danajohnhill.org

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and this one was memorable, if not quite what we all imagined it would be.

It began for me on Wednesday the 21st, when I drove down to St. Petersburg to spend the evening with my grandmother - something I always enjoy. The drive was exceedingly slow due to heavy holiday traffic, which only cleared southbound in Wildwood, where the Turnpike begins. But I arrived in St. Pete eventually, and Grandma and I chatted into the night. I slept comfortably, and, as an added bonus, my cousin Marshall–who is presently living with my grandmother–has an Arctic White Fender Stratocaster.

Grandma and I chatted away Thanksgiving morning, and eventually made our way to my Aunt Julie’s new house in Pinellas Park, which was actually quite a nice place, with a huge back yard and a garage tailor made for Thanksgiving dinners. Of course, it is a custom in my family to sing a hymn in lieu of a spoken prayer, and this year was no different. One of these days we ought to make a recording of it, so that ages hence we’ll remember what it was to spend Thanksgiving at a Hill household.

Uncle Tom, Dad and I gathered around and flipped through Connie and Charlie’s scrapbooks of their roadtrip down Route 66. Miriam would have enjoyed that. But before too long I had to make a road trip of my own, back to Gainesville to spend what was left of the holiday with Mrs. Hill, and help her organize our own Post-Thanksgiving in what ever way I could. The drive back was considerably less congested, and in the absence of traffic, I enjoyed crossing the Howard Frankland Bridge, speeding through Tampa, and passing a favorite old landmark. I even made a short detour as part of the Dana Heritage Project, which I will detail in a future post.

Our premiere Post-Thanksgiving was to have been a happy gathering of combined families, an idea Mrs. Hill had, and she pulled off something remarkable, bringing together over a dozen people whom otherwise would have had no home-cooked meal. Unfortunately, my grandmother fell ill, and my mother had to work, so their absences were felt. But the food was delicious, and Miriam’s efforts were super-human.

My father bravely drove alone in his 1983 BMW 320i, which he loves. But the sudden death of his transmission at the Newberry Road exit spelled the end of his car’s journey under its own power. After some confusion regarding his exact whereabouts–I thought he was at the Red Lobster, when, in fact, he was on the Interstate off-ramp–I met up with him, and we got his car to a safe location in the Borders parking lot and made our way home for dinner. But we had to leave early to take advantage of the little remaining daylight, and attempted an on-location repair with no success. An improvised tool proved ineffectual, and the appropriate-but-pricey Craftsman version was too large to fit in the limited space beneath the car. While I was in Ocala photographing a wedding the following day, Dad worked more on the car, only to come to the conclusion that repair was likely impossible. Sunday the 25th was spent arranging for the BMW to be transported back to Pasco County. The best solution we could find was a trailer attached to a U-Haul. It worked fine, and the fellow at the Gainesville U-Haul even gave us a deal. So, U-Haul is hereby removed from the Axis of Evil.

My father’s automotive calamity was an unexpected expense and frustration for him, I know. On the other hand, I was able to spend more time with him than I had in a decade. And you can’t put a price on that.

Sorry to have been so long away, but I have been experiencing computer problems something awful.  The long and short of it is that I haven’t been getting my email, and, as you can imagine, dieses ist nicht so gut.  I spent the early part of last week attempting to relocate my site to a new host, while arranging to have all my email sent to a Hotmail account I have for precisely these sort of emergency situations.  The code which forwarded my email to Hotmail also put my website out of commission for the duration.

Ultimately, the transfer of my site proved to be a huge burden, and I opted to cancel the move, and, instead, try and arrive at some solution to my email malady with my host.  It is still pending, so, if you email me, and I do not respond to you like you think I should, it may very well be that I haven’t received your communiqué, and not that I am an incommunicative jerkface.

My station’s program director forwarded me this message from a listener tonight:

Dana Hill,

This afternoon’s program was one of the most
delightful I’ve heard in some time. You always do a fine job.
Thank you,

G.F.

It’s nice to receive compliments.

For the record, I played the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 by Rachmaninoff; Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946 by Schubert; Symphony No. 21 in A Major by Haydn; the String Quartet, Op. 32, No. 2 by Boccherini; the Romanian Rhapsody No. 2, Op. 11 by Enescu; Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel; and the Hungarian Rhapsody No 8 by Liszt, performed by Alfred Brendel, whose December 2008 retirement has just been announced. None of these works are personal favorites of mine.

Oh, Mexico.  First you give me the mariachi I love, then you give me child matadors.  What am I supposed to think?  Read the New York Times article and see the absurd pictures.

I wrote more extensively about this topic back in March, but an article in yesterday’s Washington Post reminded me of the savvy marketing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in their effort to convert the world. The Mormons are, like the Roman Catholics and others, focusing their missions increasingly on the developing world, and finding considerable success. Their tactics today are a considerable improvement over the “convert or die” methods of the past, which are certainly a blight on the history of the Catholic Church.

How the Mormons are able to sell Nigerians on a faith that seems on its face to be absurd and bizarrely America-centric is a testament to their marketing prowess. In case you don’t know, Mormons believe some weird things, such as:

• The Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri
• Jesus will personally govern the world from the United States following his second-coming
• Israelites crossed the ocean by boat in 600 B.C. and became the Native Americans we know today
• Proxy baptism of the dead is encouraged, regardless of the deceased person’s faith, including Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and Adolf Hitler
• People live in the sun (not orthodox doctrine, but still the belief of Prophet Brigham Young)

So, what about the LDS church draws so many converts in the developing world? My best guess is this: Mormons are extremely nice people. When I was a kid, during a particularly bad time, a Mormon family helped us in a profound way, and were extraordinarily generous and kind. When I was in Salt Lake City last March, every encounter I had with a LDS member was pleasant. They were all courteous and friendly. The fact that Temple Square in Salt Lake City is staffed by an army of extremely attractive young Mormon women from all over the world is a testament to the church’s geographic reach and marketing prowess.