Esquire Coffinberry's Great-Grand-Niece

Over the weekend, I had been away for a regional Cub Scout Train-the-Trainer conference, up at the beautiful then-new Camp Nicol dining hall at Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in the Red Feather region northwest of Fort Collins. A heavy snow had fallen on Friday evening, the roof overhead bore a blanket of white at least a cubit deep as I arrived Saturday morning. Weather like that was not too surprising at that altitude for the second weekend in September, I guess, but memorable nonetheless. That early September snow is somehow forever caught up in my thoughts of that week. The Monday after, of course, was a school day. But it was Tuesday that had our attention , for it was picture day at Longs Peak Middle, where Nate was in 8th grade, and Ben had joined him there in 6th. That meant special attention the night before to make sure the forms were filled out, the checks were written, clean shirts were chosen and set out, and glasses given a quick swipe (a "lick and a promise", one wo...

  Convolvulus Arvensis  Bindweed. My nemesis. Visible evidence of my moral failure to work hard enough at pulling the weeds in my flowerbeds and garden.  It drills up through layers of cardboard and mulch. It chokes the rhubarb, knots the roses, buries the gnomes.   Wishing to acquit myself of such public laziness, I resolved that this year, I would rise in the cool of the mornings, patiently enduring the skeeters that bite through long sleeves and jeans, and pull these weeds. I would do one flower bed at a time, maybe half a flower bed a day. I'd do them in rotation. That should take care of them. After a week or so of this, I came back to the first bed. It was again covered in weeds. Oh well, I would just have to be more diligent than the weeds.  I told myself it was a case of Good, Better, Best : Good would be to scrape the evidence of the weeds from the surface. Better would be to pull up the white root. Best would be to catch the runner root 6 or 7 in...

 (Cross-posted from Facebook) This week, my mind has cast back 43 years to a pivotal high school experience: my first Mock Trial competition. The case examined whether parents had a legal right to kidnap their adult child out of a religious organization they considered a cult. I had been raised on certain foundational principles including:  "Now, there [should be] no law against a man's belief; for it [is] strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds." (Alma 30:7) "We do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion..." (Doctrine & Covenants 134:4) "Know this, that every man is free to choose his life and what he'll be." (Hymn # 90 in the hymnal then in use as I played organ for worship services in our small branch, but #240 in the current Hymns.) "We clai...

  I am so easily distractible. When I was a kid, supposed to be cleaning my room, I could get stuck for hours trying to pick up a dictionary from the floor (I just was a little kid, and it was a great big fat worn collegiate dictionary that had cream endpapers printed with salmon spots, and a detailed historical summary timeline in the back), not because it was heavy but because I couldn't stop reading it line after line. I mean, who wouldn't be distracted by that! Right? Anyway, just now I was thinking of an August day in 1915 Salt Lake City, on Commercial Street, and suddenly wanted to remember where the Tribune building was at the time, so I asked Google the address thereof. Which brought me to the front page of this newspaper, where this photo caught my eye. What a magnificent church building, built in the Prairie Style of the day. Simply lovely. (It is gone, now.)

I created this blog to express my thoughts as the early days of online bulletin boards began to decline. Then my content at this blog diminished as Facebook became the primary mode of sharing thoughts (you can see it in the timeline... FB became a "thing" along around 2008, about when I quit posting). But FB is just not that pleasant a place to play anymore, and its algorithm shapes my bubble in ways I reject. I do not like that.     So, as I prepare to attend another conference with the StoryMakers Guild, I choose to re-establish this site as where I write and think about writing. However, all the old Esquire Coffinberry stuff will stay here. It is a reflection of where I was, and where my roots are. Indeed, a couple characters, Dan and Anna, in the current book received their first fleshing-out at this blog.  The Flower Woman of Salt Lake  is my current project, such as it is. I've been researching its title character for nearly 23 years. She is the gift that ...