Thoughts and stories, by Pal

This was originally Blog # 95.  It is one of the most read of all my blogs! My mother, Ruth Allen Miles, was a gifted soprano, teacher, mother, and also a poetess!   She wrote quite a few lovely poems, and I have a few of them.  I will include the poems I have in this blog.        While Ruth was teaching at Salt Lake City, the winter of 1945-1946, and going to the U. Of U. she was summoned to her sister Adelia’s back in the small town of Washington, near St. George.   Her mother, Levinah Emeline Wilson Allen had had a heart attack.  Ruth arrived there a few hours before she died.   This was taken of Levinah when she was about 20. In her history, Ruth wrote:  "She died as she had lived – Bravely, with no word of complaint.  Her last words were, “I’m glad to be here with my children.  Your voices are so quiet," and then, “It’s so peaceful here,” and with a smile she  breathed her last.  God bless h...

Petra was one of the very delightful parts of our tour!  A lot of it will be pictures, as I took many!   This was typical of the landscape before getting to the main part of Petra.  It didn't look unusual at all, almost like Southern Utah! We hired a cart and horse, driven by a guide, for $40.  (Plus a $20 tip that was expected!  $30 each wasn't bad.) It was outside the main part, and riding in that cart was quite an experience!  It was totally bumpy, to say the least!  A lot of the road was sort of like cobblestones, but large rocks put there by the Romans, probably before the time of Christ.    There were many other places there which had been carved quite a bit.  In the openings, there were caves carved out, where people lived.  I took pictures bouncing along in the little cart behind the horse! Inside, there were many vendors along the trail, probably 2 to 3 miles, fairly difficult to ...

Today is Sunday, and the last Sabbath I had was on April 28th, Saturday, which is when they hold the Sabbath in Jerusalem, to go along with the day the Jews celebrate the Sabbath there. I was in front of the beautiful arches at the BYU Jerusalem Center! I had requested before to be able to play on the beautiful organ there, and the lovely Sister Janice Clayton who was the organist for the Branch there, allowed me to play.  I played "The Holy City"  (Jerusalem), and was so full of gratitude and just thrilled to be able to do it! This is looking toward the front of the chapel there, and you can see the beautiful city of Jerusalem through the big windows in the arches!  We had some very inspirational speakers there, and I will tell of them, and what they had to say in a future blog.  I need more time to get it ready, but I wanted to post this on the Sabbath Day here at home!    A view from below, showing the 16 acres it is b...

Today will be mostly pictures, typical of life in Egypt.  We were in a very nice hotel, and the attendants both in the hotel, and the bus were very polite, and respectful to us.  They were fluent in English, and I asked one man how he learned English.  He said by watching American movies!  He wasn't married, and planned to buy an apartment before he felt he could afford to be married.   The language there is Arabic, and street signs and many other types of signs were both in English and Arabic.  We were told to not eat anything raw there, but to make sure it was fully cooked.  We all did that, and none of us got stomach ailments.  So here are the pictures: mostly in Cairo. In the center of Cairo, there was a wide sort of park in the middle of the streets. We went to a papyrus factory, and they had many scenes on papyri that you could buy -- most quite expensive!                   ...