Pomp and Circumstance

Dear Reader,

We are not immune to the murmurings of Rumor with her ten thousand tongues, and it has come to our attention that you may, in your heart of hearts, believe some of our posts to be excessive in length. Judging from the magnificent scarcity of comments on our last post, we may only conclude that you very likely nodded off before ever reaching the post’s conclusion, or that you simply got bored and skimmed over the last two-thirds of the post before moving on to matters of greater moment and, I might add, moved on without even a brief comment. You need not make your complaints explicit. It is the writer’s duty to anticipate the reader’s will; and we zealously subscribe to the dictum that it is the very nadir of bad form to bore an individual who will, in the course of human events, have no opportunity to bore you back. Therefore, we here inaugurate a new epoch in the history of this blog; from henceforth, the Week in Review will abandon the diachronic form of its day-by-day presentation in favor of a more synchronic encapsulation of the week’s most momentous occurrences. Hard-core enthusiasts of elegant and abundant English prose may well lament the necessary abbreviation of our posts that such a shift will inescapably require. To such we can offer no consolation.

The week just ended marked the end of Justin’s career as an undergraduate student at the Brigham Young University. On Wednesday he took his last final. On Thursday he watched Commencement exercises while comfortably ensconced in his parents’ living room. On Friday, he himself donned the black robes of the false priesthood to march amid the pomp and circumstance of the ritualistic encomium to the philosophies of men which the secular clergy in ages past christened Convocation. A highlight of the experience was a chance encounter after the ceremony with two old friends whose acquaintance Justin can date back to the first grade. Another highlight came as Justin descended the steps of the rostrum after his three seconds in the lights to find that Julia had broken free from her grandmother’s grasp and invaded the floor of the Marriott Center. Justin happily scooped her into his arms and the two posed for a photo that captured for posterity the image of our graduate at his very least attractive.

Earlier in the week we had made family excursions to the homes of the three professors who had composed Justin’s letters of recommendation for law school. Lia baked an apple pie for each of them and, despite her anxiety at the possibility of having given “a yucky pie to the general president of the Young Women’s organization,” feedback from the professors themselves has been overwhelmingly positive. A renowned Dante scholar commented, for instance, that he “put some cinnamon on top, heated it up in the microwave, added a scoop of ice cream, and could have sold it thus for a million dollars.”

Julia spent as much of the week as possible out of doors, at once profiting from the good weather and from her last precious moments with many of her friends who are moving away and with those of her friends who are not moving away, but from whom Julia herself will soon take her leave. It’s a bit of a nostalgic time for all of us. The good folk who have been our associates and friends at Wymount are some of the best young people on God’s earth—stellar souls who will do much in the years to come to roll forth the borders of the Kingdom. We have come to love many of them indeed, and shall miss them greatly.

Sunday was a special day because it witnessed Eli’s baby blessing. A precise law of automotive metaphysics that appears adversely to affect all St. Georgians with any link whatever to Yale University (see Jeffrey R. Holland, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come,” Ensign November 1999) waylaid the Suttner folk on their route northward, so the blessing was postponed by three hours. Afterward we gathered for barbequed beef and pork sandwiches, fruit salad, potato salad, peach cobbler, cookies, and ding-dongs (these last were provided for Gabe and Boe by Justin’s well-meaning mother; unofficial reports indicate that Jini consumed thirteen, Chari thirty-seven). A natural conversationalist, David Sr. regaled Justin’s brother-in-law, Samuel, with tales of 4-H glory and misadventure, including one anecdote detailing an unfortunate encounter between Davy’s (known in more stylish circles as “Dave”) hind quarters and the gaping jaws of an unhappy pig. We all parted company well fed and much enlightened.

It has been a good week; and with this brief account of it we take our leave, friend Reader.