Adventures at Church

Today I had an organ adventure. I've been the ward organist for ...maybe twelve years now? ...in our last ward, and in this ward too. Some Sundays are fine, and some Sundays are Bad Organ Days. I'm not sure what today was; it was just...an adventure!

This is not the organ I play, but similar to it.
You set the stops by pressing the larger buttons at the top 

of the organ console. It has nice sounds like "flute" and "oboe" 
...and "trumpet," as well as a few you've never heard of.
It also has "longer and shorter pipes." The longer the pipe, 
the deeper the sound. (Really it's all electronic, so there are 
no actual, physical pipes connected to this organ.) 

The pre-sets are the little round buttons. You can 

program them with several stops, so you can just 

press one button and get a whole bunch of sounds. 

We were going to sing America the Beautiful for the opening song, so I picked out stops on the organ that I thought would sound good for that song and started playing the introduction part. About halfway through the intro my knuckle hit one of the pre-set buttons—although I didn't realize that's what had happened at first. All I knew was that suddenly instead of playing the nice, Sacrament-Meeting-appropriate sounds I'd chosen, now I had nearly every stop on the organ going. It was playing almost every brass and woodwind instrument that the organ can replicate, as well as all the big church organ sounds—including all of the long, pew-shaking pipes. (Imagine the Tabernacle organ crossed with the marine band—but no drums, thankfully!)

Well, it sure surprised me! It surprised the music director, who looked at me to see what was going on; all I could do was shrug my shoulders and look confounded. I imagine it surprised the entire congregation.

At least those stops sounded OK for America the Beautiful. It would have been pretty awful if I'd been playing something like Sweet Hour of Prayer, or I Stand All Amazed!

Changing the World

My world is in the process of changing, or at least I hope it is. But right now there is not much I can do about the particular changes I'm thinking of (which I will tell you about when (if?) they come to fruition).

Instead, I'll tell you this story:  About ten years ago Bruce and I were driving somewhere, and he was talking politics and finances and ...probably world peace, or something. He lost me after the first few sentences (although, in my defense, this was much-traveled territory—the subject matter, as well as the drive, and I had something else on my mind). When he paused for breath, and asked me my thoughts I said, "What would you think if I colored my hair red?"

He was a little taken aback. He said here he was talking about how men (meaning humans) can change the world, and I was thinking about coloring my hair. And I said—and you can make an awesome meme out of this (one that has a beautiful scene behind the words so that it looks like a great motivational thought); a meme that it will outrage many feminists for years to come...
Or, hey! I'll just do it for you!

...I said:

Not only that, but it's quicker and more fun, too!

(By the way, that statement had such a profound effect on Bruce that he wrote it in his planner later. I am that deep.)

Well, anyway, I have been feeling a need to Change the World. And last Wednesday, since Bruce wasn't around to talk me out of it, I did make a change. See for yourself:

Yep. That's me. Changing the World a little bit at a time.