A List of Cool Stuff to Embrace

• Romeo and Juliet, 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version, minus the bedroom scene
• Persuasion, BBC Canadian version
• Minerva Teichert paintings at the BYU Museum of Art ending soon!
• A River Runs Through It, Maclean, University of Chicago
• Film by the same name, Robert Redford directing
• Dorothea Lange photographs from the Great Depression
• The Springville Arts Museum - a sanctuary for the weary, full of regional art
• Pride and Prejudice, the modern version, Irish director from BYU - charming in the extreme
• The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument - Calf Creek, Spooky Gulch, Peek-a-Boo Canyon
• Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City
• Any hiking trail long the Wasatch Front
• Main Street in Park City
• Sitting in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, especially at Christmas time listening to youthful choirs singing carols
• The lights on Temple Square from Thankgiving to New Year's Eve
• Running along Eleventh Avenue in Salt Lake City,
• Through the SLC Cemetery,
• Past the Frank Lloyd Wright home between "E" and "B" Streets - north side of the road, (You figure it out!)
• Then, up City Creek Canyon and countless adjoining running paths.
• Temple Square and the Christus in the Visitor's Center
• The 20,000 seat Conference Center and its beautiful interiors, original paintings and furniture - not to mention cordial tour guides and the ever-endearing sister missionaries there from all over the world, who will field your questions in whatever language you choose.
• The University of Utah's Museum of Fine Art
• The Santa Fe train depot in Salt Lake
• The Alpine Loop, up Provo Canyon, to Sundance Ski Resort, down into Timpanogos Cave Ranger Station
• Bear Lake, from Logan city, up Logan Canyon and into the Riviera of the Rockies.
• Lava Hot Springs on the way to Pocatello, Idaho
• Zions Canyon, the hike back - way back, the daring Angel's Landing hike, the WPA tunnel joining Zions with Utah Highway 89, Kanab, Bryce Canyon - O, the marvel of Bryce Canyon
• Bumbleberry Pie in Zions village
• St. George
• The plays - the Shakespeare plays!

All this and infinitely more - enjoy!

Separation of Church, State - Misunderstood Metaphor

This book should be part of every citizen's library of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State by Daniel Dreisbach. http://www.nyupress.org/

Jefferson's letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association has undergone too little scholarship to understand its context, its contents, and Jefferson's intent and understanding of the metaphor, which was neither as high nor as inpregnable as modern interpretations since 1947 (Everson vs. Board of Ed.) would have us believe. One need merely begin with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" to arrive at serious doubts as to whether or not we have got it right.

This book fills that gap with important insights and analysis, and is thereby essential for its "scholarly critique of separationist pieties" (Christianity Today).

Question stuck-in-the-mud authority, and dogmatic adherence to separationist policies, which over-emphacize the "Congress shall make no law respecting" section of the First Amendment, and assign too little emphasis to the "nor restrict the free exercise thereof" clause.

Jefferson: The People Ignorant? Educate Them

A paraphrase of Jefferson's famous quote on the importance of education goes something like this: If the People are not sufficiently intelligent enough to wield Power, do not take it from them - educate them! If they are not a sufficiently safe repository of Power, the solution is not to take Power from them, but to educate them and make them so.

One's life can be dedicated to that proposition: That all men are created equal and where inequalities exist, education will make up the difference.

I eschew elitist posturings - both on the Left and on the Right. Through hard work, people can rise above the mire they've been born into, with the help of family, friends and neighbors, with limited Federalist intervention.

O, the blessings of work! And the curse of the dole - the curse of that generational Culture of Welfare.

Now, let's get to it! Go to iTunes University, to Stanford and MIT free online classes. Take advantage of online degrees. Such rigor hardens us into thoroughbreds, capable of more than those horses bred in Collectivist Colonies of Despotic Imperialism.

The talking horse in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia was valient compared to those of the repressive regime he'd fled from. But when compared to the free souls of Narnia, his was merely average - his valor commonplace - for theirs rose to such extraordinary heights of courage and pitch as to embarrass him in his mediocrity.

May we rise up on wings of eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. For He will make the Princes of the Left and the Right as dust. Let us wait patiently on Him, and He will give us our heart's desires! Come, let us reason together. Let us learn of Him, for therein is wisdom! God bless us all in this endeavor!