Day 9-Close to Home

Honestly folks, what to write about? Oh, okay, I've got it. Okay, in the book, one of the main characters is a teacher. He classroom is just her adopted daughters' bedroom, converted during the day to fit the class' needs. The only books that she has are old copies of reading and arithmetic books. She teaches children from the age of about 16 to the very youngest school ages. She has no more than probably 2 dozen children attending every day. Most every person in the class is LDS, so naturally most of the class is based on reading from the Book of Mormon, alongside the other textbooks. I was just thinking how different all of that is from today's school system. Today, in at least the school I go to, there are a few thousand students. There are dozens of teachers and classrooms, and the size of the school itself is, compared to what was described in the novel, huge. My school has teachers for different subjects, each with sufficient schooling for their job, a full-size, working cafeteria, and who knows how many facilities and recreational things for teams and activities. The teacher in the book only knew what she had learned and taught to herself. She was naturally good at what she did, but still had little of no schooling, and definitely no degrees for it. How different education is now than it was back then. Not only in its appearance, but like I said before; with the Book of Mormon being part of the curriculum, you know that we have gone a long way from what people used to have. Given, Nauvoo was an LDS community, but still. Today we can't hardly even mention the word 'Mormon' in school without penalties. Its crazy. It makes me grateful for what I have today. For my opportunities to learn a lot and expand my knowledge. I guess that’s just something to think about.

Day VIII-Close to Home

Hmmmm.....my excuse is that sometimes its just as hard going downhill as it is going up. I'm almost done with this nice little English assignment, and I am running out of ideas, and even forgetting what was in the book! I admit it. I read it at the beginning of term, and all the books in the series are starting to run together into one long series of huge books. I shouldn't have started number 6 so soon afterwards!
Anyway, lets see if I can pull something together. Hmmmm. Alright, I think I've got something. Okay: in the book, Will continues his adventure away from home. He thinks that his adopted father, Joshua, has been killed by Mormons, and through his struggles to get revenge on the killers, he ends up as, more or less, and endentured servant onboard a small sailing vessel. I think that all of that happened in the fourth book of the series, but I can't quite recall. The continuation of his adventure is in this book at least. Anyway, so Will ends up sailing across the Atlantic to England, and eventually ends up in China. The crew does its stuff there, trading and the likes, and Will is allowed to roam around the town, sort of as a day off. So he wanders around a bit. The thing I am trying to get to here is that in his wanderings, Will discovers fireworks. I don't know why I just thought of this, but I guess its true; if you didn't know what fireworks were, you would probably crap your pants when you saw them for the first time. Some little chinese kid lit it, and it popped and snapped all over the ground, scaring Will, and of course interesting him in buying some for himself. I just think that it is sort of cool how one of the characters catches a glimpse of modern technology. If only he had known what more was to come. What machines, weapons, or other things that would work on the same principles. Its just interesting to think about I think.

Day 7

Recreation is a big part of out lives. Think about it. When we aren't working, or doinging school work, we are either reading, watching TV, or doing some kind of activity that we enjoy doing. For example: I play Water Polo. (I suck at it, but that's besides the point.) I used to run Cross Country and Track. Sometimes I play basketball or raquetball. (Again, I suck at all those too. Why do I even try?) Anyway, there is a reason we do those things. You might say its because those things are fun. I say that its because without those things, we would all get fat and lazy, and because none of us want to go out of our minds with bordome. So it leads me to think: what did the people way back when do for fun? They had books, but they didn't have the things that give us an excuse to be lazy like TV and the internet. They had books, sure, but thats just about all they could do to inside and alone. So what did they do outside that kept them busy when they weren't working? They didn't have square rooms and raquets to play with. They didn't have nicely divided swimming pools for Polo or competitive swimming. They didn't have marked, standardized, springy tracks to run on. All I can see is that they had dirt and sticks to play with. I don't know about you, but playing with dirt and sticks doesn't sound like much fun to me. This is what brings me to my conclusion on this odd subject on this fine Day 7. I am lead to beleive that the people before modern technology actually had what we like to call today imagination. They knew how to have fun without guidlines or standardized "stuff". They must have just had the best of times, running around, just chilling, doing whatever sounded like fun. This brings me to my final conclusion: TV is the uber suxx0rz, as is the internet. Lets all get off our butts and use our brains. That is what fun really should be. That is all.

Day 6-The Descent

The hardest thing about writing about this book is actually knowing what to write about. The ideas ought to just come to me, but here I am... not discussing anything. Okay, I'll go off the deep end here. I am eating a burrito, and it sure is good. I feel kinda bad that the Saints of the day didn't have the sweet goodness that is Mexican cuisine. We have all sorts of conveniences today. Its great. I mean, you are hungry sitting in your nice, warm toasty comfortable house with snow falling outside, and all you have to do to solve your problem is open 2 doors a plastic wrapper. Out of the freezer and into the microwave, straight to your stomache. Back then, what did you have to do? Light a fire in your nice little cast iron stove (which of course takes the wood and skills to light it, taking valuable time and adding to your hungry dismay), go outside, and shoot something to cook! That's a process that could take so long you would starve before you ever even got the chance to look at a steaming pile of meat on your plate. And lets not mention the guns that they had to shoot their food with. Single-shot muzzleloaders, with extremely heavy lead rounds, powder, and patches to carry draped across your shoulders that are still weary from the day's labor on the feilds or the Temple, etc. I don't know about all that. Such a different lifestyle than we have today. Sucks to be them?

Day 5-Getting Closer

One of the major parts of this book was the construction of a Temple to the Lord in the city of Nauvoo. The saints were called upon to put their rescources and skills together to build, for their day and time, a very large and mighty structure. The building was much larger than most buildings of the day. The saints started from complete scratch. They had tools that, in many cases, they had built themselves. They had dynamite, sledge hammers, and wedges to cut the granite squares from the hillside. They had wooden cranes and pulleys to hoist the several ton blocks onto wooden horse-drawn carriages. It often took a dozen workers just to cut 2 blocks in an entire day's work. Then it took a wagon and at least a dozen well-bred horses to pull the cart all the way to the temple site, which was up-hill from the quarry. This was only part of it. They had so many more things to do on the temple, that It makes me feel kind of guilty in a way; just to know that I have the things I have at this day in age makes me feel very grateful, and yet guilty in the sense that I don't always appreciate everything I have. One of the biggest things that I have that I take for granted is not the technology of the day, but the very thing that the Saints so long ago strived so hard to construct. We as a church have so many of these beautiful temples, all of them built with such ease compared to that Nauvoo Temple so long ago. There are probably 5 temples within an hour's travel time of my house, and yet I still can't manage to find the time to go there and partake of those blessings. I have only been a few times in the last few years that I have had the opportunity to. Reading of the things that the Saints of the early church went through to build a temple of our Lord gave me more than just a knowlege of church history. It also gave me great apprectiation of the blessings that I have, as well as a stronger testimony of the doctrines of the Church. I love the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I know that it really is the only true gospel on Earth, and I know that it is the true church of our Savior, Jesus Christ, without a doubt. I think at this point, it would not be out of place to say that I bear witness of these things and testify of them in the name of Jesus Christ, my redeemer. Amen.

I never thought that an English assignment would come to that, but there it is; part of my testimony of what I know to be true.

Day IV...thats 4, not I.V.

At one point in the book, two of the characters are on a riverboat going down the Mississippi River on a steamboat. They are going from Nauvoo to St. Louis. The author describes the scene very well. What happens is, back in the day, if 2 riverboats spotted eachother going the same direction on the river, they would race to get to the port so that they could dock first and unload first, and then be on their way. I guess it got them some good money or something. Anyway, so what happens is the characters' boat spots another boat across the river, and the people on the boat get all excited because they know whats about to happen. They line the rails, and the race begins. The steamer starts pumping out a bunch of smoke, and they can see the other boat doing the same. They race to the middle of the river, trying to keep ahead of the other boat and cut it off. In the end they almost collide, but at the last possible moment, the other boat backs down rather than ram into the other boat, and the 2 characters make it downriver first to the port. I don't really know why I'm saying all of this, other than the fact that I found it interesting and I played a song in a symphony once called the Great Steamboat Race. The song sounds like it would fit the race hand in hand. It even has the whistles, steam sounds, and at the end, it makes it sound like the other boat fades off into the background behind. Its cool. Now I know why the song was written. Cool beans, sweet sauce....you know the drill.

Day 3

One of the things that I liked about this book was the connections I could make with the characters' personal lives. In this particular book of the series, there is a lot of flirtatious-like romances among the young people. They are only are year or two older than I am now, but back then that was marrying age. The author wrote so much about these circumstances because I think he wanted readers to realize just how it was. I mean, if it had been me back then, I could be married within the next year or two. Its funny, just because the things they do seem rather... well, I don't want to say immature, because a lot of it is stuff that I do myself, but it is kind of. There are several characters who like someone else, and they get hurt when they realise that that person likes someone else. They funny thing is, these people are all pretty close, like really close friends or even family through marriage. But its always jsut back and forth, and it deffinately brings out the teenage girl in the characters. They get all angry and emotional and depressed. I see a lot of that in today's world. It makes me giggle, but at the same time, the author really did a good job of connecting the story to young readers like myself. I can really relate to a lot of it myself. Fun fun fun.

Day 2, Base Camp

Okay, so lets get started, eh? Let me first say why I liked this book a lot. It had a lot of stuff that I liked, but the biggest reason is because of the connections that I was able to make between the book and myself. For example, I am LDS. When reading about the things that the people of my church went through as they struggled to find a place they could call home, It makes me feel more grateful for what I have now. The people then had a lot of work to do just to stay alive and make a living for their family. In addition to that, they lived in relative fear, not knowing what might happen to them next. They had already been driven from their 'new home' 2 times. They had gone through tragedies such as Haun's Mill Massacre and the Battle of Crooked River. In this book, they were settling in their own town, building it practically from scratch. They had to build their own homes with not much more than their hands and their knowledge, and they had to sow their own feilds. At the time, much of the Nauvoo area was swampland, so before they could even begin to plant, they had to drain their lands by hand, with no more than shovels to aid them. It was a rough life for anybody, but for a religious group of people seeking refuge from the storm to have to go through that is awful. This book helps me see how much I have been blessed with just by being born into a time, and place where those sacrifices aren't necessary. Reading about the Saints has helped me see just how Saint-like they were. I am excited to learn more about them as I continue to read the series.

So it begins

So, to get things started, I am going to do exactly what you shouldn't do to start a written assignment. I am going to state simply, what I am writing about:
I read The Work and the Glory, Volume 5. It is about the early history of the LDS Church, written as a historical novel. The author portrays a family by the name of Steed among the early saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. The author describes many things that occured there, so the reader learns a lot about the topic, but the reader is kept awake by the stories of the Steed family. Through reading the first 5 books, I have seen just how much detail the author put into the family, and I have learned to love the church history because of the fictional family. They are right in the middle of everything that goes on, and they go through many emotions as they struggle through the tough times. Some members of the family leave the state, and even the country, for months and years at a time. The book shows everything those people went through, as though they were real people in history, and it also portrays what is going on back home with the rest of the family. The book takes you from the town on the Mississippi river, to China, to England, and back. In the following posts, I will go more into detail with how I liked this book, and explain some of the things contained therein.