cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. Diane Cluff, Andrea Nielson, and Heather and Nate Pace
"It has been a week with a bomb every day, some literal and some metaphorical, some destructive and some suprises, and some killing and some redirecting.
As each of you know, the scene was set just before 11:25 AM on Tuesday, April 20th, when two good looking High School students in Littleton, Colorado, threw a pipe bomb on top of the school after having shot two students on their way up to the cafeteria and the massacare which left their names in infamy. When I talked to Andrea tonight, she mentioned that Brother Graff, an institute teacher in her ward, received a letter from the Seminary Teacher at Columbine High School. There was one seminary student shot, and he is still in the hospital in serious condition. Most of the seminary students, independently, and for random reasons, chose to not go to the cafeteria that day, like they normally did. The Seminary Teacher sees the working of the Holy Ghost in what happened with his flock. Two thoughts. First, I lived in Littleton with the parents of a missionary companion, Elder Kingfisher, the first part of the summer after my mission (1973), my second summer to work for Amoco. It seemed like home, like anyplace else I had ever been. A logical conclusion is that this type of mayhem can and will occur any place, at any time, and under the most normal of circumstances. As a Father who loves each of you dearly, PLEASE BE CAREFUL!
Second, as you go about your daily activities, keep your eyes and ears and nose and sixth sense open. I remember when we lived in Missouri City, and Sister Vivian Page (.../9821.html), a young widow, was the Young Woman's President and I was the Young Men's President. She was driving her daughter Sharon to a church activity, turned to cross a major street, and this man pulled up next to her, pulled a pistol out and pointed it right at her head. When I saw here in 1998 at the `This Is The Place' Monument it was one of the first things she spoke about. She recalled her prayer, and she recalled feeling comforted, and she still recalls how scared she was. Remember the Holy Ghost, and practice listening to the still small voice. It will protect you. I recall one Saturday coming home from some errands in Dallas, when we lived on Hanover Street, being followed by a guy in a little red car. Maybe he just happened to make the same 10 turns I did, and there is no question I will not know until after this life, and after I step back through the barrier we know as time, as a spirit, and watch my life over and over. However, I do know I felt impressed to make the wrong turn at the last minute, to double back on myself, and to move to where I could watch him leave the subdivision after what looked like searching on several streets for my car. I really doubt if he had a bomb. I don't know if he was casing where we lived. It was probably just my paranoia. And if it wasn't, I am glad I listened to the still small voice, some write off as paranoia. A related comment is to help when help is needed, and don't take foolish chances being a hero if there is not a real high probability of success. There are crazies out there who carry might throw a bomb. USE COMMON SENSE!
A week ago Friday afternoon I received an urgent call from Sadhar Ghalib, affectionately known as Gabby. Gabby is the business manager for Abdullah Fouad and Sons, and was HyperMedia's agent when John Amason, Larry Law, myself, and others worked in Saudi Arabia. He wanted me to make sure the General Manager of the Processing Center was called and talked to about the things we are doing at Continuum. The Sales Vice-President was on a school sponsored fathers and son's campout, and so the job fell to me. I finally got hold of the V.P. at about 1:30 on Saturday morning. I reminded him of meeting him when I was doing HyperMedia. He was not impressed. As I talked to him I recalled when Desert Storm was under way and a scud missle landed in the Aramco parking lot, and the bomb didn't go off, and the hole in the parking lot was patched by the time expatriots got to work the following morning. I remember leveraging this fear of `loosing Aramco's knowledge' to sell HyperMedia software and services. Despite these memories, by the time we finished talking, I had won him over a little bit, and had guaranteed a follow-up invitation for his boss, the IT (Information Technology) Vice-President, to visit Continuum on the 19th of May. I sat expectations, and specifically mentioned I would be out of town. I didn't say it would be to be on my honeymoon. Monday this week started with following up on this phone call and making all of the necessary arrangements. One of Gabby's sales representatives came and took a couple of us to lunch at Beef `N Bird. Then we took him by the new office to see the new theater. He was impressed. Later in the day there were meetings about the OTC (Offshore Technology Conference), about getting the Visualization Center properly running, about improving communication in our new company, and in the mean time I was busy preparing materials to take to London with me. Larry and Alma were the only ones who joined me for Family Home Evening. Larry gave an excellent lesson on a series of questions derived from the scriptures.
As I talked to Andrea Monday evening, particularly as we discussed what I had written in last week's Thoughtlet, titled Involvement (.../9917.html), I recognized one of the metaphorical bombs of my week. I apologize to those whom I have offended by my candor. I do feel it is better to talk through feelings about the changes happening in our family, particularly with my upcoming marriage to Andrea, and it was absolutely not my intention of to stifle any conversation with any of you. Andrea kindly helped me recognize I stifle repeat conversation when I broadcast the first conversation to the world. I repent, and I will be very careful to limit (1) writing about Marti in these Thoughtlets, and (2) repeating conversations, including e-mail, I have had with you kids unless you ask me to or say it is OK in advance. Although I am a very private person, my openess philosophy has derived from D&C 1:3 where we are taught:
Being one of the rebellious, I figured I might as well talk frankly about my sin of not trusting. Now I realize, after reflecting on the explosion of a word bomb, everyone is not as secure as I am, and not as willing as I am to hang dirty laundry out for others to see. I hope that what I have written shows my willingness and desire to talk through hard subjects. However, I recognize how my attempts to be open can backfire and offend and silence those who I am hoping to see open up. Despite believing everything will be made known at some time in the future, I do know there are things best kept to private conversations and kept in confidence. I have assumed that since everything will be made known at some time in the future, there is no real advantage in delaying the discussion. However, based on the conversation Monday evening with Andrea, I recognized again to `assume' is to make an `ass (of) (yo)u (and) me.' My assuption about talking now rather than waiting is simply not true, especially if it results in cutting off or inhibiting communication with those I love. I plan to test out this approach by better filtering what I write. I would appreciate feedback and comments.
Tuesday I went into the office early, and worked up until 2:00. Had it all timed out. Leave at 2:00 PM, get to Park And Ride at 2:30, get to the airport at 2:45, an hour before the flight. Wrong! There was a long line at Continental. Finally got up to the ticket counter at 3:20 and the attendant said, `The flight is closed.' Suprise bomb. She called the gate and they said they could not guarantee my luggage. Luckily I only had one bag and my computer, so I ran to gate 5 in IAB pulling my two bags. I was the last one on the plane, and I made it.
Wednesday morning I got into Gatwick Airport at 6:30 AM. Took the train to London and read about the killing of the popular BBC television anchor, Jill Dando, on the front steps of her home. The Serbians had just taken responsibility, they said, in response to a bomb blowing up a media center in Belgrade. The articles brought faint memories of when I visited Belgrade, Yugoslavia as the only representative of Landmark Graphics at an EAEG (European Association of Exploration Geoscientists, now the EAG or European Association of Geoscientists) Convention in about 1987. There were several key sales that were consummated as a result of that trip, including Mobil Oil, which become Landmark's largest account. I got no sales commission, and no real recognition for being the cowboy salesman I was in those days. As I read about the war in Kosovo, I shuttered to think about the people I met and talked with in those days, which seem so long ago.
There were also articles about two separate nail bomb attacks on ethnic neighborhoods in London. Of course, I did not expect any of this would have anything to do with me. I just converted $100 to Pounds, bought a round trip ticket on the Gatwick Express, went into Victoria Station, took a cab to the Rembrandt Hotel across the street from the Albert and Victoria Museum, ironed my shirts and suit, had a shower and shaved, changed clothes, walked up Exhibition Road past Hyde Park Chapel (as mentioned before this was the mission home for The England East Mission), walked another half a block and turned left onto Prince Consert Road and went to the third floor of Imperial College's School of Mines to see the Continuum Resources London Service Center. It is beautiful. The three screens, which form half a hexagon, are 8 feet tall and raised off the floor about a foot. There is an elevated control room at the back, and two levels of customer space. The colors and walls are very tasteful, and the whole facility is very impressive. I had lunch with our investor, Kjell Finstad, and his accountant, Pal Rullestad. There was a temper tantrum about some things which could not be changed by one of Continuum's management. A kind of emotional bomb. There was a big meeting with a Norwegian banking group starting at 2:00. The President and the Chief Financial Officer of MuSE flew over from Albequerque for the meeting, and on Wednesday evening we all had dinner to talk about the proposals by the bankers. Interesting stuff. I was wiped out as I walked back down Exhibition Road and past the Hyde Park Chapel. When I got to the room I watched `Godzilla' and called Rob to remind him to go to Young Men's.
Thursday I got to the office, walking past the Hyde Park Chapel, at about 8:30 AM. Mr. Finstad is shooting a speculative seismic survey offshore Iran. U.S. Companies can not do business with Iran. However, as a Norwegian he owns the data and so he can bring the data into our Service Centers. It is a very interesting project, and should make him a lot of money. It will take a couple of years to shoot all of the seismic. We had about 20 oil companies in the center, and it was a very formal Power Point then dynamic fly-through presentation. I was impressed. Some of the presentation did not go as smooth as hoped, and there was a little bit of a feeling the second part of the presentation was a bomb by some of my colleagues. However, I was very satisfied. I had started working on my presentation for the Landmark Technology Forum on the plane on the way over, and I spent as much time as possible on Thursday continuing this work. That evening we had a Continuum Board Meeting, and then we went out to dinner at Michael Caine's resturant in Earl's Court, which is where I lived the last four months of my mission, and is the tube stop closest to the motel Melanie and I stayed at last summer. I was wiped out when I got back to the hotel.
Friday morning we met with Mr. Finstad and a company which is a potential merger partner with one of the divisions of Continuum. It is very obvious Mr. Finstad is not going to let Continuum bomb and become another HyperMedia. This is great news to me. We went back to the office and had demonstrations by a company which does 3-D GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Based on the demonstration, I hope to take the topography of Shirt's Canyon, just south of Cedar City, turn it into a 3-D digital terrain map, texture map the USGS maps on top of it, and start working to demonstrate how this could become a prototype 21st centrury 3-D intelligent city built around people instead of around cars. For those of you who have followed my Walden 3-D dream, notice how I keep coming back to the same place, again and again and again and again. Three of us left the office about 11:00 and drove up to Nottingham University about 2 hours north of London. There we had some wonderful demonstrations on using medical imaging tools to interpret interconnected reservoir bodies in a 3-D seismic survey. Neat stuff. We got back to London at about 5:45 PM, and I got dropped off at the east end of Hyde Park, close to Hyde Park Corner.
I was going to walk through the park, past the Hyde Park Chapel, and down to the hotel. However, I decided to walk up to Oxford Street, see if there were any shops open where I could buy a new suit for the wedding, and maybe go to the theater. There were no shops open, and so I caught the tube to Leister Square, got a list of musicals, and decided to walk up Charing Cross Road to the Palace Theatre and see if I could get into the 7:30 showing of Les Miserables. It was about 7:15 when the street was suddenly swarming with ambulances and police. I walked up to the theater, and was able to get the last seat on the ground floor. It was expensive, 35 Pounds or about $70. Even though I've seen the musical several times, it is kind of like reading the Book of Mormon, there are new insights everytime you dealve in again. Mistakes. Repentance. Business. Jobs. Appetites. Helping. Humor. Adoption. Protection. Sacrafice. Protagonast. Rescue. Law. Mercy. Kindness. Marriage. Death. The tears came as I contemplated the numerous and intertwined themes. At the the end of the applause the Inn Keeper, Thenardier, raised his hand for the applause to stop. It did. He asked everyone to sit down. We did. He said, `As you know there has been an incident outside and the police have asked that everyone leave the theater by going south on Charing Cross Road.' I didn't know anything. However, when I got outside, there were ambulances in the street, the entire area was taped off, and there were dozens of police forming lines and insuring crowd control. A nail bomb had been set off in a gay bar about two streets from the Palace Theatre. There were 2 dead and 73 injured enough they were taken to the hospital. When I got back to the hotel I watched the details of what happened as I was walking out of Leicester Square tube stop at 6:35 that evening. Scary. We never know when someone else's free agency is going to impinge on our ability to function and even to live.
I went to bed about midnight (6:00 PM Houston time), got up at 5:30, left the hotel at 6:00 AM (midnight Houston time), took a cab to Victoria Station, just caught a Gatwick Express train, got my ticket changed, checked a bag, bought some shortbread and chocolate and a paper, and read about the bomb. We got to Houston about 2:15 PM. I went to `Big and Tall' to buy a new suit for the wedding. They told me I have lost too much weight and they don't have anything which will fit me. I havn't lost that much weight, and it still sure felt good to walk out of that store. I went to The Men's Warehouse where Rob got his suit and ordered a suit and a sports jacket. I got to the house at 5:00 PM (11:00 PM London time). In the mail was the redirecting and anticipated letter from the First Presidency. It reads:
Again, I hope none of you will ever come face to face with a bomb. My prayers are with each of you that you will be safe and that your guardian angels will watch over you and protect and guide you into safe paths."