Autumn

 Oh hi kid!

Today has been a very gorgeous Sunday. I’m sitting on the front porch as I type. The weather has cooled, almost as if on queue from the solstice. 

It’s been a quiet week around here. We finished a couple of projects...grandma’s deck and mom’s kinder treasure box. It was fun doing both of those projects with your brothers. Very gratifying both. It’s time to start some new projects, as always, I have a few in mind.

Covid cases are still going up here. Even though we plan on going back to church November 2, I’m guessing quarantines are likely to start up again. I wonder what restrictions you’ll return to. I imagine that whatever the case, it will be vastly less restrictive than what you are experiencing now. 

We had some odd news this week. Mom and Jacob both had eye appointments. Turns out that Jacobs left eye blurring is a developmental problem, not an optical one. Apparently, when you are younger as your brain and vision are developing, if one eye has drastically poorer vision than the other, your brain will prioritize the good eye. If this is understood and corrected before about the age of 10 or 12, the can correct the vision in the poor eye, patch the good eye, and the brain will retrain. According to this somewhat condescending doctor, this time has passed for Jake. He doesn’t seem to bothered by it, of course your mom and I feel guilty over it. Not that we haven’t been good about taking you guys for your check ups, just that we never caught it. Apparently, it’s not uncommon, even amongst athletes. He said Jake probably won’t be a pilot for his profession, but otherwise he’s normal. Jakes pretty good at things requiring depth perception, so he seems able to overcome it.

Yesterday was a fun day with all of our projects and goofing around. Then something really upsetting happened. We we’re coming home from shopping on Redwood. We saw kind of a parade or something going on. Weirdly, the roads were still open and mostly functioning. There were cars and trucks with flashing lights adorned with flags and banners. As we came amongst them they were mostly tump 2020 flags, and were mostly driven by a rougher looking crowd. Many of the vehicles has passengers hanging out of windows and sun roofs, yelling and waving. Many of the trucks had people in the back doing the same. I felt a feeling of dread the further this went on, I’ll bet there were 80 or 90 vehicles, maybe more. As we moved through them, we began noticing that some of the men riding in the beds of the pickups were armed with military rifles and hand guns, openly. They also wore vests and other gear. The looked like terrorists, if terrorists were rednecks. I’m not sure what message they were putting out. I just know that the feeling they projected was not one of peace and love, or intelligence. I’m not sure what’s going on in our country Benjamin, but I never remember anything like this in my lifetime. I think things are going to be interesting around here for the next few months. 

Next weekend is conference. It will be comforting to hear words of encouragement from a higher perspective. We read President Neilson’s talk on personal revelation from 2018. What a comfort. But the fact that we cannot survive without personal revelation was illustrated in that experience yesterday.

Well, kid, I miss you, I love you and always pray for you. As always, I’m so looking forward to hearing from you tomorrow.

Pops