Volcanoes—A Book Report

My friend, Joy, gave me two books to read about volcanoes. They were highly interesting. They need to be summarized.
Volcanoes are a natural phenomenon that can, has, and might again change the world.

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World Class Expert

Last evening Marjorie and I read “To Become a World-Class Expert” on page 196 of I Have No Greater Joy. The point of the article is that 10,000 hours of practice is necessary to make one an expert in anything. Ten-thousand hours is a long time. I got to wondering if Marjorie qualifies as an expert piano player.

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Passionate

It’s always refreshing to meet someone who is passionate about something. It’s interesting to hear him or her discourse on what he’s excited about.
Today we met a young man who attended our ward for the first time with his wife, two little boys, and his mother. He has taken a job at our local car dealership. His mother explained that he is passionate about cars.

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Notes from Encyclopedias

1. Aluminum is the third most common element after oxygen and silicon.
2. The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world after the Nile. The Amazon is 4,000 miles long. It begins about 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the Andes in Peru. The Amazon falls 16,400 feet in its first 600 miles, and only 800 feet during the rest of its course. Ocean ships can sail 2,300 miles up the Amazon to Iquitos, Peru. The Amazon carries more water than the Mississippi, Nile, and Yangtze rivers together. High tides at the river’s mouth occasionally overpower the river’s current which creates a wall of water, called a bore, that measures up to 15 feet high and rushes upstream.

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Cascadia’s Fault

I read a book called Cascadia’s Fault by Jerry Thompson (2011). For the benefit of my family I need to do a book report. The book was a fascinating detective story. It chronicles the evolution of thought which changed scientists’ thinking that the Pacific Northwest was aseismic (no earthquakes) to the belief that this is one of the most dangerous seismic areas in the world.

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Call Me Columbia

I am the Columbia River. I begin at Columbia Lake in southeast British Columbia, in Canada. I am 1,243 miles long, and drop 2,690 feet before I empty into the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon.

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Call Me Aspen

My name is quaking aspen. I am a 50-foot-tall tree with nearly round leaves. The slightest breeze makes my leaves quake and tremble, so the scientific name that botanists gave me is populus tremuloides.

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Call Me Opal

Call me opal. I’m a gem stone. I’m sometimes called “The King of Gems.” That’s because I can be any color, up to 60 different shades, and my color changes with each direction that I’m tilted. I’m actually multi-colored at any one angle.

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The Lord Knows the Details

Last week I had a struggle with my check book. It wouldn’t balance. Not only would it not balance, but my figures and the bank’s figures were hundreds of dollars apart; and if the bank’s figures were correct, I was severely overdrawn.

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Different Wavelengths

Mac’s three siblings went to see him at his home on 18 September 2020 instead of going for the traditional Friday morning walk. He had just gotten out of the hospital, and was not up to a hike. His son, Wesley, was there, and reported on his father’s condition on a previous occasion as he was getting out of the hospital. Wes said, “On my way there to get him, I took note of a road sign that warned, ‘6% grade for next 6 miles.’ I wondered out loud how many feet drop in elevation that would amount to. Dad was groggy coming out of the hospital, but without any hesitation, he looked up and said, ‘1,200 feet.'”

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Teach Me

It has occurred to me that I have learned few things at church. Nearly everything that I’ve learned has been taught to me by the Spirit. The value of church meetings is not in what I learn there, but in being put in touch with the Holy Ghost. That is the major purpose of church meetings: to put a person in a setting and in a frame of mind where the Spirit can reach him.

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Birds I have Known

I have always loved birds. I’m not a serious ornithologist, but I’ve always been interested. I’ve studied the local birds, and know their habits and songs. Most of them I can recognize by sight, flight pattern, or sound. They each have their interesting points.

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So Much that We Don’t Know

The scriptures can be maddening. There is so much that we don’t know. Hints are given, but we don’t know the stories behind the hints, and we’re not yet privileged to have the full accounts.

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Stunners and Blockbusters

Among the basic doctrines of the Church are what Neal A. Maxwell called “stunners.” (Ensign, November 2003, pg.100). President James E. Faust called them “blockbusters.” (Ensign, November 2005, pgs. 21-22). They are monumental, astounding, life changing, and earth shaking. They totally change prevailing religious and philosophical thought. Here is my own collection:

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Hidden Treasures of Knowledge

How would you like to go on a treasure hunt?
Yes? Well, then here’s your own personal treasure map. (Handed all three children a set of scriptures open to D&C 89:18-19). Now you follow the underlined verses while I quote them.

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Open Your Mouths

Ezra Thayer and Northrup Sweet were told in the 33rd section of Doctrine and Covenants to “open your ears.” (D&C 33:1). Having done so, they were then commanded to “open your mouths.” (Verses 8, 9, and 10).

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Journal Entry

Sunday 4 August 2019
Testimony
The question was asked in Sunday School, “Has there ever been a time when someone’s testimony has made a dramatic and lasting impact on you?”

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School Bus

“Marjorie, look! There’s a sign that says that the Middleton School District wants to hire you to be a school bus driver.”

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Swallows

Yesterday we drove down to Haines looking for swallows. We found just two dozen down at Delepierre’s corner. Here at our house there is one pair left.

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The Art of Bucking Bales

Boyd Hill is my good friend. I’ve worked with him at both the Boise and the Meridian Temples. He is a retired Idaho legislator and farmer.

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If I Had It To Do Over Again

I am a retired cattle rancher. I miss my cows. I don’t miss making the hay to feed them, and I don’t miss broken-down hay equipment, and I don’t miss irrigating, but I miss my cows.

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The Fourth Dimension

Aaron gets excited about new ideas and new inventions that come to his mind. They’re generally on a level that my mind can’t come to grips with.

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Linchpin Doctrines

Section 89, the revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants that we know as the Word of Wisdom, contains four very remarkable promises.

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Ignoramuses

Half a dozen times in the Doctrine and Covenants Jesus says, “I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”

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Hidden Treasures of Knowledge

Last evening at institute I asked the Young Single Adults if they had found any of the “great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” that are promised in the Word of Wisdom.

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Lost Knowledge

Mankind’s knowledge ebbs and flows. Galileo got into trouble with the “learned” men of his day for saying that the earth moved. When he was called before the Inquisition in 1633 for saying that the earth moved around the sun, instead of vice versa, he was caused to recant his statements.

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