dahlia

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dahlia last won the day on June 16 2015

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  1. All I want is for the drivers of Iowa, many of whom are elderly, is to use their ($*#( turn signals. Just once. One of my sisters lived in rural Virginia. She said that when she went into town, she had to remember to use her turn signal because out in the country, often she would be the only one on the road, so no need to signal. Though I am in an area with a couple of small towns, there is farmland and very small towns around me, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of these folks forgot they weren't out in the cornfields anymore and needed to use their signal.
  2. Sometimes I wonder why I post. I have a sense of humor. Apparently some here do not. Actually, since relatives can homeschool in my state, assuming my health keeps up, we plan for me to be his teacher. Keep him away from godless leftie Commies in the schools. You can't even send them to Catholic school anymore (which was common among non-Catholics where I grew up because the public schools were so bad) because there's all that social justice warrior garbage.
  3. When people say unkind things about the Prophet, I always think that he had so many opportunities to say he was lying, to stop leading the Church, etc. Doing so would most likely have saved his life. But he never did. That has to mean something. Also, even if it turned out that it was all a lie, I would still be Mormon because it's how I want to live.
  4. As an investigator, I was on this board and asked questions and also read a lot. You guys know that I had my doubts pretty much until I stepped into the baptismal font. I don't know if I can point to one thing, but I can say that seeing Conference, even before I had met the missionaries, certainly made me think about the Church, how they treated the members, and what they talked about. That is, it wasn't all pie in the sky, but frequently about real life problems. Nor was it the 'you're all going to hell' Protestantism I'd see on TV. The difference between LDS leadership talking about problems and Catholic priests was important to me, because priests don't have the experience of raising a family or even work life trials. I felt that the men in the ward and the national leadership knew something about my life. Y'all are going to shake your heads, but I'd read about the Church as an American institution long before I considered converting. That appealed to me, especially having grown up in the Catholic church, with everything being Rome-centered and with few American saints. The equality in the Church appealed to me. The respect for the Constitution appealed to me. The fact that most of the people I met were nice, hard-working folks was also appealing. I could lie and say I was struck by a lightening bolt or something and had a life-changing religious experience (well, I guess I did, kinda), but it just all came together and all the parts were meaningful to me.
  5. Guess who had her first grand baby 3 weeks ago? Welcome Alexander! It's been rough. Mom need a C-section for that 9lb 14oz boy, and had problems. Then she tested positive for COVID in the hospital. They made my son take the baby home because he couldn't go back to the nursery and couldn't stay with mom, who had an infection and was still in the hospital for a few more days. It's been real, folks. But, mom is slowly getting better. Thankfully, she was asymptomatic and the rest of us didn't need to get tested, which was a medical concern. Nana introduced him to Blondie's 'The Tide is High' and is writing a list of future lessons in rock and roll. She also informed him that her name is 'Nana' and not 'grandma.' Shallow, I know, but there it is.
  6. I don't want to write a whole book here, but if this is really the case, you aren't looking. I'm old enough that my family couldn't eat inside a DC restaurant, couldn't try on clothes at the better department stores, and couldn't buy a house where we wanted, because of red-lining. Have things changed? Yes, of course. But fast forward 20 years or so, I'm in an inter-racial marriage, and was told there were still places in town that would not welcome a mixed couple. I'm a black woman with a PhD and I still have to straighten out white people when they talk to me as if I just stepped off the plantation. The bar is set very low for blacks, especially by liberals who have a savior complex and whose lives only have meaning if blacks are perpetually stupid, unemployed, and criminal. I won't even go into the experiences of dark skinned blacks I've met over the years , whose lived experiences were more difficult than mine as a mixed race 'high yellow' type, as they used to say. I've been fortunate to live in very open places like Seattle and Ann Arbor. I've been to beautiful Colorado a number of times. Racism is not my normal daily experience. That doesn't mean it's not there.
  7. I had decided not to go to church anyway (most of the brethren in my ward are doctors at the university hospital or faculty, around lots of young people), but was trying to figure how I might get the missionaries to give me the Sacrament at home. Considering how the virus affects different age groups, I'm hesitant to allow young men, who have been in homes all over the ward, to come in the house. If anyone has any ideas; I'm open. I find all of this amazing - who would have thought there would be no public gathering for the Conference or Sacrament meetings?
  8. Last night I watch several videos of the Chinese government via the Army or police, physically abusing a woman who was outside without a mask, sealing people in apartment buildings, loading a couple into a box on a truck, and dragging people out of their homes. While I am somewhat concerned about the virus (having seen how bad H1N1 was on my campus), I watch these videos more to remind myself that no matter what leftists may say, no matter what 'workers paradise' they promise, this is what happens under a totalitarian government and to a disarmed people. I'm not saying that, if sh$t really hits the fan in the US, we might not see some government action that would make people uncomfortable, but I can guarantee you, some of our good citizens will shoot to kill before they let their family be sealed up in the house or taken away to some unknown location for who-knows-what to be done to them.
  9. Thanks for your story. I usually don't pray only for a specific result. Of course I pray that I or the other person be spared whatever calamity we're facing, but I also ask for the grace to deal with whatever comes. My will is not God's. I'm not always going to get what I want, and I'm not always going to be happy about it. Those are the times I need the grace to deal with it and to stay close to God instead of blaming and running away.
  10. Thank you for that. I am not always the best Mormon, still don't know all the theology, and don't always think this way. I'd hear women talking in RS about a problem, then everyone would say they should pray, and I'm sitting there thinking, "You need therapy."
  11. Well, blessing or not? First, I'll say that I had a difficult time with the concept of blessing when I took lessons. Why do we need to be blessed? Why should we do things like fasting or tithing so that we can be blessed? Shouldn't we do the right thing without wanting blessings? I still don't know how I feel about this, but I pray anyway. Moving on... So, I did my fast. I finished the BOM. I did what I told myself I would do for me and for the person having surgery. Today, we got notices about the Iowa caucuses. I had to look up my precinct to find my caucus location and while I was looking for my voting card in my desk drawer, I came upon a check from the state. A big, big check. Long story short, after checking with my bank and the state, it looks like I put the big, big check in my drawer and forgot about it. This was just a few weeks before I retired, and perhaps my mind was elsewhere. Anyway, big money is coming my way! But here's the thing - I have been helping this person financially. Now that I'm retired, I have to think twice before I do this stuff, but I thought it was worth the sacrifice. And darned if the check isn't EXACTLY what I've paid for this person's bills and to help out! I did this over several transactions and when I added them up, OMGoodness! So what do y'all think? A fasting blessing? A 'Stupid, you forgot to deposit a big, big check? Are you senile?' kinda thing? It's weird, huh?
  12. It was a mini-series, if that counts, 'The Great Train Robbery' (2013). It's in 2 parts, one being the robbery from the robbers' POV and one from the police's. I guess the last movie movie was 'Legend' with Tom Hardy where he plays the Kray twins, kingpins of the London underground in the 60's. I learned about the Krays when I went to London in 1990 and a movie about them had just been released. I found it fascinating that while I was all into the Beatles, etc., these guys were ruling their world.
  13. How is this news to you? πŸ˜„
  14. Well, this discussion went in unexpected directions. πŸ˜„ I leave you guys alone for a couple of days and you don't know what to do with yourselves. So, what's happened with me so far: I was able to fast 30 minutes longer (to clarify, I fasted from dinner to dinner the next day, going 30 minutes longer than I had planned) than I originally scheduled. I thought I'd need to have almond milk all day, but only needed 2 cups of bouillon. When I finally ate, I wasn't ravenous, I just had my usual meal. I got as far as Helaman in the BOM. I'm sorry I didn't finish before the surgery, but I'm not gonna let that stop me and plan to finish it tomorrow. I guess I could have plowed through it, but that would have defeated my purpose of really getting into it this time. My friend had his surgery and it went well. I'm so happy, for him and for me, that I could do this for him. I do have a question for the science people here. There are several incidences in the BOM where bodies were thrown in the Sidon river. Why would you do that? 😨 Why not burn or bury the bodies? Why would you pollute the water? Inquiring minds...