Karen Hall blogs the convention, in true New York Post style. She’s got a Page Six section (with boldface names like Don King and Brooks & Dunn), a bit of politics, and not-one-but-two different discussions of possible public nudity. With Karen’s post, I think BCC has solidified its status as the New York Post of the bloggernacle (does that mean that Steve Evans is the bloggernacle Rupert Murdoch?). After all, how often can you go to any other Mormon group blog and read a sentence starting out “If I wanted to rip off my dress . . . “?
Back to Primary
When we moved to Jonesboro, I found myself called into the elder’s quorum presidency, which is the first time I’ve ever served in any kind of executive capacity in the church. (Being a district leader in the mission doesn’t count.) I served with two elder’s quorum presidents, and found myself seeing church service, and the economics and politics of running a ward, from what was for me an entirely new and somewhat fascinating angle. But all experiences must come to an end, and when our elder’s quorum president was called into the just-reconstituted bishopric, I was released. After floating free for about a month, I was returned to what is, surely, my natural habitat. Primary.
For Labor Day–Remembering Esther Peterson
Before T&S is reduced entirely to partisan bickering and banter among Yankees fans (it’s OK, guys, I understand–not everyone is noble enough to endure the agonies of Red Sox fandom), I thought I’d write about Mormonism’s own labor hero, Esther Peterson. This is mostly adapted from an interview Cokie Roberts did in 1993, and retold in her book _We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters_ (dumb title; pretty good book). Esther Peterson’s mother was one of the first women to attend Brigham Young Academy, but she had to drop out and work when her father became ill. So from a young age, Esther was aware of the real necessity of women being able to work and earn a living. Esther left Utah to attend Columbia Teachers College, where she met Oliver Peterson. They married and moved to Boston, where Esther taught at a girls’ school. She also volunteered to teach working girls at the YWCA in the evenings. One night, she arrived to find a nearly empty classroom, and learned that her students were striking, because the conditions of their work had been changed, making it much more difficult and time-consuming for them to produce each piece for which they were paid. Esther said, “I thought a strike was simply terrible. I was raised that [striking workers] had bombs in their pockets and were communists. But Oliver said, ‘go find out, go find out.” Of course, she found no bomb-throwing communists, just…
Happy Labor Day!
It’s that time of year again, when we get to celebrate labor by doing no work whatsoever. It’s a great idea. So I’ll be dutifully doing my part, and taking the family to a baseball game.
Some Random European (mostly French) Thoughts
A week and a few days ago, I returned from a trip to Europe, mostly in France. I was at a conference center in a chateau in Normandy, Cerisy-la-salle. The conference was good; its only drawback, for me, was that it was an interdisciplinary conference. I think my presentation and the discussion afterward went well, especially considering the fact that my French is, to put it mildly, barbarous. Contrary to popular mythology, people were not rude about the state of my French. They worked hard to understand me and gave me the benefit of the doubt. I was the only person there for whom English was the mother tongue.
Book of Mormon Family Home Evening Lesson Twelve
(This is last week’s; I’ll have today’s later today. Sorry to get behind; I was out of town.) BMS: King Benjamin MBM: King Benjamin Scripture: Mosiah 5:7 Theme: We can follow Jesus Christ. Resources: 1. The June 1992 Friend has a flannel board for King Benjamin. 2. GAPK #307 3. Children’s Songbook #276 “Do As I’m Doing” 4. The June 2000 Friend has a nice, short story called “King Benjamin’s Words.” 5. We played a little game with the poster article called “Prophets” from the May 2003 Friend. 6. The kids’ favorite part was when we took turns pretending to be King Benjamin standing on his tower (i.e., kitchen chair) and telling the people assembled in their tents (blankets) what they could do to follow Jesus.
A test post
Test 1
Sunday School Lesson 35
Lesson 35: Helaman 13-16 Chapter 13 Verses 1,ff: Does the Lord threaten the Nephites through Samuel, telling them to “repent or else�? If so, how do we understand such a threat? How does it differ from bullying? If not, how are we to understand this kind of prophecy? Verse 5: What does Samuel mean by “the sword of justice�? Verse 7: What are the glad tidings which the angel brought him and which he hoped the Nephites would receive? Verse 8: Why does the Lord say he will withdraw from them because of the hardness of their hearts rather than because of their wickedness? What does the Lord mean when he says he will take his word from among them? When he says he will suffer them no longer? When he says he will turn the hearts of their brethren against them? (After all, it can’t mean he’ll send the Lamanites against them since the Lamanites are now righteous.)
Sunday School Lesson 34
Lesson 34: Helaman 6-12 Chapter 6 Verse 3: How does the attitude of the members of the Church compare here with Moroni’s attitude? Verse 9: As soon as we read that the Nephites and Lamanites “became exceedingly rich� what do we expect to read about soon? Verse 17: Why do they want gain? What does it mean to be lifted up above another? What’s wrong with it? How do we lift ourselves above others? Verse 27: Why is the comparison of the Gadianton robbers to Cain an important one for us? What does it tell us? Verse 30: What does it mean to say that Satan is the author of all sin? Does that mean I am not the author of any sins? If so, how can I be held responsible?
Theodicy and Me
Yesterday was our last long beach day before the start of school. As I watched my achingly beautiful children playing in the waves and building sandcastles, I couldn’t help but think about how utterly charmed their lives are (with the exception of having a neurotic and incompetent mother, whose genetic endowment to them will likely result in eyebrows, noses, and thighs that fail to meet the highest aesthetic standards). And of course, because of them, my life is also blessed beyond all reasonable hope. This unnerves me; it is so clear to me that these blessings are bestowed without my meriting them that I don’t even know how to be properly grateful. The background of my brooding, of course, was the news from Beslan, where hundreds of parents spent the day waiting, praying, hoping, and then, horrifyingly, identifying the maimed and burned bodies of their children–children who were loved like mine, whose parents surely deserved God’s favor as much or as little as I do. I can often, from the comfort of my reading chair, appreciate the doctrine of free agency, and find reason to worship a God who values it so highly that he will not interfere. I can even love the idea, at least, of “The Weeping God of Mormonism” (Gene England, Dialogue Spring 2002). But not today. I would prefer a God whose justice and mercy are more recognizable to my puny human mind.
Move to Word Press
I think this is now running. It looks like we just plain outgrew MT. I guess all of the earlier time outs were a warning. Apparently, it doesn’t handle particularly well when there are 1000 entries and 20,000 comments (3 MB of entries and 20 MB of comments). I would have preferred to have kept things in MT, having already done a lot of work in that software, but it looks like we hit the limit. There are still some changes to be made.
New Report on Abortion Deaths
A new report finds that 70,000 women per year die in unsafe abortions. It looks to me like that is a data point that should be easy for both sides to spin. For pro-life advocates, it is further proof of the harm caused by abortion. And for pro-choice advocates, it is further proof that women need better access to safe abortion services.
Washington D.C. Sex-Blogging
By now it’s pretty old news, but in case anyone missed it, a tempest in a teapot hit D.C. a few weeks ago. (That’s the Washington Post link, and it’s completely safe for work, thouh the text is a bit sex-oriented in topic). A young female Senate staff assistant named Jessica Cutler (she was a mail opener) was having flings with multiple, multiple men. And she blogged about it. Her blog was apparently meant to be an update on her social life, so her friends could keep up with it. By the time it became public, she had detailed her sexual encounters with a half-dozen men over the course of a few months. She was sleeping with co-workers, friends, rich Washingtonians who paid her in cash, and staid, married Republicans. She’s 26, and she now has a six-figure book deal and a contract with Playboy. I’m not completely sure what to think of Ms. Cutler’s widely-reported story. On the one hand, it provides yet another reason not to have a fling with your mail opener (or secretary, or maid, etc). She might be blogging about it, and if she is, you might end up being awfully embarrassed. On the other hand, Ms. Cutler has successfully leveraged her sex life into a book deal that many authors would kill for. [But would they sleep with six guys and then blog about it? –Ed. If they thought it would work, probably —…
Racist by Association
More than once in my career, I have been told by colleagues that they had me wrong. They had assumed, because of my religion, that I had unkind feelings toward racial minorities. After observing me in various settings, however, they had concluded that their initial assumption was unfair. These moments are always bittersweet. On the one hand, I am pleased to have gained some measure of approval, even if I have not consciously sought it. On the other hand, I wonder how many other people never get past the initial assumption. When I was an undergraduate, a marketing professor told me that Proctor & Gamble assumed that every customer complaint was representative of six (or was it eight?) other unhappy customers. Similarly, I assume that for every person who admits to having this initial negative opinion of me based my religion, many more people simply harbor the opinion without ever giving it expression. Moreover, I fear that some people will not take the time to disabuse themselves of this unfair assumption or, even worse, will find confirmation for their opinion in some errant word or action on my part. I am starting at a deficit, and it can be tough to climb out.
Protected: 12 Questions Schedule
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Guest Blogging Schedule
================================ Scheduled: Carol Armga: May 1-14 Patrick Mason: June 12-26 Jonathan Green: July 7-21 Carrie Lundell: August 1-15 Jill Mulvay Derr: End of August ================================ Accepted invitation, no date yet set: Jeremiah John (Adam) (on long-term hold) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Julie) Terryl Givens (Fall) (Jim) Jon Wilson (aka Ebenezer Orthodoxy) (Matt) Aaron Brown (Matt) Richard Oman (Nate) ================================ Invited, awaiting response: Mother of Ebenezer Orthodoxy Rob Daines? ================================ Approved by bloggers, not yet invited: Rob Fergus (post-post-post-election) Brother Haglund Sally Gordon Brent Andrewsen? Sarah Aldo Edwards Gray & Young (12Q?) Kristin Smith Dayley Christine Durham (12Q?) ================================ Invited, not accepted Keith Lane (possibly in 2005) (said no, for now). (And Jennifer Lane?) Randy Butterfield (no). ================================ Under review John Fowles ================================ Other thoughts and possibilities: J. Scott Craig Bryan Earl Matt Fairholm Robert Kirby Tuan Samahom Alden Stradling Emily Tippets Laurie Uriquiaga Cheiko Okazaki (Kris) Matt Asplund Tony Kimball Zina Peterson Melissa Inouye McMullen Katie Blakesley Nancy Dredge Heather Clayton ________ Allison Pingree Michelle Larsen Karen Lynn Davidson Eric D. Snider? Jennifer Lane Jill Derr Marilyn Waite Matt Astle John Payne Alonzo Gaskill David Holland Russell’s brother-in-law =============== Summer 2007– Nate Oman to reinvite Richard Bushman Ray (Curtis DeGraw) invited and accepted
Technical Update: Still Not 100%
Hi everyone, here’s the scoop — Things are back to _looking_ more or less normal. However, rebuilding is still on the blink (and I’m still not sure why). Comments will eventually show up, but you’ll get a 500 error, until I figure out what’s going on.
Thanks, Jeff!
We’ve been very happy to have had Jeff Lindsay as a guest blogger for the past two weeks. His posts were uniformly interesting and informative. Thanks for being a T & S guest blogger, Jeff! (And note that he can still be visited at his blog Mormanity, and it his own Cracked Planet website).
Sheri Dew at the Republican Convention
As many of us know, Sheri Dew was selected to give the invocation at the Republican National Convention. The prayer she gave, as transcribed, was rather simple and probably uncontroversial: Heavenly Father, we come before Thee as citizens who care about this nation to express our gratitude for this land of liberty where we have the freedom to live, vote, and worship as we choose. We are grateful for the evidence of Thy hand in the founding of this nation. We are grateful for every man and woman in uniform, and ask Thee to bless them and their families. We pray for the wisdom to protect and defend all families, for our nation is only as strong as its homes. We are grateful for a Commander in Chief who seeks Thy guidance. Wilt Thou bless him with wisdom and courage. We plead with Thee for peace and continued freedom-not only freedom from those who would terrorize us and encroach upon our peace of mind, but also freedom from acrimony. We pray for Thy Spirit to be with us today, that we may be wise and discerning. We love Thee, Father, and we thank Thee for loving us. We worship Thee in many ways. But as a follower of Jesus Christ, and in behalf of all who believe likewise, we offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. As many of us may know, Sister Dew has had a…
Now How Exactly Is This Going to Work at the Resurrection?
Woman Turns Husband’s Remains Into Diamond.
Praxy and Doxy
John Hatch continues his coup over at the liberalmediablog, with an interesting post on whether the church values orthodoxy (right belief) over orthopraxy (right action). John notes: If I don’t show up to help someone in Elder’s Quorum move, no one says a word. If I miss my home teaching, no one calls to chastise me. If I don’t sign up to do a cannery assignment, not a word of disapproval is uttered in my direction. . . . When I mentioned that the Melchizedek Priesthood was probably restored in 1830 and not 1829, two people were so angry I thought after Church they’d be heading to the hardware store to pick up torches and pitchforks. Why might heterodoxy be considered a greater threat than heteropraxy? (If it is indeed so considered, that is). My intuition is that it might be because heterodoxy looks like an active rebellion, while heteropraxy looks more like a natural process of decay. But it does seem like a strange prioritization system — I suspect that more people fall away from the church because their home teachers didn’t visit them than fall away because they’re worried about Zelph.
Technical note on Comments and Time Out
We get a lot of remarks about our wimpy little comment engine. It times out a lot. Sometimes people don’t realize this, and they double post (or triple, or quadruple, etc) a comment. I don’t know a way around this. I had previously thought that it was a result of the site being run by a bunch of lawyers in their spare time, with no real knowledge of programming or coding. However, I now think that it may just be a deeper MT problem. Over at Three Years of Hell, Anthony Rickey explains why MT sometimes tends to go out to lunch when posting a comment. Using the hypothetical of comments at Will Baude’s blog Crescat Sententia (a popular legal-oriented blog), he notes: Now imagine what happens if Mr. Baude writes a post to this category that attracts a lot of comments. Every time one of his readers adds their little bit of opinion, not only is 150K+ of homepage rebuilt, but nearly a megabyte of category will end up rebuilt, all in order to increment the number of comments entry by one. Ditto for the weekly archives. Ouch. I’m pretty sure the same applies here, which probably (along with Kaimi’s creaky coding) accounts for the time lag when making comments.
What “Evidences” Really Matter in a Testimony?
A question: what “evidences” might actually matter in obtaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon or of the Restoration? Is the issue one that we (the Church, “on the average”) emphasize too much or not enough? Background: Latter-day Saints rightly emphasize the importance of revelation in gaining knowledge and faith about the things of God. This can exasperate some critics, who wish that we would collapse under the weight of their alleged “evidence” that the Church is false and abandon our testimonies. They may attribute our stubborn persistence in the faith as a sign of lemming-like ignorance and self-deception, thinking that our testimonies are little more than hypnotic delusions shrouded with warm fuzzy feelings. How foreign and frustrating the LDS testimony seems to be to some people, yet it so thoroughly biblical. Peter was a keen thinker, IMO, yet his testimony of the Savior was not based on a consensus of leading scholars, or on DNA studies showing that the DNA of Christ was of divine origin, or on an objective comparison of Christ’s actions with rabbi-approved interpretations of ancient prophecy. It wasn’t even based on the scientific improbability of the miracles Peter saw. When Christ praised Peter for having a testimony of the Savior, it’s source was clear to the Lord: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17). This rock of…
Swifter, Higher, Stronger
The 2004 Olympics have come to an end. Melissa and I are not complete Olympic junkies, but we watched and followed closely numerous athletic events, as we do every four years. I’m not much of a sports fan, last competed in an athletic contest when I was in junior high (cross-country: I was pretty good at running away from people), and know very little about most of the events we watch. But the intensity and quality of these men and women, and of what they can make their bodies do, is often compelling. It’s captivating to watch Australian Ian Thorpe’s long arms pierce the surface of the water on his way to yet another gold medal, or watch Ladji Doucoure of France power his way through the 110 hurdles, hitting every single one and yet desperately stay in contention until tumbling forward over the last one at the very end. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, indeed. Melissa particularly enjoys many of the rhythmic or precision events: gymnastics, diving, etc. I fixate on different contests randomly, just depending on who or what catches my eye or interest: an unusual competitor, a possible record-breaker, etc. Pole vault is not one of those events that have usually attracted my attention, but it did this year. One member of our ward, Mark Calvin, came to Jonesboro to train under Earl Bell, a local legend and former world champion pole vaulter,…