This week in History

This week has been filled with tragedy. Not just in 2007, but for several years. It amazing how two single events have led to a whole bunch of events.

Adolf Hitler was Born April 20, 1939. Several years later he managed to orchestrate the killing of 6 million Jewish people.

This event led to 12 students, 1 teacher and 2 terrorists being killed on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado as the terrorists celebrated Hitler's birthday.

This tragic event led to a psychotic killer killing between 31-33 people (I love how CNN & Fox differ on numbers) in Virgina.

That alone would be a very bloody week in April. But this week is also sees the anniversary of two other horrific events. Sadly they were on the same day. On April 19 1993 86 people in Waco, Texas were killed during an exchange with federal agents. Their leader, David Koresh, had a warrant out for his arrest at the beginning of the experience, 51 days prior to the April 19th blood bath.

2 years later, on April 19th 1995, Timothy McVeigh used the Waco Texas events as an excuse to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He then waited 4 days and celebrated his 27th birthday on April 23.

This really is a bad week in history.

Thoughts from Sean

These are just random thoughts I have had floating around in my head....

If it's okay to trash talk about a rival sports team; And if we teach our elementary school children that sticks and stones will break their bones but words will never hurt them; And if we tell children to just ignore people when they say bad words, because that person is just trying to make them feel better. And if we are a people that cherish our rights to have freedom of speech. And if it is okay for rappers and R&B singers to degrade women verbally....why did Don Imus get fired? Are we telling our children not to express their opinions or open their mouths? Are we teaching our children that a redneck cowboy can really offend a college Women's basketball team? Is either A) a Women's Basketball team that weak that words destroy them or B) we are just looking for reasons to be offended?

Why do we fly the flag at half staff for a few killings in Virgina but we don't fly the flags at half staff everyday to help remind Americans that almost every day a US Soldier is killed in Iraq defending our freedoms? What makes 32 killings in one day more important than over 3,000 killings over the course of 4 years?

Why s the president of the United States allowed to take vacations on the same week he approves extending the troops in Iraq by 3 months?

My Sister is currently listening to John Lee Hooker. I wonder if he knows John and I were at JLH's last musical engagement. Santana was there. Van Morrison's daughter was there. Bonnie Raitt Sang as well. It was a rocking good time. I was never quite sure if John Lee hooker enjoyed it though. If I remember correctly it was on June 25, 2001, but it has been a while since then.

Why is it that my mind often returns to KNJ? Why is it the KNJ of 2004 and not the KNJ of 2006?

Chili Dogs

I shared this with my friend MR at lunch today, so I might as well share it with the rest of you. Today, for lunch in the Galley they had chili hot dogs. Every time I have a chili dog it reminds me of French-kissing.

My first French kiss was in the summer of 1995. I was dating this girl and we had been dating for about 3 weeks. I went to kiss her goodbye and she French kissed me. I kind of knew this was coming because we had talked about it a few times.

Unfortunately, on this day, she had eaten a chili cheese dog with onions. It was the most horrible thing to have in my mouth. I was not prepared for it.

I rushed home and threw-up. Chili cheese dogs with onions are pretty nasty as is, but to have someone else's in your mouth is just wrong.

I swore off French-kissing that day. If that was what French-kissing was all about, there was no way I wanted any part of it. It took another three months before LK could convince me to let us French kiss again. And this time she had just got done sucking on some mints. It went much better the second time.

But it never fails...every time I have a chili dog I'm reminded of that experience and how nasty French-kissing can be.

I got to put my training to full use

Today I was on a class field trip. We were getting to cross the street. A bus was near where we were crossing. He stopped to let us pass. Unfortunately, the school bus behind him didn't stop. I watched a bus full of kids plow right into another bus full of kids. The students were all 4th grade to 6th grade.

Being a trained first responder, I joined another student in my class and started doing triage until Rexburg showed up. And oh boy did they show up! Rexburg sent their entire police department and their entire fire department. Rexburg has three ambulances, but that wasn't enough. They had to borrow ambulances from surrounding counties and other areas. All in all, I watched 8 people put onto backboards and put in ambulances, along with about 25 walking wounded. (The backboards reminded me of an accident my brother and I had nearly ten years ago where I was strapped to a backboard and put into an ambulance.) It was really sad when this one little girl was put onto a backboard. She was only half as tall as the backboard.

I'll upload some of the pictures to my photo blog.

Being a trained "first responder" made the event better. While others stood around in disbelief, I was able to jump into action and help calm the students, asses the situations and provide a detailed list of victims to the arriving EMTs (One of which was a friend of mine).

Here is one link to the news. I'll update the links to the newspapers tomorrow.

"First rule in Fight Club

...Don't talk about fight club! Second Rule about Fight Club: DON"T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!"

Oh well.

In the past three weeks an interesting phenomenon has started in Rexburg. Tuesday Night Fights has started. It is rumored to have started at either Tuscany or Rockland, but it has blossomed into a secret society of boxing. Last night was no exception. It was carried out in the Heritage lounge. I didn't go, but I've seen some video of the event. It's no holds bar boxing. Each person dons a pair of boxing gloves and they go at it. Last night had about 5 fights before it was broken up by Rexburg PD. 3 of the fights were guy on guy. The other 2 were girl on girl. I've only seen video from two of the fights from last night: 1 guy fight and 1 girl fight. The girl fight was vicious with eventually the one girl (who was pretty hot) being knocked to the ground.

This new group is interesting on two parts. 1. If they ever get caught by the administration - every student attending runs the risk of getting kicked out of school. 2. It is a supposed secret society. But ever since the nightclub got shut down, those students that need to live a little on the edge have been searching for something to do. So word is spreading. Last nights gathering had at least 200 students at it.

Here are some links of some of the original fights that helped lead to last night (Last nights haven't been posted yet):

Rockland 1
Rockland 2 (Please note the picture of the prophet on the mantel)
Rockland 3

Black History and Wind Ensemble

So...You've all been looking for black history posts, right? Yeah...about that. I am really busy this semester. I've been trying to post a blog on Oprah for about 10 days now - because let's be honest: hasn't she been the most influential black woman America has ever seen? Rosa Parks is close, but she never gave a car to 300 people at one time...

After 10 days, I still haven't had time to post. So, I'm just going to not do it this year. I'll pick it up next year from my new blog (because next year will no longer be "Life in Idaho." It will be "Life in Washington," "Life in Colorado" or "Life in Texas.").

I have been so busy this semester. I usually watch about 30 minutes of TV during the week: "The Office." But this past week I even skipped The Office so that I could go to a wind ensemble concert. If you remember, last semester SZ had me take her to a jazz concert. While there I was reminded how much I like brass instruments.

This particular wind ensemble concert had a focus was on Sousa. (That's right MR. "Stars & Stripes Forever.") It was an amazing concert. The performers were amazing. Each breath they took resulted in beautiful stirring music. There were two parts I didn't like, though. One was this opera singer. I'm not sure what an opera singer was doing at a wind ensemble concert, but she was there and wasn't impressed (I should mention that I'm never impressed with opera singers). The other part I didn't like was at the end. As part of the closing number, they had this massive American Flag drop from the ceiling, which of course meant everyone stood, which resulted in a standing ovation at the end. I felt kind of cheated into the standing ovation. I would have given it anyway, I just don't like being tricked into it.

Oh, but the songs were amazing. They didn't just stick to Sousa. There was Gershwin, Berlin, Brion, and even Kabalevsky. And each note was perfect. It was worth missing The Office for.

**
On a side note, SZ was performing. She mentioned she was thinking of joining wind ensemble shortly before we broke-up, but I never knew her decision and then eventually forgot about it. I grossly underestimated her level of talent. I know the caliber of the performers she was playing with and she kept up with them. There was a part when 5 of the performers moved away from the music stands and used piccolos in front of the audience. SZ was in that group and performed marvelously. It was very impressive.

**
On another side note, I have since watched the episode of The Office that I missed. I didn't miss much.

Lunch

While this won't matter to most of you - I had an interesting experience at lunch today. I had lunch with Elder Eyring's son. He was at BYU-Idaho doing some business. He was sitting two over from me and as this kid and I engaged in conversation about housing prices in the Bay Area (this kid just got home from the California San Jose Mission), this older gentleman chimed in. At the end of the conversation this kid I was talking to said "Good bye brother Erying." I turned to the older man and said "Brother Eyring? Are you any relation to Elder Eyring?" He said "That's my dad." Then, without skipping a beat, I asked, "That's great. Hey could you do me a favor? Could you pass a message on to Elder Scott for me?..."