 8 minute challenge. That means that they each must write for 8 minutes everyday. I don't care how they write; they can journal, create, blog . . . But they must write. As a symbol of good faith I'm accepting the challenge too and to keep me focused I'm resurrecting the Grandma Jar (again!). Watch for daily updates and upbraid me if I miss!

Question of the day: what are some lessons you learned from your parents? I've learned so many lessons from my parents but I'll mention a few. I learned service from both of my parents. Mother was always baking or cooking something to take to a sick or sorrowful neighbor. As a kid I was a bit of a smart alek and when I came home to a house full of delicious aroma's I'd ask, "who is that for!" Whenever there was a Ward welfare assignment Russell Black and his brood of (I was going to say willing children but that would be lying) children would be there to hoe beets, pick beans, move headgates--you name it we did it. I remember being reluctant then--I'm incredibly grateful now. One time one of the men in our ward (Russ Gerber) was really sick and they transferred him to LDS hospital in Salt Lake. At that time Russ's wife JoAnn didn't drive and dad would pick her up and take her to the hospital to see her husband every single night. It seems like th...