We all knew this day would come, but now it seems so sudden . . .

Ethel Ohlin Bradford  April 16, 1917 – November 21, 2017

Ethel recently had a health set back and after a few days in a care facility, she has left us to join the majority in the next room.   In our mortal world, a giant vacuum now looms where she stood, but we know she is on the good path, and watches over us now with joy.    Here are some of her words, written in preparation for this day.

            My childhood was spent on a small Murray farm and there was no way for me to know how blessed I was. I had freedom to roam and two favorite sites remain in my memory. One, being high in a backyard tree, ensconced with apples, raisins and books; and the second, out in the cool, shady cornfield with the same trio of companions.

     Life was good in those cool, private retreats where body, mind and spirit were nourished, and I mourn that children today have no such places to explore.

            My teen years were the time of The Great Depression, when there was no money, clothes hand-me-downs, and our meals almost entirely home-grown. I wouldn’t wish such experiences on anyone, but my generation survived, and were strong enough to man the Armed Forces and triumph in WW 2.

             My first job was as a Comptometer Operator in the Payroll Dept. of Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph, which covered Utah, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Nevada.  

             My husband was employed by the U.S.A. during WW2, at Hanford, Washington, and unknowingly helped build the Atomic Bomb.

            We returned to Murray at War’s end, and I worked for James “Jim” and Bette Cornwell at the Murray Eagle newspaper, became Women’s Editor of their “Green Sheets”; Columnist (Out My Window); and feature writer.
  
Friends were scattered around the world, and though many have died, I remain in touch with others. for email has made the world a village.

            Metaphysics became a large part of my life, and wrote, lectured at classes and seminars throughout Utah, including the UofU, taught classes at Utah State Prison, was a witness at the Bishop execution, and counseled many on a one-to-one basis.

           With Beverly Wheeler Mastrim’s art, and my words, we created the book, “The Sunset of the Farmer”. There are few still alive who experienced that life, and so, before it became only hearsay, we told in words and pictures how this valley once was.

       Other books of mine are: “Our Road”, (tales of the people of the Taylorsville-Murray-Holladay Road); “Murray, A Tale of Two Cities”; “Our Road II; and “Extra Innings”. Others always in the making.

            And now I’m stepping into unfamiliar territory and shiver, but know I’m on an eternal Pathway that leads me back to The Source, and rejoice to know that, as Fellow Travelers, we’ll meet somewhere along The Way, and know each other again.      

2017

Ethel Ohlin Bradford

Most retailers can wait until Halloween is over, other’s can’t.  I even saw “Christmas in July” on a shopping channel this summer.  Either way and in any case, the barrage of holiday advertisements and messaging is upon us.  So this is Ethel’s wish to us all to keep the important things up front, and remember to love.

We’ve spent our lifetimes being programmed by others as to what Christmas is.  We are all barraged daily with messages from elevator music to junk mail, and heaven help anyone who watches TV or has a phone.  There is a reason they call it “programming”  and it starts with $.

Well here is a Holiday message from Ethel.  Imagine a group of people, together, (with the TV and electronic devices off) sharing a meal and themselves.

Thank thee Lord, for food prepared,

Thank Thee, Lord for love that’s shared.

Bless Thou the Cup,   Bless Thou the Bread

Thy Blessings, Lord, upon each head.

Amen.

Best wishes, and let this spirit be the guide for your holidays . . .

Not superstitious?

Well, maybe so, maybe so, but…have you ever felt a qualm about raising an umbrella while inside the house? Wished upon-a-falling-star? And before we became wise enough not to smoke, did you know people who would never light a third cigarette on one match, but would toss the match aside, light another, while shaking their head and murmuring “Three-on-a-match, you know.”

So, where did they start? Course, no one can be sure, but researchers in ancient lore believe wishing-on-a-falling-star originated with the Star of Bethlehem, and while That Star didn’t fall, its light most certainly did, o’er all the earth, too.

The three-on-a-match fear came into being during the Crimean war when the men realized that if a match remained lit long enough for three ‘smokes’ to be lit, it also gave the enemy time to zero their guns on the target.

Knocking-on-wood dates back to the Druids whose gods lived in trees, and so when they wished for good fortune, they knocked on the trees to alert the Druids of their needs, just as we knock-on-wood to ward off disfavor today.

An interesting side-light of this tree superstition is our Christmas trees. In the darkest days of winter, when the sun was in evidence only short hours a day, the ancient Druids retired to the forest and prayed to the tree gods to let the sun linger longer.

And, ya know what? They were right, for immediately afterwards the sun slowly did light the sky for a longer time each day. This was also, it’s said, for the beginning of a tree being taken to the house in the deep of winter for ‘worship’.

Friday is considered the unlucky day of the week and when it coincides with thirteen, it’s murder. Adam and Eve ‘fell’ on a Friday, the Flood came on that day and so did the confusion at Babel. the death of Christ, and there were thirteen at the Last Supper.

And the result is so strong that people bow to it today, and many a high rise building has no 13th floor. Of course the numbering systen goes from the Twelfth floor to the Fourteenth, but the busy people who use those buildings today, don’t stop to count, they just know their apartment or business is not cursed with being on the 13th floor.

No less a personage that Winston Churchill, the man who saved the Free World during WW !!, refused to travel on Friday the thirteenth and insisted on bringing any handy person to make the diners at a table number 14. He also, if he couldn’t find anyone to join them, would ask some unlucky person to leave the table to reduce the number to 12.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, our President who worked side by side with Churchill for long hours, days and weeks, secretly told friends,  that getting around that number 13, with Churchill took a lot of maneuvering. Even to how many hours in flight or aboard ships.

Do you cover your mouth when you yawn? Say “God bless you” when someone sneezes? Well, way, way back our ancestors believed our souls were in our very breath and so, when we sneezed we stood in danger of spewing out our souls and suddenly finding ourselves dead.

And in close relationship. they feared yawning and while we cover our gaping mouths as a social nicety, they covered theirs to keep ‘evil’ spirits from being sucked in with the sudden intake of breath that accompanies the yawn.

Superstitions are far from being musty relics of the past. New ones are as contemporary as garden weeds. Which is quite apparent when you think how many ‘Lucky Charms’ are made, sold, worn and toted around by people every day of the year. And on TV shows where money can be won or lost, it’s common for the contestants to have a Lucky something or other, in their pocket or hand.

But you aren’t superstitious? Better give it a second thought cause chances are, in some way, we both are.

As I get older  (Way older, you just try being 100 and then tell me what you think about it!), the moments become more precious.  Here’s one of my old columns that says it well . . .

Sometimes the days, hours or moments we ‘waste’ turn out to be the ones we remember for the rest of our lives.  We think of all the chores we could be doing and feel it’s ‘wrong’ to occasionally do nothing but look, relax and experience the joy of  life itself.

I remember just such a day.  Two small boys were going wild with the joy of the first really warm day of summer and were constantly calling me to, “Oh, Mommy, come and see”.  And smart enough to know that they wouldn’t always want me to ‘Come and See”,  I put aside my dust cloth, broom and cookpot and together the three of us roamed the fields and pasture. Fields now fenced off and the cow-pasture that became the Mick Riley Golf Course.

I can re-live that day right now.  They showed me certain ‘special’ rocks they found, we peered into  bird nests, watched bees drone in the sun, found tiny hidden flowers and ate our lunch on the warm slope of the hill.

Ah, the chores I left unfinished that day are long ago forgotten and  whatever I fixed for that night’s dinner matters not,  but how the three of us spent that day has become one of my most precious memories. A ‘wasted’ day?  Don’t tell that to any parent who has taken the time to walk, listen and watch while their children still want them ‘to come and see what I’m doing’.

I remember another ‘wasted’ summer day long before that, when my own mother scolded me because she had looked for me and worried when I couldn’t be found.  I was far too young and unknowing to even try to explain, but just the same, I can still see where and how I spent that time. And no matter how many office buildings have been built in  that spot, I still have my memory.

Yes, I can still see the Cherry tree at the head of two rows of Currant Bushes.  The grass grew high (Well, it was high for a four or five year old) between the bushes, and I played the hours away in their seclusion.  The Cherry tree had a pungent odor I would still  know, and my cheeks pucker even as I write these words and recall the sweet-tart taste of the ripe currants I stuffed into my mouth.

But how could a child tell her upset mother she was just taking her first real look at God’s world and finding it good?  The truth is, the child didn’t know what she was doing.  Just aware that the day had been satisfying beyond anything she had before known.

I also remember when, as a young bride, I ‘wasted’ a few minutes, made extra work for myself, but found unforgettable beauty.

I had hurried out to bring in the my laundry from the clothes line, as a rain storm was near.  With the frantically gathered linen in my arms I turned to hurry back into the house, when I noticed black billows of clouds tumbling and pouring down the ravines of Mt. Olympus, looking like big billows of black whipped cream being poured from some height, and I stopped in my tracks, dead still, and watched.

The wind whipped my hair and clothes and big rain drops came and wet me and the sheets and towels in my arms, but the violent beauty  of the eastern mountain became etched on my mind.  The work of once more drying the linen is forgotten, but the storm’s beauty is still mine.  ‘Wasted’ time?  You know better.

Oh, it’s easy to scold the young lad who has stopped in the middle of lawn cutting to stand and dream, with the warm sun on his back, and the cool lawn at his feet. But who knows?  He just might be seeing the world in a new way,  and that moment of seeming idleness, a moment he’ll treasure years from now when his whole world has changed, and he’d like nothing more than just to be that  boy again with nothing to do but mow the lawn.  And have dreams.

‘Wasted’ moments????  Ah, these aren’t the wasted ones.  I’ve forgotten forever the many tasks of  cleaning rooms and preparing thousands of meals, but the ‘wasted’ hours I spent amid Mama’s  bushes and the day with two little boys at play in the pasture that is now also gone forever,  will be with me to the end of my days.

The Old Order Hath Changed.

                 Wow!  How the old order hath changed, for with the first nippy air heralding the coming of winter, I realize again that people “don’t get ready for winter” anymore.

Not too many years ago (Come on, now, who’s counting?) but this area was  very rural, and, “Hello, are you ready for winter?” was the common greeting.  And, as a kid at home, it seems that one of Mom and Dad’s first considerations of late summer was “to get in the coal”.  How else did one cook and keep warm?

At one time we had a coal shed and it was piled clear to the rafters when “the coal came”.  Later on, with house reconstructions,  Pop had it slid into the basement coal room, but either way, with the first blast of winter, everyone wanted to have stored all the coal they’d need for the long months ahead.

Mom always bought flour for the year, too.  I still don’t see the wisdom of this, but the big 50 lb. sacks of flour would arrive (of course everyone baked their own bread) and my parents would carefully store the flour in the cool attic on a special framework Dad had made for them.  Maybe flour and coal were cheaper in the summer.  I don’t know and who is there now left to tell us???  I can only give hints.

Putting up fruit kept our mother in a turmoil of work for at least six weeks in the late summer and early fall and it was this child’s delight to step to the basement and see the long shelves filled with the glorious colors of the fruit, pickles, sauces and tomatoes she ‘bottled’.  To me it meant good eating in the months to come and I was always glad when it snowed, for until then, Mom wouldn’t let us start using that good stuff.  It was food for winter, not summer or fall.

Pop built outside Root Cellars, too, and they were common to this area then.  Long trenches were dug, lined deeply with fresh clean straw and then vegetables, winter pears and apples were stored.  More straw covered the raw food and a deep layer of soil went over the top.  “Chimneys’ were built to ventilate the warm, buried food.

The idea was to keep everything cool enough to stay crisp but warm enough not to freeze and the idea was great.  The trouble was, however, that in the dead of winter,  getting through a foot of snow, to that frozen over-lay of  soil, then through the stiff, frozen straw and finally to the goal of it all, the vegetables snugly buried safely underneath.

It was a good trick also, to go for carrots, delve down through the three layers of snow, soil and straw, into the depths for where you were positive the carrots were, and instead find you had ‘hit’ parsnips, apples or cabbage.  Somehow nothing looked the same once snow arrived and the markers put up so carefully in the fall had a different look in the middle of January.

Besides that, it was always so darn cold that no one (well, it was always Dad’s job) wanted to take time to really survey the place.  Just dig, grab, cover again in the right order and then get back into the warm house.  And, something no one spoke of, but by the time winter was over, everything ‘down there’ tasted and smelled like the protective straw.  Oh well.

Just the same, to the child that I was, listening to the adults talk, I felt winter was a terrible threat that was held in abeyance only by Dad and Mom’s preparation of getting “ready for winter”.

Mom, with her chests full of clean quilts and blankets, basement shelves filled with fruit, and for heaven’s sake, I almost forgot, our winter long-arm and long-legged  underwear, dresses, jackets, coats, hats, pajamas, and mittens (not gloves), boots  and whatever else cold weather demanded.

That phrase, ‘Getting ready for winter’,  was a safety buffer to me and I felt nothing could harm me when I’d hear Dad say,   “Yes, we’re ready,”  in reply  to some neighbor’s query.  Upon hearing those three simple words, some spot within me relaxed for with them I knew all was right and safe with my world.

When you’ve been raised that way, that question was hard to put aside, for without all that work, preparation and storing away, who and what was to protect one from that Demon called Winter??

And, today, I watch two of my neighbors (their tie to past is their own business, not mine)  but it’s satisfying and gives me a good feeling to know that there are those who, in their own way,  still follow the customs I once knew so well.

And by the way, “Are you ready for Winter”?  Or do you even give it a thought?  Much less a ‘second thought’.

Here is something I wrote years ago, but is ever relevant . . .  And nowadays, we ought to talk about addiction in wider terms.  Prescription drug abuse is rampant and who knows how many lives are wasted because of it.  Bottom line, respect yourself and watch for the danger signs of dependency.

Ten Simple Clues

In all the years that I’ve written a newspaper column “Out My Window” and now this blog of “From Out My Window”, I’ve repeated very few columns.  One is  of ‘Lilacs’  used  on Memorial Day, and  now the one I use today,  because two people have told me that my ‘questions’, as seen below, were eye-openers for them, and that just maybe they might do the same for another.

And there’s one more person I meet occasionally, a delightful person, but who, I’d be willing to bet, will become, or already is, an alcoholic.  I wanted to talk to him, but didn’t, for there would have been anger, and I’d have been told, truthfully, that it was none of my business.  But at one stage of my life I was active in AA, and while not alcoholic myself, I learned an awfully lot.

One was this list of the following questions and I’ve used them in many ways over the years because they were true then and are just as true today.

If you answer ‘Yes’ to even one of the following questions,  the chances are you have a problem, and if you answer “Yes” to three or more, you are an alcoholic.  It may take years before you admit it, but the course of the disease is relentless, constantly  down-hill and continues to worsen until admitted and faced.

Don’t tell your answers to anyone, but for your own sake, answer truthfully to yourself, and oh how I wish, hope, that even one person will read, and let them  make a difference.

1. Do you ever take a drink in the morning?
2. When people mention drinking do you walk away in anger, thinking they were speaking about you, and wish they would mind their own business?
3. Have you ever (secretly) felt that your life would be better and easier,  if you stopped drinking?
4. Have you ever said to yourself, “I can stop drinking anytime I want”, and then poured yourself another drink?
5. When having guests or going to a party, do you ever pour yourself a secret drink, before-hand, just to ‘get in the mood’?
6. Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or two, and then found yourself drinking again within one or two days?
7. Does your drinking ever cause trouble at home?  At school? On the job?
8. Do you ever have black-outs? Partial memory loss?
9. Have you ever gotten drunk when it was the last thing in the world you wanted to do?
10. Have you ever switched from one kind of liquor to another in hopes the change would keep you from getting drunk?

Simple, aren’t they?  But that simplicity is deceiving, and all the disbelief in the world won’t change the truth of them.  Or your answers.

Take Question 8.  A blackout doesn’t mean ‘passing out’.   Blacking out means that you were on your feet, talking, laughing, dancing, or whatever,  but the next day you can’t remember one thing of what happened.  You ‘blacked out’ and it’s a mean thing, for no one there would have seen one thing odd in your behavior.

Now, it doesn’t help if a spouse or parent recognizes these traits and tries to help by telling you.  The one who has the disease will fight back, maintaining ‘there is no problem’,  (See No. 4) and, anyway, ‘living with you would drive anyone to drink’.
And if No. 7 is brought up, it will always be someone else’s fault.  Always, always, always, and never, never, never, theirs.

But thank heavens today we all know about alcoholism from TV, internet, radio or magazines.  You will find AA meetings in your own neighborhood, across town, or if you wish to be truly anonymous, there are groups which absolutely insist upon it.  Where even  your Last Name is forbidden from use and Nick-Names only allowed.

It’s not an easy journey, but the sooner the alcoholic recognizes the disease, and only then, can it be controlled.   And, as I once learned, it is not a case of just the alcoholic needing help, but everyone whose life has been closely touched also needs help.  Which is why meetings for the non-alcoholic partner, teens, adults and even for adult children of alcoholics are well attended.

It’s a mean, progressive disease, and if someone recognizes the disease and stops drinking, but, years later decides one small drink would do no harm after all this time, they’ll find it  one  horrible mistake, for the disease progresses whether you drink or not, and that ‘first drink’ doesn’t react as it did years before, but in a far more terrible way, and stopping far harder to do.  It’s nothing to play games with.  At all.

As I said, I quite often get requests for these words to be repeated, and I hope that the one I met so briefly, will get the help that is now so easy to find.  Miracles do happen, you know, and my trust in such is why I now,  and again repeat my words, at the beginning of what is usually a time of heavier than usual casual, social drinking, and that my words just might help at least one such person.  Cross your fingers.  Mine are.

It’s all around if we but notice . . .

ESP is so commonplace that we don’t blink an eye about it. We know it’s Extra Sensory Perception, the Sixth Sense, but it’s different from the other five, Taste, Hearing, Smell, Touch, Sight, where no explanation is needed. It’s been called Gut Instinct, Third Eye, Hunch, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Precognition and ad infinitum, but that still doesn’t tell us what it is.

However, when it hits, we need no explaining. One time I answered my phone and it was Margaret, from Seattle. Our acquaintance was so casual that I wondered why she’d called, but as she was getting ready to say goodbye, she asked if I knew where Florence could be reached.

“No,” I answered, “I haven’t seen or heard from her for over a year.” And she said, “Well, take down my phone number and if you happen to see her, tell her to give me a call.”

Now, hearing from Florence was so unlikely that I almost didn’t write down the number, but I carelessly scribbled it, while knowing I’d garbage it within a day or two.

However, believe it or not, before I even moved from the phone, it rang again, and yes, and you have already guessed that, of all people, it was Florence. She, too, had no real reason to call me, and it amazed us both when I told her what had just happened and she said, “Yes, I do need to talk to Margaret and had no idea how to do it, but, really, Ethel, I wasn’t thinking of her when I called you.In a daze I sat there and felt as if I had been used as a tool  by someone or something. Because, with no conscious thought, I had been the connecting link between two people who needed to reach each other and didn’t know how. It has remained one of those things that puzzle me to this day.

Another ESP ‘thing’ that we disregard, but if we live around animals, we know they have it.   Tales abound. My brother-in-law Jake had a Dachshund, and they read each other’s minds, and when Jake was returning from being gone for a day or week, that dang dog sensed his coming and sat by the door, and when he began jumping up and down and whimpering, Gram knew Jake was near. And he was. Again, don’t ask me how it happened, but it did.

There was a time when there were Milkmen, who, using horse-drawn wagons. delivered our milk early in the a.m. and the tales told are many. It took but a week or so, for the horse to ‘know’ the route and so the man could leave the ‘stops’ up to the horse and he could nap, read, whatever, and the horse would stop at the right places.

As a young man my Granddad, as all men did, had a horse, and he said that at night, and no matter where he was in the valley, he could go to sleep and the horse would take him home.

And there’s the life-saving tale of a man on horseback, who lived in Bennion, when the valley’s west side was entirely open fields and, he got caught one night when an unexpected blizzard hit.

Blinded by snow and freezingly cold, he knew he could never find his way home, and so  put his life in the hands of God and his  horse.  He dropped the reins, gave his horse a ‘slap’  on its  rump,  huddled down to get any warmth he could get  from the back of the horse and, resigned his life to Fate. Within  half an hour they were at the barn and safe..

Without lights or other landmarks,  the man was helpless but the horse knew where they were. Whatever ESP is, it’s hard to prove, that is, if it needs proving. It isn’t scientific, but far, far more than that, and don’t ask me to tell you ‘how’, because I can’t. I only know that it always was and still is.

The brain, as well as the heart, stomach, lungs, kidneys and on and on, can be weighed for size, heft and dissected, But the Mind? It uses the brain, but it is not the brain. And so vital that, no matter how good a body, or how much money one has, without the Mind we are just a body, nothing more.

Traveling the inward pathway to the Mind is the longest journey we’ll ever take.   But, so often without our permission or request, it uses me and it uses you and if you ever find out what ‘it’ is, tell me. But in the meantime and whatever it is, isn’t it great?????

A Utah town of any name would be the same

        If you know your Pioneer ancestor was born right here in Zion, and yet the town listed on the Birth Certificate, can’t be found, take heart, you’re not alone.

Original Pioneer farms were far apart and the name, was either  for the first family there, or for some outstanding feature of the area.  Changes came fast and were no big deal.

My husband’s Birth Certificate shows him born in the family home, still in the same place, but on 1700 South.  Today, same place, same road, is 4800 South.  See?

Brigham Young had a marvelous plan for naming the streets, starting from a point at the southeast corner of the Mormon Temple grounds and going all four directions from that spot.  He divided the land into Blocks, and going south, every Block went from First South, to Second, Third,  Fourth and ended at Ninth South, because that’s where civilation, and the city ended.

Every foot of land  beyond was considered desert, but when  some man began a farm a few miles south, no matter how far,  it became 10th South, and the next farm, with no surveying,  became 11th South’    And so, at one time, 4800 South was  the eighth street  south of that original boundary of 9th south.   And the chaos of  road being created in between and  so forth,  you can   imagine the headaches it all creatated. 

And then there is Redwood Road with nary a tree or a  family named Redwood anywhere near.  Well, Jess W. Fox, Surveyor of the Mormon Grounds, was asked to draw plans for a road from North Temple Street south to where 21st South now is.  He did, and named it Campus Lane, but no one liked  that, so they tried Fairbanks, which didn’t stick, either.

Finally ‘Redwood’, the nick-name the workmen had used from day-one, became official.  Thousands of  Surveyor’s Pegs were needed to lay out that road, and those pegs were made from Redwood trees because that wood could withstand the hard pounding needed  to drive them into cement-like ground, as well as hold up under all kinds of weather. 

And so, the laborers who did the work, also named the Road.  And good for them,  it became and still is  known as Redwood Road. 

Mormon Wards were the center of Pioneer life, and were usually named after the predominant  family,  and when a ward  became too large, it was divided.  Many families settled west of the Jordan River, and so West Jordan Ward  became its name.  But in 1867  it was divided into many smaller ones and the communities of Bluffdale, Riverton, Herriman, South Jordan, Granger, Taylorsville, Hunter, and Pleasant Green were formed.

Bluffdale was named after the high nearby bluffs above the Jordan Narrows, Taylorsville after the early Taylor family, and Brighton, at first Silver Lake, was named after Thomas W. Brighton who  built the first home at the top of  Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Alta, high up in Little Cottonwood Canyon,  was the site of a silver mine, and one of my uncles, Lethair (sp?) Goodall, died along with others in a snow slide there.  And, as many of the miners were Spanish, they used their word for ‘high’ , namely Alta, to mark the spot.  The mines and the miners are long gone, but the name, Alta, is known  throughout the world as a Ski Resort and I’d bet that only one in a thousand knows that ‘Alta’ is of Spanish origin.

Draper Ward opened in 1867, surveyed and planned by the same Jess Fox.  He divided the land into farms, numbered each one, put those numbers on slips of paper, and eligible men picked a slip from a hat Fox held, and, like it or not,  that was where they would live.  They called it South Willow Creek, but soon was re-named Draper after one of those early Settlers.  Willow Creek still lives on, but now just as  an area of the far southeastern part of our valley.

So. Cottonwood ward was divided, forming Union, after Fort Union; and Granite, after the rock mined nearby to build the Mormon Temple.   Once there were many  smelters in the valley with the one in Murray being the only one that continued through the years,  but one of them, built  upon sandy soil,  became the  Sandy City we know today.

I like the humor that often crops up in staid journals, and so, with apologies to who ever wants them, Sandy  was,  at that time, known as the Red Light District of the valley.  Right in a nice Mormon town, and journals  tell of it being   prosperous  villalgae, as well.       .

Midvale (another smelter town) was first known as Bingham Junction, later as East Jordan and finally,  because of  its location, Midvale.  Bingham received its name from brothers Sanford and Thomas Bingham who grazed their cattle in that canyon and staked out mining rights to the surrounding hills.

Franklin, a Railroad spot on the rails  running south from Salt Lake, soon became Murray City, after the territorial Governor Eli H. Murray.  Sugar House was named for a Beet Sugar Mill built  there, and  Magna is the Latin word for large, big, magnificent and so on and on and on.

So, if you KNOW your ancestors were born in this valley and yet their birth certificate shows some town you’ve never heard of, and isn’t on any map, don’t fret. Poke around, there were many small,  isolated spots with names that lasted so short a time they were never recorded, but nevertheless, that place was here.
Good luck.

Here we go again with Orin Hatch.  Five years ago I published the column below.  Unfortunately for us, it is still relevant today . . .

If Orrin Hatch’s words were true in 1976, then they are still true in 2017.

If you’ve felt buried by political ads now, what’s coming will be worse, but it’s also when we should seriously look at the records of those who seek to be our national voice.

I’m no puritan, but it actually does get down to who is telling the truth and who is not telling the truth.  The two are not copasetic, and truth, you remember, never changes.  Now Romney and his many words are beyond me, too full of ‘what I really meant to say’ and ‘you read me wrong’ but we have absolute records of what Orrin Hatch said as he sought his first Senate Seat, and what he’s saying today.

There is a difference, and if his words were true when he spoke them against his opponent, Frank E. Moss, then those same words must be true today.   I go  back.

Frank E. Moss, his opponent in 1976, was born Jan. 29, 1903, grew up in Holladay, the son of James E. Moss, an educator who was named ‘The father of Utah High school athletics’.  Frank grew up in a home filled with words and actions of law and education.

He graduated magna cum laude (UofU, 1933), and then served FDR at the NRA (National Recovery Administration), and other national federal groups to aid in National Recovery from the Great Depression, and then during WW2, (1942 to ’45), served  with the Army Air Corps in the Judge Advocates General Dept. in European Theatre of Operations.

Not a bad intro to his political life, both local and federal, and in 1958 was elected as Utah Senator against both Arthur Watkins and J. Bracken Lee, each mighty forces in Utah politics.

As Utah’s Senator in Washington, he added more National Parks within Utah; investigated and aided in eliminating  control of abuses to the elderly in Nursing and Retirement homes; Physicians’ abuses of the Medicaid program; and with Senator Church of Idaho sponsored first legislation to provide Federal funds for hospice programs.  That Bill did not pass Congress until 1982, but his ideas held and were included in Medicare benefits.

In his Third Term he sponsored detailed Warning Labels on cigarette packages; banned their advertisements on radio and TV; the Toy Safety Act; and was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

He was a hero to people of small towns and rural areas, for, in the beginning, and at first, television station signals were available only (if you can imagine) where there were major marketing areas, namely the highly populated places, with great consumer possibilities. Moss was instrumental in getting funding to make it possible for all small towns and rural areas with ‘few’ consumers, to receive the same TV transmissions.  He and his group helped found the great TV Translator system that provided television to the great rural areas of America.  It was a major battle in Washington, but he won it.

It was on his run for his Fourth Term in 1976 that Orrin Hatch opposed him, and Hatch’s strong points were how much Moss had accomplished, how much we owed him, but that he now was too old.  His mind no longer sharp and should be replaced, with thanks, by a younger man.  Himself.

Hatch won.  Now, as Orrin wishes to fill his fourth term, he does not mention age, born Mar. 22. 1934, so is 78 years of age, and 3 years older than Moss was at the same point in his career.  He refuses all requests for live TV debates, and dodges photos and off-the-cuff meetings with local or national press. Rumors in the gossip magazines (they’re not always wrong) tell that Hatch, Botox, and Senility have developed a close relationship.

He should recall his own words, spoken when he fought Moss, and admit that he is 3 years older than Moss then was.  An age he blatantly called too old to be a Senator.  Hatch no doubt also remembers what the live TV debate did to Nixon when he faced the nation against the young John Kennedy.  As they say, ‘he shot  himself in his own foot’.

If  Moss, dedicated and astute, but then 73 years old, was too old, then we’d better remember that Orrin is now 78, and for us to do exactly what he, Hatch, said then.  What do you call a Senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.”.  Yes, let’s give Orrin thanks for what he has accomplished, and then, (again his words), replace him with a man who is ‘younger, mind quicker, sharper and more in tune with this era of time”.

Orrin Hatch’s words were either true then, or true now.  He can’t have it both ways. One or the other is untrue.

If any of this rings true with you, please pass this along to others you know.

“. . .  change comes so slowly we don’t see it, except when we clip our fingernails.”

I was only a kid when I first saw the words. ‘Perpetual Motion’ and they were on a large outdoor sign and,  with my interest piqued, I’ve listened as it’s been debated on radio, TV and in magazines. But I first saw them when Dad was taking the family on a Sunday ride to see the Countryside,

And, as an aside, exactly when and where did the countryside go??? Is it still there under concrete waiting for you to re-discover and give it back to us? Oh, that’s for another day.   Perhaps another life time, for if we dug it up, where would we put all the discarded concrete and the people living there?????

But, my words, today, are my answer to the subject of what or where is Perpetual Motion and which, for some reason, I’ve listened to ever since I learned how to read., and that’s been more than a year or two.

Those childhood rides however, formed memories I recall with wonder and love.. There were no Freeways, just two-lane roads winding across and around large corn or wheat fields, with barns, chicken coops, and old fashioned outside toilets a familiar sight.. But also, large companies would pay the farmer for permission to put large signboards there in his fields, and the names of ZCMI, AUERBACH’S, KEITH O’BRIEN, PEMBROKES, PARIS CO. and , as I said, PERPETUAL MOTION. were placed there to lure us to their stores.   It was a different countryside, which slowly changed into what we have to day. Priceless.

But at that time scientists were constantly seeking to find some machine to produce Perpetual Motion. And over and over we would hear of that search, but no one, as far as I know has done so. And last week, I laughed over a few of my old notes, for they are my answer to Perpetual Motion, But as you know, I have lots of ideas . . . . of my own.  So . . . .

Change, I’ve come to believe, is Perpetual Motion. Change, everything is changing,   And no matter what we look at or even think of, is changing. And while I’m no ‘brain’, I still have my days and even have a book about Einstein that I get out occasionally. And, that genius never spoke of God, but did speak or write of some Power that is the Source of all and called it The Essence of pure energy. Ever-changing, but never disappearing.  Einstein’s words, not mine.

And so, I searched for more of his words (good old Google) to find if he spoke more of how Energy is ever changing, but never disappearing, and no doubt he did . . . . but in words that are beyond my scope. However the thought remained with me, that the only perpetual motion in the world, no matter when, where or how, is Change.

From the most minuscule part of an atom . . . . change. Water, ever changing from steam, cloud, ocean, urine, ice, glacier, to the Soup Pot on my kitchen stove. Form after form, but basically, water. Then there’s our entire Planet of rock, sand, animal, leaves, all changing slowly from one form to another. Universe, planet, moons, stars, changing . Trees, wild or tame animals, plants, seeds, dry leaves, excrement. The same basic material, but never the same. Change, change, change.

I gotta think about this one, and you smart ones who might stumble upon my words, give it a thought. This world and all that’s in it, is changing. Is it the long sought answer to Perpetual Motion????.   So simple, so commonplace??? Maybe too simple? Maybe too commonplace? So simple and commonplace that we never consider it.

But, like it or not, all we are, see, or hold, is changing, even as we look upon ir. Our hair, toe nails. People were discussing the earthquakes of a week or so ago, and one stated that the earth, deep down under Nepal moves each year, the distance of how much your fingernail grows in the same length of time. But that small change, builds up, until it eventually shifts the weight of the mountain side, and we have an earthquake.

The people who lived on this sphere thousands of years ago, with time and change, change, change, became you and me. And we, all who are living now,   are and will change, and slowly surely, become those who will  change the world of ‘then’.

Follow me???   We’re all part of it.

Change, Perpetual Change. Perpetual Motion. And you can answer back about that bane or blessing of today’s world . . . plastic . . . and in spite of what Thor Heyerdahl, who with companions crossed the Pacific on a raft, said the ocean, once you got 10 or so miles from shore, was so pure. Unchanged.

Then, only half a century later he and others took the same trip accompanied by scientists, and he wept as he said they never got away from the debris of plastic. All across the Pacific, California to China, was our discarded plastic garbage. But I again cynically say give it time and in a few thousands millennia the plastic will be gone, but, only because it will have changed into some new form of garbage.

To me, ‘Change’ is Perpetual Motion, and we are part of it. Right before our eyes, in our hands, and remember. our actual hands and eyes are part of it. Only it comes so slowly we don’t see it, except when we clip our fingernails.   But we need look no further, for we, you and I  and the entire world we live in and upon, are perfect examples of the very thing we seek. Perpetual Motion.