I decided to move this journal to a blog, so today this one ends and Top of the Mountains begins.

Visited my family yesterday. I played my song (the one I've been writing) for my little brothers, and my seven-year-old brother then played it (with a little of my help in showing him which notes to play -- he mostly sightread it, though). Well, half an hour later, I was in the other room with my mom when we heard my brother playing the song. But the sheet music for it was in my hand, so he was playing from memory. Quite a kid. :)

Rediscovered the LDSMusicians.com mailing list. I subscribed to it before my mission, but since I've been back I was unable to find it (at least on a cursory search). Also discovered LDSMusicNews.com.

Was called as the ward pianist today. It's nice to be able to play, because I don't have easy access to a piano during the week (at least not unless I go to school extra early or stay late), and I miss playing the piano really, really, really bad. :)

Spent several hours at the Family History Library up in Salt Lake researching my ancestors from Polanco (Santander, Spain). I also discovered all the language books they have up there -- quite a treasure trove.

I began reading Jane Eyre this evening. Before opening it, I had the thought that it would be dry nineteenth-century prose, the sort one wades through out of duty. But by the end of the first page I found I was wrong. The characterization is excellent (I've only read two chapters but already I feel like I know Jane rather well) and the prose itself is amazing (vivid but not verbose). Already Jane Eyre has become one of my favorites.

At the end of my New Testament class the other day my teacher made a profound comment that really struck me: Would I die for President Hinckley or any of the apostles? Certainly. Would I die for a good person (like any of my family or friends)? Without a doubt. But would I die for an odious sinner like Charles Manson? Would I take a bullet for Adolf Hitler? The thought is repulsive, but yet that's exactly what the Savior did. It blows my mind.

I'm thinking about majoring in English Language instead and minoring in both family history and editing (or linguistics). Still not entirely sure, but that's what I'm leaning toward.

Discovered the website of the Royal Institute of Thailand (they're the people who do the official Thai dictionary). Very neat, especially the PDFs they have on their site (there's one on the principles of romanization, for example).

I've started teaching myself hiragana and katakana (Japanese script). No plans to master kanji or anything like that, though. :) My linguistic interests faded away shortly after I got home from my mission, but a few days ago they flared back up again and show no signs of disappearing.

Found this neat quote from C.S. Lewis's essay "Transposition" (in The Weight of Glory: "Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. 'But,' she gasps, 'you didn't think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?' 'What?' says the boy. 'No pencil-marks there?' And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a tranposition -- the waving tree-tops, the light dancing on the weird, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother's pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.

"So with us. 'We know not what we shall be'; but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like pencilled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun."

Read a compelling article in BYU Magazine (Winter 2005) by Val D. Hawks that really gets the gist of how I view my standards: Looking Toward the Mark. Rather than finding excuses to allow more lenient behavior (a moral anesthetic if you will), we must stand firm in the path that Christ has set. As Dr. Hawks says, 'When those of the world say they are "pushing the limits" or "living on the edge," they are focused on relaxing or removing the limits of acceptable behavior. If we are using those limits as our guide, we will go down with them. We must not only not follow but remain immovable in taking the Holy Spirit as our guide and in a life patterned after Christ, who is our mark.'

I also really liked the Beggars article and the Reading for Truth article.

I've been home from my mission over six months now. Six months?!? It's amazing how fast time goes by. I still think about Thailand and my mission every single day. Miss it a lot. Those really were the best two years of my life so far -- the Thais are a wonderful people and serving them by preaching the gospel is an incredible experience. Over the past six months I've found that it's a lot harder than I expected to keep up on my language skills and keep in touch with my Thai friends, but I'm determined to keep at it because it's a core part of me now. Someday I'll go back to Thailand, of course, and hopefully will be able to return many, many times, but right now my financial and educational situation has me stuck here for a while. :)

Read a John Williams interview from Film Score Monthly. Pretty good. Also discovered JohnWilliams.org.

We got back on Monday. Downtown Las Vegas is a dark pit of evil, worse than I imagined. Anyway, I made burritoes from scratch today. My eventual goal is to make most of my meals from scratch (as much as possible), because it's cheaper, it's good to have cooking skills, and it's healthier.

Hugh Nibley died this morning. He was my role model in several ways...

My roommates and I are on our way to Las Vegas for the weekend. (Tyson is from there.) I want to start updating this site more often -- it seems to have died these past few months.

The other day I found a neat site on jazz improvisation (music theory): A Jazz Improvisation Primer, by Marc Sabatella. For my music composition class this week we're writing a rounded binary double-period piece using flute, clarinet, and cello. I imagine that someday I'll be writing music like John Williams... ;)

Hmm, not a single person has submitted a testimony to the Restoration Testimonies site. Not quite the result I was expecting.

I suppose I could update this journal more often if I simply put my mind to it, because it really doesn't take that long. :) Well, school's keeping me quite busy, as usual. This semester I'm taking three family history classes, a class called Family Life (which is based on the Proclamation on the Family), New Testament, and Music Composition. I'm working for the Center for Family History and Genealogy on the Immigrant Ancestors Project doing programming, graphic design, and other stuff. Still slowly learning guitar. Hmm, I need to start updating this site more often...

Taught myself how to play 'Edelweiss' and 'What Child Is This' on the guitar. The skin on the tips of my fingers is getting calloused already and it does hurt a lot, but now that I'm making music it doesn't seem to bother me anymore. Finally, improvement. :)

I'm pretty much better now (other than some weird constriction in my chest, but I think it too will be gone by tomorrow).

Found Hymns of the Heart, some articles by Orson Scott Card on writing hymns. Pretty cool.

Last night I ate some masaman curry that we had made on Sunday, then went to Bangkok Tokyo for our monthly Thai get-together a few hours later. Within five minutes of arriving at the restaurant, I made a desperate dash for the bathroom. Over the next hour and a half, I threw up ten times. Turns out I have staph food poisoning. Stayed home today and rested. I'm feeling somewhat better and have been able to hold down water, which is good.

Put together the Restoration Testimonies website.

Wow, it's been a while. :) I moved out on New Year's Eve and am now living in a house off campus with three of my mission buddies. School started on the 4th and has kept me quite busy. I'm now working for the Center for Family History and Genealogy. Hopefully I'll have more time to write in this, but so far it's been crazy. :)

Found a neat page on Brahms' thoughts on inspiration and creativity.

It's been a while. :) School ended (fairly well, for the most part), and I've been working full-time over the break. Spent two days working on the new Thai Testimonies page. I move out on Saturday (I'm rooming with some of my mission buddies) and school starts again on Tuesday. Oh, I got a guitar for Christmas, too.

Read this talk: Honest, Simple, Solid, True (by C. Terry Warner). It's about how to be free. (You'll see what I mean.) I read it on my mission and it changed my life quite remarkably.

Here's a quote on reading by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I stumbled across today: 'Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library -- a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.'

Four finals down, three to go. I spent a couple of hours tonight teaching myself how to play the recorder. :) It was far easier than I thought.

Last night I got a copy in the mail of the legislative petition by Robert and William Shanks in 1820. From it I learned that Robert and William were brothers (and had a third brother named John who fought against the British), that their father's name was James and was still living in Ireland at the time, and that Robert and his wife and three children arrived in America on 21 Aug 1817. I'm in the process of tracking down which ship arrived on that date. Success is not far away. :)

I found out yesterday that the local Asian market has durian, so today I went down there and got the last one ($6). It's sooooo good! The taste is the same, which is the best part. It's the Monthong variety, which means 'Golden Pillow.'

I've had the flu since Wednesday and have been home recuperating. It's not the most convenient time to get sick (the last day of class is this Thursday and then we're plunged into finals), but oh well.

I'm really busy with school and work right now, so work on this site will cease for the time being.

I've decided to forego guitar for now and focus solely on drawing. Spent a couple of hours in the evening reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and drawing from a picture of a mission buddy (which is now Elder in the Gallery).

Got a Laotian Bible from the library and started reading it. I can read it fine except I've forgotten how to pronounce the Lao tones.

Started teaching myself guitar. Playing single notes is a lot easier than I thought (my fingers are already starting to develop muscle memory), and I was pretty proud of myself until I started trying to play chords. Now my fingers hurt. :) But I trust that half an hour a day will fix that, even though it may take a while.

One of my friends is a amazingly good artist and she showed me some of her drawings tonight. I'm going to start taking a sketchpad around with me everywhere I go, because I'm never going to get good if I don't practice.

Had a great Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Finally got all of Adventures in Thailand online. My next project is my mission photos...

Went to my cousin's wedding in the Salt Lake Temple. It was amazing. Ah, I can't wait to get married... :)

Put in a few hours on the Moroni 10:3-5 pages. They're coming along nicely now, with 23 languages so far.

Thanksgiving break starts today! :) (Technically it starts tomorrow but I don't have any classes today.) Helped my family repaint some of the walls in our family room.

Last night I got some books from the library on piano technique and all sorts of good stuff. Two of them are on harmonization and so I've been practicing that this morning. It's terrifically fun. I've never really tried to fill in the chords when I play (i.e. if I just have I-IV-V-I or what have you, and produce the chords on the spot), but it's not as hard as I'd imagined it would be.

For the past month or so I've been researching the Robert and Elizabeth Shanks line, trying to figure out where in Ireland they came from. So, today I did a cursory search on the Library of Virginia's catalog to see if they had anything that mentioned the Shanks family. First item to come up: the Shanks family papers, 1824-1853, including lots of deeds and other miscellanea. There's an accompanying historical note that confirms that Robert emigrated from Ireland with his wife Elizabeth and he was a carpenter at first, but also did lots of land deals. Then I found the Baxter family papers, for William H. Baxter (who married Robert and Elizabeth's daughter Matilda) and his father. Finally, I did a search through the legislative petitions and found a petition dated 5 Dec 1820 which reads, "Petitioner: Shanks, Robert & William; Locality: Chesterfield County; Description: Natives of Ireland and nephews of William Shanks who died intestate in Sept. 1816 ask for a law releasing to petitioners the Commonwealth's right to a tract of land in Nansemond Co. and a house and lot in Blandford. Includes declaration of citizenship." As you can imagine, that's a goldmine. Now I know that there's a William who is Robert's brother or cousin, and there's a William Shanks already in America by 1816 (and probably a while before then) who is their uncle. There's a William Shanks I'd seen in the personal property tax lists from 1800 on but I didn't know if he was related or not. Now I've just got to get my hands on the actual record so I can see that declaration of citizenship and find out where in Ireland my Shanks family came from. There are a William, Robert, and Elizabeth Shanks in Granville, North Carolina, about the same time, and for a while I thought they were the same (that Robert and Elizabeth even have a Robert, Jr., just like ours), but they're not.

Went to a splendid lecture on Herculaneum by Roger McFarlane. Fascinating stuff.

Found a bunch of historical newspapers from Petersburg, Virginia on Ancestry.com in the late 1800s and I'm finding a lot of info on my Shanks line there.

My laptop died eight days ago and wasn't fixed till yesterday, thus the delay. Only one more month till the end of the semester. :) I'm starting to study Spanish in earnest, since I'm going to go to Spain in a couple of years to do a family history internship.

Went to the Family History Library for five hours and researched my Raffaele Iavicoli line. Found three whole generations! It was quite the successful day. :)

Midterms have been keeping me busy lately. Today I start a new job, working on the Welsh Mormon History project (Welsh immigrant records). I'm currently researching my Asberry Bailey/Mary Pauline Haire line.

I'm now in charge of maintaining the links on the Italy Research Outline for the Center for Family History & Genealogy (making sure the links aren't dead, adding new resources, etc.).

Thoughts on Halloween: it may seem like an innocent holiday, since of course we don't really believe in Dracula and ghosts and walking skeletons and all that, right? It's just make-believe. But I've been thinking and it seems absolutely wrong to be flirting with evil, even in pretend. Paul said to avoid even the appearance of evil, but at the end of October everyone seems to revel in taking on the appearance of evil. Evil is real, not just a figment of the imagination, and we can't afford to waste time dancing with the devil. I'm sure he's just tickled that we decorate our yards with monsters and headless horsemen. And we mustn't forget the masses going to haunted houses to be frightened -- quite the triumph for him. Disciples of Christ are commanded to touch not the unclean thing, and it seems to me that we should eschew this satanic Halloween business (even if it is just in jest) and spend our time on better things.

It's snowing! :) This is the first time I've seen snow in two and a half years.

Gave into an impulse when reading through my C.S. Lewis page and ended up ordering The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2: Books, Broadcasts, and the War. It was pretty cheap -- when I bought the first volume three years ago, it was $60 or so, but this one was $13 new.

Went to a lecture by a collector of rare books (Fred Schreiber or something like that -- I can't exactly remember his name). Fascinating. I really must find out where all the local old bookshops are...

I saw Puccini's La Boheme tonight, my first time at the opera. I was quite impressed. For one thing, my ancestors are from Italy and so Italian has a natural charm for me; in addition, these past few days I've realized that music is calling me. I've decided I'm going to teach myself guitar each morning (and eventually violin and other instruments).

Here's an article by C. Terry Warner entitled Honest, Simple, Solid, True. I read it when I was in the MTC two years ago and it profoundly changed my life.

President Hinckley's General Conference talk on women is amazing.

I've been home from Thailand for two months already. Wow. It sure went by fast.

I'm now the secretary for the Thai club at BYU. I'll have more details as I learn about what it is I'll be doing. :) We had a Thai food get-together with about twenty of us. I wish I could eat Thai food every day... :)

Went to the Family History Library for five and a half hours today. Ah, it was fun! :) I found the will for Robert Shanks and all sorts of personal property records and deeds and such (he was actually pretty wealthy, I've found), and I also found the death records of Raffaele Iavicoli and his wife Anna Lucia Caldarelli. Raffaele's from Castiglione Messer Marino, a comune in Chieti (Italy), and that's where my research will be turning next. All in all, it was quite a successful trip.

I'm very, very pleased with my Powerbook so far. It does everything I need it to and it's a beautiful machine (small, sleek). Laptop sleep mode is something I'd never used before but it's quite convenient and now I can't do without it. :) And wireless Internet is very nice when I'm at school. OS X's font support is amazingly beautiful. I don't think I'll ever go back to PCs... :)

I've been researching my Shanks line, specifically Robert and Elizabeth Shanks who lived in Petersburg, Virginia but were born in Ireland. I know that they must have immigrated between 1820 and 1830 (from the census), but that's about it. Tomorrow I'm going to the Family History Library in Salt Lake to search more records.

I've been getting everything set up on here. Installed Fink and then Mutt (of course :)). Downloaded libgmail to get all my Gmail messages. Tried to install Gaim from Fink but it didn't work. Installed Desktop Manager so I have my multiple desktops again. :)

Well, the reason I haven't updated this for the last two weeks is that my laptop crashed (in Linux; in Windows it still worked fine), so I decided I wasn't going to battle with it anymore. Put it up for sale last Monday and finally sold it yesterday. This morning I bought a 12' Mac Powerbook G4 and am now happily tinkering with OS X. So now I can finally update this site. :)

Most of my time is spent on homework these days. I did start reading Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone again a few days ago for fun, though, and now I want to learn Welsh again. :) I'm thinking about majoring in both Family History and Latin, with minors in Art and Creative Writing. Still not sure, though.