Songs

This song was used as the music for Psalm 47, and is referenced by both Song 029 – Simonton Blues  and Song 044 – My Family. I had left Landmark Graphics because the management wanted to build a $4 million office building and would not give me $200,000 to build a sequence stratigraphy package to help our customers. The President was having a public affair with his Marketing Vice-President, and I felt other’s people’s choices were a reflection on my integrity. So, I took the HyperMedia software we had developed, left Landmark, and started HyperMedia Corporation. The company failed because NetScape gave a lower quality internet browser away, and paid for it with advertising. I had guaranteed HyperMedia loans with Landmark stock. Landmark stock went from $24/share to $8/share, and the bank took all of my stock away. I went to work with Bob Sneider, one of the most renowned explorers in the industry. He decided he did not want to work with me, which is a long story. So I went to work on a deep water Gulf of Mexico task force at BHP-Billiton. When this finished, and BHP won about 70 leases in the Gulf of Mexico lease sale, I wanted to give Marti space, hoping she would change her mind, and I took a consulting job with The Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at UT Austin. For a year and a half, I would leave early Monday morning, and get back home late Friday night. It gave me an opportunity to see Roice, who was at The University of Texas. I was at the LaQuinta by the BEG office on 03 April 1997 when I got the call telling me we had an $80,000 tax bill, because of money we had pulled out of Landmark stock, and put into a trust for the kids. The divorce decree was close to being made final. Dad’s barn had burned down, and he had terminal cancer. As I looked out of the window towards the west from the third floor of the LaQuinta there was a big Texas thunderstorm. I was overwhelmed. I heard the beat and the music between my tears as the thunder sounded all around the hotel. It reminded me of the night after Marti and I had gone to the Dallas Temple, I had insisted she ask the Temple President the questions that bothered her, she verbally attacked him, and in our hotel room that night all we could hear was the thunder of another big Texas thunderstorm. It also reminded me of the day the Federal Inspectors shut down Nelson Meat Packing Plant, Dad disappeared, I had to tell Bob Goodwin and Gerald Black they were fired, they cried as they told me not to drop out of school, and a big afternoon Cedar City thunderstorm suddenly came up (see the description of Song 087 – The First Prayer). Absolutely and totally emotionally overwhelming experiences.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 19, for Psalm 81, and is referenced by Song 044 – My Family. Typical of too little too late. Like many of these most personal songs, posting this is probably the first time anyone besides myself has been able to read the words or hear the music. The music has been compiled since before we moved to Cedar City from Houston in 2014. It has been in a big thick book in the corner of the living room since we moved into the condo. Probably intimidating. Probably no one who has visited who is interested enough to thumb through the pages. These pages are there so I can sing myself a song and/or a psalm each morning to start my day off right. Of course, in my mind, the goal is to leave my kids and their descendants a digital legacy, a legacy which hopefully they can gain from in their search for happiness. The divorce was inevitable by the time I wrote this song. I still hoped and prayed and fasted and prayed Marti would change her mind. We were called as stake missionaries to serve in the Columbus Branch. For over 20 weeks I would start a fast on either Friday or Saturday morning and would break it on Sunday night when we got home from Columbus. This was my 40+ days of fasting and prayer. I still wanted to hold Marti’s hand, and to have her leave her virtual world. I did my best to not let our problems disrupt the kids and their lives. Melanie was a cheerleader and graduated from High School on the same day the divorce decree was finalized. Hard times, and not a fulfillment of my desires.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 105, for Psalm 142, and is referenced by Song 003 – Alone and by Song 080 – The Road of Life. We have been admonished at church to personalize the scriptures, and to put ourselves into the scriptures. I am known for taking this type of admonition personally. I do not know anyone else who has put the 42 chapters of the Book of Job to music, twice. Once, just to be able to review the scriptures. The second time to put themselves into the scripture. There is about 8 hours of recorded music linked to this page (4-11 minutes per chapter, say an average of 6 minutes, times 42 chapters, times the Job and the Roice versions). I doubt if anyone will ever listen to all of these recordings. Oh well! So why make the effort? Because I hope some of my descendants will come to understand the depth of the emotional pain which has been the sad part of my life. Thankfully the happy part of my life has more than balanced out these emotional lows. It took months of planning to have all 84 of these chapters recorded so they could be posted as a regular song. Then I struggled with what image represents Job, and his struggles and his pain. I finally decided on the cover photo from the autobiography I wrote for my kids, which is titled: Stand Back Up. This photo of an oil slick on the road in front of our condo was taken on the 27^th of April 2016, and reminded me of the oil slick in on 200 North in front of the Elementary School in about Third Grade (described on page 127), my Rainbow Mosrite Guitar (pages 76 and 243), my first map at Mobil Oil over the Andaman Sea (page 127), the double rainbows I’ve seen, including one during 2015 Science Camp at Aunt Sara’s (page 118), all of the maps made with Landmark software using the spectrum color bar, and the rainbow mosaic under construction outside my office window (2016).

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. At the time, February 1995, Marti lived in a virtual world created by Orson Scott Card. She was Melyn in this virtual world. She had friends and lovers in this virtual world who became closer to her than any of her church friends. One of them, a lady, moved in with us for a while and slept on our couch in the living room. I was attempting to find out what Marti wanted, and I asked her to write out what romance meant to her. As I recall, her original words were “not candles, car doors, diamonds, and dinners.” I left of the word “not” when I put her words to music at an El Rancho Cima Boy Scout Camp in 1995. However, I thought then, and I think now, there is great wisdom in the words she wrote. It is hard for me to sing this and to not personalize it. Did I not show her she was valued? Did I not have a gleam and admiring eye? Did I not create a secret language? I obviously did not keep her delighted. We were certainly two independent people, and while I choose to be with her, she choose to not be with me. Both paths do not work. I complained too much about piles of laundry and was too critical. I was obviously not essential to her happiness. Never did learn to joke. I certainly put in time and effort. I don’t have wit. She chose a different path than I did. I see the negative impact on our lovely children, and it tears me up. Hopefully, when discovered, some of these words will help those of our children who are still struggling to reconcile the struggles of their imperfect parents and the negative impact these struggles had on them. I sincerely hope my attempts to open up and bare my soul are not taken as a selfish self-justification. Rather, I hope these efforts will be seen as time and effort taken to share and to show my love and my concern.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song is referenced by Song 011 – Howard Nelson, by Song 044 – My Family, and it provided the music for Psalm 104. I have always liked this song, and have sang it several times for others, even after the divorce and after my marriage to Andrea. The song describes what I saw in my mind about my home: a lovely queen, whose spouse I was blessed to be. It is mostly a description of the house. The big sedimentary layered rock we brought back from Tipton, Wyoming in a U-Haul rental trailer. The cut glass in the front door. The in-laid wooden floor and the hand stenciled foyer, which were later replaced with the original marble floor and plain white walls. My office, the music room, and the baby grand piano and the harp. The living room, full of books, photos, and music. Our nest on the right. I did not realize until we moved from 1307 Emerald Green how much Andrea did not like sleeping the same bed Marti and I had slept in. Oh well! We sold the bed when we moved. The kitchen and dining on the left, and the pool and trampoline outside, where kids could go play while we talked to friends from around the world who stopped to say hello. The song nicely captures the good parts about my home for 30 years. I refused to leave the home when Marti insisted on divorce. It was very hard for me to leave this home, when we decided to move back to Cedar City. Chris (now Eric) Schmidt, who lives on the street that dead ends into the 1307 Emerald Green driveway, talks about how often he misses having us there as he drives out of his cul-de-sac. This song brings back those good memories to me.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 139, and is referenced by the text describing Song 044 – My Family. This is one of those very personal songs, written in a very personal moment of insecurity, which – although it can be said it turned out to be justified, I have never sung for anyone but myself because I was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. A few years before this, Marti had threatened divorce. As I recall this threat was a response to my losing my temper and yelling at the kids about not taking care of my stereoscope. I had walked out of the house, walked all night to Brookshire along the railroad track from Fry Road, seriously contemplating stepping in front of a passing train, slept for a while in a granary, and the next morning called home from a pay phone in Brookshire and attempted to patch things up. After this experience, my life changed. I did not know what was happening to the eternal family I had worked so hard for. It was obvious I was not leading in the right manner. Certainly, I recognized, at least subconsciously, there were few following my example and my teachings. No one was home on this Saturday, April 30^th, 1994. I started playing my guitar, writing down my fears, and this song resulted. There is a verse about each individual in our family at that time. I was overwhelmed with the negative. I did not (do not) have the tools to handle those who were not following (will not follow) my example, who – in my opinion – did not (do not) want to be part of my family – as shown by life choices, and I was (am) overwhelmed. I have those in the family who say: “You do not know me.” I guess I feel like most of those who say this, “do not know me.” I believe that if they would put a portion of the emotional energy I am putting into publishing these songs, so they can come to know me better – if they choose to, I would know them. And yet I fear this effort will come across over time as another one of my ego trips. As time passes, the family status of some stays too much the same. The bright lights are when someone finds what I found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and changes their life. It is particularly heartening to see how well each of our grandchildren are doing with their lives.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm and is referenced by Song 080 – The Road of Life. I still remember the 21^st Anniversary, or the brass and nickel anniversary. Marti had pretty much decided she was leaving our marriage by this time. I still thought we could pull things together. I looked up what the symbols were for this anniversary, and spent a Saturday afternoon in an antique emporium in Spring Branch, Texas looking for something made of brass and nickel. And we still have what I bought, in the guest bathroom in Cedar City, Utah.  A little container with a unicorn on it, reminding me of “Song 54 – The Wooden Shoe,” and a brass water spray bottle. I claimed to love Marti more than myself, and now I wonder if this was true. Certainly, she did not recognize it, if it was true, or she would not have given up on our marriage. I have a tendency “to look beyond the mark,” and in so doing often do not see what is right in front of me. As I was writing these notes, my mind jumped to “Prime Words,” and all of the time I have spent capturing 4-line stanzas since the flight from Calgary to Houston, on 12 December 1985, when I wrote the first stanza. As I read through some of the stanzas, I related the following two to this song:

Mindwalks:         Have you ever gone alone
                             For a walk in your mind
                             Searching high and low
                             For whatever you may find

Dimensions:        The four-dimensions of earth life
                             Mirror heaven and spiritual thought
                             Where we will see as we are seen
                             And know what is real or what is not

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. After the horrific fires at Yellowstone National Park, I wanted the kids to see what had happened. So, we drove to Cody, visited Riley and Linda Skeen, and they drove into the National Park with us. I only wrote 1 verse and a chorus. Andrea has never been to Yellowstone National Park. It has been my intention for years to take her there, and to spend some time exploring Yellowstone Lake (which I mapped, as shown to the left, as part of my Senior Thesis for partial fulfillment of obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Geophysics from The University of Utah. There is so much potential all around us, and there are so many projects I have started and have not finished. Oh well! Time will tell what I end up deeming as being truly important and what slips through the cracks and is never finished by me. Hopefully, the digital documentation I continue to work on can provide a basis for one or more of our grandkids to grab hold of something which interests them, and expand on what I started.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. I don’t know where my critical nature comes from. Probably from my Mom. I know that when I wrote this song, Marti was quite taken back by the words.  Blue and Orange Silk Flowers are a nice contrast in complimentary colors. I wonder if the kids really did eat them? I like real flowers, dried flowers, and things that nature makes. Although by the third verse I was recognizing I did not have an allergic reaction to the fake flowers. Also, they do not attract bees, and they even moved in the artificial breeze created by the air conditioner. The photo I chose was of some dried purple sage, which is the opposite of fake flowers. I have come to appreciate the beautiful bouquets of fake flowers in the Celestial Rooms at LDS temples, or in the homes of some of the elderly ladies I visit as part of my church service these days. Maybe I am maturing enough to enjoy the fake flowers, and to not just be sarcastic in tone and word for artistic efforts I have not yet learned to appreciate.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm and is referenced by Song 080 – The Road of Life. In fact, none of the songs in this week’s postings were used as the music for a Psalm. At least not yet. I recently saw a book with a title something like, “Psalms of Nauvoo,” and maybe after I post all of these songs I will go back and use the music for some of these songs to put the “Psalms of Nauvoo” to music. In the meantime, this song is about dreams of buying things we could not afford. It reflected my on-going desire to help others. To have the resources to give to those in need, and not feel like we had to have things given to us in order to make our lives more comfortable. I never have liked chasing dollars here and there. After all, things never go like they are planned. And, like my Dad, dollars seem to slip right through my hand. Guess we do not hold on to that which is not important to us, even though we may later come to learn it was important to us and we should not have been so careless. Little kids cry, and Marti was able to cope with these tears very well. She was very even tempered, and just kept on getting on. She filled or house with lovely things, and I did not appreciate these “things,” because I did not have a connection with them. Now we live in a museum, and most of the things we have are things tied to travel and experiences. Still lovely. Appreciated more because of a personal connection to them or where they came from. And still, we do not seem to truly give. Maybe I should say, I do not seem to truly give, as Andrea is really blossoming as the Hillcrest Ward Relief Society President, and does truly give of herself to others. The brass rubbing to the right is “The Pounder Brass” from Ipswich, where I spent 9 months of my LDS Mission. We gave it to the Shakespeare Theater, and it now sits in front of the restroom at the new theater.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Song 063 – Willow Tree and Song 80 – The Road of Life refer to this song. This song was not used as music for a Psalm. I do not remember writing this song. I do remember singing it to myself fairly regularly, and thinking how the two streams symbolized the marriage of two individuals. I love the outdoors, and to see the clouds above. They fill my heart with love, and remind me of a dove off to woo his true love. This song was written a year after we got engaged, with times both low and high, and most importantly we found ourselves combined like the two streams we were walking by in my mind. It wasn’t that long after this song was written that we borrowed money from the Iron County School Credit Union, so we could go to Europe and explore (after all, we did not expect to ever travel that much after going to work for a big oil company). The First Anniversary is the “paper anniversary.” So when I opened up the box of material from 1974 in the garage, and saw these books from our trip to Europe, I felt like I needed to include a photo of them in remembrance of our First Anniversary. I do remember how we were taking turns reading “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” out loud to each other in those days. I remember we had tests and papers and we would put them aside to read about Frodo and his family. Even before the fantastic movies about these books, we were living in our own version of the imaginary world created by J. R. R. Tolkien. Maybe this type of fantasy is a basic need, in order for us to be able to cope with the mundane? I do look forward to when we can look back, remember everything, and put back together the pieces of our lives.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm, and it is referenced in the write up tied to Song 066 – Home. It is interesting looking back, as a 68-year-old, at where minds were when we were 24 and 23 years old. I had just returned from England, where knights once roamed the countryside, and where I spent hours and hours rubbing brass memorials made to these knights. Marti was my maiden fair, and in Marti’s mind, I had a decree from the king to slay a dragon. I was not going to fail, and yet I did fail. The mountains were like the mountains of southern Utah and Calf Springs Ranch. I still dream of castles in the sky, and want to build enclosed Buckminster Fuller designed mile-diameter geodesic-spheres, which will heat up from the sun, float around the world, and within them can be built 3-D cities. How we change, and how we stay the same. Yes, this song predicted our failure, although to be fair, C2 was written in January of 2017, when I was working on cleaning up the documentation of my songs.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was the basis for the music for Psalm 129, and is also referenced by Song 044 – My Family. I still have the Indian pottery leather books on our bookshelves, and the Knight brass-rubbing is in the garage. When I saw it was getting close to posting of this song, I pulled it into the bedroom and took a photo. Then I found the photo to the left of the same knight in the first Apartment Marti and I had in Salt Lake. So, I’m using the recent photo of the Black Knight for Song 67 – The Knight. It turns out the apartment in Salt Lake at 5^th South and 13^th East, was designed by Raymond Gardner’s Dad, when he was a pre-architecture student at the University of Utah. It was Bob and Gen’s first apartment. My Southern Utah roots were always a bit overwhelming to Marti. I really enjoy this song, and enjoyed singing it with Marti, because we took the 3 choruses, merged them, and would sing them at the end as a round. We probably only ever sang it that way a couple of times, and now I have no one to sing it that way with me. Oh well! The song does nicely describe a young couple starting out with their first apartment, cleaning the apartment up, and turning it into a home, which we settled into, with blessing surrounding us, and lovely thoughts coming to mind each morning when leaving for classes and work. And then we watched our friends, as they would settle down, and they would sing a variation on the words of the song we’ve sung. Life is beautiful and a wonderful n-dimensional training cycle.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This is one of maybe 10 songs I wrote, or in this case helped write, which is universally loved the first time it is heard by LDS Audiences. It is a great song for a Ward Party. And I do think folks like to hear it again. However, I doubt anyone wants to listen to it on the radio, again and again and again. When Marti and I were making our plans, Marti had a flash-of-insight at the jeweler’s, and said why don’t you write “Celestial Kingdom or Bust” on the inside of your wedding ring. I ended up giving the jeweler a Book of Mormon, and Marti was quite surprised at how the conversation had gone after her comment. Always the optimist, I only heard the “Celestial Kingdom” part, not the “Bust” part of her comment. This song is the basis for the music and phrasing of Psalm 6, and is referenced by Song 044 – My Family, by Song 050 – Tribes, and by Song 60 – Randy’s Song. Our Friend Quentin Reed fell in love with the title. So, he decided that Marti and I needed a song named after what was being put inside my ring. I dimly remember Quentin writing the verse about Israel. I think I added the verse about the Sons of Mosiah. Maybe Quentin brought up the apostles in a fishing boat. I recall writing “And jumping from the boat Peter’s words were thus.” I added Verse 5, about coming to the west, on March 14^th of 2016 because sang the song at the Family History Consultant’s Monthly fireside. I always remember how Quentin and I sang this at a Young Adult campfire at Estes Park, and on the way back to Denver that night, Riley Skeen stopped to help someone whose car was broken down, specifically because of the words in what is now verse 6, “So, if you see someone bending under their load, stop and help them along the road, we help them, and they help us, Celestial Kingdom or Bust.” I wore the ring for a couple of years after the divorce, while I was going through the PAIRS Therapy Training. Others in the class told me I needed to stop wearing the ring. I finally cut a gap in the ring with a hack saw, and left it on the cabinet in my closet. I think Marti or one of the kids must have taken the ring. The downside of the “Bust” was the absolutely hardest emotional trial of my life. When I did a web search on the phrase, it was interesting to see the image to the left come up, showing how someone, most likely independently, is commercializing the phrase at an LDS website.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song is referenced by Song 044 – My Family, the music for the verses was used as the music for Psalm 13, and the music for the chorus was used as the music for Psalm 14. This song is a run-on-sentence describing my excitement, at the beginning of the summer of 1973, before Marti and I got married in September of 1973, in the St. George Temple, St. George, Utah. In some sense, the run-on sentence is meant to represent eternal happiness. It mattered where we met, at The Red Barn. And yet it didn’t matter where we met. We were playing games young people play, hoping we would not find the unhappiness our parents found when their marriages did not work as they wanted. So, we got to know each other, thought we knew what love could be, got engaged, and started planning our family. Time did pass very quickly, and we became like the confluence of two streams passing by (see Song 068 – First Anniversary). The song does recognize that “once we’ve gone through the temple, and been sealed for forever, we will need His hand to guide us, so, we can be with Him again.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as the music for one of the Psalms. Not sure where this song came from. We had willows growing across from the house all the time I was growing up, and there were willows along several of the ditches on the farm. Maybe there was a willow tree in some corner by Riley and my apartment on Elizabeth Street, a corner the sun shone on, and thus the tree could be watching the sky as the clouds passed by. The song summarizes our re-meeting, with recognition we were going to build a family for forever (see Song 68 – First Anniversary). Marti’s Mom & Dad had some horrific fights, which I understood from my childhood, she had one brother and I had 1 sister, and it felt like we only had each other. We both had a personal relationship with Jesus, and so we were going to trust in Him and “give life our best labor.” I did not finish the short song until the 28^th of January 2017. I finished it by writing a second chorus, describing how the willow tree was cut down and “how sad it is to see everyone’s hurts and frowns.” The Mans in our ward had a beautiful willow tree I was going to take a photo of for the picture. When I went over there on a nice sunset evening, the willow tree had been cut down. So, the next day I went out to the valley to Willow Glen, where Andrea and I had our wedding reception, and took a couple of photos of the Willow Glen sign. Willow Glen is on Bulldog Road close to Dad’s farm, and even though Andrea went to Houston with me for 15 years, our story literally started here in Cedar Valley.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as the music to a Psalm. However, Song 013 – Benjamin’s Song, mentions how my plans and Marti’s self-confidence were on different planets, and while Song 062 can in some ways be considered our theme song, it is not a very positive theme. In the song, I am encouraging us to create something new, Marti is overwhelmed, does not have the self-confidence to believe she can write a song, let alone sing along, and just wanted me to “put up my guitar and let her be.” So, I come back with a different approach. It’s sunny. It’s a beautiful day. We are on the lawn. We could always remember this day if we just “wrote ourselves a song.” Anything but create something new. Tennis, gin rummy, there are just a lot of better things to do than write a song. So, I give up. “Let’s go inside. There our time abide.” Well, I guess I never give up. “Till we find the words for the first and last line.” Short song, only 95 words with a 2-word title. And to me, it tells the story of our failed marriage. I’m not saying I was right because I was attempting to create something new. I was wrong, because I did not build up Marti, and help her self-confidence. I was out there building up my ego, and proving how important I was, and simply overwhelming my wife. There are not simple answers to most of life’s challenges.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. Because I wanted to stay and help the new Mission President, President Smith, I extended my mission a few weeks. Then Elder Jones and I toured Europe. So, I did not get to Denver from England until the Tuesday Richard Nixon was elected, and I expect I got home to Cedar City the following day. The bottom line is I missed the fall semester of school at The University of Utah. Did not have money to go to school anyway. So, I ended up getting my degree in Geophysics from the U 1 quarter short of 4 years.  I took heavy course loads, so when the song says “work real hard,” it is not an exaggeration compared to many of the other students. Don’t know that I got “real-smart,” and I did “read a lot of books.” “Studied science, and people’s lives, prepared for the future, with what others have left.” And it was “Thanks to my Mom & Dad.” Mom taught me how to think and Dad taught me how to work. Mom did not want me to go on a mission for the LDS Church. Have a testimony of the restoration, and so I went. Definitely learned more on my mission than I learned at college or in any books. It is hard to quantify what I learned. And yet it seems I can recognize how experiences in England impact something that happens in my life almost every day. This song must have been written after Spring Break, when Marti and I got engaged. I was following my dream and preparing for a family and “lots of kids,” making “a lot of money,” and still hoping to enjoy life. This song is kind of a cute little status check on my life in the spring of 1973.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 72. Song 60 is also referenced by Song 044 – My Family. Riley Skeen and I lived on Elizabeth Street, near the “U.” One day Randy Shirts came to visit me, and this song was the result of that visit. I remember sitting on the front porch writing the song after Randy left. My sister’s boss in Engineering, who introduced her to Desmond, had a daughter who was starting college. I do not remember names. I do remember she came over to find out what I was writing a song about. It was very awkward. I did not tell her what the song was about, and was careful about singing on the front porch after that. When I sang the song to Randy years later, he did not remember asking me why I decided to get married. Isn’t it interesting how different people have completely different memories of the same event. I have always like this song, even though my marriage to Marti was a “bust.” The words and the tune captured how I felt, and how I now feel about Andrea, Randy’s little sister, who is 5 years younger than us, and whom I would never have considered dating when we were growing up together.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. The image to the left was found on the web under a search of “Quickly Now”. The song was written by Bill Hansen on the piano our third year at The University of Utah. Bill helped me figure out what the chords needed to be to play his song on the guitar. He had served a mission, I think to Japan or maybe to The Philippines. I do not remember if he was dating someone. The song sounds like he was. I transcribed into my Song Notebook, and he wrote the kanji, which I think must be “Quickly Now.” I always liked Bill’s song, and so it is included here.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm and it is referenced by Song 80 – The Road of Life. Image to the left was found on the web, and reminds me of the snowstorm reunion in my mind, when I wrote this song about our reunion. I stopped in Denver to see Marti on my way home from my Mission. My Mom had been in Denver while I was on my mission, met Marti, and she gave tacit approval to our dating. The issue was I went back to school at The University of Utah in Salt Lake City in January of 1973, and Marti was in school at CSU (Colorado State University) in Ft. Collins. There are these mountains, called The Rocky Mountains, between those two places. It snowed a lot more the winter of 1972-1973 than it did this year, the winter of 2017-2018. So snow was a big issue in our courtship. And, obviously, I am a hopeless romantic.  So when I would drive over to Ft. Collins, or when Marti would drive to Salt Lake City, snow was a big consideration. I remember some of the trips were pretty scary in my little copper colored Studebaker Javelin. I remember it was good to get together. I especially remember when Marti came to Cedar City over Spring Break, when we got engaged (see Song 057), and when we made the Mello-Drama movie with Bill Hansen. Good memories.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 11. Song 057 is also referenced by Song 012 – A Lullaby. Before I left for my mission, I sent a note to the Mission President asking if it made sense to bring my guitar. I was very pleased to get a positive response. So I took a guitar with me to England. The Mission had a band, which band sang for Community Family Home Evenings all across the Mission. I was quickly recognized as one of the top baptizers in the Mission, and so I was never given a chance to play guitar with The England East Mission Singing Group. I let them use my guitar, and it was stolen. The mission paid me the cost, and that helped cover some of my mission costs. I was the District Leader for the Singing Group the last few months of my mission. I took them out to Hyde Park Corner, and had them sing, and then had elders preach, just like happened in the 1830’s and 1840’s. I had access to a guitar in my last area, and I wrote the tune for this song then, in 1972. I finished it in 1973, just before I proposed to Marti. It wasn’t spring. There were no birds singing in the garden. There were no cattle and no horses and no meadow at Calf Springs Ranch.  It was cold. We walked from where the snow was too deep to drive, into Calf Springs Ranch. The snow was up to our waist sometimes. I cooked a steak for us. I carried my guitar. And I sang this song as my marriage proposal. My friend William Bunker Hansen came down from Salt Lake, and we made a movie that weekend to commemorate our engagement. I remember Marti saying, she would never tell grandchildren about what we did, because it was so weird. So, I choose to tell the story here.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. I expect most people, at some time in their lives, struggle with the concept of predetermination and free agency or free will. This song was one of those moments in my life. Is it not possible to change? Do we follow the paths set in our environment of youth? Are we simply an extension of our interaction with friends and neighbors and society? Do our genes control all aspects of our lives? I always struggled with allergies. There was no choice. Is this what happens in our life, similar to the impact allergies have on us? I do not think so. I believe people can change. And I especially believe people can change when they turn to our Heavenly Father.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 29. Ma Mere was one of only a couple of songs Marti and I wrote together. I was attempting to use Marti’s French, and the translation of the title is “My Mother.” Both of us came from dysfunctional families. And the song captures the need we both have for a Mother who was engaged in our life: “Where are you? I need you! To help me find the way. To teach me what to say. Where are you?” All mothers love their children, and so we recognized they fed us, clothed us, sang to us, and held us. However, these memories were from a long time ago, a distant memory, which both of us missed as we grew up, as our mothers got involved in their careers, and as we were no longer a priority in their lives. The good news is I found “another mother, of my brother,” as described in Song 157 – Maxine Memories. Andrea and Randy Shirts Mom became my Mom, and I have enjoyed the time we have been able to spend with her and to get to know her better since we moved back to Cedar City. This is why I put her photo to the left.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

The Wooden Shoe is the best-known and best-received of the songs I sing and wrote, or in this case helped write. It was used as the music for Psalm 27. The song and the tune were started by Quentin Reed, the summer after I got home from my mission. This was my second summer to intern as a geophysical assistant at Amoco in Denver (Pan American the summer 1970 before my mission). I think added verses 3-6 and C2-C3. Quentin and I had written Song 087 – The First Prayer the first summer I worked in Denver, which song was probably a major reason I kept at writing songs. Quentin said this song was about Marti, who though engaged to me, still lived in a nursery rhyme called “The Wooden Shoe.” After my mission, Elder Jones (from Delta) and myself received permission to tour Europe on our way home (we never expected to be back in Europe again). We had taken the ferry from Dover and the train to Paris. We rented a little Mini-Cooper and drove to Antwerp in Belgium, to Holland, to Germany, to Switzerland to see my companion Bruno Steinle, and back to Paris. In Holland I purchased a small wooden shoe, which looked like the one to the left. The extended image is of a house built to look like a cowboy boot, reminding me of my 40 years in the wilderness of Texas. Both images are intended to help recall the nursery rhyme by Mother Goose:
“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do,
She gave them some broth without any bread;
And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
I like this song. A lot more than the nursery rhyme. I especially like the way others like the song when I sing it to them. Wish all of my songs brought this kind of joy to others.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. The photo to the left, and it’s extension, were taken by my friend Joe Klutts, in his backyard in Lafayette, Louisiana. Joe is in his 90’s, and was the second President of Petsec Energy in Lafayette. He found a lot of oil & gas in his career. Joe is a jewel of a man. He was one of the first to recognize the value of our lightning analysis. He put money into Dynamic as a shareholder, in exchange for a lightning analysis across one of his prospects. The photo to the left is a portion of his 2016 Christmas Card, where the entire fox family is shown in the expanded photo.

I wrote this song a little over a year after getting home from my mission to England, and about 4 months after Marti and I got married. I think Marti and I had had our first fight by then, and I had gone off into the mountains to think. I recall a voice, or at least a very strong feeling outside of myself, telling me to get back home and to take care of my new wife. So I did. Maybe the rocky way was this hike in the hills to the east of the “U” (University of Utah). I have never had anything to do with a fox, and so I’m not sure why I picked this animal. I know Grandma Nelson always had chickens when I was growing up. She collected the eggs, and so maybe this is where these words came from. I remember being with Uncle Glenn Hafen at Calf Springs Ranch once, when we found a badger in one of the big metal traps used to keep animals out of the orchard. Beautiful animal, and it was hard for me to watch it get shot. So maybe I thought it was a better solution to take the trapped animal to the zoo. The song is not very good. Attempting to unravel the paths my mind was going down 45, or even 30 years later (when the notes say the song was finished), is sketchy, at best.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. This was one of the first songs written after I got home. It is a pretty poor excuse of a song. Basically, the song is complaining Mom was still telling me to clean up my room and to stop playing the guitar after I returned from my mission. Probably more important, is that it got me in the song writing mode after returning from England. This was written 4 days before I wrote Song 089 – The Birth, which is one of my favorite songs I wrote, and certainly written after singing another favorite song, Song 087 – The First Prayer. I had been promised on my mission that if I served a good mission my parents would come back into the gospel net. They were not interested in the church when I got home, and I was struggling. I guess I was wondering if I had not served a good mission. My Mission President had been disfellowshipped. The song title, Rush Lake Blues, captures what I was struggling with inside at this interval between when I returned from my mission and when I started school again in January. When I went to Corvallis, the summer of 1968, I spent time at the beaches of Oregon. Everything at home seemed like Rush Lake (and Cedar City), compared to the Pacific Ocean. I remember my suit splitting when riding my bike in Norwich the year before I wrote this song. Probably a deep-seated fear of being embarrassed again. I had stopped in Ft. Collins to see Marti, my first convert, on my way home from England. So, I was thinking about girls, and maybe the policeman represented my Mom. I’m sure psychologists can have a lot of fun figuring out what I don’t know.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 57. The photo to the left is of Erik, his bride, and our former Bishop, Michael Pickard, at a X-Tex-Pat farewell in Provo, Utah for Mike and Marion, who were leaving to be the Rome, Italy Mission President and Mission Mom. When Erik spoke in Sacrament Meeting, prior to leaving for his mission, he talked about how scary it was for him to go on a mission. I wrote the song in response to his sacrament meeting talk, and included some of the words The Byrds quoted words from Ecclesiastes 3:1-4. On 28 April 2007 I saw Erik at his sister Susan’s wedding reception. I pulled out my digital camera, and captured him saying the following: “Brother Nelson used to go on a lot of trips.  And he used to go to China frequently.  One time over there he apparently found shirts that were dirt cheap.  One of the reasons they were dirt cheap was probably because of the hideous awful design of the cloth they were made out of.  He brought every member of the Teacher’s Quorum back a shirt.  Thinking, of course, that we would wear them at home, on our free time, not that we would all wore them to church the next Sunday, which we did.  Proudless.  We loved these shirts that he brought back to us.  We still talk about them.”  Sort of sounds like the words to his song: “Helping others on their way, finding good things to say, teaching truths from yesterday, that can help out lives today.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 49. The campout at the LH7 Ranch in Bandera, where the song was written, was horrific. LH7 was owned by my friend Maudeen Marks, who had the ranch just in back of where Landmark built their building on Cypress Run in 1984. It was where I wanted to prototype a new type of city, and the site Ray Gardner used for The Intelligent Habitat Project report he did for me back in about 1990. Maudeen had told me about her Bandera Ranch, and so I thought it would be fun to take the scouts there. Horses, wild west, river, and all of the necessary ingredients for a good scout camp. It also had a lot of dry grasses. I had one of the worst allergy attacks of my life on this campout. When I woke up om the back of my caravan, not able to breath, there was no one else in camp. The allergy pills had put me into a deep sleep. One of the younger scouts, I think Jonathan Schmidt, had also got so sick the others had taken him to the emergency room. I still remember my prayer that evening, literally pleading for my life, and promising to do better. This was at the beginning of the divorce “discussions,” and it seemed like just one more trial. I was reading a book called “Tribes,” and this song is kind of a summary of concepts in the book. Family was obviously on my mind. I love my children, and was (and remain) very concerned about the impact of divorce on them. We were on a Boy Scout camp out, with teenagers, who move to a different beat than Scout Leaders. Marriage was supposed to be forever, despite the fact the words in my wedding ring at the time read “Celestial Kingdom or Bust.” And having had a sort of near death experience, death was on my mind. I remember one of the older scouts, I think it was Mike Romig, asked me to sing what I was writing to him. This was hard for me, as the songs I write have always been very personal. He liked it. Maybe this is one of the reasons I am putting the effort into posting these songs for my kids. It is not easy for me to share deep feelings. Getting older, and guess I do not want all of my work to just die with me.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 50. It is another of the Boy Scout High Adventure songs. The photo to the left is of the group in Chris Schmidt’s driveway, and the extended photo shows most of the team on top of one of the mountains. All of the photos can be reviewed on-line. This time we took the boys to Big Bend National Park. I loved the geology and the astronomy and the food. We had some real gourmet cooks on this trip. It is a long drive across Texas. Very active group of boys. They brought bicycles with them, and rode them down the hills at Big Bend Park like maniacs. It was hot and it was dry. We did a lot of hiking. We had several flat tires. Some of us went to McDonald Observatory. Another flat tire. Lots of checkers and chess and cards. Had a skunk come into camp and into a tent to eat candy one of the boys had in their tent. No one was sprayed and the skunk went away. I can not believe how fat I was in those days. I’m sure a lot of it was the stress accompanying the divorce. I did make a 14-mile hike climbing 2,000 feet. This area is mostly shaped by volcanic activity, associated with a large transform fault the Rio Grande still follows. I still have one of the pieces of rhyolite I picked and made into a wall hanging for each of the boys on the wall of my office. I later found out one of the boys I played a lot of chess with was struggling with drugs. A few years later he ran in front of a school bus and was killed. This is a hard memory. The good memories were of him coming out of his shell, playing chess, and having a good time with the other young men. Still, life is hard.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. On April 7, 2001 I wrote a Thoughtlet, “Light at the End of the Tunnel” #0214, about how it looked like Andrea and I were finally going to come out the financial tunnel we had been in since we got married. Of course, we are still waiting for this to happen February 3, 2018, which is almost 17 years after the Thoughtlet was written. Tunnels can be a lot longer than we expect. Whenever I think of a tunnel, I think of the mile-long tunnel going out the east side of Zion Canyon. The photo to the left is a sight I have enjoyed many times coming out of the tunnel at Zion going west.

In terms of this song, it is fun to sing it, to remember the projects, and how important and big they each seemed at the time. I signed a contract with Shell Oil to build them a Best Practice. I spent years working with Christian Singfield on his creation of digital rock scans. Folks often come to me and want to know what I am working on, because they would like to work with me again. Exceptions include Gary Jones and Dennis McMullin, who say they will never work with me again because they have never worked so hard before or since in their lives. I really do enjoy Ken Turner, and his faith and how he and Nell have been able to live day-to-day as a starving artist. Ken has been a tremendous example for me. I met Bob Burton through Rick Zimmerman, and Bob worked hard to sell some of my exploration ideas. Mike Dunn ended up hiring me to work for GDC (now Geokinetics) as Vice-President of New Business Development heading up their TILES^TM project (repackaging Fred Hilterman’s well log database) and introducing GDC into China. MKS was a new version of Bob Sneider’s company. Both were ex-Shell. I spent several years working with Dick Coons on the Texas Shelf. Expect we will pick that work back up at some point in the future. I also spent time building some nice Infinite Grid^SM examples, using Tropical Storm Allison data over Houston and tying results to Census Tracts. Arnie Vedlitz at Texas A&M University was very excited about this work. Funds to pursue the opportunity were never found. Hopefully they will be someday. Horace Snyder had been at Enron, before the collapse. Johnny Kopecky was the K in MKS. I have been involved in so many big and so many exciting projects over my career. Yet most of them, while technically exciting, have never found financial traction. Thus, I continue to live in a financial tunnel. Oh well!

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as music for Song 382 – A Song of Praise, or Psalm 156, which is taken from Judges Chapter 5. It was written one evening I was alone. Andrea was probably in Salt Lake. I found myself looking at the little pig floating above it’s reflection in the Mirage parabolic mirrors. I remember when Ethan first saw this illusion he started to cry, because what he did not feel did not match his visual reality. I was teaching him about a physics delusion. Einstein had a deep emotional attachment to determinism, and taught, God doesn’t play dice.” Stephen Hawking has a interesting lecture posted, where he writes “Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.” I look forward to the afterlife, where we will come to truly understand physics and geology. In the meantime, “electromagnetic dice (are) an illustration of spiritual paradise.” The pig was facing the Christmas Tree, and it looked as if he could really see. This was different to the pigs on the farm, which became bacon for breakfast and pork chops for dinner. The feelings as I wrote out words for the song, was that the spirit world is very near. A stated in the write-up to Song 001, I have used the scientific method to prove to myself over and over and over again and again and again the spirit is near, and when we listen “our minds can find truth more valuable than gold.” Again, “I have experienced having thoughts planted in my head from a source outside of myself many times in my life.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 74 and for Psalm 137. Coming home to Cedar City has reminded me of my patriotic roots. I vaguely remember a family confrontation over disrespecting the United States flag. I was accused of being to mean to a little girl over my perception of her disrespect for the U.S. flag. Years later, I was in San Antonio at an SEG convention in the BGP Booth (Chinese geophysical contractor Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting). I was talking to Meng Ersheng, when the first 9/11 videos came on the television. I had flown San Antonio from someplace else. Flights were cancelled to Houston, and so later Andrea drove over to go to the President’s Reception and drive me home. I was deeply moved by the terrorist attack. And, of course, so were others. My artist friend, Kenneth R. Turner, painted two paintings, as a result of the attack, both of which I find most inspiring. To the left is “Out of the Ashes,” a memorial to rebuilding of the twin towers after the event. Click on this image and there is an image of the flag with patriot portraits as ghosts titled “We the People.” In 1993 Ken painted Sara’s painting titled “Milestones,” and which is included as the image for Psalm 74. There is a Southern Utah jet trail (link to Psalm22 extended mage showing jet trails) that connects each of the kid’s paintings. In Sara’s painting, this jet trail goes right through the twin towers.

It is really sad how some people have come to disparage and take for granted the freedoms we have in the United States. It seems to get worse and worse, almost weekly. Images scream out for retaliation, protect the innocent, protect the nation. Doctrine & Covenants 1:3 talks about how “iniquities will be spoken upon the housetops.” With our Dish satellite this makes much more sense than it did on November 1, 1831, when the revelation was written down. Mormon 5:8 in The Book of Mormon teaches “all things which are hid must be revealed upon the house-tops.” 9/11 was a fulfillment of prophecy, “showing the cops helping the firemen until strength was sapped.” Of course, “we must always be careful that we don’t cross the battlefield, joining the lie.” I hope I will always honor my heritage, and the flag, which represents the freedoms we enjoy.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 80. We went to see Ethan when Ben and Sarah lived in Calgary, and they arranged for us to go to a dinosaur museum with Ethan. The photo to the left shows two image sizes of Ethan in front of a Triceratops dinosaur replica. He was a lot bigger here than when I wrote this song. He was 1 when I wrote the song. Fun to hold, until he wiggled like jello in a mold. Matt and I were on a High Adventure in Colorado when Ethan’s birthday happened. We went to Dallas for a meeting with Magnum Resources the next week, and went to see Ethan at Ben and Sarah’s new house. Ethan was walking, starting to talk, and he really jumped when a balloon popped while eating dinner at Applebee’s. Then breakfast included pancakes and scrambled eggs, cleaned up by his dogs. He walked like a cowboy with bowed legs from riding horses so long, and he liked to mute my guitar. Good visit. One I can relive again and again, as I sing the song.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 43. The photo to the left shows one of the first times the family got together in Houston at 1307 Emerald Green. Roice and Melanie were with us only as photos. The extended photo shows everyone but Ben, when we were at Disneyland together (Nate Pace, Heather’s ex-husband is there also). On 30 April 1994 I had written a song called “Family Status.” This song, “My Family,” was an update, written on 30 July 2001, 7 years later. The chorus points out what a good job we did at raising the kids so they each had the self-confidence needed to pursue their own different interests and paths through time and space. Then there are verses about Andrea, Marti (see Song 60, Song 64, Song 65, Song 66, Song 73, Song 74 – 1307 Emerald Green, Song 77, and Song 78), Roice III, Ben and Sarah, Paul and Kate, Heather, Melanie and Jared, Audrey, Sara Ellen, Rob, Rachel, Matthew Charles, and the first 3 grandsons are mentioned or implied. All parents worry about and love their children. I wrote about what I saw, and these words become engraved in time, especially as I sing the songs over and over, and then as I find enough self-confidence I share the songs. Sometimes it is better to forget and to move on. And yet I think it is important to be transparent and to describe the warts and the pimples, as well as the love and the beauty of my life. Hopefully, if I have written anything disparaging or hurtful in these songs, or in these descriptions of the songs, those who are offended will be able to forgive me. I have no intention of offending. I’m simply telling my story as best I know how to; warts, pimples, and all the rest of my life’s test.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 63. I really liked the symbolism captured in this song. The photo to the left shows all 12 of us who participated in this Venture Scout High Adventure, with our matching Team shirts on. When you click on this photo, it shows 10 of us at Mount Snuffles, Colorado (Greg Stine and Chris Schmidt were missing or taking the photo). I love the outdoors. I love the starlight and the moonshine and campfires. They feel like they are mine alone, when I am experiencing them. I remember we got in trouble with an officer when we walked into a restricted area at Shepard Air Force Base, where we stayed on our drive west. Explaining the volcanic flows to the scouts was fun. Chris Schmidt’s car alarm went off, and one of the rangers had a come apart. I thought he was right, as I do not like car alarms. There are great teaching moments on these High Adventures. It is sad when we see the youth we come to love ignore the things we worked so hard to teach them. The song talks about creation, the vail, getting baptized, climbing the mountain, eating broken bread, enjoying the beautiful scenery, catching fish, a storm coming up, at the transfiguration, being protected from Devils, being missionaries, and enduring to the end. Nice summary of our Savior’s teachings to His disciples.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalms 119 A-V (scriptures, then click on the following links to download the guitar chords [letters] or various music sections [Hebrew] of Psalm 119): A Aleph; B Beth; C Gimel; D Daleth; E He; F Vau; G Zain; H Cheth; I Teth; J Jod; K Caph; L Lamed; M Mem; N Nun; O Samech; P Ain; Q Pe; R Tzaddi; S Koph; T Resh; U Schin; and V Tau. Heather was 22 when her song was written, and there are 22 parts to Psalm 119. The photo to the left and it’s extention captures her in those days. She lived with us in Houston one summer. A day after she arrived she wanted to go to the gym to work out. Andrea gave her directions. She came back some time later very frustrated, as she never found the gym. She said something like, “I could have driven on every street in Cedar City in the time I was gone looking for that gym.” Heather’s favorite movie was Practical Magic, thus the name of the song. She liked PBS shows like “Sense and Sensibility.” Divorce is always hard, showing life isn’t always groovy. She worked at a fast food place in Houston, which served food she would not eat because it wasn’t good for her. After getting her B.S. in Chemistry, she worked for a couple of years and then became a professional bicyclist. She loves riding her bike and racing and she has done very good at it.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 42, and is linked to in the text describing Song 033, Camp Liendo. Andrea had gone some place on the Saturday I wrote this song. It was obviously a sunny day in the spring, with birds singing, flowers blooming, and the water filter and spa overflowing into the swimming pool. Sunlight showed the contours on the bottom of the pool, while the neighbor’s dog barked at the birds in the trees. As the sun went down, with what I imagine was a beautiful Texas sunset over our beautiful yard, I recall often thinking my ancestors would have thought this was the Celestial Kingdom. I finished writing out the words of this song by thanking Andrea for entering my life. I’ve never been very good with words, which is one of the reason I have put so much effort into my Songs and Psalms is to exercise the linguistic part of my brain, with the hope of becoming better at saying what is in my heart.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. The song was written at two different campouts with Matt. The first at Brazos Bend State Park, south of Houston, on December 30^th, 2000. The second at Camp Strake on February 17^th, 2001. I remember the campouts were cold. It doesn’t get as cold in Houston as it gets in Cedar City. However, the humidity makes it feel like it is much colder. The first campout was with Matt’s scout leader, Floyd Lunt. Andrew Salt rode with us, and Andrew and Matt did not want to listen to country music. Floyd and I ended up controlling the radio channel. The campfire felt good, because it was so cold. Mark Beckstrom and Brent Peterson were with us at Camp Strake. It was so cold we all slept in to stay warm in our sleeping bags and missed the flag raising, and getting our assignments. I think this was the campout when a racoon got in one of the tents, and I ended up going in to the tent to get it out. Racoons have big teeth, and they really bare them when they are cornered. No one was hurt. I remember Brent Peterson giving me a bad time about shoveling my food down at a campout at Camp Strake. Even though I’d been remarried for a couple of years, I was still struggling with the rejection of divorce, and found solace in eating. Gained a lot of weight. Oh well!

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. Stephen F. Austin State Park was a 30-minute drive from our house, and so we ended up having a lot of scout camps out there. It is safe to say the 12 and 13-year-old boys we were with were a lot like monkeys, and since chimpanzee sort of rhymes with Christmas Eve, the song refers to the leaders and the chimpanzees. We ate a lot of tin foil dinners on these campouts. The campouts reminded me of home, which has always been Cedar City to me, and were one of the things which provided me sanity after the divorce in the big city of Houston. It was fun to sit around the campfire, to sing and write a song, to watch the kids play and explore, and to remember my youth out doors on the farm. I like to play with numbers, and so C1 talks of 3 leaders, C2 of 2 leaders, C3 of one leader, C4 of two leaders, C5 of three leaders, and C6 of two leaders. The song captures the major events and the tone of the campout. As I sing these type of songs, I am transported back to the events in my mind.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. Andrea was called as the Young Women’s President shortly after she arrived in Houston. By April we were looking for things to do to help the Young Women, and so we had a joint Young Women/Young Men Campout with a bunch of parents as chaperones. We did the campout at our artist friends house, Ken and Nell Turner, in New Ulm, Texas. The girls slept in the house, and the boys slept in tents outside. The tune came from a bird song I heard. These are always the hardest songs for me to reconstruct years after the event. We stopped at an Antique Fair. We introduced everyone to Ken Turner’s art, Nell Turner’s herb garden, and their roses. With this song it is a little harder to reconstruct the events of the campout, compared to some of the ballads written for other scout campouts.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a psalm. I only wrote the chorus about the campout at Camp Brosig. Matt went to this campsite later, jumped headfirst down a big slide, hit his head on the end of a 12-inch pipe, and ended up with a big scar on the top of his head. The Nottingham Country Ward Resident Paramedic, Gary Jones, was on this campout, and like when Paul fell off a rope climbing up a cliff at El Rancho Cima and knocked himself out, Gary sewed up Matt and made sure he was ok until he got home. When I was starting to move my songs to a common digital repository, in 2017, I wrote 4 verses, looking back years after “the parenting furnace.” Before the divorce I lived on an airplane and was flying all over the world. After the divorce, I was asked to work with several different groups in the church’s Young Men’s Program, and then with Matt, attended additional camp outs as his Dad. Looking back, I think these camp outs were very useful for me personally, helping me get back in tune with nature and with my life, and to put the hurt and the pain associated with the break-up of my family behind me.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 79. By January of 2001, I had had some success in writing scout campout songs I liked. So, it only made sense to write a song about another campout I went on with Matt, as his Dad. Bill Hagen moved into Nottingham Country Ward a couple of years before Andrea and her kids moved to Houston, and moved out of the ward about the same time Andrea and I moved back to Utah. Bill had grown up in Maplewood II Ward, which is where my family went to church during our first 3 years in Houston, when we lived in Missouri City, and before we moved to Katy (with a Houston address). Bill and I knew a lot of the same people. Bill is a cattleman at heart. He had this ranch about an hour west of Katy, where he built a cabin about the same size as Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. I had spent several years working with Anders Saustrup on my urban planning ideas. Anders was the key researcher behind Michener’s book “Texas.” Anders taught me a lot about Colorado County, Texas, where I was hoping to prototype the urban planning ideas Ray Gardner and I have spent decades developing. This song ties together many of these ideas: I-10 was Davy Crocket and Stephen F. Austin’s route. Borden was where dried milk was invented. A Colorado County rice farmer took communism to China, and is the only oriental man buried with honors on Red Square in Russia. This was a beginning scout skills camp for Matt, and so he learned about building fires, tinfoil dinners, orienteering, lashing, knots, and first aid. Again, as I sing the words, I find myself reliving the experience. Good times. Fun times. Good friends. Bill Hagen became one of Matt’s mentors and friends.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as music for a Psalm. One of the things I like about Donald Trump is his “war” with the agenda-driven-media, and what he calls “fake news.” This song is an example of an over-hyped media-fury tied to computers anticipated inability to switch from the year 1999 to the year 2000. The Time Magazine Cover to the left illustrates the fervor there was about all of the things which were going to go wrong because computers were not programmed to make this change. It seemed to me, and proved to be, completely fabricated hype. And when nothing happened, the media took no responsibility for all of the false hype. So, I tied the words of the song into the Second Coming of the Savior. Of course, looking back, Jesus did not return on January 1^st, 2000.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 12 and for Psalm 147. I like the tune, the rhythm, the guitar string strumming, and the words of this song. I had a digital camera (this was early for digital cameras). The camera used mini-CD’s for image storage. I have hundreds of these CD’s, which I want to get moved into a master photo library (after all I claim to be the first digital man). I thought it was important for scouts to play with new technologies. This camp out was only a month after Camp Liendo, and Brent Peterson and I were the scout leaders. We were working with the Priests in Nottingham Country Ward. The 3 Priests were Adam Salt, Justin Stein, and Tyler Camp. Justin was a gymnast, and stood upside down. The raccoon gave everyone a start, and provided a good target for a lot of digital photos. Tyler still plays the guitar, and his Dad, who was later our Bishop, always remembers the time I spent as his leader and guitar mentor. Brent even brought up the song over a decade after this camp out, showing how the songs help create good memories.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 33. Andrea and I got married on May 15^th, 1999. We did take time for a 2-week honeymoon. Then we moved her and 3 kids to Houston. By November Andrea was the Young Woman’s President in the Nottingham Country Ward, Audrey had gone back to Cedar to go to school, and I was going on camp outs with Matt. I was obviously writing the Scout songs in another book, and they got transcribed to my brown journal as a group, which is why there is the three-year gap between the consecutive songs, 032 and 033. I think I went to this camp out as a Dad, not as a Scout Leader. I found Camp Liendo historically stimulating, and the experience very interesting. Greg Branning is a thinker, and I’m sure his being one of the leaders was part of why I liked this campout. Greg has worked all over the world as a specialist in iron ore. With my somewhat equivalent background in oil & gas, we always have a lot of stories to tell each other. The Liendo Plantation dates back to the Civil War. They do reenactments of the Civil War battles in Texas. There are a actors who come from all across the state. We happened to camp next to some actors from the far south of Texas from McAllen. They had left the LDS church and created a new church they called “Reconstituted Mormons.” It was a real interesting experience to listen, as we sat around the campfire Friday night, to these men bear testimony of the Book of Mormon, while saying they no longer followed the church. The pancakes were burned Saturday morning, and this was made up by watching the excitement of scouts taking photos of some big beautiful peacocks wandering through our campsite.

The reenactment was very realistic. I had a phrenological reading of my head. I have a lot of bumps on my head, and this kept the actor very busy explaining my head to the scouts. There was a time-period wedding, and a Civil War Doctor explaining his trade. One of the members of the cast was from our ward, and his son, Anthony Dowd, was one of the scouts. I got a great photo of Matt saluting a U.S. flag with these actors, which I plan to use as the basis for Matt’s Ken Turner painting when we can afford to do this. Matt Pickard loaded and shot off a black powder cannon. He was sure his Mom would not like this. I thought it was great. The cavalry, the cannons, the smoke where the canon balls hit, the saber fighting, the infantry marching, and the pipers tunes all made for a very fun experience. Once again, the song helps me to relive the experience again and again. Since I am recording these songs, after having not singing them for about a year, sometimes the emotions spill over.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 4 and for Psalm 10. Find A Seed was written 3 months before Song 031, Camp Strake. My marriage was falling apart and I was not accepting this could happen. In some ways the scout camps were a way for me to cope, to get in touch with nature, and thus to get in touch with myself. On this scout camp, at Spring Creek Park (see satellite images), I was looking for answers. I let the leaders work with the scouts, and I went off on my own and played the guitar and wrote this song. James Connors came over and talked to me, and we discussed some of my ideas about deriving music from seismic data and other types of natural sources. That was a fun conversation. Little did I know at that time that Jim was struggling with his marriage too. There were big trees growing in Spring Creek Park. They needed space. They obviously had deep roots because they were so tall. I am sure, looking back, I was depressed, unsure what to do, sad, and lost. So, it makes sense I would compare my children to the trees, the tree roots we can not see, and my efforts to provide them an environment where they could grow so “their heads are way up high.” Family is a theme, for obvious reasons. I had left Landmark, and HyperMedia had gone under by this time. So, it is also logical to compare business efforts to trees. Landmark was a giant. I had felt forgotten, and maligned, and taken advantage of. And I have this strong desire to help the poor, to help everyone to soar, and my latest attempts at the United Order at Simonton had failed. Yet I was thinking about how to “find a seed, that will meet a need” and then how to “find a space, where it can grow in place.” Even in my darkest hours, I remained an optimist.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 34. It was written about a year after Song 30. I do not remember if I was called as a scout leader, or if I had just taken Rob. I do remember this scout camp was very memorable, and not for normal reasons. Yes, there were canoes, hiking, and the water pipe at the toilet broke. We arrived early, and were taking the boys on a hike around the camp so they knew what was located where. As we were walking a big, probably 10-foot-long and 6-8-inch diameter branch on one of the pine trees broke off, came down, and hit 3 of the boys. Two of the boys were hurt bad enough we took them into Conroe to the emergency room to have them checked out. There were a lot of weird people in the emergency room. We did our best to keep the two scouts with us separated from the clowns. Someone went and got Taco Cabana Taco’s. This was the first, and probably the last time I’d had this particular fast food. Last, because I typically don’t go out for fast food much. Adam Salt thought he was going to be in an operating gown. A few years later his brother Matthew needed a kidney transplant. Adam was identified as an ideal donor. He has such a good spirit. He agreed, and weeks later his Dad, Steve Salt, found out Adam thought he had volunteered to give up his life so his brother Matt could live. I tear up every time I think about this. Back at the scout camp, the check-in, swim test, visitors from out of town, dinner, singing competitions, and merit badge sign-ups all happened. Gary Jones and I took a bunch of laundry to the laundromat, and as we were driving on I-45 the roof top carrier came off, because it did not have weight holding it down, and just missed a semi-truck following us. I can still see how fast all of the scouts moved, when another branch creaked at camp, and they thought it was coming down on them again. Both Gary Jones and I were glad when this camp out was over.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 65, and is referenced by Song 80 – The Road of Life. The song about Rob’s week-long scout camp out with me at the El Rancho Cima scout camp near San Marcos, Texas was the first of the ~20 Boy Scout and other camp out ballads I wrote. I think it captures the freedom felt by boys growing up in “suburban ghettos” as they “learn to be un-haltered.” At a place where they can go “swimming in the river like salmon going home,” experience “pulling out a sliver,” have “pillow fights just for fun,” and feel the fear of “thunderstorms and lightning fire.” There was “an ancient oyster bed,” just like is up Fiddler’s Canyon or over by Milt’s in Cedar Canyon. I do enjoy teaching kids about geology. At El Rancho Cima the Austin Limestone outcrops and running water creates giant carsts or cavern sized holes in the formation. One of these is called “the toilet bowl,” where we hiked to and had fun doing campfire skits. One of the values of these songs (ballads) to me is they help me remember and to see in my mind, as if I was still there, experiences from the past, including when we “find a scorpion” or all of the “dirty socks.” And these experiences remind me “life keeps going on.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 25. Boy Scouts were not popular with friends at school when my boys were growing up. As they got a little older, they felt like it was shameful to admit to their friends they were involved in Boy Scout activities. Ben would have been 15 when I made him go on the Boy Scout campout to Simonton. He stayed in his tent until it was time to leave in protest to having come on the campout. This was probably not one of my best parenting moments. I remember Allen Peterson saying, “That just isn’t natural.” I believe this was about when Allen was in Steve Feil’s Bishopric as a counselor with me. Why did we go to Simonton? There were a lot of fire ants. It was hot. We sweated a lot. Lyle Rowbury had put his sweaty clothes on top of his tent, and fire ants had climbed up the support rope to his clothes to get some of the salt water and take it back to their nest. “Sweating in your tent in Simonton, in Simonton.” We went to Simonton because my Uncle Glenn had gone bankrupt again. I had loaned him some money, and had bought some of his cattle. He had transported them to Houston, and I had placed them on the property of a friend who had moved out of Nottingham Country Ward and lived in Simonton. Several of us had agreed to use these cattle as the basis for a United Order experiment. Thus, the lines in the song “where the animals run free” and “the home of the order is Simonton, is Simonton” and “feeding hay to cows in Simonton, in Simonton” and “Listening to the moo’s in Simonton, in Simonton.” After the divorce and the tax problems (see Song 078 – Rain), I ended up selling the cattle to my partner in China Cattle Corporation, Chuck Edwards. It turns out Roice’s wife, Sarah Nemec, was raised in Simonton. Her father was a policeman there. There was a good Christian movie made about a murder case he was involved in there, and an excellent example of true Christian love. This happened years after the campout, and shows not all of the lines in my songs are right: “No one makes the news in Simonton, in Simonton.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 91. Also, Song 028 is referenced in the writeup for Song 017. As I recall I wrote this song at a Father’s and Son’s Campout at Brazos Bend State Park, southwest of Houston. The first several Father’s and Son’s Campouts I took the boys to were at Chudley’s Farm, north of Stephen F. Austin State Park. Brother Chudley was a hard working farmer, and reminded me of Uncle Bud. Someone bought his farm, and he was able to nicely retire. I remember his retirement was about the time I published “Prime Words” in about March of 1997. He wanted a copy, and so I found and gave him a copy. The Father’s and Son’s Campout was always a Stake activity. I remember Ken Turner was there. Ken and I attempted to play soccer with the boys, and they surrounded us and kept the ball from us. Thus, the lines “Fathers and sons kick a ball on the grassy knoll, Father’s chasing sons because they are getting old.” Ken liked this song, and had me play it for everyone at later Father’s and Son’s Campouts. The last verse was written after I got back from taking Dad to Australia, Indonesia, and Japan on one of my teaching trips to the Far East. Dad was at heart a sheep man, and had always wanted to go to Australia where there are a lot of large sheep herds. Meanwhile, back in Texas, Ken and I would often disappear into interesting discussions at these campouts. The kids would be playing ball or capture-the-flag, and we would be having discussions about when all of the power gets knocked out in Houston, and there will be a tent city at Ken’s property in New Ulm, as people start a very hard journey to the Rocky Mountains. I hope it doesn’t happen as we discussed, and as Ken saw in a dream. I know how glad I was when Matt moved out of Houston to live with Rachel in Salt Lake, and Rob moved to Austin to work with Roice. Shortly after these two moves, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and caused tremendous damage. None of my family were impacted by this disaster.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 118. This song, like Froggie Learns the Gospel, Song 007, was written by Quentin Reed. Like Froggie, and Spring, Song 026, this song is about animals. It is about a white rabbit, a bear, two little fishes, a little brown owl, a bashful racoon, a squirrel, and a chipmunk (as shown in the images to the left), and what these animals are thankful for. I’ve had a lot of fun with this song over the years. When I first taught the CTR-8 class in Primary (see CTR-8 Testimonies, Song 005), we formed a class choir, and sang this song several times, for a Relief Society Party, a Ward Party, and a stake activity. I’d play the guitar and the kids would sing and hold up a photo of one of the animals. We repeated this for Melanie’s primary in Katy, and for the Hillcrest Ward primary in Cedar City. The kids, the teachers, and those we sang for have always enjoyed this song. I enjoy it also, and think the song has a good message, especially for those who will listen to the message.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm114, and was referenced by Song 007. About six months after I got home from my mission, I was thinking about marriage and about my first son (who turned out to be Roice, Song 012), and I wrote a song about the farm and about my Dad (Howard Nelson, Song 011). It was the spring, and I wrote about the spring. About a flower pushing “it’s petals through broken twigs and dried up leaves,” and how “the flower soon will bloom and colors bright will be in sight of all of the country side.” About a squirrel digging “through dirt that’s covered up his door.” About “preparing for the snow which must come once again.” And about “a little boy walking with his hand within the hand of an old man who means so much to him.” Then closing by tying together the walk, the flower, and the squirrel. “Spring has come, bringing new birth of seeds planted yesterday,” “awakening a resting world,” “bringing new life, and memories of a job well done,” “reflections of work done today.” I’ve always liked this song. When we started doing Nelson Grandkids Summer Science Camp, I realized the song was really about me, and I am “the old man” who “is the young man’s Granddad” and I’m glad to be able to “take the boy(s and girls) for a walk in the countryside.”

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 132. It was nice to be back to Southern Utah after spending 2 years in southeast England serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I remember how disappointed I was to receive my mission call to the British Mission. I wanted to learn a foreign language, like my cousins Darrell Krueger (German) and Roice Krueger (Japanese) and Mark Nelson (Japanese). I felt like I had failed the language-learning-capacity test, which I took with high school classmate Donald Bentenson. Obviously, my decision to go on a mission was not completely self-sacrificing. Of course, it turned out England was the best place I could have been sent. The British Mission was the first foreign mission of the church. By the time I arrived in England, the mission name was changed to The England East Mission. I started my mission spending 4 months in Canterbury, home of The Church of England. Then I spent 9 months in Ipswich, where locals were as skeptical of strangers as the folks I grew up with in Cedar City. I was thrown out of the office of a man in Norwich because I was a “Mormon missionary.” I finished my mission in Harlow New Town, Islington in northern London, and Earls Court in South Kensington in downtown London, the centers of traffic and burning city lights. It was so nice to come home “to the land I love” “to walk though sagebrush that scratches at my knees” (see image to the left) where “jack rabbits dart through the trees.” One of the first things I did when I got home was to go to Snows Canyon, “to climb a mountain, and look down from above.” I ended up writing this song about being back “with people who are like me.” I felt the same way when Andrea and I moved back to Cedar City after I had spent 40 years in Texas (6 years in the traffic and burning city lights of Dallas and 34 years in Houston). The extended photo is from Snows Canyon.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

The music to Grandma Hafen’s song, Helen Hafen, was used as the basis for the music for Psalm 7. When we moved from Houston, I had a farewell concert at Ken Turner’s Art Studio in New Ulm. I sang the first 20 Psalms and the songs the music for these Psalms was based on. In a way, it is a good thing I do not care what people think of my activities. I believe if the basic project is good, at some point in time others will recognize it. There were about 10 people came to my “concert,” including Melanie and her 5 kids. Google Analytics of views of these Psalms, as of the 28^th of December, shows there have been 453 sessions, 117 users, and 2,359 page-views since June, with 74.2% returning visitors. While more than came to my concert, over half-a-year, it is about 6 visitors per day. Certainly, this is not a commercial venture. Why do I bring this up? After the concert in New Ulm, I asked my artist friend, if there were any songs that stood out to him. He told me this song about Grandma Hafen was the best one. I was surprised. I sang at an old-folk’s home here in Cedar last year, and some of the residents said they thought this song was a very nice tribute.

Grandma Hafen sent me money each month for my mission. When I got home, I got in the habit of calling her each Sunday night. She wanted to go to China, so I took her when she was in her 80’s (and Aunt Linda, who was also a nurse) on one of my 50+ trips to China. I also took a small recorder, recorded her answers to questions about her life when on the plane, and had my secretary, Sherry Sump, type the notes up when we got home. This audio recording became the basis of Grandma Hafen’s personal history. My passport was stolen, along with a pair of Levi’s, when I went for a run when we first arrived in Beijing. I had to go to Urumqi for the conference I was there for (like flying from New York to San Diego), with a Chinese document the police gave me. I called Grandma and Aunt Linda, and there was no answer. I returned to Beijing right after my talk. When I told my host why I was leaving, he said “You will live a long life.” Here was a Chinese Communist Geophysicist quoting the first commandment with a promise: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land” (Exodus 20:12). Grandma Hafen and I were close.

Grandma’s song is a condensed repeat of her life history. Talking about her birth, her parents, her Mom’s death, her adoption, how spoiled she was, her mission to California, her marriage to Paul Hafen, the purchase of Calf Springs Ranch, the fun we had at the ranch, Grandpa being one of the first downwinders to die from the 1950’s nuclear tests in Nevada, her weaving, competition and how she never entered a contest unless she got first place, and a graphic example of the sometimes coarseness of her language. This song is a tribute to my Grandma Hafen.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

I really like the tune to the chorus of Rachel’s song, which is probably why it ended up being used as the music for both Psalm 123 and Psalm 146. Rachel was 15 when her song was written. I struggle with using terms of endearment, even for those I love the most. My Dad called me Pumpkin, and this is the closest there was to a term of endearment being used in my family of origin. One of the hired hands at Nelson Meat Packing Plant called everyone “Sweetheart.” He had one other word he always used, and I have never overcome this “legacy,” to be able to use words like “sweetheart” for those I love. So, it is interesting to me, the words which came for Rachel’s song climbed over this emotional hill, and were “Rachel, My Darling.” I like how I tied in Rachel’s 4 Uncles: Randy Shirts; Russell Shirts; Robert Shirts; and Steve Shirts; as well as my sister, Sara Penny, and Randy’s wife Aunt Katherine Hansen Shirts. I did use the word “dirt,” because it rhymes with “hurt,” and is what we walk on. Sometimes we feel others treat us this way. I especially like the words I found about my sister: “Like Aunt Sara, Life’s aloe vera, Soothing and healing, Sharing deep feeling.” There are phrases and tune strings which, on looking back, feel like they were planted, sound like they were beyond my limited capabilities, and were simply inspired. Rachel is the owner and jewelry designer behind Wuggins, Inc., the mother of Gwyn, and the wife of Garrett Olson, a Union Pacific Railroad Engineer.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Since Roice is the oldest, and his song, A Lullaby, was used for Psalm 1, it only makes sense to use our youngest son’s song, Sir Matthew Charles, as the music for Psalm 150, which is the last Psalm in the Book of Psalms. So, Song 022 provides the music for Psalm 150. Matt was 12 when his song was written. He was playing soccer, and earlier in the day the song was written there was a church volleyball game, where someone spiked the ball at Matt. He was playing football, and who knew Matt would become a strength, bulk, and endurance workout specialist. His muscles definitely ooze these days. Matt likes to talk, and he has learned a lot about what life’s choices pay in the last 18 years. Matt loved computer games, and was very good at Star Craft. He can talk for hours about the Horus Heresy series of thirty plus science fiction books. Both the games and the books are full of places “I can’t even name.” Like many of our society’s most creative folks, Matt grew up living in Lego Land. I have a Star War’s Lego Star Cruiser he built in my office. Matt has a Psychology Bachelor’s Degree from SUU (Southern Utah University). Who would have guessed, when I wrote the words to this song about his “seeking words to sing, the song of the free,” Matt would end up going to Afghanistan, and would join his Grandpa Morris Shirts as a veteran. Matt, thank you for your service! I’m glad you came home safe, and I am very proud of you! Matt has gravitated to oil and gas field work in mud logging and fracking. He currently works for Schlumberger in North Dakota, and we get to see him in Cedar City one out of every three weeks.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

The music to this song was written in my song-notebook between July and October of 1999 and then the song was written on the 16^th of January, 2017. Since the last regular Psalm put to the music of one of my songs was on the 12^th of September 2012, there is not a Psalm associated with Dunes. The photo to the left, and the extended photo, show our family playing at the Pink Coral Sand Dunes by Kanab, Utah. From a historical perspective, Andrea and I went to an SUU (Southern Utah University) dance recital in 2015 directed by our then neighbor, Patty Meredith. One of the dances was about a hive of bees, and the thought came to mind, “dances could be performed describing geological processes.” So, I immediately outlined titles for several songs about geological processes. This was written when Dunes was about the third of these titles put to music. As of Labor Day 2018, I have written about “Song 405 – Thrust” (April 2018), “Song 399 – Eruption” (April 2017), “Song 109 – Sedimentation” (February 2017), “Song 110 – Alteration” (February 2017), “Song 397 – Faults” (January 2017), “Song 386 – Erosion” (March 2016), and “Song 387 – Collision” (March 2016). I have yet to write about “Intrusion,” “Landslide,” “Reef,” “Thrust,” and other exhilarating geologic topics. The words for these songs relied on some of my geologic dictionaries.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Audrey’s Song was used as a basis for Psalm 145. Andrea’s biological kids were a lot older than my biological kids were when I wrote their songs. Songs were less like a patriarchal blessing, where a very young child is given some guidance and encouragement, and more like a status report. Audrey was 19 when her song was written. She played the guitar and the piano (“Audrey play a song for me”). She was working for a very prestigious law firm in downtown Houston. She took the bus downtown with Sara, who was working for Texas Independent. Audrey’s favorite word was “Awesome.” So, I wrote about an “awesome child,” an “awesome teenager,” an “awesome young adult,” and an “awesome Mom,” each statement having proven to be absolutely true. When Audrey’s father left Andrea, he also left each of his girls and Matt. They have each struggled with the rejection of being abandoned in a different way. I think Audrey felt like she was partly to blame for the divorce, and nothing could be further from the truth. With Audrey, I attempted to visit her while she was doing an internship at the Utah State Capitol, and it was so obvious she was conflicted about spending time with me. She was striving to be true to her Dad, and I was stepping over a boundary. So, I backed off. She did not like my use of the word “silty” (which rhymed with “feeling guilty”). Note, silt is rock fragments finer than sand and courser than clay. It is not like the words “dirty,” or “muddy,” or “filthy.” To me, silt describes how each of us have experiences, not unlike rock fragments, which have made us who we are. Silt describes a defensive wall to protect us from being burned again. Audrey has always worked hard, and has always had the restored gospel at the center of her life. Audrey is on the Women’s Executive Council with the NRA (National Rifle Association), the mother of 3 beautiful and talented girls, and the wife of Joshua Waldron, co-founder and CEO of Silencerco.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Ben’s song Questions was used as the music for both Psalm 38 and Psalm 140. The photo to the left was taken at the same time his older brother’s photo, Roice’s extended photo in Song 012, was taken. Roice and Ben were inseparable growing up, and so it seemed like a good idea to include photos taken at the same time. The extended photo shows one of the better captured shots of Ben on the soccer field. Ben was our soccer champion. He also asked great questions: “Don’t your shoes get torn up at night, if you sleep with them on?” “Do all dinosaurs have white teeth?” “Does heaven have a backyard?” And as parents we do the best we can to answer the questions, when they come up, or, in my case, even later. I never have been very good at responding on the spot. It takes me time to come up with a response, and by the time I do come up with a response, the moment has passed. Guess this is one of the reasons I write songs. I can think about a response, polish the response, and when it feels right, commit the response to paper.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Pauline Hafen Nelson’s Mother’s Day song was used as the music for Psalm 5. I remember how well singing this song acapella, as part of a Mother’s Day talk in the Nottingham Country Ward in Katy, Texas, was received. I like the song. I had a love-hate relationship with my Mom. She was very mean to Dad, as stated in the write-up with Song 11. She threatened divorce for years, both before and after her stroke in 1985. I like to think I had something to do with her not following through and getting a divorce. Then I watched my own marriage break up. Mom was also very mean in things she said about Dad’s family. I think it was a reaction to things they must have said about her and Dad not getting married for time and eternity in the LDS temple. If she felt someone had crossed her, they were never forgiven. Except me. She loved me, and I know it. The special part about Mom are memories of singing musicals with her while she played the piano when I was very young. Memories of making butter cookies and popcorn balls. Memories of her annual Christmas Day party. Memories of my High School friends coming out to the house and talking and telling stories and laughing with her for hours. Memories of her yellow GTO with dual chrome carburetors. Memories of her 1928 Studebaker. Memories of her arranging for me to come to CSU (College of Southern Utah) to give a talk about exploration geophysics. Mothers are special! We get one a lifetime! I need to put the hard memories aside, and focus on the good. She did nurse me and she did baby me, long past my infancy. She taught me to think. Dad taught me to work. She was a best friend, especially when I was a teenager. She was more a teenager than I was. And I do miss her. The 40 years in Texas became an escape from the negative. I still missed her. And I do often think of the words she said to me, long ago. Mothers are special!

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Rob’s song, The Tank, was used as the music for Psalm 148. Rob had the challenge of being the youngest of six, and watching the disharmony as his parents divorced. He came through his trials with a smile on his face, and with grit. He was picked on by his three older brothers. He was teased by all of his siblings. And he fought back. So, Rob’s song is about German tanks, Patton climbing the stairs to Nuremburg, Israel in the Sinai, and fighting Charlie in Viet Nam. These are metaphors for Roice, Ben, Paul, and kids on the bus. Hopefully, you hear the words about “loving hugs,” and how “he melts like ice in the nook of my arms, smiling to show the depth of his charms.” He loved his dog Einstein (and the photo to the left shows Einstein loved him). The extended photo shows him driving his tank (his Dad) at a Father’s & Son’s campout (Song 28). His Ken Turner painting shows him climbing a tree at a Nelson Family Reunion. I almost put an extended photo in showing Rob climbing trees at Brazos Bend State Park south of Houston. These days Rob is very good about visiting and helping his Mom, about calling to check up on Andrea and me, and, as a recent example, was the force behind getting me a new lap top computer for Christmas 2017. And now, Rob is IT support at General Electric Aviation Services, and sometimes plays ping-pong with his elder brother Roice (Song 012) at lunch time

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Sara Ellyn’s song was used as the music for Psalm 107. I admit, this is one of my favorite songs. Also admit, Ken Turner’s painting for Sara is one of my favorite paintings he did for the kids. I worked hard when I was growing up, both on the farm, feeding cattle every night after school, and during the summers as one of the hired hands in Nelson Meat Packing Plant. I wanted my kids to have time to play, they did not live on a farm, and so they did not have the same kind of chores I had as a youth. Sara “lived in an apple tree,” with all of the food and basic things she wanted and needed available.  She did throw papers. I still remember when I drove her once and made her put a paper up on the porch, she made sure I knew she “would never throw papers with me again.” Her painting is centered on a 2000-year-old bristlecone pine tree at Cedar Breaks, which tree represents the Savior. One interesting thing about Sara’s painting is the jet trail, which connects the 6 completed paintings, goes right through the New York City twin towers. Ken completed this painting years before 9/11. Sara always wanted to spread her wings, and this jet trail in her painting captures this. Now Sara flies all over the world, not like a bird, but in airplanes, is married to Tim, and works as an executive for HomeAway. She still likes to talk, and the insights and meaning of her words causes one to think. It is hard looking back and realizing how fast children grow up and leave us. Hopefully the things we taught and the examples we strived to set will always be a guiding light.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Melanie’s song, Little Girls, was used as the basis for Psalm 122. The song talks about how little girls make Dad’s happy, and I think this is captured in the photo to the left of me holding Melanie. I also think happiness and joy is captured in the extended photo of my Dad (Howard Nelson, Song 011) picking Melanie up. In the posting of Dad’s song, Ken Tuner’s painting of Dad is to the left, and the extended photo shows the painting hanging at Melanie’s house. The word “high” was used because I grew up singing John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” and “high” rhymes with “sigh.” The first verse chides Melanie about her posture, and encourages her to decide early where her priorities are. Melanie’s priorities are perfect. She grew fast. She managed the divorce better than most of the kids. She is still cute, though in a very mature and dignified way. She has always been a people person, and she is very good helping others. Melanie did not always set the best example for Sara. When I wrote this song, she was only 3 years old, Sara was a new baby, and her example was perfect. I’ve come to realize there are times when we all set poorer examples. She sure sets a good example now. Melanie is the mother of 5, a “Meant To Shine Entrepreneur and business Coach” for Rodan+Fields skin care products, and wife to Jared, a wonderful dentist starting a new Texas dental practice. As Melanie once explained, “Dad likes Jared, but he love’s Jared’s family.” The Wrights, from Vidor, Texas, are just like the honest hardworking folks I grew up with in Cedar Valley.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Paul’s Song was used as the basis for Psalm 2. When Paul was working for Siemens in St. Louis, after getting his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from BYU, he called and said, “Dad, you’re a prophet and I’m going to be a rocket scientist.” Paul has always been a little bit out in left field (except when he did the worm in his band uniform at a Taylor High School football game), and this statement made no sense to me at all. It turned out, a week before Paul’s 3^rd birthday, I had written him this song. The last verse says, “The rocket ships you build today will soon break and be thrown away, but someday things you build will be for more than play.” So, when I found the photo of Paul and Roice in front of a rocket ship at Cape Kennedy (what I remember as Cape Canaveral), it had to be the image for this Song. His Ken Turner Painting is about the creation, with images of each planet and Paul creating the “Big Bang” with his soccer ball. And, of course, as the only one of my children or step-children who followed Andrea and my examples and served a mission for the LDS Church, it makes sense the extended photo show Paul in front of The LDS Church Mission Training Center in Provo. Paul is now Kate’s husband, the father of 5, and a Fellow at Orbital ATK, a true rocket scientist.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Benjamin’s Song was used as the basis for Psalm 36 and Psalm 121. This song is one of the few songs written jointly by Marti and myself. I think I came up with the music and wrote the chorus, and Marti wrote the 3 verses. When we were dating, I was excited to be dating someone who played the guitar better than me, and saw us as becoming the next Osmond Family. However, as is summarized in Song 062 – Our Song, my plans and Marti’s self-confidence were on different planets. In Ken Turner’s painting, Music Room, he shows Ben as a roly-poly baby on the floor behind me, as well as a teenage soccer player coming down the stairs and an old man coming down the same stairs. Ben was and is happy, even though he now has more than two teeth with every smile. The photo to the left shows Ben was a serious soccer player. The extended photo shows Ben was our miracle baby. I wanted (want) to take photos of everything, and so had a camera in the room as Ben was born. The Doctor poised, Ben asperated amniotic fluid, and we almost lost him. He was in the infant care portion of the hospital for the first several days of his life. I never took a camera in for a birth after this terrible and scary experience. Thankfully we have prayer, and our prayers were answered. And now Ben is wonderful father for Ethan and a senior executive at Agrium.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

On my way home from my mission to England, in the Fall of 1972, I arranged to stop in Denver. Marti picked me up at the airport, and we visited Rick Hawthorne’s brother and bore testimony. Rick and Pat Hawthorne are a beautiful U.S. Air Force couple I had the opportunity to teach and baptize in Ipswich. I was 23 when left the mission field. I had introduced Marti to the church before my mission, when I was working for Pan American as a geophysical assistant during the day and in the evenings at The Red Barn – a hamburger joint across from Mammoth Gardens. Marti was baptized the same week I flew to England. When I returned, I was ready to get married, and did not really date anyone else. The next summer, 1973, I was rehired as a geophysical assistant – the company was now Amoco Petroleum. We had got engaged over Spring Break (see Song 057 Engagement Song), and as is typical in my life, I was looking way down the road. This meant I was thinking about our first child. A Lullaby was written for him, Howard Roice Nelson, III, who was born a year and a half later on November 25th, 1974. As our first child, this song became the music for the first Psalm. The photo to the left is Roice as a baby, and, when you click on the photo, the expanded view is Roice a few years later. The song talks about how soft a baby is, and describes his eyes, lips, cheeks, nose, smile, ears, hair, and charms. A favorite phrase of Roice’s Grandma Sharp (later Jackson and now Gries) from the song is “Your cheeks are pink like a rose, And fit so nice on either side of your nose.” And now Roice is married to Sarah Nemec Nelson, and is a software team leader at General Electric Aviation Services. This song provided the music for .

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Psalm 102 uses the music of this song about Dad. I do not remember who was living with me at 1307 Emerald Green (see Song 074 – 1307 Emerald Green) in March of 1999. After Marti left in 1996, the house became a serial half-way house for several folks struggling: a man going through a divorce; a youth struggling with drug addiction; and others. Even with others in the house, I was still alone (see Song 003), and must have been meditating on life on this Monday. I typically invited other single adults over for Family Home Evening on Mondays. Obviously – sometime on this Monday – I had an hour or two to write the song. Dad had died May 16th, 1996. The day I wrote this song was almost 3 years later. I was missing him and regretting not having been in Cedar to work with and be with him more. So, I decided to write a song about Dad. This song became one of my favorites. I cannot sing this song, at least for the first time after weeks or months or a year of not singing it, without shedding tears. Dad once told me his Aunt Sarah (Sarah Stella Nelson Mendenhall) took him aside when he was a youth and told him the Meadow Lark was singing “Howard Nelson’s a good little boy.” Dad’s song is based around this phrase and the familiar tune of the Cedar Valley meadow larks. The verses describe his life as a child, a youth, a student, a young adult, a college student, and a farmer. I’ve never known anyone who worked harder than my Dad. I’ve never known anyone who I thought was as honest. He struggled with managing money and his businesses of meat packing and farming. He stuck by Mom when she was beyond mean. He was a good man. I hope someone can feel about me with a portion of the positive feelings and love and respect I have for my Dad.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

By March of 1999, just 3 months later, things were starting to look up for me. I had let go (see Song 006, Fly Away), I had accepted Marti was not going to change her mind (see Song 008, The Fallen Angel). I went to Seattle with Roger Anderson, and stopped in Cedar City to see Mom (and Andrea) on the way back to Houston. After Mom’s stroke, on April Fool’s Day 1985, I arranged to stop and see her almost once a month until she died in on April 3^rd, 2003. On this trip I brought Andrea a “Sleepless in Seattle” night shirt and had Matt take a photograph of our first kiss. Then sometime later we went to the St. George Temple, and Andrea accepted my marriage proposal. Looks like this is the first song written after these milestones. This Song 010 became the music for Psalm 28. I see patterns everywhere. As things started to turn more positive in my life, my life started to rhyme again. This March day was a beautiful spring data in Houston. I must have gone out by our beautiful pool and sang Song 001 (Open My Eyes, Please), and realized this day was beginning to be “beyond times hard,” and beyond “the floods that raged yesterday.” Thus, the contrast of love and rejection. Also, the cryptic comments about family expanding, merging experiences, building mutual reliance, and a family fraternity. Key pattern concepts to me are “life, love, and family,” “the threads of eternity,” and “moving thoughts to words” to actions. The patterns we seek out and follow can make all the difference in the world to our lives and to our happiness.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

The same Christmas day I wrote Song 008, The Fallen Angel, I wrote a song for one of Sara’s friends, Aimee Moyers, who came over to the house. Like many of my songs, it captures a moment in time. The photo to the left shows Aimee is still a beautiful young lady. I assume she still like money and cats. I do not know what she studied and how much she played at school. She was a light for me on Christmas Day in 1998, a day when I did not see much light around me. I enjoyed writing the song, and I enjoyed singing it to her more than I enjoyed writing it. Isn’t this concept of work and service true in so many aspects of our lives? Certainly, is true for me.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was also not used as the basis for a Psalm. The divorce had been finalized since the day Melanie graduated from High School (at least I was able to keep the marriage together that long). There are definitely bumps in life’s road. Two day’s travel from far away, probably means I was just back from one of the 50+ trips to China. Reflecting on all of these trips, I do not think I shared much with my family about what happened on these trips. Never have been very good about communicating. I’ve written about some of the most memorable experiences in “Stand Back Up.” I wrote 2 songs about trips to China (see Song 082 and Song 111). It would be a good idea to take the time to write down my memories of what happened there, before I forget more than I already have.

This exercise in digitizing the songs helps. It is fun for me to see how I mix numbers and words (2 days, 3 years, 4 decades, 50 years). It also reminds me some of my responsibility for the divorce was I traveled a lot, too much, when I worked for Landmark. I didn’t realize what was happening at home when I wasn’t there. I experienced the disharmony mentioned in verse 3, and since I grew up with much worse disharmony, must have thought the chaos and the pain and the anger was normal. Verse 2 mentions I asked Marti to come back, and she was emphatic the answer would always be no on that Christmas. Thinking about the 4 decades from Christmas 1998, I certainly have enough projects to keep me busy until age 88 and beyond. It has almost been 2 decades since I wrote this song, and the pain often comes up unexpectedly. Especially when I make a poor choice, or when I do not agree with choices some of our children have and continue to make. So, I keep busy, to keep my mind off of my failures, and my parent’s failures, and my children’s failures. Oh well! At least all of our grandchildren are perfect, and they do not make any poor choices.

The joy of positive choices was shown this summer (2017) when several of us went to Palisades Reservoir in Idaho to view the first full solar eclipse in 99 years. The 30 bulbs on the tree are from a “Tiny Planet” display of a 3-D video my son Roice took during the eclipse. The numbered sequence starts in the upper left, and goes left-to-right-to-left-to-right-to-left-to-right-to-left from the top of the tree to the bottom. The regular video of the eclipse experience is on-line at this link, and the tiny planet video is on-line at this link.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Froggie Learns the Gospel was written the second Christmas I was on my mission to the England East Mission by my Hippie friend from Houston, Texas, Quentin Reed (see Song 87 -The First Prayer). Froggie was used as the music for Psalm 61. Quentin and I have sung this song ever since I reconnected with him in Denver, the summer of 1973 after my mission. The summer we met, we talked about animals. Quentin had written this song about a frog. I later wrote a song about a squirrel (see Song 026, Spring). And then later Quentin wrote The Animals Testimony Meeting, Song 027. We played off of each other. I have always told people Quentin wrote Froggie Learns the Gospel about me. In other words, as a young Jack-Mormon, before my conversion the summer of 1968 (again see Song 87 -The First Prayer and Song 107 – The Missionaries), I was like Herman – the frog. After my experience in Corvallis, Oregon, I became like Herman, after he was baptized. Quentin was from Orange, Texas, and converted to the LDS church in Houston when he was young adult. So, of course, in Quentin’s mind, he is Herman. Maybe Herman is simply a “type” of many of us. Whatever the case, the song is fun for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Like Song 002, this song was not used for music for any of the Psalms. Probably because the song brings back hard memories tied to the divorce. It looks like Song 005 was written between when Song 004 and Song 006 were transcribed from my original notes to the journal, explaining why the song numbering is not tied to the date the song was written. Song 006 starts off talking about rocks and stepping stones, and so I took a photo of the stepping stones to our neighbor’s house, and some of the rocks next to this path. Specifically there are several pieces of pyrite, fool’s gold, which glitters and are pretty in the sunlight. By August of 1998 I was beginning to realize I would not be able to change Marti’s mind. I expect she was still at least emotionally involved in an Orson Scott Card virtual world, and specifically a man she met in this virtual world. The song is about the rocks at the base of everything, the branches we set on these rocks to make a fire to warm ourselves and guide others home, water – both in a stream and in sewage – the source of life and cleanliness, how we can become lost as people, and how we can build a fire on rocks to invite those we love to return and renew their baptismal covenants and become clean again. Letting her fly away, and leaving an open door for her to follow the light and fly back was an important part of my letting go and getting on with my life. This song was written just before I took Andrea on our first date to Milt’s Steakhouse up Cedar Canyon.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 044. The photo is of the Bromley family talking to Ted Elwell about Jackson Bromley’s baptism the day before. The older sister, Erica Bromley, bore her testimony about how her little brother, Jackson, will be protected after his baptism. I captured the following stanza, named Protected, from her comments on December 3, 2017 in the Hillcrest Ward Fast & Testimony Meeting:

• We were protected
• On a trip to Lake Powell
• Just as the Holy Ghost
• Will protect my little brother

The testimonies shared by the Hillcrest Ward Primary in Fast & Testimony Meeting are special. One of their motivations is the love of their former teacher, Ted Elwell. In Houston, we had a neighbor who was 7, and sometimes was out of control. I had worked with him quite a bit, and I was asked to substitute in his Primary Class to help keep him focused. I ended up teaching his class for the next 2 years, and then staying with the CTR-8 class for some time after that. I had started consolidating my songs in a new journal at the time this song was written, 26 March 2006, and gave each song a number based on when it was transferred to the journal. I like this song. The song is a nice summary of 9 of the kids who were in my Primary Class for a couple of years, as well as a nice summary of what a testimony of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. I would bring my guitar to this class about once a month, and our class actually performed for Relief Society and some other church groups, where the kids sang a song I had written and I played the guitar and sang with them. Fun times and good memories. For me, the memories exist because the song captured the moments.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 131. The photo is looking into my home office in the evening, showing the computers and immediately available reference material. I was focused on starting up Continuum Resources International Corporation at the time I wrote this song, and it appears I was thinking about the long-term impact of business. Businesses start small (1), planting seeds from which crops are harvested (2). Then folks work (3) and rest (4). Dictionaries helped with definitions on many of my songs. Folks build (5) and use what was built (6). Projects are staged (7) and people serviced (8). Life is full of priority challenges, and sometimes when we fall down we realize we selected the wrong priority. Then we replant (9), and there is more to harvest (10). It is important to be thankful for the harvest (11), and to resolve to cooperate to increase tomorrow’s business harvest. I believe successful business follows planting seeds and taking care of those seeds which sprout.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was used as the music for Psalm 94. The photograph is a self-portrait in two reflecting mirrors. As stated in Song 001, the divorce was not fun. It was not fun to be alone. It was easy to become depressed and to feel sorry for myself. I do not think verse 9 was written when the first 8 verses were written. Years after writing the initial words to this song, I specified verse 1 was about Marti, 2 Roice, 3 Ben, 4 Paul, 5 Melanie, 6 Sara, 7 Rob, 8 me, and 9 Andrea. Music has always been a comfort to me, and this comfort was captured with the words in verse 8: “Alone I touch my guitar strings, As they help me learn what to own.” Like all challenges in life, there were good things which followed the tragedy of divorce. I put the entire book of Job to music. I expect many of the songs I wrote came as a result of having more time on my own, reflecting more, and in general attempting to recover from the divorce. “Alone I know beyond times hard, Are times easy and times sunny.” And, of course, knowing in my heart “I will never truly be alone” because my God and my Savior and The Holy Ghost are with me and answer my prayers.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

This song was not used as the music for any of the Psalms. The photograph is a portion of 6 of our 80 or so bookshelves, specifically as related to verses 3 and 4. A couple of years after Marti divorced me it became painfully obvious she was not going to change her mind. My cousin Darrell Krueger visited me in Houston, and shared Genesis 2:18, which states “It is not good that the man should be alone.” I decided it was time to see if I could find some one who would be a helpmeet. My assistant, Rhonda Hartman, set me up on dates with two of her single Baptist friends. The coffee at dinner in Houston and the focus on fancy cars at the Dallas State Fair immediately and respectively showed me this approach would not work. Then I was reading a paper and saw a large photograph of a lady who is a well-known member of the LDS church, and had never married. I wrote this song about my attempts to meet her. Never did. Oh well! Life’s not fair. And I ended up with a much better catch when I re-met Andrea Shirts Nielson. And to top it off, Andrea was willing to give up an “i” to marry me.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.

Even as the self-defined “first digital man,” it is a big step to share the songs behind the psalms I have been posting since June 9, 2017. Complete documentation requires digitizing the songs, as well as the psalms (and everything else). Thanks to those who listened to, and especially those who came back to listen to additional psalms. It is hard to gauge interest, with only 1 comment tied to the posting of 157 psalms. Thankfully, this comment, as well as a few verbal comments, have been positive. So, the project continues and expands. Song 001 was used as the music for Psalm 26.

The intention of the merged photograph to the left illustrates how posting of these songs makes bare the most personal of thoughts and feelings and emotions. The words of this song illustrate the personal information which will be shared as additional songs are posted. The background and the poses for this composite image are Da Vinci’s 1490 ink drawing, known as the Vitruvian Man. The two merged photographs were taken by my son-in-law, Joshua Waldron.

The 3 lines in the chorus rotate, with the bottom line summarizing the next verse. This song is a prayer. It starts by asking to be able to continue to run through life, despite being mostly a bag of salty water and fat. I want to be a good father, which I consider my essence. Yet, as the children have left the quiver, the distances seem to grow. This song was written about 8 years after the first threats of divorce. I travelled too much, was too critical when I was home, and did not understand what was happening to my marriage. Those were hard years. I continue to make it through trials, thanks to prayer, and my testimony of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Life is wonderful and complex, and my scientific nature is always searching for truth. I truly enjoy taking basic principles and turning them into new businesses. I have taken the opportunity to start some 22 companies or research organizations so far in my career. The Allied Geophysical Laboratories (AGL) at The University of Houston (UH), Landmark Graphics Corporation (now Halliburton Landmark), and Dynamic Measurement Corporation are the most successful on-going operations. The others have each been technical successes, though not financial successes. The song (prayer) ends by asking to again be able to receive inspiration, in order to continue to make a difference and to help others. I have experienced having thoughts planted in my head from a source outside of myself many times in my life. I have experienced having thoughts planted in my head from a source outside of myself many times in my life. As a scientist, this repetitive process demonstrates to me how thoughts come from God, trailing clouds of glory. Many of these songs were answers found through meditation and prayer.

It also seems appropriate at the onset of this part of the digitization project to explain the claim of being “the first digital man.” I grew up on a farm, on the back end of shovel on the star ship enterprise. I remember when we got our first television set. I remember first seeing Bonanza in color on Grandpa and Grandma Hafen’s new television set. I remember Sputnik. My friends and I made and experimented with rockets as a result. We used slide rules in High School. When I went to the University of Utah in 1968 I was introduced to computers in the form of a Texas Instrument calculator and a UNIVAC computer. In 1970 at Pan American I calculated seismic array response curves by submitting the parameters to the Tulsa Research Lab’s computer via teletype. On my 1970-1972 mission for the LDS Church in England I designed, at least in my mind, what we now call a tablet, for keeping track of contacts from tracting and street meetings. My 1974 Senior Thesis at the University of Utah was “A Reflection Seismic Study of the Quaternary Sediments of Yellowstone Lake” and included a printed digital 3-D map. This map was a key factor in the 1982 formation of Landmark Graphics Corporation. Landmark built the first stand-alone 3-D seismic interpretation workstation, which changed the way every oil and gas company in the world explores. Landmark has done over a billion dollars in business every year since their 25^th anniversary in 2007. The initial 1983 Landmark marketing material was “New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics,” which I wrote at the house using a modem based remote terminal connected to a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) VAX-11/780 at the AGL. In 1978, while getting my M.B.A. in Entrepreneurship at SMU (Southern Methodist University), 3 of us formed Computer Genealogical Services, where we placed a punch card machine in Linda Fletcher’s house, and printed Family Group Sheets and Pedigree Charts using a time-share service out of St. Louis, Missouri at a remote facility in Dallas, Texas. There have been several different ways explored of displaying genealogical data since then, including using “The Brain.” As Elder’s Quorum President in Dallas, I kept track of 15% monthly move-ins and move-outs (180% of the ward per year) on the SMU Cyber-860 using punch cards. At the AGL we set up the Keck Research Computation Lab, and the students did remote seismic processing using a Cray-2 and a CDC-205 vector processor (Control Data Corporation). In 1994 I left Landmark to form HyperMedia Corporation, and commercialize a UNIX, X-Windows, MOTIF, Client-Server, hypertext engine (web browser for geologists with a classification system and linked geological overlays on seismic and geologic cross-sections) which we started prototyping at ULL (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and at Landmark in 1988. Note Mosaic, the forerunner to NetScape, was first delivered in 1993. I wrote and posted a daily Lovelet from 29 Feb 1995 to 12 Jun 1997. I wrote weekly Thoughtlets to my kids (think the first blog) starting the 38^th week of 1996. In 1996 we also tested the idea of Virtual Seminars. On 01 March 1997 I self-published “Prime Words,” and I regularly add to these four line Stanzas. In 1999 several of us started Continuum Resources International Corporation. We built the first commercial 3-D visualization centers, and were doing real-time collaboration with a 250 gigabyte 3-D seismic survey in Perth, Australia (CURTIN University) and London, England (Imperial College) and our office in Houston by replicating the data and sending state changes across ISDN. I prototyped an on-line outcrop, log, and seismic geologic analog atlas in 2001. At v-Patch (the Virtual Oil Patch) we did web-based project management for Apache Corporation in 2002. From 2002-2007 I put “An Open Mind” on-line, as the beginning of a series of books on science and religion. In 2007 I summarized 35+ years of thinking about a new type of urban environment in a proposal titled “Galveston Futures.” From 2015-2016 I put “Stand Back Up” on-line, as a personal history written for my kids and grandkids.  Since 2016 I have built and have been expanding Excel versions of The Book of Mormon. There are about 147 boxes of history in our garage and about 57 journals in my office backing up this paragraph. The goal is to digitize and catalog spatially, temporally, by process, and data type all of this data and information and knowledge and hopefully even some wisdom before I die. SUU (Southern Utah University) Special Collections has agreed, in principle, to be the repository for this digital legacy.

A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.