cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Andrea, Rachel, and I went to see the movie `Legally Blonde' on Friday night. I was working at Chroma, as I also did on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I see no need for some of the language and the body part references and innuendo. And aside from that, it is a wonderful movie. Sarah, Paul, Kate, Melanie, Audrey, and Justin should especially go see it, just maybe it will help you understand the rest of us better (Jared, I'm assuming you were more of a blonde when you were younger).
Blonde jokes were not in style when I was growing up. Rather it was elephant jokes: How do you get an elephant in a volkswagen? Carefully. Why do elephant's have flat feet? From stamping out burning ducks. etc. Being blonde was just part of growing up a descendant of Swedish immigrants.
I remember after my mission, since it was the only chance I would have to be in Europe, a missionary from Delta and I got permission to take a week and tour Europe. We took the train from London to Dover, the ferry to Calais, and the train to Paris. We took the metro to the Odeon and found a cheap hotel. After sight seeing the next day we rented a little red Metro Mini and drove north out of Paris. We got lost, and somehow slept in that little car. The next morning we went down to the beach, and I shaved in the surf. We were at Antwerp and we walked into the most wonderful museum of Christian art from about the 1200's. I bought some little art pieces for my sister, which I think she still has on the wall at her house. We drove up to The Hague and visited an open air market and I bought a pair of little wooden shoes and some Risjwick china, not realizing all of the time I would later spend in Risjwick working for Landmark and teaching at Shell Research, which Paul Sullivan is now in charge of. We slept in the car again, and got lost in the early morning fog. The signs were not in English. As we came up over a hill the first morning sunbeams shown through the fog like headlights, and they were all focused on a giant memorial for U.S. soldiers who died fighting in World War II. We stopped the car, and as we walked through the thousands and thousands of little white crosses and looked at the pillars and the memorial the tears flowed and we were so proud to be Americans, and we didn't even think about being blonde.
We drove into Germany. On one of the few dates I had been able to get someone to go with me on in my first two years of college (remember I had really bad zits), we had gone to a fraternity party at The Heidleberg, a famous restaurant in the Salt Lake area. When we came to Heidleberg, I insisted we stop, and we found a castle, went on the tour, and had a great taste of Germany. We drove on into Switzerland, and stayed with my missionary companion Bruno Steinle and I bought a Swiss watch. I remember money was really tight, and so I labored long and hard over my purchases. We went to the Swiss Temple, drove back to Paris and took the train and the ferry back to Dover. At immigration, we filled out the forms. Where it asked the color of our hair, I had put down `dishwater blonde.' The officer in charge laughed so hard he almost fell down. He took my form to several of his colleagues and showed them. It was the first time I realized it was special to be legally blonde.
The movie is a play on all of many of the cliche's there are about those who are legally blonde: shallow; self-indulgent; manipulative; etc. Of course, it was really a play on how smart blondes are, and how they manipulate the the dumb blonde preception to do what they want; i.e. roles played by Marilyn Monroe; Goldie Hawn; Meg Ryan; etc. The part of the movie that impressed me was the part that stressed integrity, being able to keep a confidence, not giving into peer pressure to be unethical, being willing to quit a job and school based on keeping your principles, and the general tone of helping the underdog and making the world a better place. It was a fitting end of the week activity.
Monday morning there was a nice e-mail from my legally blonde daughter Sara. Sara, it is interesting to me how when I first started writing the Thoughtlets you wanted nothing to do with them because I was broadcasting to the world all of this personal stuff. Sara I'm sorry I embarrassed you with an early Thoughtlet. I find it interesting how the world turns, and right now, you have given me more and better feedback on my efforts to create a communication forum for our family than anyone. Thanks! It gave me things to think about all week.
My legally blonde wife and I went downtown to Interactive Interpretation and Training's offices in The Park to work together for the first time on Monday. We ended up working until 12:30 AM Tuesday morning, only to find out that Swede Nelson left a message on my cell phone that he was postponing coming to Houston until Monday next week. Oh well! We got a lot of work done. I was up at 5:30 each morning, and busy working on the Offshore Texas project. It is really exciting to me how it is coming together.
Thursday morning I worked at the house until 9:30 when I went over to have a physical exam for the High Adventure. Dr. Solis was on vacation and I saw his partner Dr. Mehta. Good guy. Probably because of my hours, and because I have not been running, and my weight has climbed back up to 255, and because we had had a late night discussion about curfew with a legally blonde daughter, my blood pressure was up high enough he put me on blood pressure pills and wants me to come back in a month. He said there would be no problem with the High Adventure, and I need to lose some of the extra weight I've gained. Oh well! I spent the day downtown, and left the office at a little after midnight. Friday I timed coming home from Chroma so I arrived just as it was time to leave for the movie. It was nice to relax for a few minutes. If I wouldn't have brought an empty popcorn bag and got it filled up, I would have fallen asleep during the perviews. Oh well!
Saturday morning I worked at the house until 11:00, fielding a lot of telephone calls and working on several parts of the Offshore Texas project. Then I went to Chroma and for the first time started working on a Dynamic project, where Dynamic gets paid an override if we find something worthwhile. It was exciting, and especially when I found an anomally which is a gas filled sand channel. Not sure it is big enough to drill, and I hope it is. The resulting images are really quite stunning. They will be part of our conversation at breakfast tomorrow morning. I got home in time to go with Andrea to the Williams' for an adult fireside/family relation's class. Melanie's friend Marie Williams was there. I told her we went to a movie the night before about her. She asked which one and I said `Legally Redhead.' Andrea was sure I didn't remember the actual name of the movie, and I refused to change my story. It was a fun evening.
Today was a special Sunday. At sacrament meeting there was a special musical number by Loralynn Jones and Angela Moore. It was Pacabel Cannon in D as a harp and violin solo. I cried. It is not that often that you see the consequences of listening to the spirit as blatently as this. In about 1990, on one of my trips to teach a course at Shell Research in Risjwich, The Netherlands, I met a professor friend named Dr. Jhoost Berkhout. He invited me to dinner at `the nicest restaurant in The Hague, a place called Des Indes. I got there early, and spent a heavenly half hour wait listening to a Uruguayan harpist. When I got back to Houston, I told Marti that we needed to buy a harp for Sara. She did. She learned the harp. And Loralynn, who is legally blonde, liked what she heard, and took it up, and the music was beautiful. To top it off, Matt and I made our last Home Teaching visit to the Moore's, and I was able to tell Angela, who is also legally blonde, this chain of events and how much I enjoyed the music. Matt, who is not quite blonde, said `One thing I don't understand. Did you hit some wrong notes, or what?' Oh well!
In Gospel Doctrine we had a lesson on the Priesthood and the importance of the Priesthood. I wrote the first new stanza for Prime Words I have written in several months:
The Home Teaching lesson we gave this month is titled `Pornography, THE
Deadly Carrier,' by Thomas S. Monson. I'm going to quote from it,
because it is a theme I do not think can be repeated too often these
days, especially with some of the subliminal messages in even good
movies like Legally Blonde:
As I watch satan mingle scripture with the philosophies of men, I worry
for all of us, and not just those who are legally blonde. One dirty
story is OK? One alcholic drink doesn't matter? Or does it? Do these
simple and accepted activities by society desensitize us, and make it
so we can not hear the spirit attempting to teach us eternal truths?
I firmly believe so. And I believe the scriptures predicted it in many
places, for example when they talk about ever learning and never coming
to a knowledge of the truth (II Timothy 3:7).
Last week I mentioned that a week ago Saturday Andrea and I went to dinner with Harold and Joyce Burnham. When we got back to their house, Joyce, who is also legally blonde, talked about how she reacted when Melanie last bore her testimony in the Nottingham Country Ward. Melanie, she had watched you struggle in High School, and she knew you could go either the way of the world or the way leading to eternal life. After your testimony she left the building and went out to the car and cried tears of joy and wrote one of many letters she has written to a daughter who is not active in the church. I do not have words to describe the emotions and the fears I feel as I think of those who put themselves in situations where they will surely be cut off from the spirit of truth and the guidance of the Holy Ghost. And we all have our free agency, and no matter how much I care, my job is to be an example, a voice crying in the wilderness, a candlestick on the hill, calling those I love home, and inviting them to part of our eternal family. I guess this simply comes with the territory of being legally blonde."