Dialann | Issue 11, July 2013

ISSUE 11 JULY 2013

A VISIT TO THE

Statue of Liberty

ISSUE 11 JULY 2013

table of contents 8

THE JOURNAL

2

Susan: Our first NYC apartment

It’s small, but it’s cozy, and we use the space well. But most importantly, it’s home.

COLOPHON Our family Susan Jane Hibdon Joyce Dustin Tyler Joyce Fiona Claire Joyce

4 Dustin: Seeming rather than being

Higher ed’s deficiencies are leaving students empty-handed and the nation shortchanged.

8 Fiona: Learning to swim

Playing in the water is fun, but it’s even more fun when I know what I’m doing.

12

MILESTONES

10 January–June 2013 A VISIT TO

12 The Statue of Liberty

Susan and Dustin’s visit to the Statue of Liberty­—and all the way to her crown—was a bucket-list moment: something Dustin had waited his whole life to do.

18

STORIES

18 Folly & foolishness

By Susan | A (mostly) true story from one day in the life of the Hibdon family.

OUR TIMES

22 Terrorism strikes again in America

By Dustin | Two bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three, injuring more than 260, and reintroducing America to terrorism at home.

22

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

On the cover Front: The Statue of Liberty on Independence Day, 4 July 2013, the day it reopened following Hurricane Sandy, which severely damaged infrastructure on Liberty Island, including the docks where boats drop off visitors. It was also the day Susan and Dustin visited and went all the way to the crown.

Back: Susan and Dustin stand on the parapet at the top of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, overlooking New York Harbor and the Manhattan and Jersey City skylines.

Sans serif text is set in Hypatia Sans Pro. Serif text is set in Adobe Text Pro. This issue was designed on a Dell Inspiron ONE2305 desktop, with 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon II X2 240e processor with a speed of 2.8 GHz. The software used includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, as well as Microsoft Word 2010.

The operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Dialann—Irish for “journal”—is published quarterly at New York, in January, April, July, and October.

Published by Dustin Tyler Joyce | dtjoyce.com Printed by Blurb | blurb.com

24 Trend parenting for Latter-day Saints

By Dustin | How should Latter-day Saints raise our children? It starts with having the courage to share our testimonies with them.

LAST LOOK

28 A special delivery

A special delivery congratulates us on our special delivery.

Original content is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. Some material in this issue was produced by others; material used under a Creative Commons license is identified by “CC” and the license type and version. For more info, visit dialann.org/copyright

dialann.org

Did you know? The cumulative student loan debt held by Americans has quadrupled in the past 10 years, from approximately $250 billion in 2003 to more than $1 trillion today. SEE PAGE 4

THE JOURNAL SUSAN

Our first NYC apartment.

It’s small, but it’s cozy, and we use the space well. But most importantly, it’s home.

J U LY 2 0 1 3

R

ight now, we live in a relatively small three-bedroom apartment. Well, officially it’s a three-bedroom, but we have fewer bedrooms (and, at the same time, far more rooms). The biggest “bedroom” is used primarily as our living room, though about one-third of the room is our “garage,” occupied by the storage bins where we keep our random stuff. And the “Stube,” which we believe was intended to be the living room/dining room/kitchen, has a kitchen, a dining area, a bike storage zone, and my workshop.

Our little apartment has gone through quite a few different arrangements. When we first moved in, we put our futon against the outer wall of the living room, with our huge bookcase right across from it. Claustrophobic, especially when the futon was unfolded. So we took all the books off and moved the bookcase to create a divider between the living room and the garage. At the time, our computer was on a lower bookcase in the Stube, and Dustin and I slept in the mediumsized bedroom. Fiona’s was the loveliest room (well, when it was clean), and also the first one that was completely put together. We set it up the day we moved in while Fiona was at our branch president’s house playing. She knew immediately that it was just for her.

Later, we decided that a loft bed would be cool. So we disassembled our regular bed and put it in the garage, then put together a loft bed in our bedroom. Now we had the perfect place for an office! The low bookcase and computer moved into our room, and we found a little table for my new workshop.

Just recently, we realized that it would be better for Fiona to have the big bedroom. So we disassembled the loft bed (with the kind assistance of our friend Jensen Clifford) and made the switch. Fiona has had some trouble sleeping in her new room, because she’s not used to being in such a big place by herself.

Our apartment is cozy. Although we sometimes wish for more space (as well as a dishwasher and washing machine), we are very happy to have such a nice little apartment, and we’re proud of ourselves for using our space so well. d

 On the steps in front of our apartment.

PHOTO TAKEN 15 JULY 2012 BY DIANE AYTCHE

Bedroom 1 16′3″ × 8′10″ 4.95m × 2.69m

CLOSET

Stube

16′3″ × 18′11″ 4.95m × 5.77m

Bath

4′9″ × 6′11″ 1.45m × 2.11m

DOWN

REF

CLOSET

 top Fiona’s old bedroom. It was the first room we got arranged after our belongings arrived on 2 September 2011. We ate dinner in this room for a few nights after we moved in. And it never looked this clean again.  above Houses on our block in September 2011, the month we moved in, according to Google Maps. Our house is the second from the left.

Bedroom 3 6′6″ × 11′ 1.98m × 3.35m

Bedroom 2 9′4″ × 11′ 2.84m × 3.35m

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THE JOURNAL DUSTI N

Seeming rather than being.

Higher ed’s deficiencies leave students empty-handed and the nation shortchanged.

PART 2 OF 2

High debt, low learning

I believe in being smart, and I believe in education.

I love learning, and when I’ve pursued formal education, at either the high-school or college level, I’ve put all I can into it.

At South Mecklenburg High School I graduated in the top 10% of my class, with a 4.339 GPA. I was also voted “most intelligent” by my fellow students, and the faculty selected me as one of a couple dozen “outstanding seniors”.

In college I had a GPA of 3.956—.044 of a point from a perfect 4.0 because of three A minuses (all the rest of my grades were A or its equivalent).

When Susan first learned that, she remarked, “No wonder you hated college.”

Education is not just essential to the advancement of individuals; it’s vital for the advancement of nations. One of the reasons the United States became a superpower in the 20th century is because it prioritized providing a high level of education to a vast swath of its populace.

But somewhere along the way we lost sight of that. Caught up in politics, economics, and personal circumstance, gaining higher education is a much more complex proposition than it used to be—and than it needs to be. And even if, as in my case, because of your academic accomplishments—or, as is increasingly the case, because of your family’s wealth—you can access higher education, my experience in college taught me that what you gain is an inferior product that is more likely to guarantee heavy debt than increased job opportunities or earning power.

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The college debt crisis And it’s there that I’ll begin, because there is a general consensus that student debt is a growing issue that is beginning to undermine the entire higher-education model in the United States.

First, a few numbers. ÎÎ A full 70% of the class of 2013—more than two-thirds of college graduates this year— graduated with student debt. This includes traditional college loans as well as debt to families and credit-card debt.1 ÎÎ The average debt load for a member of the class of 2013 with debt is $35,200.2 ÎÎ More than one-third of recent graduates, 36.7%, are working in jobs that don’t require a degree—according to the study, they are “mal-employed”. CNN Money notes, “The mal-employed earn up to 40% less per week than their peers…. That could make it harder for them to pay off their student loans, move into their own apartments and even get married.”3 ÎÎ Another 8% of recent grads have part-time jobs rather than full-time jobs—meaning they are working and earning less, with fewer benefits, often with no health coverage, retirement plans, and other perks of being employed full time.4 ÎÎ All told, over one-half of recent college graduates, 53.6%, are unemployed or underemployed, and “Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000.” The situation is worst in the Mountain West, where the University of Utah is located, where up to 60%— roughly 3 in 5—of recent grads are un- or underemployed. This despite assurances from universities and others alike that a college education would open the door to career opportunities and higher incomes.5

In short, we are saddling an entire generation with an enormous amount of personal debt, before they even enter the workforce and start their careers. Cumulative student debt in the United States now totals more than $1 trillion.6 That’s more than either auto loans or credit-card debt.7

When they enter the workforce, they face the bleakest prospects in generations. Today’s college graduates are more likely to remain unemployed for an extended period of time, and those who do eventually find employment are more likely to work in positions that don’t take advantage of their education and/or pay them

less than they would have earned a generation ago.

Add to that the fact that this generation will have to pay off the highest level of national debt in American history in real money terms: as of this writing the national debt exceeds $17 trillion.8 Total liabilities, including entitlement programs, total more than $126 trillion—which this generation will have to figure out how to fund. This out of an economy that totals just under $17 trillion and where we are being left behind.9

A significant portion of this debt stems from misguided wars in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq. Where, by the way, our generation carried out most of the ground combat and, therefore, suffered the lion’s share of the casualties. And which we are now expected to pay for since the government financed the wars through debt. It’s on our backs.

Ours is also the generation on which the success of President Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, health-insurance reform, depends. The entire point of the individual mandate—the requirement that individuals buy health insurance or face a tax penalty—was to get our generation, young and therefore mostly healthy, into the system to help pay for the costly care of older, sicklier generations. This, too, is on our backs.

Ours is a generation disabled by debt, with untold consequences for individuals and families, and enormous repercussions for our nation and our world. Yet this is a generation where, as Carl Van Horn, founding director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, put it, “Employers are taking college grads over high-school grads, but paying them high-school grad wages.”10 We are shortchanging that entire generation with an inferior college education According to the College Board, “[a]mong full-time undergraduates at public and private nonprofit four-year institutions, the median published tuition and fee price in 2013–14 is $11,093.”11 This does not include room and board or other costs related to attending college, such as transportation, books and supplies, and other expenses—essential extras, all of which can easily double that sticker price. For many students, it is not a stretch to say four years of higher education can cost over $100,000.

So what are students getting for their cool hundred grand?

As it turns out, not much.

PHOTO: COLUMNS IN THE FRIEDENSKIRCHE, POTSDAM, GERMANY TAKEN 16 DECEMBER 2007 BY ANDREAS LEVERS, CC BY-NC 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/96DPI/2119924191

A book released in 2011, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, conveyed some startling findings from a study of 2,300 undergraduates at 24 colleges and universities, a representative cross-section of American higher education. (An Associated Press article on the book notes, “The schools took part on the condition that their institutions not be identified.”) ÎÎ A full 45% of college students “show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their” second year of college. ÎÎ That number improves to 36% after four years. But that still means that over onethird of students, upon leaving college, have no measurable gains in the skills that many say are the essential reason colleges exist in the first place. ÎÎ The social environment of campus—again, a core reason higher education as we know it today is organized how it is organized— generally makes no difference in student performance: students who study with others show lower gains in the key measures than students who study alone. Some social aspects of college even have a detrimental effect: the study found that “students who spent more time in the Greek system had decreased rates of learning.” Then again, I guess it’s sort of obvious that you’re not learning much when you’re spending all your time at the frat house. ÎÎ A year out of college, these results begin to show their real impact: one-third of college graduates move back home and 10% remain unemployed (that’s to say nothing of the 37% who are mal-employed and the untold others who are underemployed).12

So, let’s say colleges succeed with 64% of their students, helping them improve their critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing by the time they graduate. And let’s translate that to a grade: a D according to the grading scale at most American universities. In short, the nation’s system of higher education is doing no better than a D—and a low D at that—at fulfilling their core purpose of educating the nation’s youth and positioning our nation to be viable and competitive in the global economy of the 21st century.

My personal experience in college corroborates these findings. My first semester at

What does our society really value?

The appearance of being smart, talented, and accomplished, rather than the actual fact. Its motto is videri quam esse, seeming rather than being.

5

Bottom 25%

58%

Net worth < $8,500

25% to 50%

17%

$8,500–$79,000

50% to 75%

15%

$79,000–$311,000

75% to 89%

$311,000–$983,000

75% to 89% > $983,000

6% 3%

Who owes what?

Distribution of total student debt by level of household net worth (percentile)7

J U LY 2 0 1 3

the University of Utah I had a course where the teacher allowed one page of notes to be brought into the exam. The notes were to consist of selections from the book we were then reading, which we could then quote in our essay. I remember one particular exam on a book I hadn’t read. I woke up the morning of the exam, flipped through the book and found a page that sounded like it could be useful in the exam, and typed it up and printed it out. I aced the exam. My blue book was filled with praise from the professor on the strength of my essay. All on a book I never even read.

A year later I had another course, a gen ed course on American history. I studied for those exams in much the same way: cracked open the textbook for 30 minutes the morning of the exam, then aced every test.

While I like to think that I’m smart and a decent student, I’m not that amazing. Rather, the coursework just wasn’t so rigorous that it required more effort. And I spent over $1,000 for each of those classes13 where my greatest takeaway was the deficiency of America’s system of higher education. Had I gone to the library and borrowed a book—for free—and read it, I likely would have learned more.

The researchers behind the book I mention above, Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, blame these results in part on “a culture at colleges and universities that values research over good teaching.”14 My personal experience at the U substantiates this as well. Except it wasn’t just research valued over good teaching—it was everything but good teaching that was valued more highly: the research; the medical center; the business er, research park; and especially athletics, most of all the football team of Urban Meyer and Alex Smith that went undefeated my sophomore year. We mere students were thirdclass citizens at our own university, bottomdwelling scum suckers because we were a drain on—rather than contributing to—the university’s revenue. Or so it felt.

We are recreating a caste system High debt, low learning: the repercussions are great for individuals. But what of the

consequences for our nation and our world of the failure of our system of higher education to perform its most basic functions? These effects can be summarized by one word: divide.

Wealth divide. The divide between the richest Americans and everyone else is the biggest it has been in generations and is only getting bigger. And the deficiencies in our system of higher education are contributing to this growing wealth gap. The bottom 25% of Americans, those with net worths less than $8,500, not only hold a greater proportion of the nation’s cumulative student debt than the wealthiest 25%—those with net worths of $311,000 or more—they hold more student debt than the top 75% of Americans combined.15 A system of higher education that burdens the most those who need its help most urgently will fail to live up to the very ideals it purports to instill in its students. The growing burden of debt, combined with higher ed’s failure to provide a sound education to a significant portion of its students, threatens to contribute more to economic inequality in our nation far more than education will solve it.

Generation divide. Millennials, those born beginning around 1980, give or take a few years (a generation that probably includes Dustin but likely excludes Susan)—in other words, those who are currently in college, or who graduated from college within about the past decade, or who will begin college in the coming decade— are the first generation in American history that expects to be worse off than their parents.

Hobbled by the greatest student debt burden in history, the greatest national debt in history, bleak economic prospects, and mediocre college educations, it’s easy to see why. The failures in our system of higher education threaten to exacerbate the generation gap, and it could well continue to grow for future generations.

Racial divide. And for universities’ idealism—the equality and opportunity rhetoric of their professors, the political and social activism of their students—there is one startling fact that stands in stark relief. That same study that found that 36% percent of students graduate college without improving important skills such as critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing also found that the gap between white and black students widens during the four years of college.16 Add to that the unraveling of affirmative action programs17 and persistent achievement gaps between black and white students at other levels of education, the failures of our higher-education system threaten to undo

a century and a half of progress on the issue of race in this country.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Conclusion But what of this fact, which the University of Utah’s Office of Admissions notes on its website about tuition: “the average salary for a college graduate is almost $20,000 per year higher than the salary of a high school graduate (that equates to $900,000 over a career).”18

More than saying something about the value of a college education, I believe that fact says something about our value system as a society. The facts remain that more than a third of college students gain little to nothing from their (expensive) experience, and that for an increasing number of college students employment prospects are negligibly higher for them than for those with just a high-school diploma—indeed, for an increasing number of them, they end up working behind the same Starbucks counter, returning home at night to the couch in their parents’ living room. Salaries and wages remain depressed, and the costs of college education have increased at a rate far exceeding that of inflation or income growth. There are likely other, less expensive ways to help young people gain skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing as well as knowledge in a particular subject area and, while doing so, contribute more significantly to society and the economy.

But academic discussion on these alternatives— tied to the politics and revenues of the nation’s colleges and universities—is scant to nonexistent.

But in the United States, we still have this idea, this belief, that all people would benefit from going to college. From the president to the PTA, we want to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to postsecondary education to every student, regardless of resources, academic NOTES 1. Fidelity Investments, “Student Debt Levels— Now Averaging More Than $35,000—Surprise To Half Of 2013 College Grads,” 16 May 2013, fidelity.com/inside-fidelity/individual-investing/ college-grads-surprised-by-student-debt-levelexceeds-35000 2. Fidelity Investments 3. Luhby, Tami, “Recent college grads face 36% ‘mal-employment’ rate,” CNN Money, 25 June 2013, money.cnn.com/2013/06/25/news/ economy/malemployment-rate 4. Luhby, Tami/CNN Money 5. Associated Press (AP), “Half of recent college grads underemployed or jobless, analysis says,” 23 April 2012, cleveland.com/business/index. ssf/2012/04/half_of_recent_college_grads_u. html 6. Chopra, Rohit, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Student Debt Swells, Federal Loans Now Top a Trillion,” 17 July 2013,

achievement, personality, and individual needs and interests. And while I can appreciate efforts to democratize higher education, they are clearly falling short, leaving students empty-handed and society shortchanged. As Rebecca Schuman, an adjunct professor at the Pierre Laclede Honors College at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, wrote in Slate, “The indecorous truth is that …, without a radical overhaul in either state funding or university management, college in the United States will continue to cost vastly more than students can afford. But we will continue to tell them that in order to find employment, they have no choice but to go—and yet when (or if ) they graduate, there will still be few jobs for them.”19

And this idea that people should have gone to college persists as individuals seek employment. Virtually any job description will list as a requirement a “college degree”. More often than not, it doesn’t matter what the degree is in: it doesn’t have to be in a course of study at all related to the job, it just has to have been earned. HR professionals may tell you that a person’s possession of a college degree is a sure sign of their level of intelligence and their ability to stick to and follow through with a project or goal. Yet, clearly, with alarming frequency, a college degree is no sure sign of any of those things. The only guaranteed thing a college degree tells you is that someone spent tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper (albeit a rather fancy one). College degrees have become status symbols and little more.

What does our society really value? The appearance of being smart, talented, and accomplished, rather than the actual fact. Its motto is videri quam esse, seeming rather than being. Which, come to think of it, would appear an apt description of the role that institutions of higher education play in the lives of their students and our society. d

consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/student-debtswells-federal-loans-now-top-a-trillion/ 7. Severns, Maggie, “The Student Loan Debt Crisis in 9 Charts,” Mother Jones, 5 June 2013, motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/student-loandebt-charts 8. The highest level of national debt as a percentage of the GDP was in the years after World War II—a level we are once again rapidly approaching.

9. usdebtclock.org 10. Luhby, Tami/CNN Money 11. College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2013, p. 3, trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/ college-pricing-2013-full-report.pdf 12. Gorski, Eric, “Report: College students not learning much,” Associated Press (AP), 18 January 2011, nbcnews.com/id/41136935 13. I did have a scholarship, so my personal cost was probably less. But nonresident, lower-division undergraduate tuition for 12 credit hours at the

University of Utah was $4,465.76, plus $264.70 in fees, for the 2003–04 academic year, my first at the U. By contrast, nonresident, lower-division undergraduate tuition for 12 credit hours at the U for the 2013–14 academic year is $9,508.20, plus $434.10 in fees, an increase of 110% in just 10 years. Meaning those same worthless courses would cost nearly $2,500 today.

14. It is fair to note that the researches also place blame on “students who don’t study much and seek easy courses.”

15. Severns, Maggie/Mother Jones 16. Gorski, Eric/AP 17. I make this statement without any judgment on the actual value or merits of affirmative action.

18. admissions.utah.edu/cost 19. Schuman, Rebecca, “Buyer Beware the BargainBasement B.A.,” Slate, 4 November 2013, slate. com/articles/life/education/2013/11/affordable_ college_education_the_10_000_b_a_and_ competency_models_are_not.html

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THE JOURNAL FIONA

Learning to swim.

Playing in the water is fun, but it’s even more fun when I know what I’m doing.

J U LY 2 0 1 3

 Fiona overlooks the pool at the YMCA in Jamaica, Queens.

I

n the summer, I took swimming lessons in a pool. The pool was at the YMCA in Jamaica, Queens. Every Friday I put on my swimming cap and my swimming suit and mama took me on the subway to my lesson. Except for the time Mama and Daddy didn’t have time to put my swimming suit on me before we left our house and they changed my clothes on the subway. Mama put my swimming suit on me while Daddy held up a towel so other riders couldn’t see what was going on.

One day when we got to the YMCA I looked at a camera and then I got a card with my picture on it. After that, whenever we got to the YMCA, we went to the basement, where all the walls were painted blue, and I showed my card to the lady, who would let us in. We went into the locker room so I could take a shower before I got into the pool. The floor was really slippery when I was all wet!

I fell down one time, but just one time.

Then I went out on to the deck, which had really big hooge steps that mama and daddy sat on while the class had its lesson. At first I was nervous and didn’t want to go with my class, but then I decided it was okay. At the beginning of class, we all went to one corner of the pool with our teacher.

I had two teachers, in fact. At the beginning of class, they gave us something they called a backpack. I put it on my back then fastened the straps over my tummy. Then we walked along the pool with our hands on the wall because I didn’t want to slip.

When we got to the other end of the pool, we sat down along the edge of the pool and splashed our feet in the water.

Then we got into the water. The water was so deep that I couldn’t touch the bottom, so PHOTO TAKEN 30 AUGUST 2013 BY DUSTIN

This is the first article to whose writing Fiona directly contributed.

Highlighted portions of text are, more or less, direct quotations from Fiona.

I held on to the edge of the pool with my hands and stretched out my legs. I put my face in the water and blew bubbles. One time I started crying because I got some water in my nose. The teacher would hold on to me like this [with her hands under my arms] and say, “Kick! Kick! Kick! Kick! Kick!” and, “Circle!

Circle! Circle!” I would kick my feet and move my arms in circles so I could learn to swim.

I also learned to float on my back.

At first all I did was look up, up, up at the sky.

Then I learned to kick while I was on my back.

I also flapped my arms like I was a bird and that helped me go through the water.

When we were done learning how to swim each week, the class got out of the water and took jumps. That was pretty fun. But the best thing I got to do was use a noodle. It was green, but other noodles were pink and blue and purple. My teacher put it under my arms and I practiced swimming. My teacher didn’t even have to hold on to me when I was swimming with the noodle.

Then we climbed up the ladder and got out of the pool and walked back down along the pool with our hands on the wall.

I was usually cold and shivering. We took off our backpacks and put them away and said goodbye to our teacher. Sometimes mama and I would stay and watch the big kids in their lesson. The teachers would put in the lane lines. The lane lines were really, really, really long—as long as the whole pool! They made a pattern: blue, yellow, blue, yellow, blue, yellow, blue. When the big kids got in the pool, they would hold on to kickboards and swim all the way down the pool.

Someday I’ll be able to do that, too.

But I’m still small, so I have to learn how to use those kickboards and swim all by myself. d

Pretending I’m at the laundromat One day, Mama made me a pretend washing machine out of an old cereal box because I was sad that I couldn’t go to the laundromat with Daddy. The first thing I did was load it with clothes.

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To get the clothes clean, you have to add soap. I pretended that a purple crayon was soap.

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To make the machine start running, you have to pay.

On my pretend washing machine you could pay with coins …

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… but I also insisted that I be able to pay with a credit card, so Mama made me a pretend credit-card reader.

4

And if you pay with a credit card, you have to be able to sign your name on the screen.

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9 PHOTOS TAKEN 10 JUNE 2013 BY DUSTIN

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travel events in the Church

birthdays world events

Dustin (31) The London Underground, the world’s oldest subway, celebrates 150 years (see Dialann 10.9) President Obama has Washington, D.C., license plates with the phrase taxation without representation put on the presidential limo, in support of District residents’ efforts to gain full voting representation in Congress (see Dialann 6.18–20) Barack Obama inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States The price of a first-class stamp rises to 46 cents

February 1 10th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Columbia disintegrated upon reentry in the earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members on board: Rick Husband, commander; William C. McCool, pilot; Michael P. Anderson, payload commander; David M. Brown, mission specialist 1; Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist 2; Laurel Clark, mission specialist 4; and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist 1 2 Grand Central Terminal, New York City’s grand transportation hub, celebrates its 100th anniversary 4 The Royal Canadian Mint ceases distribution of one-cent pieces, also called pennies (see Dialann 10.8) 6 USPS announces plans to end Saturday delivery  7 Mississippi finally officially ratifies the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery (see Dialann 10.9) 8–9 Blizzard (sort of ) called Nemo 15 Meteor over Russia (see Dialann 10.9) 17–19 Family to Springfield, Massachusetts; Brattleboro, Vermont; and Concord, New Hampshire 22 To accommodate the influx of new missionaries following the announcement that ages for missionary services were being lowered to 18 for men and 19 for women, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the creation of 58 new missions, including the Utah Salt Lake City East Mission, the fifth in the Salt Lake Valley. The new missions bring the total number of missions worldwide to 405 28 Pope Benedict XVI resigns, saying his failing health is keeping him from fully carrying out his duties. He quietly announced his decision in Latin on 11 February March 1

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announces new editions of its scriptures, with minor

13 22 26–30 April 6–7

8 30

May 2

2 17 17

20 30 30 31

June 8

26 26 27

changes to the 1979 Latter-day Saint edition of the Holy Bible and the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, becomes Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church Meteor spotted over Northeastern United States, including New York City, but we didn’t see it. Sad. Susan and Fiona to Bethesda, Maryland 183rd Annual General Conference. President Thomas S. Monson announces temples in Cedar City, Utah, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Jean A. Stevens, the first counselor in the Primary General Presidency, became the first woman to offer an invocation or benediction at general conference when she offered the closing prayer at the Saturday morning session Lady Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, dies at age 87 Willem-Alexander becomes king of The Netherlands as his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicates. Beatrix announced her decision to leave the throne in favor of her son on 28 January 2013. Willem-Alexander is the country’s first king in 123 years. (Dustin studied in The Netherlands from 1 September 2005 to 12 January 2006) As the last sections of its spire are hoisted into place, One World Trade Center, already New York City’s tallest building, becomes the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and fourth tallest in the world, topping out at a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 meters) Maryland becomes the 18th state (plus the District of Columbia) to abolish the death penalty Frances Monson, wife of President Thomas S. Monson, passes away at age 85 Two Metro-North trains collide after one derails just east of the Fairfield Metro station on the railroad’s New Haven Line in Connecticut. More than 70 passengers were injured, several critically, but there were no fatalities Meck Dec Day Susan’s pregnancy is confirmed by the doctor A train service to the Rockaways is restored  The largest tornado ever recorded occurs near El Reno, Oklahoma. It was 2.6 miles (4.2 kilometers) wide with a maximum recorded wind speed of 295 miles per hour (475 kilometers per hour).

Fiona gets her first bike helmet Dustin receives his first-ever jury summons. He is to report for duty at Kings County Supreme Court at 8.30 on 2 July Susan’s last day of school The legalization of gay marriages in the United States advances with rulings against the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8  Fiona’s last day of her first year of school

In more detail …

The mail becomes a relic of the past 6 February | The United States Postal Service announces plans to end Saturday delivery of letters, including bills, cards, and similar items, effective 10 August 2013. It would still deliver packages on Saturdays.

The move would save the Postal Service an estimated $2 billion annually. However, on 10 April, under pressure from Congress and the public, it rescinded the decision and said that Saturday delivery would continue through at least 30 September 2013. As of this writing, no further announcement has been made.

New York City’s subway is made whole 30 May | A train service to the Rockaways, Queens, is restored, making the New York City Subway system whole once again. However, though the new South Ferry station on the 1 train remains closed; the old South Ferry station is serving as a temporary replacement while the rebuilding of the new South Ferry station, which was only four years old, continues (which could cost $600 million and take several years).

Other “Fix & Fortify” efforts throughout the system remain ongoing. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently announced that the R train between Brooklyn and Manhattan would be shut down for 14 months straight beginning in August while repairs are made to the Montague Tube, which carries R trains under the East River. The MTA also announced that the G train between Brooklyn and Queens—specifically, Greenpoint Avenue, 21st Street, and the Court Square G platform— will be closed for 12 consecutive weekends beginning 6 July while repairs are made to the Greenpoint Tube, which carries G trains under Newtown Creek).

DOMA declared unconstitutional 26 June | In a pair of 5–4 decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and that the proponents of California’s Proposition 8 didn’t have standing to defend it in court.

The DOMA ruling means that the federal government must extend to same-sex couples, legally married in the states where gay marriage is legal, the same rights and benefits it extends to heterosexual couples. With Proposition 8, the court remanded the case to the lower court with the instruction to dismiss it, meaning samesex marriage is once again legal in California as well as Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

11

12

A VISIT TO

the

STATUE of

LIBERTY

J U LY 2 0 1 3

Independence Day ■ 4 July 2013 Susan and Dustin’s visit to the Statue of Liberty­—and all the way to her crown— was a bucket-list moment: something Dustin had waited his whole life to do.

I

 Finally there Dustin stands on Liberty Island in front of the Statue of Liberty after visiting the statue’s crown.

am one of those people who have a bucket list—a list of things I want to do or see at least once—even if my list isn’t written down anywhere and is only roughly defined. But there are some things that are definitely on that list. Visiting the capitol of every U.S. state and riding every rail system in the United States and Canada are two that come to mind.

Regardless of how my bucket list is defined, visiting the Statue of Liberty, and going all the way to the crown, was certainly on it. And this month—on Independence Day, no less—I was able to cross it off.

Last October, when Hurricane Sandy made a direct hit on New York City and the surrounding region, the Statue of Liberty itself escaped virtually unscathed, but Liberty Island did not. The dock where ferries from Manhattan and New Jersey dropped off visitors was destroyed, as was much of the island’s electrical system and other infrastructure. The island and the statue were closed to visitors, and temporary lights and generators were brought in to illuminate the monument at night.

Hurricane Sandy made landfall on 29 October 2012, one day—yes, just one day—after

the Statue of Liberty reopened to the public following a yearlong renovation and restoration project that began on 29 October the previous year, one day after the statue’s 125th anniversary.

This was the latest chapter in the tumultuous recent history of allowing visitors access to the crown. The statue and the island were immediately closed following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The island reopened to the public by the end of 2001, and the pedestal reopened in August 2004, but the statue remained off-limits throughout the Bush administration due to safety concerns (the difficulty of evacuating in an emergency, which, frankly, is understandable). The Obama administration reopened it as a “special gift” to America on 4 July 2009, with a daily limit on the number of people allowed to access the crown.

When the opportunity to be among the first to visit the Statue of Liberty and go to its crown following Hurricane Sandy popped up on 8 May—I just happened to notice a post in my Facebook News Feed that morning—I jumped at it. It was pretty much the best $40 I’ve ever spent. And it was, quite possibly, the best Fourth of July ever. —dustin

Jersey City, New Jersey

Hudson River

Ellis Island Empire State Building

The view New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline from the parapet at the top of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.

14

1886

The year the statue opened

305.5

Height, in feet, from ground level to the tip of the torch (93.1 meters).

The statue itself is 111.5 feet (34 meters) from heel to torch.

The crown Susan and Dustin inside the head of the Statue of Liberty.

Chrysler Building

40 Wall Street The Trump Building

World Financial Center East River Battery Park One World Trade Center Under construction

Staten Island Ferry Terminal

New York Harbor

354

Number of steps (give or take) from the ground to the crown. While an elevator is available to take visitors to the top of the pedestal, the last 154 steps, inside the statue itself, must be walked.

15

16

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

EMMA LAZARUS “THE NEW COLOSSUS”

1

2

3

4

5

6

1. The tablet the statue holds in her left hand, inscribed july iv mdcclxxvi, the date of America’s independence—July 4, 1776—in Roman numerals.

2. Windows in the statue’s crown.

3. The statue’s internal framework, engineered by Gustave Eiffel (yes, of Eiffel Tower fame).

4. The statue’s original torch, now on display inside the statue’s base. It was replaced during restoration work at the time of the statue’s centennial in 1986.

5. The statue’s face from the inside.

6. These two tightly wound spiral staircases carry visitors to and from the crown. One is for going up; the other for going down.

17

STORIES

FOLLY

FOOLISHNESS

J U LY 2 0 1 3

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE HIBDON FAMILY

By SUSAN

This is a true story. Mostly.

The waffle in this story looked nothing like this

ow that the Hibdon kitchen had been completed for more than a month and a half, Mrs. Hibdon decided it was time to unpack the boxes in the basement and move back into the kitchen.

The rest of the family was rather confused at her statement that “there are important things in those boxes,” since they had survived without them for several months. The younger Hibdons’ idea of a necessity was something that was useful; for instance, a cake pan or rolling pin. To their knowledge, all such necessities had already been restored to their permanent residences in the kitchen; however, there were still a few empty shelves, so they were forced to admit that there might be a few items missing.

After breakfast, Mrs. Hibdon asked her daughter Susan to carry the remaining boxes upstairs. When this was done, she pointed out a sink full of soapy water and asked “Now, will you please start on the walls?” The blank look on Susan’s face must have indicated her mystification at this request, so Mrs. Hibdon clarified it with “You can tell how dusty they are.”

“You want me to wash the walls.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Didn’t I do that last week?”

“Of course, but you can’t expect things to stay clean for any length of time.”

Susan had been in this situation before, and knew it was useless to argue. “Resistance is futile,” she muttered as she went to work.

Five minutes later, Mrs. Hibdon stepped down from her chair (where she had been vacuuming the shelves, which her youngest daughter, Ellen, had cleaned just two weeks earlier) and inspected Susan’s work.

“Wait a minute, you’re not telling me this is PHOTO TAKEN 15 APRIL 2007 BY CHRISTINA CHIN-PARKER, CC BY 2.0 COMMONS.W IKIMEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:WAFFLES_WITH_STRAWBERRIES.JPG

19

20

done, are you?”

“Umm… Well, no, I never said a word, but now that you mention it—”

“What’s all this dust? This is not a good job. You have to go over it three times. Once up and down, then rinse the sponge, then across and rinse it again, then one last time to get off whatever you didn’t get the first time.”

“I went over it twice...”

“Well, there’s still dust on here. Do it again.”

Susan’s first impulse was to comment that “you can’t expect things to stay clean for any length of time,” but then she remembered the window washing episode of last summer. With a suppressed sigh, she went to work.

Half an hour later, Mrs. Hibdon checked the walls, and Susan was relieved to see that they met her satisfaction. She was about to leave the room when Mrs. Hibdon bent over and peered up to see the bottom of the cabinets.

“Wait a minute, did you do this part? You have to do the cabinets, they get dust on them too you know.”

“Mmmmhmmmmnnnnnnngg...” Susan tried to smother a groan of astonishment.

Seventeen years had not been enough to accept her mother’s delusions, and every day brought with it a surprise that, in retrospect, seemed to fit in perfectly with Mrs. Hibdon’s patterns of derangement.

During the next few minutes, while Susan was intent on her dust removal, Mrs. Hibdon set out to put all those important items (whose identity was, as yet, unknown) in the newly spotless cabinets. The Hibdon children had long since learned to block out all but the one most pressing foolishness of their mother’s, so Susan tried not to observe her activities too closely.

This was, of course, impossible when Mr. Hibdon entered the room and said in shock, “Mary, what are you doing?”

Mrs. Hibdon replied, in equal shock, “I’m putting this stuff away. What does it look like I’m doing?”

Mr. Hibdon recovered quickly from his initial state of stupefaction, and was now trying to calmly sort through the boxes on the floor to establish just what “this stuff ” might be. Susan turned and, surveying the scene, attempted to contain a wild giggle. Picking up an old coffeepot, Mr. Hibdon inquired, “when were you thinking we might use this? They don’t even make filters to fit this thing any more.”

“Of course they do. They make everything you could ever want to buy, we just don’t know where to find them. Why would we keep that around if it was useless? Besides, we’ve had it for years. We can’t throw it away.”

“Yes, dear. And what about this?”

“What about it?”

“Why don’t we throw it away?”

“Throw it away! We can’t throw that away!

Look at it, it’s beautiful!”

“Oh, you’re right. What is it?”

There were several seconds of oppressive silence while the three pondered the object in Mr. Hibdon’s hands. “I think it’s a shortbread mold,” offered Susan.

“Hey, yeah, I think you’re right. See, we can’t throw that away; it’s part of our Scottish heritage,” Mrs. Hibdon said.

With a laugh (cleverly disguised as a cough) Mr. Hibdon said, “Mary, it would take two recipes of shortbread to fill this thing, and you would only get six pieces out of it.”

Mrs. Hibdon, trying to sidestep reality, said firmly, “David, we are not throwing that away.

We will need it someday, and then where will we be?”

“In an uncluttered kitchen?” attempted Susan. Mr. Hibdon laughed until he saw his wife trying not to do the same. “Okay, why don’t we put all of this in the garage?”

(The family garage was filled with furniture that Mrs. Hibdon said she was going to refinish, but never actually did. Thus came about the term “garage-ing,” which the young Hibdons defined as “the disappearance of any purposeful household item.”)

“Good idea, Susan.”

“No, we can’t put it out there.”

“WHY NOT?” exclaimed Mr. Hibdon, who had already picked up one of the boxes and was on his way out the door.

“Because it’s cold out there,” declared Mrs. Hibdon. “I mean, if we ever want any of that, we’ll have to stand in the cold and sort through everything.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve already established that WE ARE NEVER GOING TO USE ANY OF THIS!” cried Susan in exasperation.

“Besides, there’s no room in the garage.”

“Oh, that’s right. The garage is full, because that’s where we put the things that are practical, like doors and chairs,” Susan recalled.

“Right.”

At that moment, something caught Susan’s eye. “A waffle iron! How did that get in that box?”

“Oh, that goes in the cupboard with the spice rack. Will you put it away?”

“What’s this waffle doing in it?”

Mrs. Hibdon poked it and said, “Hmm, when was the last time we had waffles?”

Susan’s curiosity got the better of her, and she inquired, “Is it in the crusty stage of stale, or has it gone through the complete cycle so it’s spongy again?” All of the Hibdons knew about the staleness cycle, known as the “Archway Ginger Snap Effect,” so named because Mr.

RIGHT! THE KEY WORDS HERE ARE ‘BACK IN THE SIXTIES,’ WHEN JOHNSON WAS PRESIDENT, PEOPLE WORE BELLBOTTOMS, YOU MADE TUNA CASSEROLE, AND SMOKING WAS THE HIP, GROOVY THING TO DO. NOTICE THAT ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE BAD IDEAS. SUSAN Hibdon bought a bag of Archway Ginger Snaps about every six months. He always insisted that he loved them, but for some reason, only about four of the cookies were actually eaten. Every two weeks, one of the children took out a cookie to run tests on it, and it was found that staleness was not a continuum (as is generally assumed by the public), but a cycle that runs from a hard, crusty state (when most people throw whatever it is away) to a pseudo-normal, squishy state.

“Boy, is this thing old. David, will you throw this away?” requested his wife, tossing it to him.

“Wait a minute Susan, you can’t put that there.”

“Why not? This is the cabinet with the spice rack.”

“I know, but that has to go on the shelf with the crock pot and the fondue pot so there’s room on the top shelf for these ashtrays.”

With great effort, Susan resisted the urge to slap some sense into her mother, since she knew it would never work anyway. She was suddenly faced with three absolutely ridiculous facts: One, that somehow she was supposed to cram a waffle iron onto a shelf that was already crowded with a crock pot and a fondue pot; two, that they even owned a fondue pot; and three, that she was making room for ashtrays.

“Ashtrays? What do we need ashtrays for?”

“Hey! Back in the sixties, we used to know people who smoked.”

“Right! The key words here are ‘back in the sixties,’ when Johnson was president, people wore bellbottoms, you made tuna casserole, and smoking was the hip, groovy thing to do. Notice

that all of those things are bad ideas.”

“Well, it might be a bad idea, but people still do smoke.”

“That’s beside the point! The only way we will ever use those ashtrays is if we meet someone who smokes, and we live in Utah, so that’s pretty much hopeless in itself. Not only that, but we will have to actually like them enough to invite them to our house, and furthermore, we have to like them enough to let them smoke in our house.

None of those things will ever happen! We don’t like anyone enough to invite them to our house!”

“Not true. We don’t dislike anyone enough to invite them to our house,” chuckled Mr. Hibdon as he threw a mystery object into the trash on top of the waffle.

“Hey, wait a minute! What are you doing?”

“Sorry, my hand slipped. Hi, Martin, hi, Ellen, how are you?” he greeted his son and youngest daughter, who had just walked in the door.

“Fine. What’s going on?” asked Ellen, trashing a bent spoon.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” she replied, retrieving it.

Martin, who had been standing in the doorway and looking around with a quizzical expression on his face, turned and left the room without a word.

“Well, you guys can all make fun of me, but I know I’m right. You’ll all be sorry someday when you don’t have that shortbread mold.”

“Yes, dear.” d

Susan wrote this story during her senior year of high school. The assignment was to write a satire reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice.

The part about the waffle is 100% true.

21

OUR TIMES

By DUSTIN

Boston 15 April 2013 Two bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three, injuring more than 260, and reintroducing America to terrorism at home.

 In the days after the bombing, a show of love from New York to Boston, projected onto the facade of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

J U LY 2 0 1 3

Terrorism strikes again in America

T

errorism. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, we’d watched it happen around the world. Bombs that tore apart commuter trains in Madrid on 11 March 2004, killing 41 and injuring over 2,000. Fiftytwo killed and 400 injured in the 7/7 suicide bombings on the Underground and a bus in Tavistock Square in London in 2005.

We’d watched it almost happen here. An attempted bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it was landing in Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. A smoking car discovered in Times Square on 1 May 2010—a failed car bombing in the heart of Manhattan.

We knew it would happen again someday.

Here, in America.

And on a beautiful spring afternoon in Boston, that day came. At 14.49 on Monday, 15 April 2013, as runners were crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon, an explosion occurred just yards away. People started running.

Thirteen seconds later and 210 yards (190 m) away, another explosion tore through the crowd, some of whom were running from the first blast.

As with the September 11 attacks, it was unclear at first what had occurred. While “terrorism” crossed everyone’s mind—such is the world we now unfortunately live in—everyone also held on to a hope that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t an attack. Maybe it was just an accident, a malfunction of infrastructure. Facebook and other social media were flooded with such sentiments.

We soon figured out that, indeed, terrorism it was. But no one could predict the crazy week that lay ahead for our nation.

Investigators soon identified the suspects—two of them, brothers, born in Chechnya but whose family had immigrated to the United States as refugees in 2002—and a massive manhunt got underway. Before we knew their names and their stories, however, they managed to kill a police officer and take a man hostage in a carjacking on 18 April.

The police officer, Sean A. Collier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s police department, was shot and killed for his gun as the suspects sought to further arm themselves. They

could not, however, take the gun because of the holster’s retention system. Officer Collier was 27 years old.

The pair then carjacked a man named Danny in Boston’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood. They held the driver, a Chinese national, hostage and forced him to withdraw $800 from an ATM—the maximum the machine would allow. The car’s owner escaped while the suspects stopped at a gas station; he ran across the street to another gas station and asked the clerk to call 911. His phone remained in the vehicle, allowing the police to track it. Later interrogation revealed that the brothers had “decided spontaneously” to go to New York and may have been planning to bomb Times Square, and they needed a car to do it.

Shortly after midnight in nearby Watertown, in the early morning hours of 19 April, a virtual battle between the suspects and police occurred: an estimated 200–300 rounds of ammunition were fired and at least one further bomb and several crude grenades were thrown. Eventually the older brother ran out of ammunition and was tackled and apprehended by police. The younger brother drove the stolen car toward the police and ran over his brother, killing him. The surviving brother sped off in the stolen car but abandoned it a short time later and fled on foot.

Watertown residents received calls from law enforcement instructing them to remain indoors and shelter in place. A 20-block search area was cordoned off as police went door to door, looking for the terrorist. Watertown and several adjacent cities were locked down while police hunted for the suspect and the nation watched. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority halted all transit service in the Boston region; Amtrak service to and from Boston was suspended. Logan International Airport remained open under tight security. Universities, schools, business, and other facilities remained closed. One of America’s largest urban regions was brought to a standstill, as were the lives of its millions of residents, while police hunted for a single suspect.

That evening, outside the search area, a Watertown resident stepped outside and noticed that the cover on his boat in his backyard was loose. He looked into the boat and saw a body

A crazy week in America The bombings on Monday, 15 April, began a weeklong series of events that were almost unbelievable to those of us watching from afar.  The Boston metropolitan area, the 10th largest MSA in the country with more than 4.6 million people, came to a standstill as law enforcement searched for suspects at large.  Martial law was declared in parts of the Boston area as police cordoned off a 20-block search area and zeroed in on one of the suspects.

lying in a pool of blood. He called the police.

That evening we went to the home of a couple in our branch who had invited us for dinner. While they got dinner ready, Susan and I watched television coverage of police zeroing in on the suspect in a boat in a backyard. Authorities surrounded the boat and verified the suspect’s movement using a thermal imaging device on a Massachusetts State Police helicopter. When the suspect started poking at the tarp on the boat, police began launching a large volley of gunfire at the boat, stopping only after the superintendent on the scene called for a ceasefire. Police moved in and apprehended the suspect, who was unarmed.

Celebrations spontaneously erupted in Boston’s streets. Residents were free from the terror that had gripped them for an entire week.

Boston’s nightmare had come to an end.

The suspect’s capture was not the end of the story for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. The bombing had claimed three lives: ÎÎ Krystle Marie Campbell was a restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts. She was 29. ÎÎ Lü Lingzi (吕令子 in Chinese) was a Chinese national and Boston University graduate student from Shenyang, Liaoning.

She was 23. ÎÎ Martin William Richard was from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. He was 8.

PHOTO TAKEN 15 APRIL 2013 BY MOBILIZERS FORTHENINETYNINE, CC BY 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/MOBILIZERSFORTHE99/8654450387

According to the Boston Public Health Commission, 264 people were treated at 27 local hospitals. At least 16 people lost limbs, at the scene or by amputation in a hospital, and 3 lost more than one limb.

But stories of heroism and charity abounded. Some of the runners crossing the finish line continued running to medical facilities to donate blood for the victims. Hotels near the bombing site were forced to close, leaving hundreds of visitors without shelter; residents of Boston and nearby communities opened up their homes to provide accommodation. Across America and around the world, people in ways small and big showed their solidarity with Boston, uniting behind the slogan Boston Strong.

Muni buses in San Francisco flashed the slogan on their destination signs. Here in New York, the wall of the Brooklyn Academy of Music was illuminated with “NY  B”. The Yankees played “Sweet Caroline”—a song closely associated with their archrival Boston Red Sox—at a home game in Yankee Stadium following a moment of silence for the victims, as did organizers of marathons in Hamburg, Germany, and Stockholm, Sweden.

Once again, our nation and much of the world were united in the face of terrorism. Once again, all is quiet now, and the suspect sits in jail awaiting trial. But we sit and wait and watch, hopeful that it will never happen again on our shores but virtually certain that it will—wanting to ask if, but forced to ask when, where, and by whom. And never quite understanding why. d Some of the text in this article has been adapted from the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings, CC BY-SA 3.0

 False identification of suspects. The New York Post ran a front-page photo of two men, spectators at the finish line, that the paper said were being sought by authorities. In reality, they were not suspects. Among others wrongly identified as suspects was Sunil Tripathi, a 17-year-old Brown University student. Mr. Tripathi’s body was found floating in the Providence River on 23 April.

It is unknown if his death was connected with the false accusation.  The suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, became a national folk hero for his frank comments to the media on his nephews. When asked what he thought his nephews’ motives were, Uncle Ruslan replied, “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine of.”  An enormous explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, on 17 April, two days after the Boston event, killed at least 15, injured more than 160, and damaged or destroyed more than 150 buildings.

23

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

By DUSTIN

In our world where people are confused, how are Latter-day Saint parents to go about raising their children? Fortunately, the Lord has given us direction through the scriptures and prophets and apostles, and it all begins with having the courage to share our testimonies with our children.

Trend parenting for Latter-day Saints

S

ome time ago, Susan and I babysat for a family in our branch. As their children go to sleep, they have CDs playing in their rooms, of songs in the Children’s Songbook or similar music. Our daughter, Fiona, thought this was a good idea, and ever since then she, too, has had us turn on a CD in her room while she goes to sleep. She, too, listens to songs from the Children’s Songbook, which are the songs sung by children in Primary. One of these songs has a couplet that makes Susan and me smile every time we hear it: Now we have a world where people are confused.

If you don’t believe it, go and watch the news.1

If you do watch the news, or if you open a newspaper or magazine or listen to the radio, you will see that people argue and debate constantly about all sorts of different issues: politics, fashion, the economy, what you should eat, how you should exercise. And certainly one of the things people argue a lot about is the best way to be a parent. I did some brief research online to see how people talk about some of these parenting trends. Here are some trends you might have heard about recently in the news.

A talk Dustin gave in the sacrament meeting of the Bushwick 1st Branch on Mother’s Day, 12 May 2013.

J U LY 2 0 1 3

ÎÎ We have “tiger moms.” ÎÎ But then we also have “martyr moms.” I guess those are people who sacrifice a lot for their children—which would probably describe a lot of people. ÎÎ Clueless dads, which is the way that media and culture typically portray dads when it comes to taking care of their kids. ÎÎ We have “Walmart moms.” According to what I read, those are apparently mothers who are more concerned about family finances than national finances. I know that I am.

Then there are different types of parenting. ÎÎ You have “helicopter parenting.” ÎÎ Then you also have “slow parenting,” which apparently is like the “slow-food”

movement. ÎÎ And then the thing that’s been in the news a lot lately—I guess because of an article in The New York Times about it—“diaperless parenting,” which I’m guessing is helicopter parenting and slow parenting combined together.

People ask these questions: When are you too old to have kids? When are you too young to have kids?

The big thing every few months: people debate over which country’s (or continent’s) parents raise their kids the best. Are they in Asia?

Are they in France? Are they in Sweden?

And, finally, there’s been a lot of chatter about books, mostly geared toward women.

There is a book recently that has instructed women to “lean in.” Or another book that I found: How to Look Hot in a Minivan. (Yes, that was an actual book title.)

Again, we do live in a world where people are confused. There are so many trends out there.

But for us as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what trend are we to follow in raising our own children? I think a very good explanation of that “trend” was given by the Lord Jesus Christ himself through the Prophet Joseph Smith: And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.2

So think about that instruction that the Lord has given to parents who are members of this Church. Think about the elements of that instruction. You have first, “faith in Christ the Son of the living God;” second, “the doctrine of repentance;” third, baptism; and fourth, the gift of the Holy Ghost.” The missionaries can tell you that those are the first principles and ordinances of the gospel.3 So, in short, the “trend” that we

Dustin holds Fiona for the first time.

PHOTO TAKEN 15 JULY 2010 BY SUSAN

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Sometimes we act as if an honest declaration of doubt is a higher manifestation of moral courage than is an honest declaration of faith. It is not! … Be as candid about your questions as you need to be; life is full of them on one subject or another. But if you and your family want to be healed, don’t let those questions stand in the way of faith working its miracle.

ELDER JEFFREY R. HOLLAND OF THE QUORUM OF THE TWELVE

as parents in this Church are to follow is to teach our children the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that’s what it all comes down to.

But where and how do we start? I think Moroni gives very good instruction on where we are supposed to begin. I found this pretty interesting; I’ve never noticed this verse before: Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children.4

We begin teaching our children the gospel of Jesus Christ by internalizing it ourselves, by obeying the commandments and the first principles and ordinances of the gospel. That’s where we start.

I want to take a moment to talk about what has worked in our family in terms of teaching our own daughter the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think these things will sound pretty familiar to you. ÎÎ We really try to pray daily as a family, both in the morning and the evening. ÎÎ We try to say blessings at mealtimes—at every mealtime. ÎÎ As a family, we try to have daily scripture study. Now, Fiona is not yet three years old.5 But we still read the Book of Mormon with her. We read with her six verses a day. I haven’t calculated how long it’s going to take us to get through the Book of Mormon, but it’s probably somewhere over half a decade.

But we do it.6 ÎÎ We hold family home evening. We try to do it on Mondays, as we’ve been instructed

by Church leaders. But, you know what? It doesn’t always work out on Monday. And it’s pretty amazing how often things come up on Monday evenings—things which take me or Susan away from home and make it impossible to have family home evening on Monday. So we just try to have it one day a week, whatever day of the week works. And, again, Fiona’s not even three years old. A lot of times it’s as short as five or ten minutes.

But we try to have it.

That’s where it all starts. It’s the things that our Church leaders have instructed us to do for a very long time.

I want to take a moment and tell you that

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if you aren’t doing that in your own family, it’s not too late. It does not mean that you’re a bad parent. It just means you should start, and try your hardest to do it. I promise you that, as you do these things, the blessings of the Lord will come into your lives and you and your children will be blessed. I promise you that.

What happens when parents don’t do that?

I think back to my own mission. I served in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. We had over 300,000 members of the Church within my mission boundaries. That means I was in the homes of a lot of members of the Church. Most of them were very good, strong members of the Church. I was very impressed by so many people I met. But every once in a while, we met parents whose children had fallen away from the Church.

Now, that happens sometimes. All of us have to choose whether or not to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ and the commandments that he has given. Sometimes our children, despite our best efforts, will choose a different path. And if that happens, all we can do is love them, and we have to love them. And that’s it.

But there were some people, whose children had fallen away from the Church, who would whisper to me, “Well, when it came to religion, we sort of just let them choose their own path.”

I really wondered about that, because I really feel strongly about our own individual ability to choose. I’m grateful that I’ve had the ability to choose in my own life, and that I can choose the path that I want to follow. Now this is the path that I’ve chosen to follow—to stay close to the Church. But what about my own daughter? Can I just let her do whatever she wants to do?

In this context, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve said something in this last general conference7 that really stuck out to me, that I think contrasts with the confusion you see in the world, particularly when it comes to faith and religion. He said: Sometimes we act as if an honest declaration of doubt is a higher manifestation of moral courage than is an honest declaration of faith. It is not! … Be as candid about your questions as you need to be; life is full of them on one subject or another. But if you and your family want to be healed, don’t let those questions stand in the way of faith working its miracle.8

What that says to me is that parents need to have the courage to share their testimonies with their children. Most of us in this room have felt

the Holy Ghost testify to us that this Church is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. If we have had the Holy Ghost testify to us that these things are true, then we need to share that testimony with our children.

I still remember vividly the very first time I ever shared that testimony with Fiona. Here is a photo of me holding Fiona for the very first time. This is at almost 2.00 in the morning on 15 July 2010. She had been born at 1.40 that morning—already keeping us up in the middle of the night. Susan had held her, and then Fiona had been bathed. Then it was my turn to hold her for the very first time. The first thing I did was I introduced myself as her father. Then I told her that her mother and I had been married by the priesthood authority in the temple and that, because we had been married in the temple by the right authority, she had been born into an eternal family. I promised her that we would do everything we could to make sure she was ours forever.

Doing everything we can simply means upholding the covenants that we made at baptism and that we renewed today by partaking of the sacrament.

As I mentioned in a talk that I gave a few months ago here, when we are baptized there are a few things we covenant to do. Those covenants we make can be summarized very simply: we covenant to provide for each other’s spiritual and temporal needs as members of the Church, and we covenant to teach each other the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when you think about it, when it comes down to it, that’s the same thing expected of us as parents in this Church: we are to take care of our children’s spiritual and temporal needs and teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ. By doing so, all of us can uphold our baptismal covenants to follow our Savior and his commandments.

In closing, I leave my testimony with you that I know that God is real. I know that Jesus Christ is his Son and that he is our Savior. I know that this is Jesus Christ’s Church upon the earth. As we follow the scriptures and the living prophets and apostles that we have today, we will be able to raise children who are strong and who are able to lead happy and productive lives. I’m very grateful for those in my life who have done the same for me. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. d Listen to audio of this talk at dialann.org.

This text version has been edited for an audience reading—rather than listening to—this talk.

NOTES 1. “Follow the Prophet”, Children’s Songbook, page 110 2. Doctrine and Covenants 68:25 3. See the Fourth Article of Faith 4. Moroni 8:10 5. Fiona had not yet turned three as of the date of this talk.

6. Writer’s note: Since giving this talk I have made an actual calculation.

There are 6,604 verses in the Book of Mormon. At a rate of six verses per day, it will take 1,101 days to read it, which is three years and six days.

But it sure feels like it’s going to take us longer.

7. The 183rd Annual General Conference in April 2013 8. “Lord, I Believe”, Sunday afternoon session; see Ensign, May 2013, page 94

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LAST LOOK

O C TO BER 2 01 0

A special delivery

J U LY 2 0 1 3

A few months after Fiona was born, we received an envelope in the mail addressed to her. The return address was just down 16th Street from where we lived in Washington, D.C. But it was a very famous address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW—the White House. Inside was a this card from the president and his wife welcoming our special delivery to the world. —dustin PHOTO TAKEN 16 OCTOBER 2010 BY ANGELA N., CC BY 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/AON/5086628731

Susan and Dustin’s visit to the Statue of Liberty—and all the way to her crown— was a bucket-list moment: something Dustin had waited his whole life to do.

SEE “A VISIT TO THE STATUE OF LIBERTY,” PAGE 12

dialann. org

IMAGE IN COLOR BAR ON NAMEPLATE TAKEN 2 MARCH 2007 BY DANIEL SCHWEN, CC BY-SA 2.5 COMMONS.W IKIMEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:GOE_PLATZ_DER_SYNAGOGE_DETAIL_2_NOCA.JPG

The statue’s reopening on the Fourth of July, the day of Susan and Dustin’s visit, was a significant moment in the New York region’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Sandy, which struck in October 2012.