Sunday, July 13, 2008

...The Most Puka Shells

"He who dies with the most puka shells wins!" --that's what I thought in 1978. My goodness, how much I've changed! I was once cool, hip and trendy...at least I thought so! And I had lots and lots of puka shells. Oh, they were so important to my cool, hip and trendy image!

I had a chance to reflect on just how much I have changed when I visited my college alma mater recently. One of the activities as I visited Utah with our church youth group, was to spend a day at BYU in Provo, Utah. I had a little bit of time to walk around the campus. It certainly does not look the same as it did when I went there! You see, I got a little lost.

As I walked down memory lane, I decided to go visit the old Harold B. Lee Library--a place where I hung out for many years. I would sit and socialize, nap, and study a bit every day on the 4th floor. That's where all us cool, hip and trendy kids would meet, wearing our puka shells, of course! So, for old time's sake, I decided to go back and visit the old 4th floor at the library. This is what it looked like when I went there: I went in through the south entrance. Oh, it looked different, but no big deal, I thought. They must have changed how you enter the library. I thought, I'll just open one of these doors and take a look around...oh, no! This was not the entrance to the library! A group of about 20 students and a professor looked up at me. The professor said, "May I help you?" My face was red, I said, "Excuse me, is this the entrance to the library?" The professor said, "You need to go around to the north side and enter that way!" I was so embarrassed. I'm sure as I closed the door, they all had a good laugh.
(This is what the library looks like today! No wonder I was lost!)

Cool, hip and trendy Vivian, once adorned with her many puka shells, came back to BYU looking like this:

A middle-aged tourist! Yes, that was me! And I interrupted a class, for heaven's sake!!! What a dork! Don't tell anyone...let's just BYU remember Vivian as cool, hip and trendy...ok?







Let's talk about something else!

Of course the reason I looked like a tourist, as I've told you before, was because I was the official youth group photographer. I always had a camera around my neck! Here are some musical programs we enjoyed. One was a lovely singer named Jenny Phillips. Please check out her website: Jenny Phillips. She was awesome and beautiful. Here she is pictured on the left with Daughter #1 and her Sweetheart, who came down from Tremonton to Salt Lake City to visit us and enjoy the musical fireside. Another was Alex Boye. He is a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and also sells CD's of his own music. He was a favorite speaker and singer of many of our youth. And lastly, Kenneth Cope came to do a musical fireside for us. He was awesome. I loved his music and he had such a great spirit about him. Check out his website: Kenneth Cope.All these artists' music is available through iTunes too. Check them out and enjoy!

No quilting pictures to share today. I'm working on a huge one and it's taking a while. No two-a-days for now!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cute post! (I totally relate to your puka fetish - it was the 70s, what more can we say?)

You took some nice photos of some great artists we all love. :)

Anonymous said...

WOW! What a Youth Conference! A great experience for those kids.

Diane said...

We just got back from our stake laurel/priest trip to Nauvoo. Sounds like youth conference was great. Although we're not surprised since you guys were in charge! Michael was excited to tell us he saw you at BYU.

Ah yes...the puka shells! Couldn't ever have too many! You are so funny!

Mark and Stefani McCune said...

You're still hip & cool! It must have been nice to hear those artists sing. We used "Sisters of Light" at our last stake enrichment meeting. It was our theme & we had everyone learn it in English & Spanish.