Christmas Links

Last year, I thought it would be nice to have a special Christmassy post up on Christmas day so anybody who found themselves online would have something fitting to read. But I didn't really have a lot of time to plan it out so I just posted links to previous entries on here that seemed to fit the meaning of the holiday. I took it down the next day because it seemed a bit silly to leave a post of links to my other posts laying around.

Then I decided to make a Christmas Link post an annual tradition. But from now on, I will be collecting links to other sites throughout the year and schedule the post to go up early Christmas morning.

Here are this year's offerings. Enjoy.

Stormy
A Gift to the World
10 Free Christmas Songs by MoTab
Rejoice and Be Merry: Nativity Play Music Video
Being a More Christian Christian
1 Free Christmas Song (O Holy Night) by Eclipse
Pay What You Want Christmas Album by Various Artists
First Presidency Devotional Archives

Picking Presidents

Several weeks ago I saw a message board thread titled Americans, who are you voted for President? I debated about whether to read it, as online conflict and vitriol tends to affect my mood in the real world, but for some reason decided to go ahead with it. Luckily it stayed civil throughout. But, anyway, the original poster asked whether Americans chose their president based on who would be best for the country or who would be best for the world. One of the posters responded by saying, "Time and again, people here in the U.S. of A. vote against their own interests, never mind the rest of the world."

Now, that could be a very insightful and accurate comment - after all, it can be hard enough to know what is best for yourself sometimes, let alone the whole nation. But that sort of comment is usually followed by an example - as I think it was in this case - of "After all, we elected Obama" or "We re-elected Bush". Implying, of course, that the commenter does know what would have been best for the nation.

A few years ago I mentioned social scientist John Gottman and his book 7 Principle for Making Marriage Work. At one point in Gottman's book he quotes another book, After the Honeymoon by Dane Wile.

Paul married Alice and Alice gets loud at parties and Paul, who is shy, hates that. But if Paul had married Susan, he and Susan would have gotten into a fight before they even got to the party. That's because Paul is always late and Susan hates to be kept waiting. She would feel taken for granted, which she is very sensitive about. Paul would see her complaining about this as her attempt to dominate him, which he is sensitive about. If Paul had married Gail, they wouldn't have even gone to the party because they would still be upset about an argument they had the day before about Paul's not helping with the housework. To Gail, when Paul does not help, she feels abandoned, which she is sensitive about, and to Paul, Gail's complaining is an attempt at domination, which he is sensitive about.

So, basically what this passage is showing is that whoever you choose to marry, there will be problems. The same with presidents - nobody could be perfect at every aspect of running a country. We see what's wrong with the country now, but how do we know what things would be like if we'd elected Gore or McCain? Of course, I'm not saying that it doesn't matter who we marry or elect. We do need to think carefully about those decisions. But once we make our choice, it's made and for now are stuck with it. If things are really bad we can change, but good reasons for divorce and for ousting a president are not incredibly common.

But electing presidents is very different than choosing who to marry in many ways, one of which is that we have a scheduled time to choose a president again. If did that all the time with marriage it could lead to stress and unhappiness for just about everybody who mattered in our lives. So now we are making the president decision again. And I think that for this election you don't need to think about who we should have picked 4 or 8 or 12 years ago- think in the situation we are in now, and with the knowledge we have now, who do I think is the best choice for the next 4 years?

Testing

I'm conducting a little experiment here to see if a post scheduled for months in the past and then published will show up in my followers' feeds. So, does it? At the top or where it fits chronologically? If you have trouble commenting on this post for whatever reason then just use some other post.

Little Influences

Every so often I find myself saying a word or phrase I never used to use or performing some little task slightly differently than I used to, immediately reminding me of the friend who I picked it up from.

Then yesterday I started wondering: do these same friends pick up little phrases or gestures from me? If so, what?

Stake Conference

Last week was stake conference.

A lot of people don't go to stake conference. I've known that for a while, but this year our stake president really pointed it out to us. The week before he visited our sacrament meeting to urge everybody to go, citing some sort of statistic about how many usually go compared to the number attending sacrament meeting on an average Sunday. Then during the general session of conference, he talked about how he would like to have the perfect stake; how cool it would be to have buses show up to take us all to establish Zion or something like that, with our temple recommends as our tickets. But only 1 out of every 3 adults in the stake has a current temple recommend, and 4 out of every 5 stake members weren't at conference. That is, 33% of adults have a recommend, for which they must attend their meetings to be worthy. And some members who don't have the recommend still attend regularly. But only 20% attend the Sunday morning session of stake conference.

We are told that partaking of the sacrament is the most important thing we do on Sunday. And maybe that's part of why some people think skipping conference isn't such a big deal; they aren't administering the sacrament, so we're already missing the most important thing anyway. But the way I see it, if we are regularly required to skip the sacrament, there must be a good reason for it.

So if something is so important that it's worth skipping the sacred ordinance of the sacrament, isn't it important enough that we should make it a point to be there?

Half Herself

Lots of people love Anne Shirley from the Anne novels by L. M. Montgomery. Some love the books, some the movies. I'm a book person myself, which should come as no surprise to people who know me well. But I love Emily Starr and the Emily books more.

One thing that comes up in them every so often bothers me - Emily is often referred to, by herself and by others, as being half Murray - the Murrays being her mother's family. I don't see it that way. Emily has as much Murray blood, as much Murray DNA, as she does Starr blood and Starr DNA. She had more Murray socialization than Starr socialization, her father's relatives being absent from her life; about as much of her upbringing was as a Murray as was Starr. She is not half Murray - she is Murray in all but name.

My Holley and Leavitt cousins are not half Howes; they are Howeses. I do not see myself as being half Wagstaff. I am a full member of Wagstaff clan. The only reasons I don't go by both names are tradition and to keep my name from becoming too unwieldy- Marissa Howes Henderson Wagstaff Willie or Marissa Willie Wagstaff Howes Henderson is way too long for forms and databases, and each generation you go back would double the number of attached surnames. You need to cut off somewhere and the closer to me the cutoff comes the better, so far as length is concerned. But each of the families represented in those names, even if those names are not part of my name, are equally part of my identity.

To High School Seniors

This past Thursday I saw an ad that stuck with me. I don't know what product it was trying to sell -  I only saw it for a couple seconds. But what I did see of the ad went something like, "Make your senior year last forever with this deal that won't." And my automatic thought to that?

Please don't.

If you've managed to progress all the way to the twelfth grade, hopefully you have realized that it would be impossible to make the year last forever. But more important to my thought process is that as much as I enjoyed high school (and I did) I would hate to be back there. Because there is so much more to experience.

So, high school seniors, enjoy your year. Participate in your clubs and go to your dances and all that stuff. Then, after you graduate, move out and move on. Live with roommates. Stay at your friend's place talking until it gets so late that you're too tired to walk back downstairs to your own apartment so you just sleep on her couch, knowing that your roommates won't be too concerned if you show up sometime the next day. Eat cookies for breakfast because that's all you have in your dorm room and there isn't time to stop by the dining hall if you want to get to your scheduled final on time. Or eat cookies and crackers for breakfast in bed just because that's what looks good and bed is comfortable (this course of action is best performed if you intend to be changing your sheets soon, but if you don't... hey, live and learn).

Sure, at first you may miss having Mom do your laundry and cook your meals. But eventually, you just may discover that the freedom that comes from being the one to decide what gets washed when more than makes up for the extra burden of the chore. And that ready-made meals aren't too much to sacrifice in order to be the one who decides what to eat and when to eat it - even more when you make the lasagna and green beans than when you munch on a bag of potato chips and a brownie and call that dinner.

Seriously. It happens. And it feels good.