What an Honor

Ok, I really don’t have the time or the energy to try and sound eloquent right now. Let me just say, today has been amazing. I received the Outstanding Broadcast Award, which declares me the top broadcast junior in the nation. Pretty dang cool. And I got money. Always dang cool. I also received a scholarship. Yay! Even more money! And I get to produce a thirty minute radio documentary. I just couldn’t believe the whole experience. I also got a set of the BYU P.E. clothing. They’re getting rid of the clothes and I got some! I know, dorky. But I was excited. And I turned in my huge English project—including my much worked on short story. That’s a relief. Maybe one day I’ll have the guts to post that story here. Probably not though.
Today I felt as light as air. And for the fourth time this week I couldn’t help but smile.
Too bad Travis didn't call. All well.

Oral History Transcript of Interview

Oral History Transcript of Interview
BYU Communications 301 (History and Philosophy of Journalism)

Anna: This is the Anita Louise Pritt Oral History Project, session number one with Anita on March 14th 2009. We’re interviewing over the phone. I am in the Classical 89 radio studio in Provo, and Anita is in her home in Duchesne, Utah.
Anna: Ok, like I said before it’s just about the media and kind of what you remember from growing up: what programs you remember, listening to the radio; that kind of thing.
Anita: Ok…let me see. (Joel come on.) I’ve got to think…about media that we had?
Anna: Yeah.
Anita: It was radio—it was radio only when I was little. So we listened to the news. I listened to stories—lot of stories. They had like, oh, Disney stories, and they had The Squeeking door, mysteries, Cream of Wheat Hour—those kind of things.

...full interview available upon request...

Five Minutes Peace

When I woke up this morning and saw the snow, I figured today would be bad. But when I realized all of the good oatmeal flavors were gone and I’d have to have plain, I knew it would be bad. When I tried to fix my hair and found that I was out of hairspray there was no turning back—I was headed down the tube.
Sum up of today:
-Forgot to take a lunch
-Felt ignored by “certain” people
-Failed a test
-Discovered I had a paper due…when everyone else was getting them back
-Got a new blister
Yeah, I know, I’m focusing on the bad stuff. I have a great life, I just had a bad day and I need to complain for a minute. I’m too tired to try right now and need a five minute break before I have to slap on a smile. All will be well; it’s just not right now. I’ll keep praying for peace.

I'm Uptight

I realized I'm just waiting for the day when I can let loose. I'm waiting for the stresses to be gone, tests to be over, and love to be found. I can't wait anymore.

I think I'll just take off to Cali and pick up surfing and be a professional superstar (correlation? -irrelevant :) ) . Anyone wanna come?

Great Weekend

I had an amazing weekend. I ran a 5k (again...Rachel and I are getting so good at running!). Then went on a date with William D. He’s been a friend of mine for almost a year now, and we’ve always gotten along really well. I don’t normally date guys younger than me because I find them to be terribly immature. However, William has always impressed me with his levelheadedness. We helped out with a service project for two hours: stuffing and sewing footballs and making games for an autistic children’s school. It was wonderful. Surprisingly, Will was even subtly flirtatious; and we had a great time. We were so into the projects that we missed our bus home and ended up wandering the Wilk and joining a game of 4-square! I haven’t played since 3rd grade! We caught a sneak peek of the Latin dancing in the ballroom and a quick game of foosball in the bowling alley. And always a favorite, we looked at the stars on our way back from the bus. It was great. When I got home, my roomies and I took off to a slumber party. I really had no intentions of sleeping over, but I was going to enjoy as much of the party as my tired body could. It too was awesome. I ate two pieces of pizza, a bowl of muddy buddies, a pack of gushers, and a bit of chocolate cake and worms in dirt. Girls were running around shooting guns and bows and arrows, dancing, and playing with the Unicorn!

Saturday was awesome too. I saw my first silent movie with live organ accompaniment! It was so neat! Good friends, good fun, and the 1920 version of "The Mark of Zorro."

Sonnet 1 -Revised

I walk alone along my path in life.
The men surrounding me are merely boys
And will not be my match nor I their wife.
I flit from date to date with dancer’s poise,
But their left feet destroy the tandem flow.
My toes, they hurt! and I resent dim youth
Who will not take the lead that real men show;
to guide me forward with their moves—so smooth.
Someday I may just find my perfect match—
The glove that fits my hand with loving ease.
And when he comes into my life to catch
My eyes and ask me with a gentle ‘please;’
I will not hesitate to say I’ll be
His one true love for all eternity.

See original poem here.

You know that giggle you can feel in your heart?

I am so in love with life right now!

Sounds of my Mother

***Penguin Cafe Orchestra: “Music for a Found Harmonium”***
For my mother, the sun did not rise with choirs of angels, but with an alarming beep, beep, beep, beep. That moment, when her slumber was cut short, began the repetitious tedium of a mother’s daily schedule which wore on her like a song on repeat, or a melody without dimension. The score for this part of my mother’s life was “Music for a Found Harmonium,” a song of few notes and even fewer instruments. The song’s almost monotonous recurrence of the same few quickly paced violin tones could be heard playing over and over as she lifted loads of laundry, chauffeured anxious children, and scoured daily dishes. But my mother heard this same song differently than I did. “Listen, listen,” I remember her saying. “Here comes the change in the music.” Her eyes would close, and a small slit smile would cut across her face as she soaked in the variation of melody heard within the same “Music for a Found Harmonium.” A few key changes and the occasional trill brought my mother pleasure. The music was simple but she enjoyed it nonetheless. She found magic hidden in the ordinary; and she discovered its power. My mother didn’t get bored with a simple violin like others, because it wasn’t about the violin; it was about the music as a whole. Violins aren’t what remind me of my mother, but the changes in melody like those she heard when no one else could. And I won’t find her in the monotony of washing daily dishes, but in the occasional plastic popsicle stick leftover from homemade popsicles—the trill that caused the smile. She taught me to find harmony through the magic of ordinary days.

***Blue October: “Into the Ocean”***
But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. While I can always hear the sounds of my mother, it’s not constantly through sweet changes in violin melodies while happily doing the dishes. Sometimes, she would spin, “colliding into sound, like whales beneath me diving down.” I can remember the days the black hole mess in our bedrooms would suck her in and consume her, when “the lighthouse beam [had] just run out.” It didn’t matter how many times we all worked on organizing the girls’ room; somehow a whirlwind managed to sneak in every night. Shoes were in the bed and dolls were under it, and no one knew where the bed blankets were. By ten o’clock at night we were all frustrated and even mom was near tears. Again and again the black hole would try to eat my mother. But instead she would fall “Into the Ocean,” and drift on the waves of a heavy beat; the rhythm took her away with drums and guitars and men with liquid voices. She would listen to it in the car and in the kitchen, and she would listen to it in full volume; the beat of the song helped her conquer the abyss.

***Imogen Heap: “Hide and Seek”***
However, more often than not, I tended to out-stress my mother. At times of high tension, a different tune was sung and happiness seemed like a game of “Hide and Seek.” I remember coming home from school very frazzled; and frazzleness often came in the form of Brittney B. It didn’t matter how hard I had tried, she always had to be better than me. I can remember the way she would turn and flip her dirty blonde locks around in Dance Company. Strands of hair would fly, and then settle as she cocked her head to catch my eyes with a sideways glance. She wanted to see if I had watched. I would come home completely exhausted from play practice, Dance Company, and class with Brittney; lack of sleep and high stress easily overcame my emotions. All I needed was to let off a little steam with my mom. She would crank up Imogen and I would sing the words I couldn’t say: “Where are we? What the hell is going on? The dust has only just begun to form crop circles in the carpet. Sinking. Feeling.” I would dance around the kitchen; most of the time this resulted in me hitting some appliance or dish with either a foot or an arm. One kick to the back, right into the cupboard, and a flick of my own hair, right through the spaghetti sauce, and a sideways glance to see if mom was watching. She always was. We played “Hide and Seek” after school, and she always knew just where to find me.

***John Butler Trio: “Better Than”***
She taught me lessons from my stressful moments, lessons I’m still working on learning today. Sitting on a bar stool with my elbows pressed into our lime green countertop, I listened to the sound of my mom sing words of wisdom: “All I know is sometimes things can be hard, but you should know by now they come and they go. So why, oh why do [you] look to the other side? 'Cos I know the grass is greener but just as hard to mow. Life's not about what's better than.” The “grass is greener,” but on my little patch of shriveled grass, I could giggle with my mom, my best friend, about John Butler Trio’s “hot hip-action;” somehow that was fertilizer for my soul. Life wasn’t about being “better than” Brittney Bowman; I will never be able to raise my leg up above my head the way she can. But sounds of my mother became the power by which I got through the hard times.

***Matt Nathanson: “Come on Get Higher”***
***Eurythmics: “Here Comes the Rain Again”***
***Safety Suit: “Someone Like You”***
***Loreena McKennitt: “The Mummers’ Dance”***
The sounds of my mom pick me up and carry me. When I walk across campus alone, when I lie in bed at night, when I turn on my music “I miss the sound of your voice. And I miss the rush of your skin. And I miss the still of the silence, as you breathe out and I breathe in.” “I want to walk in the open wind. I want to dive into your ocean. Is it raining with you?” “If I were strong enough, if I were wrong enough to be someone like you, would you have let me come to be with you?” I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hear the sounds of my mother. And together in the music, we will always “link our hands and dance round in circles and in rows.”

A Prayer for Peace

Dear God,
"Friday February 13, 2009, just after 9:00a.m., a tragic accident occurred.” I have had a lot of mixed emotions about the deaths of Shilo and Micah Edwards. Everyone experienced such an overwhelming shock to discover that at nineteen and twenty years old they were taken from this life. I’m not sure I will ever fully accept their deaths; but they happened nonetheless, and many people want to know why. I know, what a classic question—why?
I’ve grown up with these girls, and they are the first young people to die that I have known so well. I can remember being nine-years-old and sitting on a church pew with Shilo only a few rows in front of me. She was all dress up in her baptism dress—so pretty in white. I remember that we didn’t like each other very much at that age, but we were young and grew out of the pettiness. When were just a little older, we would sit on the cold tile floor together and played with her dogs’ puppies. Micah was a little older than I was, but I still remember her. Mostly, I just remember them being there—image after image of their faces flash through my mind, them, in my life, there, and then not.
Heavenly Father, you were there when all of these things happened, and you knew all along their time was shorter than the rest of ours. You have the vision of the entire eternal plan, and you know why things happen the way they do. But the rest of us have been left to question: Why? Was this really necessary? Could there have been any other way?
For some reason you have given me a very cushioned life. I am constantly blessed. Sometimes this causes me to believe my larger trials will be just around the corner, but most of the time such comforts lull me into a passive expectation for ease. My testimony has never really been challenged, and although my life is full of stresses and difficulties, they pale in comparison to situations like this. Because of such a past, I felt very lost in my own religion when trying to understand death. I’ve come to the conclusion that most testimonies are just a compilation of words, and not a manifestation of beliefs. Too many members give lip service to thy word. I still know my faith to be of the true and living gospel on this Earth, but I have so many open ended questions.
My brother Josh has now been home from his mission for a year, and he has all of the missionary answers when it comes to things like this. But the classic image of The Plan of Salvation, the recognizable pattern of circles and lines just didn’t do it for me this time. No one could tell me whether Micah and Shilo felt lonely after dying. And I had never thought about trying to give a hug without a body, but now the need for Shilo and Micah to be able to hug each other was so great for my heart, I became angry that bodies were required to hug--is that silly? And the idea that the dead began to serve missions and teach the gospel was fine and dandy when it was my grandfather who died—someone who would have wanted to drop everything and serve a mission—but that didn’t work for them. They had too much life left to live. What are they going to do every day now? And how does time work in the afterlife? And will they get to stay together? And what happens to Drew? Shilo and Drew were going to be engaged Friday night, now what? If this life is so insignificantly short in comparison to the next, why will he have to move on and find someone else when he so badly wants to be sealed for eternity with his true love? They were perfect for each other! And now he just has to “move on.”
I don’t have the answers, but I’m glad that you do. Thank you for letting their sister, Shelby, see them in her dream. Thank you for comforting their family, especially their mother. Thank you for helping Dale to understand that losing his girls is a blessing as much as a trial. He told me Micah struggled greatly. But for the first time in a long time she was at peace with where she was at--in a sense, she was ready to die. And to die with a clean soul now, even though she is young, may have been the only way that they could be together forever as an eternal family. But that doesn’t entirely help me reconcile Shilo and Drew.
God, please don’t take anyone in my family. Please.

Stop and Listen

A man sat at a metro station in Washington, DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.


No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?