"The big news from this week was the Primary class performance my class put on for the Relief Society annual birthday dinner. I recall spending several nights putting together a PowerPoint Presentation, which we practiced on Sunday. The PowerPoint consisted of three parts.
The first part was the words to my song "Scriptures." Each line was written at the top, with a picture from the Primary Manuel tied to each phrase. I played the guitar, and the first part was set to automatically advance, at the same speed as I played the song. Dylan Hutchings started the automatic slides, and advanced the slides for the other songs. He did a great job.
The second part was the Primary Song "I'm Trying to Be like Jesus," which words say:
The third part was the words to "The Animal Testimony Meeting," which also included pictures of woods, and photos of each child in the class with an animal that is described in the song as bearing their testimony. Noah Inman was the little white rabbit, Dylan Hutchings was Mr. Bear, Kirsten Songster and Morgan Bancroft were the two fishes, Ashley Siebert was the little brown owl, Jared Davis was the bashful raccoon, Tyler John was Mr. Squirrel, and Jonathan Schmidt was the wee chipmunk. The kids were really cute. However, we had not practiced it with a projector for the Mom's to be able to see the screen, and so several of the kids turned away from the audience and watched the projector, instead of looking at the screen and at the audience. Oh well! It was fun for me. Andrea did not know what I was doing, other than we were going to sing a song. I'm not sure it surprised her as much as when I sang the revised version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" at a previous Relief Society Birthday Party. In fact, she didn't say much about the program. Andrea did take some video's, which are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/NottinghamCountryWard/CTR-8.
The program was Wednesday night. I had been practicing in the evenings when Andrea was away at various seminary meetings, and in the mornings before leaving for work, while she was teaching seminary. I was pretty nervous about how it was going to turn out, especially since I added the third song without permission, and without telling the Relief Society Sisters. Our performance was a small part of an extensive skit, which several sisters had been working on for some time. Anyway it all seemed to turn out OK.
In fact, on Friday there was a very nice note in the mailbox, which read:
Going back to earlier in the week, there were a couple of notes I made. I was doing a lot of work on Red Cove at this time, and on Tuesday I’d saved a note which I called Summary of Investor Proposal. It is an outline and says:
| KB# | Top Level Activities |
| D1.0 | Prototype a Synergistic Community |
| D1.1 | Select a Site |
| D1.2 | Plan, Design, and Build Community |
| D1.2.1 | Secure Financing |
| D1.2.2 | Purchase Property |
| D1.2.2 | Phase 1. Design Initiation |
| D1.2.3 | Phase 2. Design Focus |
| D1.2.4 | Phase 3. Computer Enabled Design |
| D1.2.5 | Phase 4. Construction |
| D1.2.6 | Phase 5. Long-Term Commitment |
| D2 | Formalize The Urban Machine Process |
| D2.1 | Perform A Detailed Lookback on the Development of Each New Community |
| D2.2 | Define Best Practices and Build a Database of Processes and Results |
| D2.3 | Identify General Rules of New Community Development |
| D2.4 | Automate Appropriate Design, Marketing, and Building Processes |
| D3 | Implement The Urban Machine |
| D3.1 | Market Past Project Successes and Capabilities |
| D3.2 | Identify and Rank New Opportunities |
| D3.3 | Secure Financing |
| D3.4 | Implement Design/Build Processes |
| D3.5 | Rebuild Communities Across The World |
There was also an e-mail from Mic Patterson with an attachment about a green city being built in China (see 060302_sustainable_city.pdf). Maybe the world is catching up with the ideas planted in my mind back in 1970. Hope so, even if I don't make a dime from these ideas. They are important.
Saturday was a day of raking leaves, placing lawn plugs, finishing the last four hours of the first season of "24," and going to see the new Pink Panther movie staring Steve Martin. It was an OK movie, with a lot of laughs. As I recall, it was a bit gross, with typical Steve Martin type of humor.
Sunday was Fast & Testimony Meeting. Jonathan Schmidt marched up to the front and bore his testimony. It was all written out for him, and he did a very good job. I was very proud of him and his parents.
When I called you kids that night, Melanie told me about Colby talking on his toy phone. She overheard him say: "We have a situation. A terrible situation. Call me back with directions!" It is easy to forget how every day with young children is a Primary Class Performance."