Although I got the speakers primarily with the intent of listening to my purchased music, I find that I use them mostly to listen to KSDS. I discovered San Diego’s jazz station in high school, but its broadcast was weak enough in the North County where I lived that I could generally only listen in my car if I was driving in a particular direction (south, maybe?). The station boosted its signal while I was in college, and I listened frequently when I was visiting home. For my money, KSDS is the best jazz station in the U.S. (at least, based on my experience in New York—where, seriously, the only jazz station is actually broadcast from Newark—Provo (which only played at night), D.C., and Chicago).

But, as much as I love the station, it does play songs I don’t enjoy. And it doesn’t play songs I would love to hear. I could get a more-tailored playlist from my own collection, from Pandora’s algorithm, or from Spotify’s nearly unabridged array of recordings. So why, in light of all the music and technology, go with a radio station?

Because it’s curated. The DJs at KSDS love the music they play[fn1], and they have an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, from its beginnings to the latest records. They have opinions, quirks, and preferences. True, Pandora can potentially provide me a serendipitous find,[fn2] but it often feels more like a classic rock station, playing the obvious choices. Almost every time I listen to KSDS, I discover something new.

I’m beginning to think that church meetings function in much the same way. The talks and lessons and comments from class members are those people’s curated versions of what the Gospel means; they display the speakers’ quirks, interpretations, and lived experience. Sometimes those quirks, interpretations, and lived experience don’t resonate with me. Sometimes they bother me. Sometimes I feel like I could find more meaning by studying my scriptures on my own, focusing on the meaning that I find in them. But sometimes somebody’s curated experience with the Gospel provides me with a serendipitous find, and I discover meaning that I could not and would not have discovered on my own.[fn3]

I can still listen to my mp3s when the mood strikes; I can trust in Pandora, too. I can study on my own, using the tools that I bring to the table, to supplement what I get at church. But the curated experience, both in my musical and my religious life, is irreplaceable.

—

[fn1] Seriously. Between college and law school, I moved back to San Diego for several months and was asked to play piano for the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot branch. Every Sunday morning I drove down to a soundtrack of big band swing; the DJ, it turns out, had complained that the station didn’t have any big band shows, and was invited to put one together himself.

[fn2] I heard a version of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” on Pandora several years ago that I loved; sadly, I can’t remember who it was, and I haven’t been able to recreate the series of songs that led to it.

[fn3] Yes, I realize I’m leaving out ordinances. But if our only purpose in attending church was to perform ordinances, well, I could cut the three-hour block by about two hours and 45 minutes.

In this area, none of our members have phones. One of our member’s father has a phone, but, in order to call, I’ve promised that it won’t cost him anything. It’s a party line, something I’d heard about in the U.S. but never actually experienced. (The way it works is, 10 households share a line. Calls come to the first house in the group. That person directs the call to whomever it’s for.)

I told the person at number 1 that, when she got a call she didn’t understand to put them through to me. But, after the hour, I decide to call my parents to give them a phonetic way to ask for me. It takes some doing to figure out how to call the U.S., but eventually I succeed and, 15 minutes later, I am talking to my parents.

I ended up paying about $15 for the instructional call home, but it was worth it. I got to talk to my parents, then return to the missionary work I was in Brazil to do.

—

I spoke today with friends whose son is calling them today for Mother’s Day. They’ll talk on Skype. Frankly, that seems a better way to do it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

No, not that Jersey, the one famous for Bruce and the MTV show. Its namesake, the one in the English Channel.

Through my clicking, I learned that my great-great-great-grandmother was born in Jersey in 1838 and died in West Bountiful in 1912.

For most, this probably wouldn’t be remarkably meaningful. I didn’t do the work to get back these generations, and I have absolutely no knowledge of these ancestors’ lives.[fn2] But . . .

. . . but Jersey is a tax haven.[fn3] And I’m a professor of tax law, a researcher of tax law, and, frankly, pretty darn interested in most things tax. And so, learning that I’m descended from residents of what has now become a tax haven is just cool. Way cooler than pretend being descended from royalty.

And now I’m curious. I’m curious about when and how the Church moved into Jersey. I’m curious what life was like in Jersey (which, I assume, wasn’t a tax haven in the 19th century). And I’m curious what the Church was like in Jersey. My relationship to Jersey is more attenuated than the relationship that Ardis suggests careful family history research can develop, but, for one of the first times, I’ve found something fascinating about my family history.

And that’s a cool feeling.

—

[fn1] I suspect this is accurate, notwithstanding my run-in with royalty documented in my earlier post.

[fn2] Ardis pointed out on my earlier post that, through carefully learning about earlier generations, starting with our parents and moving back, we learn details about their lives that, in turn, help bind us closer to them (a paraphrase that hopefully does little damage to Ardis’s point). I found that paradigm-shifting in my view of the purpose behind genealogy and our current participation in proxy ordinances. That said, as I’ll explain shortly, this Jersey connection also piques my personal and historical curiosity.

[fn3] Albeit a tax haven about which I know very little. In the U.S., we generally use Bermuda or the Cayman Islands or maybe Ireland or Switzerland (though the latter two would dispute the label). Jersey is mostly a tax haven for London, from what I understand.

To my surprise, after I was ushered into the room, the bishop’s counselor extended a calling to me. He explained that it was church policy to obtain the husband’s permission before his wife even found out about the calling.

When my husband remarked dubiously that this is the first time he’d ever encountered such a policy, the counselor said (somewhat defensively) that they had been instructed to do it that way by the stake president. According to him, it’s part of an ongoing effort to “help the brethren step up to their responsibility to preside in their homes.”

He didn’t go into the details of how exactly being given control over whether their wives get the opportunity to serve at church helps men to be better husbands and fathers.

Needless to say, I found the exchange depressing, not to mention insulting. To my later chagrin, I didn’t say a whole lot other than accepting the call, partially because I was just floored by it happening in the first place, and partially because I wasn’t sure what TO say.

I found it embarrassingly awkward to be treated like a child who needs permission. Because, um, last time I looked at our relationship, my husband was not my parental authority figure. But how childishly petulant does it sound to stamp your foot at the bishop’s counselor and say, “don’t treat me like a child!” It was obvious to me that at least to this particular man, I would sound like a power hungry insubordinate and a bad wife if I objected to what he evidently considered a divinely sanctioned policy.

My husband and I had a lengthy discussion about it afterward, during which I was eventually able to roll my eyes and laugh ruefully at what had happened, and pass it off as a relatively minor annoyance.

Until this morning, that is, when I was sitting in the pew after Sacrament Meeting, and a brother in the ward came up to our row. He said hello to me, and then promptly turned to my husband, to ask if it was all right if I substituted in his primary class next week. I just stared. To his everlasting credit, my husband simply responded, “she’s her own person. Ask her.”

You’d think I would have come up with some kind of appropriate response myself after my experience a few weeks earlier, but again, I merely said I would do it (once the good brother’s attention had finally wandered back to me, that is, of course).

After I finished crying on my husband’s shoulder in the hallway over the whole indignity of it all, I started contemplating what would be the best/most appropriate response to a situation like this (since it appears that at least in this ward, it happens frequently).

Should I just grin and bear it? Is there some kind of church policy that might actually somehow be construed to mean that a wife needs her husband’s permission before she undertakes to do any sort of positive action? To what ridiculous ends will this lead us? When I call a Relief Society sister to ask if she’ll take dinner to someone in the ward, should I really be speaking with her husband first to see if it’s OK with him?

I should add that the second story did actually have a happy ending. My husband had a lengthy discussion with the offending primary teacher, who said he had only been trying to be respectful (of whom? The “man of the house,” I suppose). He said it was just like when he had asked his wife’s father for her hand in marriage. Sigh. Just like.

I’m not sure if he was convinced by my husband’s energetic explanations, or just thought we were weird, but I was very touched when this same brother came up to me after church and apologized for offending me. He said that he was sorry he had made me feel bad, and grateful he had now been educated so he wouldn’t do it again. He was really humble and sincere, and it made me feel so much better to have my feelings acknowledged. It also made me feel a little hopeful that change might actually sometimes happen, at least on the individual level, if we approach it in a constructive way.

So with that said, what is the most constructive way? What would you say if your husband were asked to speak for you (or you were asked to speak for your wife)? What have you said in situations like these? Do you think it’s more effective when speaking to an intentional or oblivious chauvinist for my husband to point out that he thinks it’s inappropriate to be treated like he owns me? Or should I say it myself?

So we moved to Provo. We thought that here, in the middle of happy valley, we would be extraneous and possibly ignored. We looked forward to settling down into an anonymous calling like nursery leader. But it turns out that by purchasing a home in an area that is mostly occupied by students and renters, we got fast tracked into the same ten family status in our new ward.

As soon as our records arrived, I got called to be the primary president. A year later, my husband was called to be a counselor to our new bishop. He’s over primary, which is both convenient and frustrating. I have a much better sense of why it can take so long to get callings through the spiritual confirmation and administrative hoops, and he can see exactly how much stress the primary president feels when classes have substitute teachers every week because the previous teachers had a baby or moved away and the new ones haven’t been sustained yet. One of the happy bonuses of our callings is that we get to sit together during ward council meetings. It’s the only time we’re together at church.

But I have to wonder why, in a solid family ward with good attendance, are there still a just a relatively few families that are considered strong? Why does the work of serving in the church fall so heavily on them? I can remember exactly which families did most of the work in the small ward I grew up in in East Texas. The same people rotated through all the auxiliaries, every few years being reshuffled into one presidency after another.

I’m not surprised I’ve ended up in one of those same ten families. While we don’t aspire to leadership callings (especially not now that we’ve been in them), we do come to church regularly and are reliable and competent in fulfilling our callings and participating in other church activities. (In other words, I think the bar for inclusion in the same ten family club is pretty low.) Sometimes I’m even inspired or creative in my calling. I’ve been in for a few years now, so I know all of our children and I’m confident in my ability to serve them. But I have to admit that I am getting tired.

I was raised with the stories of pioneer ancestors. You put your shoulder to the wheel, work until you’re exhausted, and then work some more. You have to endure to the end. So I go to church, and I work. I’m glad to be able to serve. But unless all of us in the ward share the load, those same ten families are going to get burnt out. Some days I feel myself charring around the edges. So what can we do to spread the work around, to give everyone a meaningful opportunity to serve and let those who are already serving have a break once in a while? How do we break past using the same ten families?

As in past years, I’ve compiled some of the data and made many comparisons in a spreadsheet on Google Docs. That spreadsheet includes church-wide information reported since 1973, along with a number of calculations that I’ve made based on the data. Those who are likewise interested in these statistics are welcome to look at it—and anyone wishing to  help maintain, update and improve both the data an the analysis can drop me a message (at Kent [at] timesandseasons [dot] org), and I’ll allow them access to modify the spreadsheet. I also have additional data that looks at regions around the world, and I’m reporting on some of that data for the first time this year.

Here is what I found interesting this year:

• Overall improvement in growth: In 2002 the number of missionaries dropped suddenly, and the number of converts also dropped, presumably because of the drop in missionaries. Until that time the number of missionaries serving had increased basically every year, often by more than 5% a year! This decrease is probably due to demographics—U.S. (and especially inter-mountain west) birthrates had declined a couple of decades earlier, and proportionally fewer missionaries came from the increasing proportion of members outside of the U.S.While the lower birthrate and rate of missionary service meant fewer missionaries initially, eventually the number of missionaries serving should begin to grow again. And, while the number of converts has slowly increased during the last decade, the number of missionaries has stayed level until this year, when it finally increased. I don’t know if this means that the number of missionaries will continue to increase, overcoming the drop caused by lower birthrates, or if it will take longer for the overall number of missionaries to increase in proportion with the number of members. But, the increase this year does look promising, and may lead to faster growth in coming years.
  

  Please note that the line for missionaries above is graphed on the left axis (the one that goes from 40,000 to 90,000) and that it excludes amounts below 40,000, which may make the changes seem a little larger than otherwise. The line for convert baptisms is graphed on the right axis (which goes from 100,000 to 400,000) and excludes amounts below 100,000, also making the changes seem a little larger than otherwise.
• Increasing size of Wards and Branches comes from outside U. S. and Canada:In past years I’ve worried about the continuing increase in the average size of wards and branches (up from 391 in 1984 to 502 at the end of 2011), which is apparently due to increasing inactivity. This year I compared the average size of wards and branches and stakes and districts in the U.S. and Canada to those same units elsewhere. The results were startling:

  

  Please note that the lines for wards and branches above are graphed on the right axis (the one that goes from 400 to 800) and that it excludes amounts below 400, which may make the changes seem a little larger than otherwise. The line for stakes and districts is graphed on the left axis (which goes from 0 to 4,500).

The average number of members per ward/branch is basically the same in the U.S. and Canada as it was nearly a decade ago, but outside the U.S. and Canada, the number has grown dramatically. To me this means that the change in activity rates happening in the Church isn’t due to any drop off in how faithful member of the Church in the U.S. are — instead it is due to the difficulties retaining members elsewhere. [I now feel justified in my skepticism of claims that significant numbers of Church members in the U.S. are becoming less active -- if the numbers were truly significant, the average number of members per ward would rise over the long run. The increase in inactivity appears to be all outside of the U.S. and Canada.]

Most surprising in my comparison of data from the U.S. and Canada to that of the rest of the world is that the growth in active members (measured by the growth in number of wards and branches) is actually higher in the U.S. and Canada than elsewhere! From 2002 to 2010 the number of wards and branches in the U.S. and Canada increased from 12,346 to 14,071, an increase of 14% or 1.65% a year. In contrast, the number of wards and branches outside the U.S. and Canada increased from 13,797 to 14,589, and increase of 5.75% (0.7% a year) — less than half the rate of growth in the U.S. and Canada.

In contrast, the growth rate in baptized members outside the U.S. and Canada is double that of members in these two countries. Why? I don’t think it is about missionary work — I suspect that missionary work is done the same whether in the U.S. and Canada or not. More likely, the reason lies with the many social and cultural factors that help people stay in the Church. Elsewhere, these factors are still developing, and are often not there when they are needed.

At least, that’s my theory for why. What’s yours?

Before I look at that sentence, though, a couple disclaimers. First, I haven’t been to Utah in at least four years. As far as I know, the City Creek development plans hadn’t been developed yet.[fn1] Second, I can’t convince myself to care about City Creek. I’m neither from Utah, nor do I live there.[fn2] I don’t know the flow of Salt Lake, so I don’t have any idea if this development complements or ruins the city.[fn3]

In her piece, Jana says:

Moreover, such profits [from the sale of condos and lease of retail space] are tax-exempt.

To support that claim, she links to this KUTV story. That didn’t feel right to me, so I thought I’d run down the claim. And, it turns out, City Creek Reserve, Inc. (“CCRI”) may well not be taxable on rents it receives from retail tenants.[fn4] But the KUTV story doesn’t give us a good sense of why. So here’s what I can piece together:

You can read CCRI’s 2009 Business Income Tax Return here. Among other things, it tells us that, like the Church and the university for which I work, CCRI is a 501(c)(3) organization and, as such, is generally exempt from paying taxes.[fn5]

There are two big exceptions to this tax exemption, and those two exceptions apply to all 501(c)(3) organizations. First, if a tax-exempt organization borrows money to fund an investment, it will pay taxes on a portion of its return from that investment at ordinary corporate rates.[fn6] So if CCRI borrowed money, the KUTV story is wrong, and CCRI is liable for federal income taxes.

But that’s not terribly interesting, so let’s pretend that CCRI didn’t borrow any money to do the development. The other major way that a 501(c)(3) could owe income taxes is if it earns “unrelated business taxable income.”

Basically, unrelated business taxable income is income earned by a tax-exempt organization from participating in a business unrelated to its exempt purpose. So, for example, if the Church were to start manufacturing and selling macaroni, it would be taxable on its profits from those macaroni sales in the same manner as a taxable macaroni manufacturer.

The line between businesses related and unrelated to a tax-exempt’s exempt purpose can be a difficult one, on the margins, to parse. So, for example, advertising revenue the NCAA receives from the programs it sells at the NCAA tournament is not taxable as unrelated business taxable income, even though the ads may be the same ones that would appear in Sports Illustrated. Ad income from a monthly medical journal run by a tax-exempt organization, on the other hand, is taxable as unrelated business taxable income.

Intuitively, rent from commercial real estate tenants doesn’t seem to come close to the line.  And actually, it doesn’t. Section 512(b)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code explicitly exempts from UBTI rents from real property. There is one exception to this exemption that may apply: if the rent is based on income or profits derived from the property, CCRI would be taxable on the rent.

Taubman says that it owns the property under a “participating lease” with CCRI. I don’t have any details on how that participating lease is structured but, if CCRI participates in Taubman’s income or profits, it will pay taxes on the rent it receives. On the other hand, if that participation is based on a fixed percentage of gross receipts or sales, CCRI will not be taxable on that income.

My ultimate conclusion: CCRI will probably not be taxable on the rent it receives from Taubman. If, however, CCRI borrowed money to invest in City Creek or if its participating lease is structured in a specific way, it will owe federal income tax on that rent.

—

[fn1] And, if they had, I wasn’t aware of them at the time.

[fn2] I don’t mean this to be a subtle or not-so-subtle dig at Utah. I just don’t have any roots there, and I have very little family there, so development of Salt Lake’s downtown isn’t terribly high on my list of things to pay attention to.

[fn3] I will say, when in doubt, I don’t like malls. That said, I have a hard time objecting to the glitziness of the stores at City Creek. Its tenants read like a pretty standard list of mid-range chain retailers. But that may be because I work a block away from Chicago’s Magnificent Mile (and across the street from a Bentley dealership) and, before, I worked about five blocks from Times Square (which is not, by the way, home to upscale retailers, either). But that’s entirely to the side of the point of this post.

[fn4] I could be wrong, of course—all of the information I have about this deal is what’s publicly available on teh Internets, so there are undoubtedly details I’m not aware of. Interestingly enough (to me, anyway), CCRI wasn’t formed to do this deal: it was founded and received its tax-exempt status in 1941. (Which leads me to the question: is City Creek a geographical location in Salt Lake? or is the development named after CCRI (which seems kind of weird to me)? or is this just serendipitous naming?)

[fn5] Donors to CCRI can also take a deduction for their donations, though I’m not sure whether CCRI takes donations.

[fn6] As an example, let’s say that CCRI borrows $1 million, and invests that $1 million with $1 million of its own income in Apple stock. Apple pays a $200,000 dividend. CCRI will have to pay taxes, at ordinary corporate rates, on $100,000 of the dividend, but the other $100,000 will be exempt from taxation.

Which is why, last summer, on vacation, when my wife saw an older couple wearing missionary name-tags, we decided to confirm when and where the church met. Turns out that they weren’t assigned to that particular area.[fn1] Still, we started talking. At one point, the husband mentioned something he’d been asked to do, and said, “You don’t say no to a Seventy.”

Let me interrupt myself right here to emphasize that it was a throw-away line. They had been asked to report on establishing some program or committee or something. He was not implying that, if a Seventy asked him to do something immoral or illegal or even questionable, he would mindlessly obey. I assume that, if pressed, he would admit that he would say no in that situation, except that he couldn’t imagine that situation actually happening. But we were in a pleasant social situation, he was a pleasant missionary, and there was no point in pressing him on a laugh-line.

I’d been thinking about writing this post for a while,[fn2] but in light of Ronan’s excellent post, which makes clear that some people seem to believe that Mormons literally do not say no to a leader,[fn3] it seemed like an opportune time.

See, I suspect that the attitude of we don’t say no is fairly prevalent in the Church. Not, of course, because we’re mindless zombies,[fn4] but because of some combination of belief that our leaders are inspired in their choices and an aversion to conflict. But that seems like a bad organizational trait, if it’s true. Not bad because we’ll commit every evil asked of us, but bad because the Seventies (stake presidents, bishops, RS presidents, etc.), though inspired, are human too. And if we just do whatever is asked of us, and accept that they have all knowledge and inspiration, they won’t get decent feedback to know what works, what doesn’t work, and how the average person will respond to their requests/ideas.

So let me know:

(a) Do we say no to Seventies (or better, is there a level at which we stop providing honest feedback)?

(b) Should we ever say no to Seventies or whomever (with the caveat that I’m assuming we won’t be asked to do anything immoral, though we may be asked to do something inefficient)?

(c) If we ever should, how should we go about saying no?

—

[fn1] Actually, they weren’t even assigned to the mission we were in; they were, however, headed home in a week or two, and were doing some sight-seeing before they left.

[fn2] About nine months now, actually.

[fn3] If you’re one of those people, btw, this may not be the comments section for you. If you actually believe that we will obey every edict that comes out of Salt Lake, you either don’t know us very well (see, e.g., many wards’ home and visiting teaching numbers contra this), you’re an ideologue, or you’re an idiot. (Sorry—as my daughter tells me whenever she hears me say “idiot,” that’s really not a nice thing to say.)

[fn4] Though that could be kind of cool.

The Head. In the section titled “Enlightenment Religion,” Wills discusses how Unitarians, Quakers, and Deists emerged in the wake of the Great Awakening of 1740s. Not everyone liked what the Great Awakening stirred up: “Once men recoiled from emotional excess, they looked more carefully at how reason could be used to guide religion into more acceptable paths.” Those paths included questioning the orthodox formulation of the Trinity (hence Unitarians) as well as other tenets of orthodox Calvinism (a turn to Arminian free will doctrines). Quakers rejected orthodox practice and doctrine in favor of simple benevolence and the inner light of the Spirit (what Mormons would call personal revelation). Deism was popular among the elites of the Revolutionary era, including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and most famously Tom Paine. Wills concludes:

It is one of this book’s theses that Enlightened religion was a blessing to this country — that it was a necessary corrective to the pre-Enlightenment religion that hanged Mary Dyer, condemned Anne Hutchinson, and banished Roger Williams.

More on that in-need-of-correction pre-Enlightenment religion below.

The Heart. In the wake of the Revolution, established denominations like the Episcoplians and Congregationalists lost ground to newer, more enterprising groups like the Methodists and Baptists. The section titles in one of the chapters tell the story: Methodists, do-it-yourself religion, escaping doctrine. The Disciples of Christ, the denomination from which Sidney Rigdon and the hundred or so early Kirtland converts came, was firmly in this camp. As religion rolled into the 20th century, the trend away from doctrine became even more pronounced: nondenominational preachers like Dwight Moody and eventually Billy Graham sought nondenominational Christian converts, who increasingly attend nondenominational megachurches preaching do-it-yourself theology like dispensationalism, the health and wealth gospel, and Second Coming dramatics like The Late Great Planet Earth (published in 1970, it has sold over 28 million copies). The focus on conversion (of the heart) started with rural Second Great Awakening revivals and continues with present-day Christian festivals in arenas and stadiums.

So is Mormonism a religion of the heart or of the head?

Two Other Candidates. But wait, we have more options. First, before the two religious awakenings gave us our present denominational constellations, the Puritans of 17th-century New England were quite happily practicing their all-encompassing approach to Christianity. This is the “pre-Enlightenment religion” that Wills referred to in the above quotation. The term is meant to be descriptive, not pejorative. It refers to the era when learning and education were seen to be fully harmonious with Christianity: before secular learning and secular culture emerged during the Enlightenment, before scholarship subjecting the Bible to critical study had been published, and well before the theory of evolution and modern cosmology provided plausible naturalistic explanations of the cosmos, life, and humans.

There is a positive angle to how the Puritans did religion: The Puritans weren’t Sunday-only Christians; they took their religion seriously. For them, religion, government, and community were all reflections of a unified Christian commonwealth, one which stressed duties more than rights, perhaps, but certainly had a strong sense of identity and mission. I tend to think Mormonism creatively adopts some features of the 17th-century paradigm, such as avoiding engagement with higher criticism of the Bible, generally discounting evolution, and at times practicing a form of mild theocracy. And don’t forget Emerson’s description of Mormonism as an “afterclap of Puritanism.”

A second alternative to head or heart is political religion as it has emerged in the recent past. Religious involvement in cultural and legal fights over school prayer, abortion, and gay marriage are obvious signs of this political turn. Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, and the Religious Right familiar terms reflecting the politicization of religion in our generation. Mormonism has not been immune to this development. The ERA fight, Prop 22, Prop 8, and even the Proclamation on the Family highlight the extent to which politics and political issues now define Mormonism.

So, is Mormonism a religion of the heart, of the head, of pre-Enlightenment unity, or of modern political religion? ["All of the above" is not an allowable answer!]

See? Proof irrefutable. Mrs. Joan Brownson, my great-great-great-etc.-grandmother was the daughter of the King and Queen of England.[fn1]

Except that it didn’t feel quite right. So I dug a little deeper. Under “Parents and Siblings,” I saw this:

So it turns out I’m doubly awesome. Not only am I descended from Edward III King of England and Philippa Queen of England, but my particular ancestor was born almost 200 years after her mother died![fn2]

—

[fn1] It does, however, bring up a skeleton in my ancestral closet. It appears, based on somebody’s genealogical work, that Richard Bronson married his mother. Because his wife and mother not only have the same name, but the same dates of birth and death. So maybe that kind of relationship undoes the coolness of being descended from royalty.[fn1.1]

…..[fn1.1] Yes, I’m being sarcastic; I know[fn1.1.1] that he didn’t marry his mother.

……….[fn1.1.1] Okay, because I only discovered these names tonight, I guess I don’t technically know he didn’t. But I’m pretty confidant he didn’t, at any rate.

[fn2] I’m going to put the only serious part of this post in a footnote: how does one get this fixed on FamilySearch? It seems to show the last information, so I could fix it by putting in the correct information. Except that I don’t have the correct information and, right now, don’t have any way of finding it.[fn2.1] So if I replaced it, I’d just substitute one obvious error for another. (As an aside, discovering this remarkably obvious error, besides royally ticking me off, has significantly dampened the budding enthusiasm I had for family history: I can’t go through and correct all sorts of errors that have been perpetuated, but if I don’t, I’ll just continue the errors. Moreover, even if I were to go through and correct them, someone else could just follow up on it and muck up what I had, hypothetically, done.[fn2.1.1]

…..[fn2.1] Yes, I know that I could devote a ton of time trying to research family history in 16th-century England. But I’m not going to; I have other priorities calling for that time.

……….[fn2.1.1] I’ll take encouragement, btw; I’ve got another family history post that is much happier, and that was the source of my excitement. But I can’t get there until I get past this.