Princess Nina

"Warning: Some of your colleagues are afraid—deeply, irrationally afraid—of social media. Social media can seem threatening to coworkers who are uncomfortable with technology or those who fear change or who have control issues. Or those who are from a more Gutenbergian era. Or paranoid privacy freaks. Or, come to think of it, "normal" human beings who don't wish to stream their immediate thoughts onto the Internet." MarketingProfs, Ken Gordon | April 29, 2011  

Guilty! We are committed SocialMediaPhobes. We deeply cherish our personal privacy. It was clear early-on that our aversion was inconsistent with the Church's new media presence. During the Pre-MTC Training we dutifully completed hours of reading, study, videos and family history worksheets, but still fell short of a perfect rating.








Our (no longer) Secret Shame? 

This is, of course, a critical dereliction because we are specifically called to, "share our testimony with those who are not of our faith."

btw - is there web-site like this for the celestial kingdom? I mean, is 90% good . . . never mind 

Fortunately, there is, "a space granted unto man in which he might repent." The process began one week before the start of September classes. We read on-line testimonies of classroom teachers, borrowed several dummies books from the Farmingdale Public Library, and finally, enlisted Ranny and one of our young students in the cause. The page was up and running by the weekend. Facebook only. We drew the line at insta-gram and twitter. Nobody needs that much interaction in an institute class. Our posts have been erratic, but fun. It is a fan page format, so people can't unfriend us. They can only "like" us.

https://www.facebook.com/PlainviewYSAInstitutePage

Unfortunately, to set up an organization page on Facebook, a personal profile and site presence is required. We don't maintain the personal page. Facebook keeps prompting us to complete our profile, (ElderandSister, where do you work? | Do you live near Farmingdale?), but we ignore it.

Which brings us, finally, to Nina, one of our students. She is Princess Nina on-line, and attended the Plainview Ward Trunk-or-Treat as Snow White. The event was the same evening as institute class, which she visited in her full courtly regalia.

BEFORE:
















and AFTER:

We tagged her in the photo. Princess Nina was delighted and the page received many fun comments from her friends and coworkers.

There was an anxious moment immediately after I hit the post button, wondering whether I had inserted the correct regal entourage: Hmmmmm, Cinderella and her FGM . . . Sleeping Beauty and the fairies . . . Snow white and . . . Yep. Dwarfs. Seven of them.

Social media and everyday princesses.
We are believers now.

If it looks like a duck . . .

National Register of Historic Places 1997 . . . seriously  

Q.  What starts with a duck, then slowly winds 30 miles along South Fork bays and hamlets before ending at a lighthouse? 

A.  The NY-NY South senior missionary Mecca to Montauk. 

(One of the semi-monthly social excursions to New York environs. You don't need a senior discount card to join the group. But it helps.) 

BIG DUCK - Flanders, NY.  #1 among the 7 wonders of Long Island, just ahead of the Commack Motor Inn and inspiration for the architectural term: Duck - "a building in which the architecture is subordinate to the overall symbolic form." Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977;  Representational Architecture, Roadside Attractions, NPS 

BIKE RIDING IN THE HAMPTONS 

TOURIST STYLE . . . . . . . . . . . . and LOCAL STYLE 

The Montauk Point Light, hamlet of Montauk, Town of East Hampton, Suffolk County, New York
A popular location for marriage proposals and weddings  

View from lighthouse dome west toward Manhattan 

Stefanie watched one wedding while we were on the point. An older gentleman was marrying a very youthful bride. The minister began. "We are here to witness the union of a young bride and her financially comfortable groom."   A little hamptons honesty?   Refreshing.











Locals are fond of travelling to Montauk Point and watching the sun rise. One hopeful young man in our YSA branch recently included this celestial tradition in his wedding proposal: Sunrise at Point Light and Sunset in Central Park, where he presented the ring. Vanessa accepted. 

https://www.facebook.com/vanesa.villanes

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Yes - it's a Pottery Barn.
Southampton. 

Peeping (day 2)

CarTalk Program #1239: 
The Truth About Leaf Peepers
Description: This week on Car Talk, welcome to foliage season! Tourists are descending on New England, and locals like Kurt have plenty of time to sit in traffic, developing theories about the drivers clogging his roads . . . 
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Still in leaf country, But due back on the island Tuesday night. The Plan: further exploration of Williamstown and then a southerly meander through western Massachusetts . . . 

We began with a tour of Williams and its art museum. An ancient rival of Amherst, this small liberal arts college was recently ranked by Forbes magazine as the best undergraduate institution in the United States, including all Ivy League universities and national liberal arts colleges. This marks its eleventh consecutive year as 1st place in U.S. News & World Report's ranking of 266 liberal arts colleges in the United States. 

Mid-October is peak leaf season in the Berkshires, but it is a weekday. So we owned the road, or did, once we found it. The Notch has a devilishly clever access point from North Adams. We passed it several times before the connection. Five seconds later, we entered a cloister of drooping cloud and dense wood. Sound and colors were muted. Twisting through grades we glimpsed a few hikers and trail crossings. I noticed one sign with familiar lettering and remembered that the Appalachian Trail crossed through . . .somewhere. 

Yes. I got out and "walked" the Appalachian Trail. 

We stopped at a boutique restaurant in the town of Lenox and met a self-declared foodie couple. They told us of travels made chiefly to sample the local gastro fare. Lunch was the high moment of their day. Our main purpose was to reconnoiter the Tanglewood estate and anticipate a summer meet with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, et al. It is beautiful, but not much happening there now. The nearby village of Stockbrige is famously mentioned in James Taylor's lullaby Sweet Baby James. 

Our time was now spent and we needed a freeway desperately. We decided to save Litchfield Connecticut for another day. The afternoon waned as we jetted down Highway 8 into Bridgeport, driving our Mazda into the ferry's belly bare minutes before departure. Stefanie was an additional fare charge. 

We studied our Books of Mormon (2nd Nephi) from the top deck on the hour cruise over the Sound. Then, down the ramp into Port Jefferson and up the hill to Terryville Chapel and our Tuesday class. 

Peeping (day 1)

View from Bennington Battle Monument

Leaf peeping 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leaf peeping is an informal term for people who travel to view and photograph the fall foliage in areas where foliage changes colors, particularly New England.^[1][2] The origin of the term "leaf peeping" is not well known. A similar custom in Japan is called momijigari.
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President Calderwood approved our travel request in September, adding his own regional suggestions. "Peak color" usually comes around the first week of October, but we had difficulty finding two days together. I monitored the foliage reports as the change moved down from Canada. It reaches Long Island sometime around Halloween, but we wanted to see the famous autumn of Vermont and New Hampshire, and maybe a covered bridge or two. By mid-October the mountain top leaves were sparse, but the valley foliage was SPECTACULAR. And - no people. We had most trails and vistas to ourselves.

Popular leaf routes wind throughout New England. Some are national scenic trails. We chose an area where the borders of three states meet and the Green Mountains of Vermont become the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The proposed route seemed reasonably navigable.









Right after Sunday meetings we crossed Throgs Neck Bridge north toward Albany and at sunset followed the Taconic Trail to our Berkshire County base, a Howard Johnson near Williams College. (Changed rooms on Day Two. Second night habitable.)

Morgan Hall | Williams College 

As the sun rose Monday we saw that fall colors still painted this corner of New England. Robert Frost spent nine years in Shaftesbury. We visited his grave behind the Old First Congregational Church at Old Bennington Cemetery. Apparently, things here are stately "old" & nominally "Old."

Headstone inscription: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world"

It was a full day. We explored forest hills and crooked rivers, shopped antiques, sampled chocolate cherries and homemade ice cream . Stefanie read in the car while I toured the amazing Orvis store in Manchester. She came inside upon learning that it also sold home goods. I particularly liked the custom long guns. When I tried on a $3000.00 leather jacket she said it was time to go. We lunched on Pizza (can't get enough of that in New York), and then browsed books at the Northshire Bookstore where I soon found the poetry section and Robert Frost biographies. On the drive back we read poems and discussed embedded issues of mortality: "Whose woods these are I think I know."

The air was crisp, the roads less traveled. I opened the sun-roof and we followed highway 100, "Vermont's Main Street," south along the Deerfield River to an intersection with the Molly Stark Trail. Hmmmmm. Memorable name. I had to know. Google obliged. Her husband fought the war, but his battle cry made her the legend: "There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" I love this guy.

The best angled rays come early morning and late afternoon. The back-lighting on our return to Willaimstown was a showstopper.