To Bear Our Fortunes in Our Own Strong Arms

The year of Our Lord two thousand and seven has entered the annals of history, sure to be about as long and fondly remembered as 834 A.D., when Drest IV succeeded Unuist as king of the Picts, the Vikings raided Dorestad (present-day Netherlands) for the first time, and the great Ibn Hasham, editor of an early biography of the Prophet Muhammad, went the way of all the earth (a lesser light, Alpin of Kintyre, King of Scotland, kicked the bucket as well). And so we sang in Tennyson’s immortal anticipation of Ivan Drago from "Rocky IV,": “The year is dying; let him die” (our readers will recall Drago’s callous pronouncement over the lifeless figure of Apollo Creed, now emblazoned on a T-shirt seen by one of our editors: “If he dies, he dies.”). A new year means, of course, a new chapter in the history of our illustrious blog. As all chapters must begin somewhere, we begin ours here, with the first full-fledged Week in Review of 2008.

Monday (January 7): Justin’s attitude toward the American political establishment has historically been that of Mercutio (“A plague on both your houses!”), but he was roused from life-long political inactivity by excitement at having a competent co-religionist in the race and by horror at the prospect of having his nominal party’s ticket headed by a man whose entire qualifications seem to consist of a mild proficiency on the bass guitar, the dubious distinction having once lost more than one hundred pounds, and the all-important endorsement the inestimable Chuck Norris. Thus fired, Justin and his elders quorum president, John Thompson, called an early end to the workday and left around noon for Manchester, New Hampshire, where they pestered already inundated New Hampshirites with phone calls. Tiring of that, they engaged in a couple hours’ worth of door-to-door pamphleteering and propagandizing. The door-to-door electioneering was certainly more fun and undoubtedly more effective than the obstreperous phoning. Justin could hardly bring himself to read the assigned phone message, promising that Governor Romney will take a hard stance on immigration reform. He was tempted to leave messages hailing an Asimovian plan to secure the border with an elaborate series of lasers controlled by satellite technology before warning ominously that not even this will be enough when extraterrestrial immigration begins (this was an obvious segue to fanning support for the resurrection of President Reagan’s far-fetched “Star Wars” fiasco). But the calls were at least moderately supervised; and Justin does in his heart of hearts wish Romney to win. He also called one fellow who sounded so spectacularly old that Justin could only express his warm hope that the gentlemen might somehow survive until Tuesday to cast his vote for Governor Romney on the way to the morgue. While tracting, John encountered a pleasant fellow who listened kindly until he heard the word “campaign” before bellowing, “Oh, give me a break! If I see one more campaigner at my door, I’m gonna PUKE!!!” The man looked gaunt and palish, and John worried for a time he might make good on his promise prematurely. Without bothering to close the door, this over-solicited dyspeptic retreated to his couch, where he draped himself in a blanket and curled in the fetal position. “Vote for Romney,” John cheerily saluted. “A President America Can Stomach!”

The intrepid pair were rewarded for their efforts with beanies and T-shirts bearing the Romney-for-President insignia. But this was small peanuts compared to the ultimate joy of meeting the man himself, who stopped by headquarters around 8 p.m. for a quick rally, after which John and Justin secured some surreptitious pictures of themselves at the governor’s side. What these images may some day be worth, none can foretell. Neither of the New Havenites could quite get in the spirit of the rally, however. Justin had a hard time with high school peppery even when he was in high school, and Paul Hedengren’s perspicuous definition of school spirit as “excessive emotion on trivial grounds” kept running through his mind. But shaking Romney’s hand was wages enough to inspire even Justin’s cynical spirit.

The biggest downside of the trip was that, diligent enough to insist on stopping at every house on our list, we [switch to first person] missed the pizza at headquarters. So we were on our own for dinner. It was about ten p.m. when we stopped at the drive-thru of a local Wendy’s, where we were helped by a teenage boy whose voice was as monotone as Kansas is flat. He duly took our order and invited us to pay at the window. We arrived at said window just in time to hear our man receive a mammoth earful from his (it would be unkind to repeat "mammoth") female supervisor, apparently a couple years his senior and, one can only guess, something less of a Halo enthusiast. Unfazed, our man gazed at the author of this harangue with an indifference that refused even an open avowal of apathy. The manager looked heavenward and muttered an imprecation. Our man turned and asked us whether we had paid. We had. “Okay,” he mumbled. He then handed us our food. And then handed us a frosty we didn’t order. “I think we’re good,” John offered, declining. “Oh,” remarked our man. “Well it was just sitting here, so I guess you can have it for free.” (One wonders how any boss could be displeased with such an employee.) We then asked our man if he knew the way to the Everett Parkway. “Oh,” he thought. “Man,” he continued. “No idea,” he concluded. Fortunately, we found the Everett Parkway on our own. It could not have been more than fifty yards away from Wendy’s. We can only rejoice to know that the legacy of Dave Thomas rests in such able hands.

We drove home, content in the knowledge that we had done our civic duty; but wondering at the same time what two respectable young fathers like us were doing on the road after midnight on a weekday. (As a side note, I’m sure some readers have wondered sympathetically about the plight of our wives. Thankfully, Julia and Eli were well behaved and went to bed at the appropriate hour. The same cannot be said of John’s firstborn son, Elias, who was awake when Kim called us around 11:30. But Kim knows what to do with an insomniac and rebellious son: resolutely sit him down and make him watch Emma. Smitten with such soporific potency, Elias hardly knew what hit him.)

As for the Romney campaign, it appears to be nearing the end of the road. But let it never be said that the elders quorum of the New Haven First Ward did not do its part.

Tuesday (January 8): We had dinner at the Thompsons’, ostensibly because that good family wanted to thank Justin for picking them up at the airport the previous Saturday evening, though we suspect it had something more to do with Elias’s relentless demands to see Julia. We had a wonderful evening, highlighted by fantastic Mexican food, lively conversation (though Justin and John seemed unmistakably worn), and ample demonstration of Elias’s prowess as a player of a Bob the Builder video game. We tried to ignore the backdrop of Romney’s tragic loss of New Hampshire at the hands of Senator McCain. Eli mostly ran contented laps around the apartment.

Wednesday (January 9): We don’t remember what happened on Wednesday. Well, that’s not quite true—we remember that Justin went to bishopric meeting and Lia took dinner to an ill sister in the ward, but chronicling such acts of duty and charity in a blog read by all the world might create the impression in the minds of ungenerous readers that we do such things to be seen of men, which isn’t at all true. We do such things that we might write about them in shining English prose and publish the account for men to read and admire. We hardly care whether they see us or not.

Thursday (January 10): Today was Justin’s sister, Jeni’s, birthday, but since he did nothing at all to acknowledge the birthday of his brother, Jared, earlier in the week, he thought that making any noticeable effort to wish Jeni a happy birthday would smack of playing favorites, and in this egalitarian age our heroes eschew discriminatory behavior of any kind.

One of the happiest developments of the day was that our church books arrived. When we left Utah Justin had heroic ideas of subsisting entirely for three years on the Bard and the Bible, so outside of the scriptures and our complete Shakespeare (pardon the redundancy), we didn’t bring any of our books with us (though the girls’ books obviously came). We missed them desperately. As a result, one of our Christmas presents from Grandma Patti was the shipment via media mail of seven boxes of religious tomes. They arrived safely and we rejoiced in their arrival.

In keeping with the religious tenor of the day, we had the missionaries over in the evening. The missionaries had invited themselves over to teach us a lesson “about the Restoration”—which we interpreted (rightly) as meaning that they wanted to make us watch “The Restoration” DVD and then ask for referrals. We wanted to beat them to the punch by making them do some real work, so we invited Sander Daniels over for dinner beforehand with an additional invitation to stay for the lesson. He did so quite graciously and we had a good experience all around.

The most entertaining element of the evening was that the missionaries, temporarily laboring as a threesome, all sat on our one beleaguered couch. A couple of the missionaries are of a rather robust composition, so they sat squashed like sardines. To make things more interesting, the ends of our couch, which is partially broken because the lug-heads who moved it into the apartment came through the wrong door and which therefore has some of the characteristics of a teeter-totter, bobbed up and down whenever one of the missionaries shifted position. Lia offered one of them our glider, but he declined.

A funny postscript to the evening came the ensuing Sunday at Church when Lia, trained from an early age not to talk to missionaries lest she with her bewitching ways and uncommon beauty distract them from their task, walked resolutely past Elder Moore (one of our Thursday guests), looking straight ahead as she ignored his amiable salutation. She did this twice, once entering sacrament meeting and once again exiting Relief Society. Poor Elder Moore shook his head glumly both times, wondering uneasily just what the ward’s star gospel doctrine teacher must think of his own teaching abilities.

Friday (January 11): A funny thing happened to Lia on the way to the shower. With Justin off probing the minutiae of the law of the European Union, Lia finally got the girls settled down enough for her to take a shower at about 10 o’clock. As she was about to turn on the water, however, the doorbell rang. Lia decided to ignore it. But conscience finally conquered efficiency and she trotted out in her bathrobe, cracking the door open a couple of centimeters to see who was there and, if necessary, to demand peremptorily what was wanted. What she saw was the always amiable face of Kim Thompson and, a few feet below that, the eager face of Elias Thompson, primed for his only and favorite formal educational session of the week. “Joy School?” Kim offered quizzically. “Oh dear,” Lia answered affirmatively. Oh dear indeed.

When Justin got home he asked Julia what she had done while he was gone. “Joy School was at our house,” she merrily responded. Justin wondered how his obliviousness had reached such epic proportions that he failed to notice Lia preparing and stressing all week about her Joy School lesson. “Really?” he responded to Julia. “How did it go?” “It was fun,” Julia mused. “Mommy let us have free playtime at the very beginning.” "I see."

The real highlight of the day was the arrival in the mail of all of Julia’s and Eli’s Christmas presents from Grandma Patti, including a Madame Alexander doll equipped with a homemade Cinderella dress (made, of course, by Grandma herself). Julia promptly christened the doll “Mayah” and has only relinquished it since Friday for the purpose of going to Church (Mayah II has even won an honored place in Julia’s bed).

Saturday (January 12): Justin took his EU final today, which meant that it wasn’t much of a Saturday. Lia taught Julia an art lesson (their newest project) about Carl Bloch. Analyzing an angelic figure in one of Bloch’s paintings, Lia indicated that the angel had a halo. “Oh!” Julia cried. “Like how Uncle Davy plays Halo?” No, precious Julia. Not quite like that. After the girls went to bed Justin made Lia sit through the better part of the first episode of Simon Schama’s "A History of Britain," the whole of which series he checked out with glee from the law school library. There are fourteen more episodes, though Lia has already now begun planning her escape. Suspecting as we slouch onto the fourth page of our single-spaced ramblings that our readers have begun to plan their escape as well, we make an end.