Unravel Every Riddle

Payment in Kind

2010-02-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm a little hesitant to write this post, because it deals with the intersection of two topics that some folks find rather sensitive: money and religion. I can anticipate that some readers might question both my motive for writing this and the propriety of what I did. Let me just say at the outset (1) that my motive is simply to explain the logic behind this approach, and (2) that I would respect (but disagree with) anyone who finds it objectionable for any reason.

I'm a Mormon, and my church encourages the practice of tithing. Members are encouraged to donate ten percent of their income to the church. Today, most contributions are in the form of cash or check, but in earlier, more agrarian times it was common to pay tithing "in kind" by actually delivering grain, livestock or produce. The church still has a "Donations-In-Kind" office, but now the most common donation is not apples or cattle, but rather appreciated stock. Let me walk you through a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the tax consequences of such a donation:

Imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that in Year 1 you have an annual income of $100,000, and therefore pay tithing of $10,000. The U.S. tax code allows you to deduct charitable donations from your income, so you'd only pay tax on $90,000. Assuming, again for the sake of simplicity, that your tax bracket is 20%, you'd pay $18,000 in taxes, leaving $72,000 in post-tax, post-tithing income. Of course, I'm ignoring any other deductions or credits.

Now, assume that you decide to use $1,000 of that post-tax, post-tithing income to purchase 1,000 shares of Acme Corp. stock, which is trading at $1 per share. You don't have any inside information (which would pose problems beyond the scope of this post!), but you just have a sense that demand for anvils and jetpacks will go up.

By the end of Year 2, your investment has performed smashingly--Acme Corp. is now trading for $11 per share, making your holding worth $11,000. But you're ready to unload the stock, since you think it has reached its peak. You also need to pay tithing on your annual salary (again $100,000) and on the increase in value of the Acme stock ($10,000--remember, the initial $1,000 investment was post-tithing). So you owe $11,000 in tithing, exactly the value of the Acme stock. You have two options:

1. You can sell the Acme stock for $11,000, and donate the proceeds as tithing. From a tax perspective, you would have total income of $110,000 (salary plus capital gain), and would be able to deduct the charitable donation of $11,000, leaving you with a taxable income of $99,000. At a 20% rate, you'd pay $19,800 in taxes.

2. You can donate the Acme stock directly to the church and designate it as tithing. Under the tax code, you do not recognize the income on the appreciated stock, so your income for tax purposes is only $100,000. But you can still deduct the full value of the stock ($11,000) from your income as a charitable donation, so your taxable income is now only $89,000. You'd pay taxes of $17,800, a tax savings to you of $2,000.

From my perspective Option 2 is the clear winner here, but I want to try to address some of the objections I think people might have.

Aren't you short-changing the church by giving them stock when you think the price will go down? No, because the market value at the time of donation is the true value to the church. I'm quite certain that the church immediately sells the stock (paying no tax on the sale), and then puts the cash into a more stable investment. So, in the example, the church ends up with $11,000 in cash regardless of whether you choose Option 1 or Option 2. But even if the church were to keep the stock, that would be part of its overall investment strategy, and would be entirely out of your hands. You've paid a full tithe by transferring $11,000 in value to the church.

Isn't it dishonest to evade taxes by donating stock instead of cash? No, the law distinguishes between tax avoidance and tax evasion. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that taxpayers are free to order their affairs in such a way as to reduce their taxes, so long as they stay within the law. For anybody who cares, the landmark case is Gregory v Helvering. If there are two ways of accomplishing the same thing, there is no barrier to choosing the way that involves the lowest taxes.

Aren't you somehow tainting your religious practice by finagling a personal tax savings out of it? I don't think so, and certainly not any more so than by deducting my cash contributions, which I think is pretty uncontroversial. The tax code allows deduction of charitable donations for a reason: to encourage private generosity. Although I like to think I would pay tithing whether or not a deduction was available, I am engaging in exactly the behavior the policy is designed to encourage, and so I feel no hesitation to avail myself of it.

If you think this seems fishy, I'd honestly be interested to hear your objections. I have given this a lot of thought, and I'd like to know what other people think. My own experience was much more modest than the example above, and I was very fortunate that my small investment went up rather than down. A quick note: most people who own stock do so in an IRA, a 401k or some other tax-advantaged vehicle, which would make this approach moot.

Puzzle solution: chemistry and rock bands

2009-09-08T03:16:00.000-07:00

To solve this puzzle, the bold font at the beginning of each word had to trigger a memory of something hanging on the wall of your high school chemistry classroom: the periodic table of elements.

Then, assuming you remembered what element each abbreviation stood for (or you googled it), you had to do a little word association. For example, one of the few synonyms for "blimp" is "zeppelin" (remember the Hindenburg?). Combine that with the element whose abbreviation is in the word, and you get...

In fact, Led Zeppelin's name came from a prediction by Keith Moon (drummer for The Who) that the band would "go over like a lead balloon." And their first album had a drawing of the Hindenburg disaster on the front cover. I don't think anybody knows what happened to the "a" in "lead."

Anyhow, keeping "iron" in mind and working off the clue "female" will lead you to...

Yes, Iron Maiden, the British heavy metal band, popular in the 1980s, who had quite the penchant for disturbingly grisly imagery. My good friend in high school, Stewart, was a fan and had a collection of Iron Maiden black t-shirts, including one showing a skull being broken open with a spoon like a soft-boiled egg. Yegch.

The third one was the trickiest for me to come up with, and you had to notice that chemical symbol for nickel is backwards. Also, the word "invert" might help lead your mind to...

So there you have it, three bands with chemical elements in their names. I tried to think of more, but nothing else readily came to mind. I love Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, but Agmmunition seemed like a bit of a stretch.

The winner is lincolnlogger. Honorable mention goes to my sister Melinda, who was the first to solve it.

Contest

2009-08-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's been a long time, and probably nobody even checks this blog anymore. But if you do, here's your chance to win! This is the first ever UER contest, so dust off your gray matter, and see if you can figure out what the following words have in common (and I have to admit that I'm using the term "word" a little loosely):

Don't leave the answer in the comments (although you're free to leave general comments). Instead, email your answer to unraveleveryriddle@gmail.com, and I will select the winner at random. If you can think of another appropriate entry for the list, please send that along as well.

What is the prize for the winner? I've been struggling to think of something that would provide at least a mild incentive to expend some effort in trying to think of an answer, but that wouldn't, as they say, break the bank (and my bank has a very low breakage threshold). The best thing I could come up with is a custom made, one-of-a-kind exclusive Unravel Every Riddle bumper sticker, which may or may not consist of an oversize Avery office mailing label printed out with "UER" in a large font. But your true reward is knowing that you bested the competition in the first of what I hope will be many scintillating intellectual contests among my loyal readers. Both of you.

From the Department of Redundancy Department

2009-04-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law (fellow holder of a degree in linguistics) sent me this clipping he came across in a random newspaper. I'm not sure whether this was an unintentional lapse in editing or a deliberate attempt at humor, but it's pretty funny either way.

Laundry RBI

2009-02-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

It's staggering how much dirty laundry a family of 6 produces, especially when 4 of the 6 are under age 10. I remember when I was single and in college, I sorted my laundry into two piles: light and dark. Now we often have enough dirty clothes to make much finer distinctions: we'll run a dark blue load, followed by a light blue load, a dark red/orange load, a white load, and then an off-white load, etc. Of course, it's one thing to start a load of laundry, and quite another to see it through to completion, with everything folded up and put away. As I was thinking about this recently, my thoughts drifted to an unlikely analogy: baseball.

Putting a load in the washer is a lot like hitting a single: it's a good start, but you've still got a lot of work to do before there's any real payoff. If you want to start another load, then you're forced to advance the first load to second base (the dryer). At this point, the first load is in scoring position. If you hit another single by starting one more load, then the original load advances to 3rd base (the laundry basket), and if it's not too difficult to fold and put away, you can easily score yourself some clean laundry in the drawer or closet.

Often, though, it's more important to advance the runners than to get another single, so you just run downstairs, move the wash to the dryer (or the dryer to the basket) and don't try to start another load in the washer. This is a sacrifice. While not ideal, this is better than stranding a runner on base. Stranding a runner on first base consists of leaving wet laundry in the washer so long that it starts to smell funny. Then that load is out, and has to return to the dugout until you can hit another single with it. The saddest of all is when you strand a runner on third. This is when you have perfectly clean laundry in the basket, but you put off folding it and putting it away, and then some kid knocks over the basket, the clothes get scattered and mixed with yesterday's pajamas and today's burp rag or trampled underfoot, and then all your effort advancing that load is for naught.

Right now, we have runners at the corners, and I'm off to see if I can get an RBI before bed.

KenKen

2009-01-16T18:52:00.000-08:00

Every night before we go to bed, Andrea and I wind down by doing a new Japanese puzzle called KenKen. You may be familiar with Sudoku, and KenKen is similar, but better. It was invented by a Japanese math teacher and actually involves math (unlike Sudoku, which could just as easily use the letters A through I as the digits 1 through 9). Anyway, here's a sample KenKen grid.

Each row and each column has to contain the digits 1 through 6. So far, sounds just like Sudoku. The twist is this: each area bounded in bold (sometimes called a "cage") has to contain digits that give the numerical result in the upper left hand corner using the operation indicated (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division). That sounds complicated, but it's actually not. Look at this cage:

Because "3-" is in the upper left hand corner, the two digits that go in this cage have to fit in the following formula:

___ - ___ = 3

In other words, it gives you the operation and the result, and you have to provide the "operands," to use a math geek term. In this case, there are 3 possible pairs (6,3) (5,2) and (4,1):

6 - 3 = 3
5 - 2 = 3
4 - 1 = 3

The order doesn't matter. Sometimes a cage has only one square, and no operation indicated, like this:

All this means is that they are providing a "gimme," and you just fill in the square with the number shown, like this:

Why don't they just fill in the square for you? Beats me. Anyhow, you have to use logic to eliminate possibilities and fill in the whole grid. For instance, consider this cage:

You know that the two digits have to satisfy the formula

___ ÷ ___ = 3

The only possibilities (using digits 1 through 6) are

6 ÷ 2 = 3
3 ÷ 1 = 3

But because the digit 3 appears in the same column as the cage, you know the cage can't contain another 3 (remember each row and column must contain the digits 1 through 6). So the two digits in the cage have to be 6 and 2. Since order doesn't matter, it could look like this:

or like this:

You don't know yet which of those is correct, so you can't fill in the squares definitively yet. But knowing that those are the possibilities helps you with the cage right below that:

This is the one I talked about before that had three possibilities:

6 - 3 = 3
5 - 2 = 3
4 - 1 = 3

But now you can eliminate the first two of those possibilities, and you know that the cage has to contain 4 and 1 (in either order). Now look at the entire column.

You know the top square in the column contains 3, the upper cage contains 6 and 2, and the lower cage contains 4 and 1, so the digit in the bottom square has to be 5 (again, to satisfy the rule that each column and row must contain the digits 1 through 6). So you can definitively fill in that square with a 5, like so:

Now you're on your way to solving the whole puzzle, because the other number in the cage with the 5 can only be 1.

5 - 1 = 4

So, you'd like to try one for yourself? Andrea and I have two sources for our puzzles. The one I've used here comes from the New York Times puzzle page. They have interactive KenKens at differing skill levels. You can even try a 4 x 4 one to get the hang of it. We also do the daily puzzle from the UK Times online, which we just print out and do the old-fashioned way--with pencils.

Politics

2008-11-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

A conversation that took place 5 minutes ago, while I was putting the boys to bed for the night. The boys got to "vote" at school today, and we had been talking about the election and the electoral college.

Eli (9 years old): I'm ashamed to say that my home state of Idaho is voting for John McCain.
Adam (7 years old): Haha! I was born in Michigan, and Michigan is voting for Barack Obama!
Eli: Dad, what about California where you were born?
Dad: California is totally voting for Barack Obama.
Adam: I forget, where was Mom born?
Eli and Dad (in unison): Massachusetts.
Adam: Who is Massachusetts voting for?
Dad: Barack Obama for sure.
Adam: How do you know?
Dad: Massachusetts always votes for the Democrat.
Adam: There's one thing I don't like about Democrats. It sounds like that crat stuff you put on hot dogs sometimes.
Eli: Sauerkraut?
Adam: Yeah!

Manblogging

2008-08-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

My wife, Potato Girl, maintains a comprehensive list of blogging friends on the right side of her layout. I enjoy keeping up on what friends are doing, so I occasionally click through her list. It's pretty clear that, at least in our circle of married friends, blogging is a predominantly female occupation. Even though the blog is titled something like "The SURNAME Family Newsletter" or "Adventures of the SURNAMEs" or "SURNAMEpalooza," it's usually obvious that Mr. SURNAME has zero input/interest in the blog.

Why is this? Maybe because Mrs. SURNAME is likely to be a stay-at-home mom with a little more time for blogging? Maybe because women generally place higher value on maintaining connections with old friends? Maybe because blogging seems closely analogous to that most feminine of all the domestic arts, scrapbooking?

Whatever the case may be, I'd like to hear more often from the other side of the aisle. To encourage this, I'm establishing a manblog-roll by going through Potato Girl's list to see which blogs have manly input. My threshold is pretty low--any blog that has had a post by the male of the species in the last 6 months or so will make the cut. I don't want to leave anyone off the list--leave a comment if you're a manblogger who wants to join the revolution.

Towers of Hanoi

2008-06-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

A while ago I noticed that Adobe was offering a free 30-day trial of some of their multimedia authoring products. I had played around with Flash several years ago, so I decided to see if the new CS3 version had anything new. It was completely different, and it took me all 30 days to figure it out to the point where I could create a simple application, which I offer here for your puzzling pleasure. (You need the Flash Player for it to work, which is free to download at the link above).

This is a common problem in beginning programming classes, which is where I came across it. The challenge is to move all the disks from the left tower to the right tower, using the center tower as needed for a holding spot. There are only two rules: (1) you can move just one disk at a time; and (2) you can never place a larger disk on top of a smaller one. I recommend starting with 3 or 4 disks until you get the hang of it.

Theoretically there is no limit to how many disks could be transferred in this way, but the number of moves required grows exponentially. The puzzle takes its name from the legend of a Vietnamese monastery where the monks work in shifts to move 64 disks from the original tower to the final one. When they complete the puzzle, the world will end. But even if they were to make one move per second, and used the most efficient method, it would take them about 600 billion years to finish. That's about 50 times the current age of the universe. Astronomers estimate our sun will flare into a red giant in about 5-6 billion years, swallowing the earth in flame. So we've got bigger problems than the Towers of Hanoi. That's the power of exponential growth (the same principle behind compound interest).

Leave a comment if you're able to complete the puzzle for 6 or more disks. If you are stumped and want some help, leave a comment or shoot me an email. If you try it with 10 disks, the top disk is so small it's hard to see--sorry about that. I would have fixed it if I hadn't run out of time. I'd like to buy Flash, but the price tag is too steep for now.

Back in the saddle

2008-04-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's been a long time since I posted. Give me a break, all right? I've been busy. Also, I've had this really cool post planned for a long time, but it seems rather daunting to pull it all together, so I've been procrastinating. But here goes.

A month or so ago, Andrea got a Facebook message from a Michigan undergrad who writes for the Michigan Review, an alternative campus newspaper. This girl was writing an article about Mormons (prior to Mitt Romney's withdrawal from the presidential race), and she wanted to know more about Mormons in Ann Arbor. Andrea, of course, fired back a response that ran to about three pages, answering all of the girl's questions (and several questions she should have asked but didn't). The writer thanked Andrea for her "extensive" response and then said: "I actually would like to know a little bit more about the statistics and history of the community's presence in this area ... Is there something significant about Ann Arbor or the U of M that draws, say, Mormon students from the West to study here?"

That got my inquisitive juices flowing. I recalled that a number of 19th century Mormons had come to study at Michigan, but I had forgotten their names, so I started doing a little research. Here are four of the people I got to know along the way.

Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932)

Martha Hughes Cannon was born in Wales, but came to the U.S. as a young child after her parents were converted to Mormonism. Her father died three days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, but her mother later remarried James Paul, who provided encouragement to Martha's educational ambitions. Martha graduated with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Utah (known at the time as the University of Deseret), and at the age of 21 travelled to Ann Arbor to enroll in the University of Michigan Medical School. She graduated in 1881, in the first Michigan class to receive 3 full years of instruction (rather than just 6 or 9 months). When she returned to Utah, she worked as a resident physician at the Deseret Hospital, which was later absorbed into the University of Utah Medical School. In 1896 Martha entered politics as a Democrat, and became the first woman in any of the United States to be elected as a state senator, soundly defeating the Republican nominee, who also happened to be her husband of 12 years, Angus Cannon.

Benjamin Cluff (1858-1948)

Benjamin Cluff came to Ann Arbor in 1886. He had served as a missionary in Hawaii, studied under Karl Maeser at the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, and had even been an instructor there, but he felt he needed more rigorous study to be effective. While a student at Michigan, he became a close friend of the president of the University, James B. Angell, the namesake of Michigan's iconic Angell Hall:

He received a bachelors and masters degree from Michigan, and returned to Provo fired up about the prospects for higher education in Utah. Benjamin succeeded Karl Maeser as principal of Brigham Young Academy in 1892 and tried to make the school a little more like Michigan, even bringing some Michigan faculty to Provo as guest teachers. He eventually succeeded in revamping the Academy into Brigham Young University (serving as the first president of BYU), and was responsible for bringing the school under the official auspices of the LDS Church. He probably shaped the destiny of BYU more than any of its other leaders, with the possible exceptions of Maeser and E.L. Wilkinson.

Alice Louise Reynolds (1874-1938)

Alice Louise Reynolds enrolled in the Brigham Young Academy at the age of 12, following her mother's untimely death. After six years of study there, she followed the advice of Benjamin Cluff and travelled to Ann Arbor in 1892, where she studied literature at the University of Michigan for two years (apparently without receiving any degree). When she returned to Provo she received a faculty appointment at the young age of 21, and spent the next 44 years teaching literature at BYU. Alice was the first woman to become a full professor at BYU, chaired the library committee for 19 years, and taught thousands and thousands of students. In fact, her students admired her so much that they created the Alice Louise Reynolds [Fan] Club in her honor, which grew to include 16 official chapters located in several states.

Joseph F. Merrill (1869-1952)

Although he was the son of an LDS apostle, Joseph F. Merrill grew up in relative poverty, and started working in railroad camps at the age of 10. As a boy he came across a science book by James E. Talmage and was captivated by the descriptions of the chemistry involved in everyday life. He resolved to become a scientist someday, and to study chemistry in particular. At the age of 18 he began attending the University of Deseret, and received a teaching certificate two years later. He knew he needed further education to realize his ambitions, so he approached his father about his plans: "I ventured to ask him if I could go to Ann Arbor to the University of Michigan the following year. Instantly he replied, 'yes, and I will keep you there as long as you let the girls alone, and devote yourself to study.'" He spent 4 years in Ann Arbor, graduating in 1893 with a Bachelor of Science degree with a focus in Chemistry. He was the president of the Ann Arbor Branch of the LDS Church, and would have had Alice Louise Reynolds and Richard R. Lyman in his branch. He later received a PhD in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, taught Chemistry for 30 years at the University of Utah, and was a diehard Democrat, holding prominent positions in the party. He retired from the University of Utah in 1928 to become Church Commissioner of Education, and was ordained an apostle in 1931, a position he held for over 20 years, until his death in 1952.

_______________________________

There are many more I'd like to include, like Ellis R. Shipp, Richard R. Lyman, Oscar McConkie, and George Sutherland (who wasn't technically Mormon, but would fit well into the narrative). Maybe someday I'll put together a paper for the MHA, but for now I've got a start. What about you? Odds are, if you're reading my blog you're either (a) Mormon, (b) affiliated with the University of Michigan, or, most likely, (c) both. Leave me a comment about your time in Ann Arbor, either as a student, professor, or spouse/child of a student or professor. You can take pride in a long tradition of higher education at what I like to call "The Lord's Graduate School."

One picture is better than a thousand words....

2008-03-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

... especially when those words would be likely to include some strong profanity.

Boy Sayings

2008-02-24T19:33:00.000-08:00

Lack of posting is a function of lack of time and lack of material. But I've got a couple of minutes now, and my two verbal children provide lots of material.

Eli (8) has discarded most of his cute linguistic peculiarities, but a few are still around. We live in a college town and that means lots of college sports. We have seen the men's and women's gymnastics teams in action lately, and have been to a few football games in the more distant past. Eli realized early on that when two teams face off against each other, it's "Team A versus Team B." However, he interpreted the word "versus" as a present tense third person verb, i.e., "verses," which in his mind means "to compete against." So when I mention that there's a home football game coming up, he'll often say: "Who is Michigan versing?" Very logical, if you think about it. Tonight Andrea was telling them the story of David and Goliath, and they were trying to get a sense of the size disparity. Since they're both big Harry Potter fans, I mentioned that Goliath was as big as Hagrid, and it would be like Harry fighting against Hagrid. Eli looked at me very seriously and said "Hagrid would never verse Harry!"

Adam (6) is very rambunctious, but also very sensitive and can get his feeling hurt easily. Several weeks ago at church, the children in his Primary class were asked to draw a picture of something they can do to show their parents that they love them. Adam drew a picture of himself cleaning up the toys in the basement and putting them away in the storage cupboards against the wall. The previous owners of the house put little decals of dogs on the cupboard doors, so Adam dutifully incorporated them into his drawing. Two sweet little girls in Adam's class, Lauren and Josie, saw Adam's picture and asked what he had drawn on the doors. When Adam said they were dogs, one of the girls very innocently said that it looked like they had beaks. This cut Adam to the core. He was convinced that the two girls were mocking him and his picture, and for the next few weeks he kept finding "evidence" that they were making fun of him. One of those weeks I was substitute teaching his class, and he seemed even more upset than usual, sulking in a corner of the room. When I asked for a volunteer to give the opening prayer, though, he jumped up and ran over to me, begging to be the one. I thought this was a good sign, so I let him go ahead. It was a very brief prayer, consisting of a few rushed formalities, followed by the following heartfelt plea: "Please bless us so that we can all get home safely today, except Lauren and Josie!" (After church we had a little talk about the inappropriateness of invoking the wrath of God to strike your fellow first-graders, but he seemed to have gotten most of the venom out of his system, and he's been much more pleasant ever since.)

My Addiction

2008-02-11T18:18:00.000-08:00

So, I'm a bit hesitant to actually publish this post--not because I'm embarrassed by it, but because I don't want to be responsible for somebody else's downfall. So be warned: if you consider yourself a geography buff, and if you have a competitive bone in your body (and honestly, who doesn't?), read no further. Just scroll on down and read one of my other three scintillating posts. I'm serious. Don't get sucked in the way I have.

Several years ago, I followed a link in a blog (see, that's how it starts...) to the home page of Geosense, and it has all been downhill from there. I'll give you a brief description so that you don't have to go to the site itself, which is like flirting with fire. You sign on, with a self-selected username and password (or as a guest), and you are then presented with several map options. The default is "World Map," but Europe and the U.S. are also options. Having selected your map, you then click "Play Alone," unless you're in the mood to challenge one of the vulgar teenagers who have latched onto the site as their own personal chat space. Bunch of posers. Anyhow, as play begins, an unlabeled political map of the world appears. In a box at the top of the window, you'll see the name of a country, followed by the name of a city in that country. For example: "BRAZIL, Rio de Janeiro," "GREECE, Athens," and "VIETNAM, Hanoi" are all cities that will show up if you play long enough. You then have ten seconds to click on the map as close to that city as you can. As soon as you click, you are shown the actual location of the city, and are told how many kilometers off your guess was. One round consists of ten cities in succession. Each guess gives you points, based on speed and accuracy. At the end of your round, the window displays your average score and distance for that round.

I've always loved maps, and I was hooked immediately. Sadly, my name appears in the "High Scores" for the world map, which is a testament to vast amount of time that I have flushed down the toilet for Geosense. If I had a nickel for every hour I've spent, compulsively clicking on exactly the right pixel that represents "JAPAN, Sapporo" or "CANADA, Halifax,"... well, I'd have to roll them up in those little paper wrappers in order to turn them in at the bank. Either that or use one of those CoinStar machines at the supermarket that takes something like a 7% cut from your loose change just for the convenience of dumping it all into a big bin to be sorted automatically. But I digress.

The point, people, is that the internet truly is a dangerous place.

Give My Regards to Broadway

2008-02-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

I blogged previously about the death of Gordon B. Hinckley, who had been the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly thirteen years. His successor was named today: Thomas S. Monson, pictured above. Although he is new to the position of church president, President Monson has served for many years in various church leadership positions and has given numerous sermons in the two-day conferences held every April and October in Salt Lake City. The proceedings of these conferences are published in the church periodical, the Ensign, so that even church members in remote locations have access to the sermons.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the church president was David O. McKay, a former schoolteacher of Scottish ancestry who was famous for peppering his sermons with quotations from the canon of western literature, particularly the works of Robert Burns. President Monson's sermons have demonstrated a similar literary bent, with frequent quotations from Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and a vast arsenal of poetry he is rumored to have committed to memory. But I have noticed another, less traditional, source of material President Monson uses to illustrate the themes of his sermons: Broadway musicals.

Now, some folks might find it a bit unsettling that a prominent religious leader finds inspiration so frequently in such, er, middlebrow entertainment. I find it refreshing. For one thing, Broadway shows have assumed a unique place in American culture--it's remarkable how many people who gripe about paying $9.50 to see a first-run film will gladly shell out upwards of $100 to go to a Broadway show. People seem to be utterly captivated by these productions, and I can't fault President Monson for (i) sharing that enthusiasm, and (ii) using the plot and characters from the stage to illustrate gospel principles to an audience that, by and large, can appreciate the comparison. Anyway, wasn't Shakespeare essentially the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his era?

So, in honor of President Monson, I present you the following quiz. Match the shows (1-10) with the excerpts (A-J) he has quoted in his sermons. I've indicated the date of at least one conference in which he's used the quotation, although several are favorites that he has used more than once. I've also edited a few of them for length. Granted, some are dead giveaways, but others might require a little head-scratching. Feel free, if you like, to leave your guesses in the comments. I'll post the answers in a few days.

1. Fiddler on the Roof (Oct. 2004)	A. "If we don't try, we don't do; and if we don't do, why are we here?
2. Camelot (Apr. 2001)	B. "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated."
3. The Sound of Music (Oct. 1987)	C. "I don't think any man has ever been as good as he could have been, but this one really tried."
4. The Music Man (Apr. 2003)	D. "Fight the unbeatable foe/ ...bear the unbearable sorrow/ ...run where the brave dare not go."
5. The King and I (Apr. 1999)	E. "God on high/ Hear my prayer/ In my need/ you have always been there"
6. Man of La Mancha (Jun. 1989*)	F. "Love isn't love till you give it away."
7. My Fair Lady (Oct. 1992)	G. "Violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness."
8. Shenandoah (Apr. 1994)	H. "A sentimental song/ If it casts a magic spell/ They only hum along."
9. Monty Python's Spamalot (Apr. 2008**)	I. "You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you've collected a lot of empty yesterdays."
10. Les Miserables (Oct. 2003)	J. "In Anatevka, ... everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."

* In the Ensign's "First Presidency Message"

** A guy can dream, can't he?

Herman Melville would be proud...

2008-02-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

Lots of people, including some presidential candidates who shall remain unnamed, are all gung ho about simplifying the tax code. I just can't get on board with that, especially since it might mean missing out on little nuggets like this one:

Are you kidding me? Only "certain" whaling captains can take advantage of this deduction, and only if they engaged in "Native Alaskan subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities"? Where's the love for the rest of our nation's whaling captains, who surely must number in the hundreds of thousands? But don't worry, if you have any questions about the deduction, you can consult Publication 526 for all the details!

First Post: A Farewell

2008-01-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to start this blog for quite a while (I actually reserved the name several months ago), but I've kept putting it off until today. As I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to the news on WDET. At about 9:03 a.m. Carl Kassel reported that Gordon B. Hinckley had passed away at the age of 97 in Salt Lake City on Sunday evening, January 27, 2008. He had served for nearly thirteen years as the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a role somewhat comparable to that of the Pope in Catholicism. As a Mormon, I considered him a spiritual leader and referred to him by his customary title: "President Hinckley." But for me, and for many other Mormons, that title fails to convey the sense of intimacy and endearment we felt toward him. He was deeply loved by his followers for his direct speaking style, for his warmth of personality, and (maybe most of all) for his unflagging sense of humor. Before I go to bed tonight, I want to record a few memories of the ways he influenced my life.

1. President Hinckley is, in fact, a distant relative of mine. His mother, Ada Bitner Hinckley, was the daughter of Brenneman Bitner, who as a young boy left the Amish country of Pennsylvania with his family to gather with the Mormons in Illinois. Brenneman's older half-brother, Amos Milton Musser, was more reluctant to become a Mormon, but went along to Illinois anyway. Amos later joined the Church, went on a mission to India, and had many children and dozens of grandchildren, including Gertrude Musser Richards, my own dear grandmother. By my reckoning, then, President Hinckley and my Grandma Gertrude were second cousins. As far as I know, they met only once, when he came to visit her small home in Pleasant Grove, Utah. He sat on my Grandma's heirloom rocking chair that the family had brought with them from Pennsylvania. while they talked about their common family history. She offered to give him the chair as a gift, but he politely declined.

2. When I was a young teenager, I lived in the small southwestern Colorado town of Cortez, just a few miles away from Mesa Verde National Park. One Sunday, it was announced that President Hinckley (then a counsellor to President Ezra Taft Benson) was planning a vacation in the area and would visit our ward (congregation) the following Sunday. Three other wards were eventually invited to participate as well, so on the appointed day our building was filled beyond capacity. Usually six or eight of the boys my age would distribute the bread and water of the Sacrament (comparable to the Communion or Eucharist in other churches) to the congregation, but on this occasion about a dozen more were recruited from the other wards.

Well, I was on my home turf, and I knew not only the layout of the of the chapel, but also the usual choreography for passing the Sacrament, so I arrived early and parked myself on the seat that I knew would likely be assigned to carry the trays to the people seated on the podium at the front. Shortly before the meeting was to begin, President Hinckley entered the building through the rarely-used side door at the front of the chapel (sometimes nicknamed the "funeral door" because usually the only time it was opened was when a casket was wheeled in for a funeral). My plan worked to perfection, and after the preliminary hymns and prayers, I found myself carrying a silver tray of white bread broken into postage stamp-sized pieces up a few steps and onto the podium. By tradition, the senior church leader in a meeting is the first to receive the Sacrament, so all the other boys waited while I offered the bread to President Hinckley. After he took a piece from my tray, I continued on to the other leaders seated nearby, and then went to offer the Sacrament to others in the congregation who had not yet been reached by the other boys. We distributed the water in the same way, and I again held a tray in front of President Hinckley, filled this time with small plastic cups each holding about a teaspoon of water.

I have to admit that the whole experience was a bit anticlimactic, since there was nothing out of the ordinary in the way he took the Sacrament. I unfortunately have no recollection of anything he said in the later part of the meeting. When the meeting was over I waited to shake his hand, and he gave me a smile and a few kind words that I have also forgotten. It never occurred to me that it really wasn't much of a vacation for him to be sitting in a nondescript Mormon church in rural Colorado, speaking to a congregation of hundreds of nondescript people and then interacting with them personally for at least an hour afterward. I do remember, though, feeling a sense of pride at having passed the Sacrament to President Hinckley, and thinking that I would someday tell my kids about that day. And I have.

3. My family later moved to the equally remote location of Vernal, Utah, where I graduated from high school. In Vernal, our ward met in a stately church building on the corner of 500 West and 100 South. (Utah street names are a bit quirky and may merit a separate post at some point in the future.) Just to the south of that building stood the historic old stake tabernacle, built at the turn of the century. Although the most famous Mormon tabernacle is the one in Salt Lake City, many other Mormon settlements included a tabernacle designed to accommodate several thousand people, as compared to a typical church building which seated a few hundred at most. Over the years, the Vernal tabernacle became obsolete as other venues became available for the church and civic functions it had been used for. The tabernacle fell into disrepair, and there was a good deal of discussion about demolishing it.

The bishop of our ward was Lloyd Winward, and he and his wife Alta led the resistance to any effort to raze the tabernacle. On one or two occasions, my high school friend Stewart Brewer and I borrowed the keys to the tabernacle from Alta and went exploring. We figured out how to access the domed steeple, where we could see the whole valley from between the wooden slats. We also got down into the bowels of the building, which held all sorts of odds and ends from almost a hundred years of history. A few years later, when I was a student at Brigham Young University, my dad called me on a Sunday afternoon and excitedly told me that it had been announced that the tabernacle would be restored and converted into a temple. Although the exterior appearance would be preserved, since Mormon temples are not used for congregational meetings the interior space would be broken up into several floors containing the rooms and offices needed for the special ceremonies of the temple, including marriage ceremonies, vicarious baptism, and symbolic instruction about life, death, and eternity.

This was a dramatic reversal of fortune for a building that had been on death row for a long time, and it was plain that the idea was President Hinckley's brainchild. He was well known for his acute sense of history, his appreciation for meaningful architecture, and his conviction that we take strength and direction from the sacrifices made by our ancestors. I returned to Vernal for the groundbreaking ceremony, which was held outdoors on an unseasonably frosty spring day. When President Hinckley rose to speak, he quipped, "Many are cold, but few are frozen," (a reference to the scriptural phrase "Many are called, but few are chosen") and then pointed out, as he did on more than one occasion, that it would have been more economical to knock the tabernacle down and build a modern temple on the site. I don't think he could have ever brought himself to authorize its destruction, though, any more than he could have ordered Michelangelo's David to be pushed off its pedestal to shatter on the ground. Several years later, after the renovation had been completed, I returned to Vernal again to hear President Hinckley dedicate the temple for its new use. That dedicatory meeting was, for me, a powerfully moving spiritual experience, and one I will never forget. A few months later, I was married to my sweetheart in the Vernal Temple, in a room close to the very location where Stewart Brewer and I had surveyed the dusty pews and crumbling plaster nine years previous. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that, without the influence of President Hinckley, the tabernacle would be rubble in a landfill today.

If you happen to stumble upon this post, and if you have any memories of President Hinckley you'd like to share, please do so, even if months or years have passed since his death.