Kyra Moon

I realized a problem with sharing poems from when I was 15-16. The poems are mostly just fine. If these were from when I was 9-10, we could laugh at how cute and silly I was. Instead we're left with poems that are not really bad nor particularly good, so I don't quite know how to react to them. But this one I'm okay with laughing at. It's almost good, and almost deep, but . . . oh boy. If you like it, great. If not, I don't blame you. Tis better to be loved than beautiful For though the two may sometimes seem the same Above the eyes, the heart is dutiful To that same soul to which you gave your name. Like earth's eroding rocks and melting caps, A woman's face will wrinkle and degrade. A love skin-deep would bear no more perhaps And then relinquish vows that had been made. Yet when the shining purity of soul Does bind each heart to heart beyond all age, A change in looks does not their love annul But simply moves the clutter from ...

As promised , I'm going to subject you all to a foray into my 15-year old mind via some poems I wrote back then. Today seemed like a good day to do it because it's a crisp, gorgeous first day of October. A whisper of the winter Lingers in the air, But only for a moment For we are not quite there. But then the whisper widens Into a sound of chill Its speaking scares the sun away Yet summer stays here still. I think this was probably supposed to have more stanzas where it got progressively colder, But I'm okay leaving it where it's at. We don't need to think about cold yet. And, while we're at it . . . here's one more autumn poem that you might not know. I found it in the 1836 LDS hymnbook, and I'm not sure who wrote it. Maybe Emma Smith herself? The sun that declines in the far western sky, Has roll'd o'er our heads till the summer's gone by; And hush'd are the notes of the warblers of spring That in the green bow'r did exultingly sing...

The title says it all, but I guess people might want to know why. And before I continue, I suppose I should make a few disclaimers. Dinosaurs are the worst things ever, but things change when you have a toddler. As in, the museums are much better because you get pictures like this: and this You can also get decent family pictures at dinosaur museums, which proves that they aren't entirely the worst. We are smiling, after all. As a side note, I think my parents once tried to take us to this museum in Vernal, and I think I sat out in the car the entire time. I think once they realized the museum was full of dinosaurs, they realized it wasn't worth it because they weren't gone that long. (This is also about the age where I sat in the car when we went to Arches and had the chance to hike up to Delicate Arch and didn't want to because a) we had already done a lot of hiking and b) Delicate Arch was already on lots of license plates, so why see it in person?)...

The past few weeks, I've found myself rereading the Bety-Tacy books with a passion. I only own the first four in Michigan, but when I went home last week (more on that later), I picked up where I had left off and kept on reading til I made it through the last one. The first time I was introduced to these books was probably when I was about 5, which is how old Betsy is in the first book. (Subsequent books follow her through the rest of childhood, high school, and even through the first three years of marriage.) As I got older, I'd get the occasional Betsy-Tacy book for Christmas or birthdays until I had the whole collection. Although I didn't really appreciate some of the later books when I was younger, I was old enough for this reading to have been every age written about and could identify with her better overall. For that matter, I've always identified with Betsy probably more than any other literary character ever -- she was the second daughter, had straight bro...

As I've mentioned before, Halloween is one of those holidays that matters less and less to me each year. I think that will change as Jim gets more excited about it, but for now it's still one which is more annoying than fun what with rounding up costumes and buying candy, which is surprisingly expensive. (It's also a little discouraging . . . I thought Tootsie Rolls would be a safe candy for me to buy, but it turns out I like them a lot better than I should.) But there was one year where I really got into Halloween. I decided that my bedroom needed a haunted house theme. Since my bedroom was in the basement, it always had a sort of haunted house feel to it anyway -- you never knew if the blouse you tossed carelessly on the ground would have a wolf spider attached to it the next time you picked it up. But this year I wanted it to be really haunted. I had glorious plans for the decorations, the thrills, and the chills that would await any who dared enter. I got started im...

One spring day when I was about 14, my mom announced, "Okay, everyone, time to get in the car! We're going on a quick drive!" We piled in and she explained, "We are so close to hitting 200,000 on the van. We'll just drive around until we reach it." And so we did, up and down the streets of Providence, heading through the parts that I didn't even know existed. On our way back from the outskirts near the coyote research farms, my mom shouted, "Come quick everyone! Watch it change!" By the time I had unbuckled my seat belt to peer at the dashboard, it was too late.  But at least I had been there for a momentous occasion in our family. Not too long after that, I was at the store with my dad talking about it, pointing out how weird it was to go on a drive dictated by the odometer. He smiled and told me that when he and my mom were fairly newly married, the old brown car was also about to reach 200,00 miles. And so they went for a drive until i...

In October 1985, a young man made a long distance call to a father in Kansas. "Hi, um, I'd like to marry your daughter." The man had no idea that his daughter was dating anyone so seriously, and he asked for clarification. "Who is this? How long have you been dating?" § It began a year earlier in Math 371, the abstract algebra class at BYU. He was recently home from his mission, ready to dive back into math and engineering classes. She was in her second year at BYU, flying through the credits so quickly that she was already essentially a junior though only 18 years old. They never really talked to each other. But that isn't to say they didn't notice each other. She learned his name quickly -- Todd Moon -- and looked him up on the microfiche. This predecessor to the BYU directory was the true "stalkernet" -- you could find name, number, address, and even class schedule of anyone at the school. She saw that there was another female BYU student li...