I write this as a room full of nursery-aged children jump and dance to The Wiggles. The reason is that for Family Home Evening tonight, a group of our friends has gathered at the home of another friend whose mother died in an accident this weekend. While the family is away at the funeral, our group is cleaning the house and taking care of any other needs there. I’m in charge of the child care at our house so that the parents can go clean without the kids making a mess behind them. Read More

Recently, I’ve noticed a bit of bloggernacle discussion over a question of burning importance: How to pronounce “Kaimi.” Here’s the short answer: Ka-EE-mee. It has three syllables, you stress the middle one, and Hawaiian pronounces its vowels more-or-less identical to Spanish. Read More

A new week brings with it a new guest blogger. We’re very happy to have as a guest someone whose name most regular T & S readers will recognize: bloggernacker and frequent comment participator Daniel H. Bartholomew, aka Danithew. Read More

To continue with the international perspective I was asked to give, here is one post that opens the door to some political debate… I hope it will not deviate too much from the questions asked at the end! Two items to set the perspective: 1) First, the vast majority of Mormon pioneers who came from Europe in the 19th century were people with leftist traits. Mostly workmen and craftsmen, dedicated to social justice, inspired by egalitarian dreams, they turned their back to an exploitative society. In Mormonism they found this galvanizing combination of religious conviction and communalist ideals (I said… Read More

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Primary programs all around. I have mixed feelings on these. Some of them are clearly disastrous. But some can be a fun experience for kids, and not too awful for adults either. Read More

Our former guest-blogger, the intrepid Claudia Bushman, has alerted me to the party of the year. It is (of course) the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the New York, New York stake. (What, didn’t you all know?) She writes: A special commemorative meeting of music, talks, and film will celebrate the organization of the NY NY Stake which began in 1934, and will take place on Saturday, November 13th at 7:15 as part of the Stake Conference. Read More

Some of you know by reading my posts here that my wife and I homeschool our children. Actually, my wife Kristen does most of the teaching, although I like to be as involved as I can. I really like talking about homeschooling. Jaymie, our oldest daughter, is 6, followed by Julia (3) and Stanley (1). Jaymie is the only child actively being taught, but Julia gets to participate as well, and Stanley participates whether we want him to or not. We’ve been doing it for a year and a few months now, and the results have been encouraging. Read More

One of the more amusing things about this campaign season has been the struggle of politicians and the mainstream media to come to grips with the blogosphere. They try to define it, contain it, co-opt it, manipulate it, yet despite their best efforts, it keeps slipping away. I laughed out loud when I heard a commentary by Mickey Kaus of Slate magazine on NPR’s Day to Day introduced as a “radio blogâ€?. Don’t blogs by definition live on the Internet? Kaus’ piece sounded just like any other radio dispatch, except that it happened to be done by a well-known blogger… Read More

For some, it was a modern-day miracle. For others, it was one of the disasters foretold for the last days. And whatever one’s religious affiliation, it is almost certainly a sign of the Apocalypse. Read More

No one else has commented on the recent First Presidency statement on Same-Gender marriage, so I’ll venture something. Forgive me if this has been hashed out before — I haven’t read all of the gargantuan threads in the archives. Read More

This should be a blog administrator post, but I’m not blog administrator. Anyway, I tracked down the bug in the comment code. Please let me know if you have any unexpected problems posting now by replying to this comment. Of course, if you are having problems posting, you might not be able to reply, but I don’t think this was that kind of bug — comments were still getting through before the fix. Read More

A year ago I met a French philosopher, Michel Juffé, at a conference on Levinas and psychology at Seattle University. In August of this year, I took part in a conference on loss that he sponsored at Cerisy-la-Salle, in Normandy. Read More

Sartre once remarked that “hell is other people.� The remark, I think, is revealing. In a sense the brand of existentialism pushed by Sartre represents the apotheosis of individualism. In the end, he offers nothing beyond the authenticity of personal choice, which becomes the ultimate source of meaning and value. His view of hell suggest that within this vision of heroic intellectual and moral self-sufficiency lies a rather nasty strand of misanthropy and solipsism. Joseph Smith’s vision of hell, I think, is equally revealing. Read More

Seinfeld fans will remember this memorable speech by George Costanza, contemplating the impending meeting of his fiancee Susan and his friend Elaine: George: You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to exist. You see, right now I have Relationship George. But there is also Independent George. That’s the George you know, the George you grew up with… Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George. Jerry: I love that George. George: Me too, and he’s dying. If Relationship George walks… Read More

Rusty at Nine Moons has recently offered a tri-partite model of nudity: P0rnography: nudity with the intent to arouse (Playb0y, p0rn sites, p0rn movies, etc.). Nudity: lack-of-clothing with the intent to display beauty, non-beauty, or nature (Manet, Rodin, fine art photography, etc.). Lack-of-clothing: no clothing with no intent except utilitarian purposes (breast feeding, showering, sex, etc.). Read More

Ok, so it doesn’t work as well as the Lennon/McCartney original. Still. Consider this a more or less open thread on the topic of serving “senior missions” (has the church settled on a specific nomenclature yet?). Some months ago, after listening to a talk at a stake conference, or perhaps a general conference address, it suddenly hit me: by the time I am retirement age (sometime in the 2030s), serving a mission with one’s spouse as a senior couple will be nearly as expected, and perhaps even nearly as common, as is it for young men to serve missions today.… Read More

I had occasion to reflect upon 3 Ne. 11 recently in preparation for a Gospel Doctrine lesson. As I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have lived through the calamities that were a part of the sign of Christ’s death in the Americas, I was struck again by the fact that the Nephites gathered at the temple spontaneously. Read More

In a prior thread, Aaron suggested that we make a blogger family tree and Bryce gave his own information. It’s a fun question — who knows who, and how, outside of the loose cluster of LDS blogs that we call the bloggernacle? Read More

(awkward pause) (waits expectantly) Read More

There seems to be a minor bug in one of the comment scripts, which is causing error messages when people enter comments. As usual, our crack team of elite experts (hah!) is investigating. In the meantime, as far as we can tell, all comments are going through just fine — it’s just giving an error message afterwards. So rest easy, your comment should be fine. And we’ll get this fixed, like all of the other little bugs that crop up around here from time to time. Read More