Five More For the Road!

If you're still curious about the inner BiV, it's your lucky day. John Remy has sent me 5 more interview questions, and they're deep ones!

1. You're absolute dictator for a month...of Vernal. What decrees would you issue?

An immediate pay raise for all educators! Each adult over the age of 18 will read one book per month. New buildings and more funding for the USU satellite campus here in town. An end to censorship at the Public Library. More cultural opportunities: theater, orchestra, ballet, fine dining. Each adult Mormon must attend religious services of another faith tradition twice a year to promote open-mindedness. All rifles and shotguns banned...wait, I've just been impeached.

2. What are your favorite poets and poems?

There are way too many--I love classic poetry: Shakespeare's sonnets,Shelley, Joseph Addison, many more.

More modern poets I enjoy are: Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes.

My favorite poems are those that relate worldly problems to religion and things of the soul. I adore The Chambered Nautilus. Another which really stirs me is this:

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old
Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

3. What is your greatest accomplishment? Your greatest failure? Bonus points for responding in verse.

To bear eight souls so strong
and bring their minds along--
To see them grow, and stretch, and shine
Must be the greatest feat of mine.

I'm strong, yet weak
In those things of which we speak.
My greatest failure, pain I can attest:
I marred the ones I love the best.

4. The people in white coats are coming to take you away (haha! heehee! hoho!). What for? Bonus points for creativity.

I snapped when I realized that even though my older children are entering adulthood, they will never reach a stage of maturity to leave me my privacy when taking a shower. I am accustomed to my 8-year-old coming in and sitting on the counter and chatting away, leaving the door open while I shiver behind the curtain. But last week I was showering with the door locked when my 19-year-old jiggled the door handle. She immediately left to find some implement to poke in the knob and pop the lock. Exasperated, I asked, "What are you doing?" She replied, "Did you know the bathroom door was locked?" AAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! (Bonus Points: I did not make this up.)

5. You're granted the power to remove one event from history. Which one would you wipe and why?

I know, most people would say the Holocaust. But I just can't do it. Those who suffered have taught the world so much. The world would be poorer without books like Man's Search for Meaning, and Night, and Diary of Anne Frank. In some cruel but transcendent way, their suffering has sanctified them. So I guess I will remove the assassination of Martin Luther King. He "shaped the political and social fabric of the times", and I would love to see what he would have done with a few more years. What would the world be like if he were still alive today?