Tuesday 12 July 2005

Dear Family,

I’m not sure that I have a letter in me, but here goes.  The best news is that we got a letter from Danny yesterday.  In the past weeks he’s sent three little, short notes, and then nothing at all last week.  Yesterday’s letter probably explains why.  He says that his new companion “got an emergency transfer” and will be spending the next six weeks with the zone leaders before he goes home.  It’s obvious that the mission president put a senior dud in Danny’s keeping, hoping that the elder would be able to pull himself together.  This tells me a lot about Danny as a missionary.  If I was a mission president I’d have to put my duds with my best elders, but I’d secretly wish that I could just send the duds home.  They not only don’t do any work, but keep the good elders from accomplishing anything, either.

While I was ward mission leader, I had a total of 22 missionaries.  I worked hard with them, so I got to observe them up close.  There were two really outstanding elders.  There were two that shouldn’t have been on missions.  The other 18 were all good elders who were doing good jobs and doing the best they could do.

My observation is that that ratio probably holds true for most groups of people in our endeavors of life.  In a group that size there will be about two outstanding ones, two duds, and the rest will just be all right.

For instance, in my 16 years of schooling I had two or three really outstanding teachers.  One was my first grade teacher, Georgia Scott.  What made her outstanding was that she loved me.  One day we were all quietly working at our desks on an assignment while she slowly walked up and down the aisles looking over the students’ shoulders, and occasionally stopped to make comments or suggestions.  I wondered if she’d have anything to say to me as she slowly approached from behind.  When she reached my desk I was aware that she’d stopped.  I looked up to see what she had to say.  She didn’t say anything.  She just leaned down, hugged me, and walked on.  I was stunned.  Then I was embarrassed.  I looked around to see if anyone had seen.  They hadn’t.  I sat and thought about what had happened.  I realized that my teacher loved me!  I determined right then that I was going to work hard in school so that my teachers would always like me.  That simple little hug set me up for the rest of my schooling.  I always worked hard for every teacher after that.  I’ve always been very grateful for Georgia Scott.  She died at age 96 a few months ago.

My next outstanding teacher was JoAnn Boyer.  She also died at age 96 a couple of months ago.  JoAnn was my English teacher in my junior year of high school.  She put a tremendous amount of effort into her classes.  She worked extra hard to keep her classes from being boring or humdrum, even going to the extent of playing her violin for background music to set a mood while someone read aloud a moving piece of literature.  I probably acquired my love for literature and writing from her.  I owe both her and Georgia Scott a big debt of gratitude for what they did for me.  I’m happy to say that in later years I expressed that gratitude to both of them on several occasions.  A year or two ago JoAnn returned a letter to me that I’d written to her from Morocco during my first year of marriage.  She’d kept and treasured it all these years.  She said, “That was a wonderful letter.  I’d give you an ‘A’ for it.”

My other outstanding teacher was a little, wizened, dark-haired man from Boston who taught Honors English in my first semester at Oregon State University.  He entered the class each day practically running, jumped up on his desk, crossed his legs Indian style, and sat there and lectured us.  He assigned us to keep a daily journal.  He wanted us to write something every day.  Occasionally we had to turn our journals in so that he could read and grade them.  One Saturday morning I received a call from him.  He wanted me to come over to his office.  He’d just read my journal.  I’ve just now pulled it off the shelf above me to look at it.  Because of him there are 36 other volumes up there that constitute “my journal.”  He wrote comments on nearly every page of my journal.  They include things like, “Best part of the journal to date is your ability to combine internal & external observation!  And this is not an easy task!”—“Front burner thinking”—“Have you read ‘Walden’ by H.D.T?”—“Abe Lincoln had something to add about this fact”…(and then he wrote several paragraphs to me).—“I read you loud & clear”—“In expanded form this could be published.  Again note relationship to Oct. 9, Nov 10.  Your sense of humor pulls you through.”—“Journal seems to help you.  And you have 60 years to go, so why stop it?  Do not.”—“To me, this is the most beautiful & wonderful sensation in the world,”  (when ideas begin swirling about so thickly you can’t write them down fast enough).  “You can go as far & high as you are able.  Never, Never, Never reject this sensation!  In the last 3 weeks, you have been going full thrust; why not come in and chat?”  He invited me over to his office.  He was very excited about my journal.  I frankly don’t see what he was so excited about, but he just knew that I was supposed to be a writer.

Which brings my thoughts to a statement that my sister, Ellen, made a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve been puzzling over what I’m going to do with my life from here on out.  My hip necessitates the sale of the shop.  It also negates the option of running the farm again.  I have no income now except farm rent from Brent.  How am I going to make a living?  Ellen says that my mother said that I’d someday be a famous writer.  I don’t think that Mom ever told me that.  Could I write?  Could I actually sell something publishable?  I’d love that!  I’ve made a couple of weak attempts to see if a publisher would be interested in something, but I really don’t know how to go about this.

I must think about these things.