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Patrick Mason, who wrote the book PLANTED, gave this talk at the FAIR Conference recently. There is a video online, but somebody over on one of the "unmentionable" anti-Mormon sites did a transcript which is below. It is a long read, so get your pop-corn and settle in for the night.
Edited to add the TL:DR
He describes an LDS church that seems really nice (and nuanced), but it's not like any ward I've attended, and it's not what is taught during GC.
Since Planted was published, I've received lots of e-mails from people who are reconsidering, renegotiating, or otherwise transitioning in their faith or membership in the church, as well as from concerned family members of those who are struggling.
By show of hands, how many of you personally know someone—a friend, a family member, someone in your ward—who has recently not just slipped into inactivity, but proactively left the church over historical, doctrinal, or contemporary issues?
It's even more clear to me now than when I wrote the book that there is a lot of confusion out there, and a lot of very real pain, felt by sincere people who are trying to figure it all out. Many of the people I've heard from haven't yet left, and are holding on with their fingertips, trying to find a way to stay in the church with intellectual, spiritual, and emotional integrity. But many others have already left, and no amount of reclamation work is going to bring them back, because their feelings are so deep, and often their paradigms have shifted so profoundly.
For some who have transitioned out of the church, they may have had different outcomes if they had found satisfactory answers or a sympathetic community sooner. I recently had a long lunch with an old friend I hadn't seen since graduate school, when he was a gung-ho member of the ward. We hadn't been in touch for years, but he reached out to me by e-mail, said he had read Planted, and wanted to talk. He told me how over the past couple years he started questioning the church, primarily because of information he encountered on various websites and podcasts. Within a few months he went from full activity to total anger and bitterness, leaving the church entirely and wanting absolutely nothing to do with it. He has mellowed a bit, thanks in part to attending a post-Mormon support group. He can now attend sacrament meeting with family members, but is still contemplating removing his name from the records. At lunch, we had a great conversation, and were both very honest about where we're at in our respective faith journeys and why we feel the way we do. A couple days later he e-mailed me and wistfully said, "If only I had reconnected with you first." Emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, he feels it's simply too late to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. I wrote Planted to try to preempt some of those tumbles, and to give all the king's horses and all the king's men—and women—some ideas on how we might help keep people on the wall, or, failing that, at least understand what happens and act with compassion when they fall off.
To me, it's essential to actually hear the voices of those who are struggling. No one narrative is representative of the whole. But as one example of the type of person who is doing all he can to hang on and stay in, I want to read, with permission, excerpts from an e-mail I recently received:
Most of the stuff I've read [online] that attacks polygamy and [Book of Mormon] translation issues tend to spin the quotes and facts they use pretty hard, and it's amazing how good they are at lulling you away into not critically examining their claims and doing your own research. It's little wonder to me why people leave the church so quickly after learning some of these issues because there are people out there that have mastered the craft of presenting their information as infallible and their opinions as iron clad. . . .
I know there's a certain stigma around [this online] material, and I completely agree that it's toxic. But once a seed of doubt has been planted and you begin to lose trust in what you've always believed, that stigma starts to fade and you start thinking you need to get your information from somewhere. . . .
I feel kind of exhausted with examining these types of controversial issues. . . .
So, I believe. . . . I really do. At times I've wondered if I believe mostly because want it all to be true so badly. I want there to be more to life, and I want to know that our family relationships and existence perpetuate after we die. I want it to be true that somebody is hearing and answering my prayers, and the feelings that I have in my heart are coming from a source greater than myself. I want to believe that forgiveness of sins is possible, and that Christ truly lives. . . .
There are still things that I think will always be puzzling to me. There is a plausible narrative that you could construct (and many people do) about it all being a lie. But there is also a plausible narrative that you can construct that it is all true. Sometimes I feel like I'm having to make allowance for a lot of ambiguity and shortcomings of men…
So…where do you think that leaves me? At this point I feel like my personal beliefs aren't quite in line with most members of the LDS church. . . . in line with the core doctrines and beliefs…but I just feel like once you've wandered down that rabbit hole…if you decide to stick around for a while I think it forces you to confront the fact that our past leaders have made mistakes, and our history as a church is pretty messy and unclear in a few spots. It leaves me uncertain about where exactly to draw the line on what to consider infallible doctrine and what to consider the opinions of sincere, but flawed leaders called of God.
This captures so much of what I've heard from so many people: new discoveries on the Internet, feelings of confusion and doubt, being wary of the stigma associated with doubt, mental and emotional and spiritual exhaustion, grappling with prophetic fallibility, and remodeling the house of faith in the midst of both uncertainty and newfound wisdom.
Now let me share what I wrote back to him:
You are exactly the type of person I wrote Planted for – a real seeker who is willing to put in the time and the work, not someone who is ready to bail at the first sign of trouble. . . .
As I read your…message, two lines stuck out to me:
"So, I believe. I really do. . . . I want to believe."
"There are still things that I think will always be puzzling to me."
This is pretty much exactly where I find myself. And of course it is reminiscent of the New Testament: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."
Mormonism is distinctive among successful global religions in the sense that it was born in the Enlightenment age. . . . One thing that has happened is that many Mormons, operating in modes similar to Protestant fundamentalists, have sought to gain or impose the same type of modern scientific certainty on their religious faith as they do the natural world. Thus all the hullabaloo about scientific and archaeological evidences for the Book of Mormon, etc. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with formulating rational grounds for belief—to the contrary, I think the anti-intellectual strain within Mormonism (and American culture more broadly) may be even more problematic.
But it's ultimately a question of parallel and in some ways competing epistemologies. The scientific revolution has wrought wonders in our world because we have been better able to apprehend our natural world through rigorous inquiry. Some people believe that there is nothing that escapes those naturalistic tools and methods. . . . I personally believe that there are elements of the cosmos and the human experience that go beyond what could ever be perceived, measured, or fully understood through naturalistic methods, no matter how refined. I would count among these things the central claims of Christianity: the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and the reality and workings of the Holy Spirit. These are, quite literally, articles of faith that can neither be proven nor disproven by a naturalistic, rationalistic, Enlightenment approach to knowledge.
One of the problems we have in Mormonism is that we have loaded too much into the Truth Cart. And then when anything in the cart starts to rot a bit, or look unseemly upon further inspection, some have a tendency to overturn the entire cart or seek a refund for the whole lot. We have loaded so much into the Truth Cart largely because we have wanted to have the same kind of certainty about our religious claims—down to rather obscure doctrinal issues—as we do about scientific claims. . . .
Over the years the church leadership and laity have also done our religion no favors by putting more in the cart than the cart could possibly bear. . . . Many of the things which trouble people are things that we probably should never have been all that dogmatic about in the first place. I find that a little humility about our doctrine, especially given the contingencies of its historical development, goes a long way in remaining satisfied with the whole. . . .
The CES Letter [formally, "Letter to a CES Director," which he cited as one of the online sources he had read] is emblematic of this all-or-nothing approach to religion. . . . The letter is nearly a perfect inverse of the version of Mormonism it is reacting to. Jeremy Runnels may have written the letter, but it was actually an inevitability—someone, sometime, somewhere was going to write that letter, because it was the obvious response to a certain style, tone, and mode of Mormonism that culminated in the highly doctrinaire, no-retreat-no-surrender positions taken by certain church leaders and members especially in the second half of the twentieth century. I would actually agree with the CES letter's basic notion, that the Mormonism it is responding to is unsustainable. Where I disagree is that I don't think the Mormonism it is responding to is actually the real, only, or inevitable Mormonism. Certainly, that was some people's Mormonism, but it's not my Mormonism, and I don't think it's the Mormonism that is going to endure in future decades and centuries.
One of the key tasks before us is developing a better, more sophisticated, and frankly more Christian theology of prophets and prophethood. We have treated our prophets too often as demigods. We do not believe in prophetic infallibility. This cannot be said enough, and it cannot be taken seriously enough. We give it lip service but too often do not believe it, nor consider its implications, other than the intellectually lazy conclusion that the whole thing must either be all true or a complete fraud. . . . We need to think harder about why we should…sustain prophets and apostles whom we know will occasionally be wrong about certain things. We don't always know what those things are except in hindsight, because we were usually all wrong together. . . . We still have a lot of work to do. . . .
I sincerely hope you can find a way to stay with and in and for the church, because we need people like you.
As you can see, I don't think that we can just blame the doubters for not believing enough. Indeed, in some cases they were set up by being asked to believe too much, either in the absence of actual data or in doctrinal propositions or theological frameworks that could not stand the test of time, let alone a basic smell test. Take two examples from my mission. First, I repeatedly and passionately bore testimony that as a young man Joseph Smith was absolutely not engaged in treasure seeking or money digging. Second, I read and discussed with other missionaries various talks by General Authorities teaching that blacks were "fence-sitters," or otherwise "less valiant," in the pre-existence, which explained why they were "cursed" in mortality. In the first case, I certainly did not intend to lie to anyone, but that's precisely what I did because I hadn't been taught any better. The second case is more pernicious to me, with moral and ethical implications that make me shudder as I look back. But as missionaries we were simply doing what the rest of the church and its leaders had been doing for almost a century and a half—filling in theological and historical blanks with what were really some rather reprehensibly bad explanations, because we felt like we had to have a solid doctrinal basis for everything, even if we were making it up. And if a General Authority said it, well then, it must be dictated straight from heaven. I've had to repent for my own un-Christian acts and words, and have been able to reconcile myself to the fact that the church that sent me out as an official representative didn't arm me with better and more accurate information. However, many people have not been able to make the same peace. They feel that they were betrayed or set up by the very institution that had taught them to be honest and true.
Part of our baptismal covenant to "mourn with those who mourn" is to try to understand, empathetically and charitably, what those with sincere doubts and questions are going through. Most people who become disaffected from the church—many of whom are returned missionaries, endowed in the temple, and have served faithfully in major callings—fall into one of two very broad and overlapping categories: what Richard Bushman refers to those who feel either "switched off" or "squeezed out."[1]
The switched-off group includes those who encounter troubling information online or somewhere else, usually regarding our history or doctrine. This new knowledge doesn't square with what they had previously learned in all their years in the church—sometimes by way of direct contradiction, but usually by revealing parts of the story that we don't typically share in our three-hour block on Sunday. There is a standard list of problematic subjects, most of which are now discussed at some length in the church's excellent Gospel Topics essays on lds.org, and which for a half century have been the subject of intelligent analysis in print sources like Dialogue, the Journal of Mormon History, and numerous academic books. But most people are not consulting the peer-reviewed scholarship, and far too many church members are still unaware that the Gospel Topics essays even exist. In recent years many thousands have found their way to the previously mentioned "Letter to a CES Director," a slick but in my opinion intellectually amateurish document that has midwifed countless people out of the church. Unfortunately, for many who land there, the "Letter" is the culmination of their quest for knowledge rather than being just one data point among many.
In any case, once they discover these new facts and realize they are not just the inventions of malicious anti-Mormon propaganda, many people start to wonder what else they haven't been told. They begin to see duplicity rather than sincerity in the church's presentation of its doctrine and history. Skepticism and doubt begin to overcome trust and faith. One of the ironies we haven't fully appreciated in our discussions of doubt is that to some degree our church culture is responsible for many people's reactions to troubling information. Whether consciously or not, they are simply applying what they learned in well-intentioned but ultimately damaging Primary and youth lessons, such as when the teacher offers the class a bowl of ice cream, then dumps a small amount of dirt on it and asks if anyone wants it now. Of course they say no, and the teacher points out that this is what just a little bit of sin does—it ruins everything. So those who see a little bit of dirt in church history are acting in ways that seem entirely commensurate with what they have been taught their whole lives—God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, so we turn away from sin and touch not the unclean thing. Unable to manage the cognitive dissonance, these people's relationship to the church becomes tenuous, and often breaks. Many feel that they cannot participate with integrity in church meetings where certain details are either neglected, covered up, or denied. In short, they have become switched off. Some of these people not only leave the church, but also abandon Christianity and even theism, since God, Jesus, and Mormonism had always come as a package deal in their minds.
The second group in Richard Bushman's perceptive typology are those who feel "squeezed out," like they just don't fit in at church. Usually this comes about more because of current issues than past ones, though historical and doctrinal concerns may be contributing factors. Oftentimes those who feel squeezed out fully embrace the basic principles and ordinances of the gospel. But they feel alienated over things like the dominant and unreflexive political conservativism among most American church members, or heartfelt questions about whether girls and women have all the opportunities for spiritual growth and recognition in the church that boys and men do, or how the church fails to adequately minister to and often hurts our LGBT sisters and brothers. Feeling isolated, alienated, judged, and sometimes pressured, these Saints sense that there is simply no place for them in the church in spite of their core beliefs. They feel squeezed out, and many of them leave us.
Of course, these two categories grossly oversimplify the complex reasons why people choose to withdraw or leave the church altogether. Every person's story is as unique as they are. It's impossible for a book, General Conference address, or even scripture to minister to people one by one, as Jesus did, so that's where each of us comes in. As we saw from the previous show of hands, doubt and disaffection are manifested somewhere in virtually all of our families, wards, and social networks. So even if doubt is a stranger to your own heart, through your relationships with others the challenge of faith crisis, as it is often called, is just as important to you as if you were going through it yourself.
My strong belief is that the most important thing we can do to empathize with and minister compassionately to those who are experiencing doubt and disaffection is to make the church a more welcoming place for those who struggle. It is our responsibility, in our church callings but also as parents and siblings and friends, to create the conditions in which people can feel comfortable working through their questions and doubts in the midst of the body of Christ rather than feeling excluded from it. I believe that a more embracing Mormonism may be the most important factor in helping people more fully embrace Mormonism. I recently read about certain members of a ward who refused to take the sacrament from a young man who had come out as gay but who was declared worthy by his bishop. That is not an embracing Mormonism.[2]
One of the most fundamental and recurring images used in scripture to evoke Christ's grace and our Father's love, is that of embrace. Think of Esau, who "ran to meet" his estranged brother Jacob, "and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" as they wept together (Gen. 33:4). Or the prodigal son's father, who "had compassion" on his son, "and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20). Or Lehi's exultant declaration, "I am encircled about eternally in the arms of [the Lord's] love" (2 Nephi 1:15). Or Mormon's description of being "clasped in the arms of Jesus" (Mormon 5:11). When we extend an embrace toward others—literally or figuratively—then we are doing the compassionate, reconciling work of Christ.
What prevents us from being more embracing, not just of those with questions and doubts but of all kinds of people who don't already think or act like us? I was recently struck by a comment made to me by a work colleague. She and her husband have been looking for a good church community to support them as they raise their two adopted granddaughters. They've been attending an LDS ward for a few months now. They love it and are talking seriously about getting baptized. At lunch a couple weeks ago, she was regaling me with the many virtues of Mormonism and Mormons—which I thought was my job!—when she paused and said, "I just don't get why they're all so defensive."
I think her comment was more perceptive than she may have realized. As I look across nearly two hundred years of Mormon history, I see a people who have been motivated first by faith, but secondly by fear. That has led us to think, speak, and behave in ways that are not always welcoming either to outsiders or to those within our midst who have questions, different perspectives, or otherwise don't fit a certain mold. Having written a book about nineteenth-century anti-Mormon violence, I get that there were really good reasons why our pioneer ancestors were scared.[3] And even since systematic anti-Mormon violence ended, we have continued to endure more than our fair share of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, sometimes innocent but often malicious. Afraid of giving our critics any ammunition, we have closed ranks and presented only what we think is the image of our best selves to the world. Furthermore, we have created the impression of absolute unity in both the leadership and membership that is in many ways a useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. I'm not saying that this came out of anything but the best intentions—namely, the survival and unity of the church. But I do think that a lot of the way we have constructed our community has been predicated on fear, which has led to a certain parochialism, risk aversion, lack of moral imagination, reticence to take accountability for past missteps, and the overall defensiveness that my colleague spotted.
Circling the wagons was an effective pioneer tactic, but was also a telltale sign of vulnerability and weakness, not strength. Shifting analogies somewhat, for too many years we refused to yield to dissenters and critics even an inch of territory—including some pretty rocky, barren outposts that should never have fallen within our borders and definitely weren't worth defending. This no-retreat-no-surrender mentality has only fueled the CES Letter and other polemics, which have made the claim that a series of apparent infelicities, contradictions, gaps, errors, and transgressions invalidate the entire Mormon system. They can effectively make that argument, and lead many thousands of people out of the church, because too many Latter-day Saints, including many of our leaders, have over the years essentially made that same all-or-nothing argument. In the process we constructed an edifice that was too rigid and brittle to withstand the storms of scrutiny that have been unleashed especially in our Internet age.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting we simply pack up and go home because there are some battles that we're going to lose, or have already lost. That's exactly the slippery slope / house of cards mentality I want us to get out of. Furthermore, I'm not arguing against the virtues of prudence, as individuals or an institution. Of course we want to institute proper safeguards that protect us, our children, and the church we love from a wide range of human frailties and corruptions. Nor am I suggesting that we forget our history of persecution. Indeed, in a best case scenario, our past traumas can have very positive effects in not only strengthening our own community but also our sympathy for others. Social psychologist Ervin Staub calls this "altruism born of suffering." As he writes, "When victimized/traumatized persons heal from trauma and have certain other constructive experiences, their pain and suffering can become a source of empathy and caring, and of motivation to help those who have suffered, or to prevent suffering."[4] We have seen this in a remarkable way with the church's new refugee assistance initiative, "I Was a Stranger." I had one of my most powerful spiritual experiences in years listening to Elder Patrick Kearon's General Conference talk in April when he connected the saga of modern-day refugees to our own heritage, teaching, "Their story is our story, not that many years ago."[5] So rather than either forgetting our history of persecution or constantly nursing our wounds, let's reflect on the violence committed against our community in the past and say "never again" to similar wrongs being visited on any other minority community today or in the future. Let's transform our past traumas into a religious, social, and even political ethic of solidarity with "the least of these."
So without forgetting our past or wilting in the face of opposition, I believe it's time for Latter-day Saints to move forward with the courage of our convictions. I would suggest that doing so will go a long way in addressing the current predicament of doubt and disaffection that so many of our members are experiencing. Mormonism is a young religion, still finding its legs. For its first century it necessarily focused on origins and basic survival in the face of tremendous persecution and hardship. In its second century the church successfully emphasized stability, respectability, and growth. Only now, as we approach Mormonism's third century, are we in a position where we can think bigger and bolder. I believe that Mormonism's challenge and opportunity in the 21st century will not be simply to survive or even to grow, but rather to contribute, to give something novel and unique that the world desperately needs and can have no other way. What will be our community's gift to the world in this century and the centuries beyond? As we figure it out together, we will galvanize the commitment of our own members, especially our Millennials, who don't just want to belong to a church but yearn to join a movement that they understand to be relevant and to make a real difference in the world.
Living Mormonism with the courage of our convictions will allow us to embrace a wider cross-section of those who may currently feel switched off or squeezed out. The gospel revealed through Joseph Smith is grand, sweeping, and capacious—not narrow, petty, and restrictive. Whatever you think about the Prophet Joseph, you can't say he thought small. It was the audacity, not the conservatism, of his thought that captured the imaginations of the early Saints.
So I'm encouraged when I see us have the courage of our convictions in embracing our doctrine of God—the God of the King Follett discourse and the temple—rather than offering mealy-mouthed compromises to squeeze our God into the box of creedal Christianity. Just like the Israelites wanted a king—"That we also may be like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:20)—for the sake of acceptance and respectability we've too often wanted a God like all the nations, rather than the one who has revealed himself to us in power and glory.
As part and parcel of embracing our doctrine of God, it's encouraging to see more members courageously embracing our theology of Heavenly Mother and the divine feminine, rather than simply perpetuating the patronizing stance that she can't bear us talking about her. And even with the question of women's ordination to the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods off the table, we are beginning to improve in discussing the priestly roles that women serve both in temples and in the everyday church, though of course we still have a long way to go.
It's encouraging to see greater courage in our Seminaries & Institutes, BYU Religious Education classrooms, and even a few Sunday School classes, which are demonstrating that holistic discipleship means educating people's minds as well as their hearts. We are seeing that people can not only tolerate challenging information but indeed are strengthened by the faithful presentation of the whole truth. Facts are stubborn things. When our members, and especially our children, see that their religion can be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as any other topic of study, and doesn't need protective hedges of dumbing-down, denial, and deferred questions, then they will have greater courage in living out their Mormonism.
I am seeing the courage of our convictions in increased appreciation that different people read scripture differently—and that non-literal readings can also be faithful readings. People like Adam Miller, Julie Smith, Grant Hardy, Joe Spencer, and Mike Austin are leading the way in a new generation of LDS scripture scholarship, and our community is so much the richer for it.
This is a hard one for many people, but I am seeing us begin to courageously explore what it really means to sustain fallible prophets and apostles, and to develop a robust theology that sustains our sustaining. The chapter in Planted that I get the most comments on is chapter 6, "In All Patience and Faith," which addresses prophetic fallibility while maintaining the conviction that God does reach down and call a few mortals among us to dedicate their lives and best efforts to proclaiming the gospel, leading the church, and calling us to repentance. One of our community's gifts, as Latter-day Saint Christians, is that we declare that God points us to prophets, apostles, and the church—not because they can save or redeem us, but because they are the temporal means by which he orients us to our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ.
Even with all these positive developments, I believe there are many areas where there is still ample room for improvement. You will have your own list, and may well disagree with mine—but I've got the mic.
I believe we need to summon the courage to finally and truly repent for some of our past transgressions. Let's start with the obvious stuff, like Mountain Meadows, the spurious racial ideologies surrounding the priesthood-temple ban, and generations of patriarchal discourse that relegated women to being reflected light compared to the glory of their husbands and priesthood leaders. Repentance, at least as the church has taught me the principle, requires an admission of wrongdoing and an effort toward reconciliation with those who have been trespassed against. It is more than either just moving on or a lawyerly expression of remorse that bad things may have happened.
I believe we need to summon the courage to authentically incorporate more of the diversity of God's children into our—rather, his—church. Twentieth-century Mormonism was astonishingly successful at creating a committed core of white, middle-class, upwardly mobile, professional, suburban American nuclear families. We need greater courage to allow members in the international church, having been taught correct principles, to govern themselves. We need greater courage to pursue real and sustained ministries to the urban poor, in this country and around the world. Even without changing our doctrine, we need greater courage not just to tolerate but to do all we can to reach out to and welcome our LGBT brothers and sisters who are hurting so badly right now. That includes partaking of the sacrament when it is blessed or passed by gay boys deemed worthy by their bishop like any other Aaronic Priesthood holder, or not isolating LGBT members and treating them like they have or are an infectious disease. And for heaven's sake, let's stop fussing over women wearing pants to church, or men coming with beards or blue shirts. With all the other problems in the church and the world, is that where we're going to spend our emotional energy?
I believe we need to summon the courage to make secularism an ally rather than a bogeyman. Secularism is here to stay as one of the principal conditions of late modern society. Furthermore, we of all people should be grateful for it, because without secularism, with its bequest of disestablishment and religious freedom, there would be no Mormonism. Secularism is not the enemy—it is the very air we breathe, and the foundation for our modern democratic, scientific, and human rights regimes that we all value and which have led to such a dramatic increase in human flourishing. To be sure, secularization can also include an aggressive campaign toward the privatization of religion, in which it is banned mostly or entirely from the public square. And in their most hostile forms, secularization theorists and champions have predicted the inevitable decline of religion, celebrated any movement in that direction, resisted any indicators to the contrary, and portrayed the stubborn persistence of religion as not only backward but genuinely dangerous. But before dismissing secularists as bigoted cranks, let's have the courage to listen to their real grievances and fears about what centuries of state-sponsored religious majoritarianism and moral establishments did to atheists and religious minorities—including, let's not forget, Mormons. Despite the cries of the merchants of fear on both sides, my personal feeling, and scholarly analysis, is that at least in America, thanks to the First Amendment, secularism is still mostly benign and generally beneficial to the flourishing of voluntary religious commitments and communities, including ours.
One of the reasons I'm skeptical of blaming outside influences for our troubles—whether it be secularism, or liberalism, or feminism, or marriage equality, or even Satan—is that doing so can prevent us from engaging in self-critique. On this score I think it's helpful to occasionally revisit the penetrating opening passage of the 1955 classic God in Search of Man, written by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the 20th century:
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living foundation; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.[6]
The vast ranks of eminently modern believers, including myself and most of you here today, prove that living in a secular age does not in itself compel one to give up on belief. So when it comes to declining rates of faith, affiliation, and trust in religious institutions and authority, the secularism of the modern world is more context than cause. The same can be said for feminism, liberalism, capitalism, nationalism, and all the other modern ideological and structural contexts in which Mormonism operates. The charge of our theology, both because of the incarnation of Christ and the ideal of Zion, is to work in and redeem history rather than escape from or condemn it.
But for too many of our members, Mormonism has become, in Rabbi Heschel's words, "irrelevant, dull, oppressive, [and] insipid." When week after week they lurch from thinly veiled political rants in sacrament meeting to faith-promoting rumors in Sunday School to elders quorums that Donald Trump could only describe as "low energy," then it becomes that much easier for them to leave when they feel switched off or squeezed out. To be sure, each person has a responsibility to him- or herself to do what they can to stay planted in the gospel. This includes the hard work of research and sustained reflection—not just casually browsing a few websites, listening to a few podcasts, and then coming to ironclad conclusions about how the church is deceiving us all.
As I wrap up, I will admit that I have two fears for the church that I love and am totally committed to. First, I fear for what I call the "juvenilization" of Mormonism, or the "EFY-ification" of the church, or the "Gospel According to Internet Memes." When it's adults in the room, let's respect one another enough to talk like adults. Most people can handle complexity and nuance. We can stretch beyond what we learned in seminary, though we are so rarely invited to. I have a really smart colleague who once invited the missionaries into his home so he could learn more about Mormonism. When they finished their discussion, with frequent references to their accompanying flipchart, he thought to himself, "That's it?" Indeed, I fear that in too many contexts we're feeding our members and investigators a low-nutrition religious diet that leaves them not only with the unsatisfied feeling of "That's it?" but also leaves them poorly fortified against challenges to their faith. I see signs that we're starting to do better on this score, but frankly only in patchwork fashion.
My second fear is for the fundamentalist takeover of Mormonism. I'm not referring to fundamentalism in terms of polygamy—I'm pretty confident we're totally past that phase of our history. Instead, this is a reference to what I think is the rather remote possibility of a process similar to what happened in the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990s, when theological fundamentalists took over the churches, seminaries, and governing bodies of the denomination and either pushed out liberals and moderates or made their lives in the church so miserable that they left on their own, thus leaving only the fundamentalists to control the whole denomination. There are occasional signs that moderates and liberals are simply not wanted in the contemporary LDS Church. We have already lost too many who feel, incorrectly in my estimation, that the church is simply a shill for the Republican Party and Family Research Council. But for the most part I'm optimistic that the center will hold, and that Zion will transcend the ongoing culture wars.
In the end, I'm bullish about the future of Mormonism, and its ability to speak to the needs of a wide range of God's children, including those who find belief and belonging in the church a genuine struggle. In this moment when we are speaking so much of doubt, perhaps it's helpful to remember that Jesus chided his disciples for their fears as much as, if not more than, their doubts. Remember Paul's counsel to Timothy: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7). I'm convinced that a church that is simultaneously humbler and more self-possessed can capture the imaginations and loyalties of those who feel switched off and squeezed out more than could a church leadership and laity that are constantly on the defensive.
We have a theology that empowers each of us to be anxiously engaged in good causes, to be co-creators and co-participants with Christ in the work of redeeming the world. Flipcharts and risk management will never capture people's hearts. In our 21st-century secular age, Mormonism will succeed because it stretches people's moral imaginations, and calls them to a life of faith that is not small and fearful, but rather creative, venturesome, open, and empowering.
Zion calls. Will we have the courage to get there?
Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
Public forum for those seeking support for their experience in the LDS Church.
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8 posts • Page 1 of 1
- LookingHard
- Posts: 2947
- Joined: 20 Oct 2014, 12:11
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
I too find some of his descriptions and also the Givens very interesting, but different to the point I can't call it "Mormonism". It is just way too different from boots on the ground in wards. Maybe there are some nuanced wards in the bay area and a few other places. I keep hearing the Neo-apologists talking so eloquently that occasionally it gets my interested then I remember, "wait - that isn't what my ward experience is at all." I hear the GD teacher rail in dog-whistle frequencies about how under siege we are from gay marriage while I sit there with a gay man on one side and on the other a recent RM that has 2 brothers that are gay.
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
That was a good read. It gives me hope that things can be better. I still need to figure out how I fit in all of this, but maybe the church will change for the better someday.
Nice find.
Nice find.
Boys are governed by rules. Men are governed by principles.
Sometimes our journeys take us to unexpected places. That is a truly beautiful thing.
Sometimes our journeys take us to unexpected places. That is a truly beautiful thing.
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
Great read! Thanks for sharing, Sheldon.
In a previous post, AmyJ really put me in a Nietzsche mood, and a quote of his came to my mind when reading through.
In a previous post, AmyJ really put me in a Nietzsche mood, and a quote of his came to my mind when reading through.
Concerning the Church, I've come to feel that belief really has no place in it. The truth is the truth, regardless of how anyone feels about it. What's been more effective for me, is to look at the LDS faith, as well as all religious beliefs, practices, ideologies, etc in the light of "is it useful?". What is useful to me can come from many sources (sometimes fiction), and will undoubtedly change throughout my life. The Church has no claim to truth, and no monopoly on goodness. But it is still a wonderful institution, that has made me a better and happier person overall.Nietzsche wrote:"There are two different types of people in the world; those who want to know, and those who want to believe."
"The whole world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole
"Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure."
-Lemony Snicket
"Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure."
-Lemony Snicket
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
Having been at this for a decade I am glad to hear to hear there are still conversations going on around these issues. But until a flood washes out the dead wood all the efforts to make a more inclusive, better LDS world won't happen.
I have liberal LDS friends - they are more TBM than I. I let it stay that way. This journey has taught me much, but I ache when I learn someone else is going through it.
I just think the numbers outrank us. In the 1970's the demographic was the same. We haven't moved that far at all. Just changed the names of issue's.
I do appreciate his effort.
Thanks for finding it for us.
Having been at this for a decade I am glad to hear to hear there are still conversations going on around these issues. But until a flood washes out the dead wood all the efforts to make a more inclusive, better LDS world won't happen.
I have liberal LDS friends - they are more TBM than I. I let it stay that way. This journey has taught me much, but I ache when I learn someone else is going through it.
I just think the numbers outrank us. In the 1970's the demographic was the same. We haven't moved that far at all. Just changed the names of issue's.
I do appreciate his effort.
Thanks for finding it for us.
"I stayed because it was God and Jesus Christ that I wanted to follow and be like, not individual human beings." Chieko Okazaki Dialogue interview
"I am coming to envision a new persona for the Church as humble followers of Jesus Christ....Joseph and his early followers came forth with lots of triumphalist rhetoric, but I think we need a new voice, one of humility, friendship and service. We should teach people to believe in God because it will soften their hearts and make them more willing to serve." - Richard Bushman
"I am coming to envision a new persona for the Church as humble followers of Jesus Christ....Joseph and his early followers came forth with lots of triumphalist rhetoric, but I think we need a new voice, one of humility, friendship and service. We should teach people to believe in God because it will soften their hearts and make them more willing to serve." - Richard Bushman
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
I wish we could do a series of EQ lessons digesting that talk.
I wish we could do a series of EQ lessons digesting that talk.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood
"It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God's moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status." TPC: Harold B. Lee 223
"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
"It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God's moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status." TPC: Harold B. Lee 223
"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
This was a great talk !!!! Really enjoyed it , Patrick Mason is spot on with my views and I will be ordering the book planted today !!!! This is what I have been looking for . God Bless .
- LookingHard
- Posts: 2947
- Joined: 20 Oct 2014, 12:11
Re: Patrick Mason talk helping you StayLDS
Planted is a good book - even for members.
Another one I really like is "When Mormons Doubt" by Jon Ogden which is good for "doubters" and members wanting to understand them better.
Another one I really like is "When Mormons Doubt" by Jon Ogden which is good for "doubters" and members wanting to understand them better.
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8 posts • Page 1 of 1


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CATEGORY: Game Improvement Irons
PRICE: $900, steel; $1,100, graphite
WE TESTED: 4-W2 (52°) with True Temper XP 90 steel and 4-W2 with Mitsubishi Rayon Kuro Kage TiNi graphite shafts.
KEY TECHNOLOGY: The 360-degree undercut channel creates a large, unsupported face to increase ball speed and launch angle.
A nimble, swashbuckling iron that's not afraid to get dirty; high or low, left or right, it's all in play if you provide accurate instructions; versatility is closer to a better-player iron than it was in previous versions of the AP1.
Distance Control
Plenty long when hit on the sweet spot, with standard, reliable gaps between clubs; simple to duplicate partial shots; chips and pitches check up reliably; the wedges (P, W, and W2) are valuable additions to the set.
A better fit for consistent, stronger swingers—in terms of forgiveness, the AP1 skews closer to a better-player club than some other models in the test; its squat, chubby look doesn't please every panelist.
Bottom Line
A holdover from last year's test, the 716 AP1 drifts toward a better-player iron; it strikes a balance between helping you improve and expecting you to put a good move on the ball. If you can hit it near the middle of the face, the club's feel, versatility and fine-grain control are easy to appreciate.

subset: commoncrawl


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He's leaving virgin territory
ex Drive is a 2008 sex comedy film about a high school graduate who goes on a cross-country road trip to hook up with a girl he met online.
Watch the Trailer!
Loveable underdog IAN (Josh Zuckerman) is the last American virgin. At least thats how it feels to him now that hes 18, about to go to college, and losing girls to his 14-year-old brother. Ians always been the nice guy, the best friend never the boyfriend. But his luck finally seems to be changing when he meets DANIELLE. Shes everything hes ever wanted in a girlfriend fun, sexy, and she really likes him. Theres just one problem. She lives in Knoxville. And he lives in Chicago. And she thinks hes the Brad Pitt-lookalike hes pretending to be on Facebook. At the urging of his best friend, LANCE (Clark Duke), Ian decides to confront his fear of rejection when Danielle makes him the offer of a lifetime: If you drive all the way for me, Ill go all the way for you. In the spirit of such classics as AMERICAN PIE, THE SURE THING and SUPERBAD, this wild romp follows Ian, Lance and their third musketeer, the spunky and gorgeous tomboy, FELICIA (Amanda Crew), as they set out in Ians older brothers (James Marsden) beloved 69 GTO. Despite many hilarious setbacks on the road, including a stop-off at an Amish rave (who knew the Amish could party?), Ian finally meets his dream girl but things dont turn out quite as planned. Along the way, Ian discovers that while hes prepared to go the distance for sex, there might be something even better a little closer to home.


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Posts tagged 'Venture Capital'
Global Corporations Plan to Increase Cleantech Investments
Venture capital investing recently rose to the second highest quarterly figure ever for the industry. According to a new report out from Ernst & Young, three quarters of corporate investors surveyed said they plan to increase their budgets for cleantech investments between 2012 and 2014.
Specifically 44% of the corporate investors surveyed said they plan to spend over $50 million on cleantech, and 12 percent said they plan to spend over $250 million on cleantech during that time. These are the types of companies that are international and have revenues of $1 billion or more, and are active in cleantech investing.
Forty percent of the corporate investors surveyed said they plan to spend their cleantech-targeted funds on research and development for cleantech products, while 20 percent of those surveyed said that they plan to increase cleantech investment in order to directly increase revenue. The report says that companies invested in energy efficiency technologies during the down turn to save money, but then those efficiencies have now turned into a competitive advantage.
Acquisitions are also high on corporate investors minds. The Ernst & Young report says that almost three quarters of respondents have acquired a cleantech company or plan to consider acquiring a cleantech company in the future.
Cleantech VC Investing Increased in Q3
Cleantech venture continued it's recovery in Q3 of 2009. The Q3 2009 total is up a further 10 percent compared to the previous quarter but down 42 percent compared to Q3 of 2008. Not only has the sector maintained the momentum it picked up in the second fiscal quarter of this year, it has emerged as the No. 1 sector in the U.S. venture investing overall. According to Cleantech Group – 27 percent of venture capital funds invested in the second quarter of 2009 went to cleantech companies – up from 3 percent at the beginning of 2004.
The greater part of investments (61 percent) were directed to companies that are currently shipping products – compared to just 37 percent for the same period in 2008. According to Eric Wesoff's (Greentech Media) tally, venture capital investments totaled $1.9 billion in 112 deals. Of that, solar, biofuels and other fuels made up nearly $1.1 billion and 46 deals – once again dominating the scene.
"Continuing growth in cleantech investment in the third quarter reflects investor confidence in the commercialization of clean technologies," says Joseph A. Muscat, Ernst & Young Americas director of cleantech. "The diversity in this quarter's investment activity, in terms of the technologies receiving investment and the participating investors, illustrate the potential to create value through the development of a low-carbon economy."
To read more about the rise in cleantech investments, click here.
New World Captial Eyeing $100M Starter Fund
Last week, investors announced the formation of New World Capital Group, a private equity firm that would invest in middle-market companies in the cleantech sphere.
Carter Bales, chairman and founding partner of New World, stated that they would provide expansion to companies and related infrastructure projects in the middle market – "what is conventionally known as the 'Commercialization Gap' – the period before companies and projects can command large amounts of institutional capital."
Bales told the New York Times that there is only $3 billion in private equity capital right now pledged to companies in the sector. He believes the sector is worth $300 billion.
The firms founders are seasoned professionals with several years of investment experience in companies and infrastructure projects in the environmental sector. They bring related skills in business operations and project management, project finance and development, and regulatory issues.
Watch out Khosla and Soros, these guys are fast on your heels! They're looking to raise $100M for a starter fund and plan to raise a fund worth $500M by the end of next year.


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Some of you may recall when I first made this curry dish and couldn't stop talking about it or how crazy easy it turns out curry-making is. You could say it sent me racing down a curry-making rabbit hole. Curry-based anything – I love it. It really is unbelievably easy to make, and as a bonus, your kitchen/home almost instantly fill with amazing smells. Still, in spite of my curry fascination, I've mostly stuck to similar dishes that use either a yellow curry or a basic coconut curry. This introduced a new flavor profile to my at-home recipe Rolodex (extra points for outdated cultural references right?!), and is beautiful and full of color, flavor, and good smells. This recipe has a little hint of a bite to it, as red curries can, so if serving to littles like me, I strongly recommend having additional coconut milk on-hand to mix into their bowls to temper the punch. "A little spicy" aside, this was a delightful Meatless Monday victory, and you should totally try it. If the all-veg version isn't enough for you, any protein would work beautifully with these flavors. Here you go.
* 1T coconut oil
* 1 sweet onion, rough chopped
* salt
* 1T grated fresh ginger (about an inch or so of ginger root), or ginger paste
* 2t minced garlic
* 1 bell pepper (any color), julienned
* 3 carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
* 5oz sliced button mushrooms
* 2T red curry paste
* 14oz can coconut milk (plus extra for smaller eaters' bowls)
* 1/2C water
* 5oz bag baby spinach
* 1 1/2t raw (aka turbinado) sugar
* 1T low-sodium soy sauce
* 1t rice vinegar (if you don't have rice vinegar, add the juice of a second lime)
* juice of 1 lime
* for garnishing: lime wedges and a handful of fresh basil cut into thin strips
Heat a wok or large, high-sided pan over medium heat, then add the coconut oil. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and saute for 3-4 minutes, mixing frequently, until they soften and become translucent. Add the ginger and the garlic and cook about 30 seconds, stirring constantly, until all the aromatics are released (bonus perk: your sinuses are now also cleared!).
Add the pepper, carrots, and mushrooms and cook about 4 minutes, until the crunchy veggies begin to soften, stirring occasionally. Then add the curry paste and stir through for about 2 minutes.
Now add the coconut milk, water, spinach, and sugar. Stir to combine and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
Remove the pan from the heat. Add the soy sauce, rice vinegar, lime juice, and another pinch of salt. Stir to mix through, and then taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. Serve over rice and garnish with some fresh basil and a wedge of lime. Be sure to take a moment to appreciate how amazing your home smells while you're at it!


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1 January 1949 – 31 December 1978
Mappe / Folder | Za-L0026
Various exhibitions at UKS
Former Secretary of UKS Ingse Kaarsberg, and former Secretary of Kunstforeningen Marie Scott-Ruud, standing in front of an artwork by Else Hagen from an unknown exhibition in 1949.
Image: Photographer unknown, 1949.
*This information is taken from the UKS Archive (1921–1998), accessible in full at our venue in Oslo. To review the Archive's complete list of physical folders—containing newspaper clippings, correspondence, contracts, and ephemera—please click here.
The UKS Archive is part of The National Archives of Norway.


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artist living, being vulnerable, can now be later, comedy of errors, dating, downtown, errors of heart, heart failure, realities, the Brewery, the Brewery artist colony, things got real, try again later
Earlier today… 9.28.12
Scene: a spooky loft just outside downtown Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights
An error occurred. Please try again later.
This is the first Friday of being really in love that I'm not with you.. and may not see you. The format is different but it's because I'm different.
Fuck the format.
Fuck the rules.
Because in reality the memories and the moments aren't always perfect. Right darling?
"I'm getting involved with a writer."
"It's not so bad. It's pretty awesome actually."
He was nervous. I was too. But that's reality. That's… how things go. How things.. come… and go.
Today I woke up and wrote yet another post elsewhere. I was feeling enigmatic again. Maybe a little bit profound as well.
The pages had to reload. They timed out. I went to link the song and the theme of this day. I got the following message:
An error occurred. Please try again later.
And maybe it had a bit. Maybe it was a sign to return to it later. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.
We have plans for this weekend that were made in advance. They may not happen. It may be another day of quiet… or it could be another day with a phone call at an early hour… because you want to tell me how you feel.
Fridays aren't the only days one can fall in love. Because when you arrived…
Because when you disappeared.
Because when you reappeared.
An error occurred. Please try again later.
And I'm sorry. I know I'm part of the reason that did.
Well… fuck you too damnit. I wish later were now… but the best things come with a fight… and sometimes it takes a couple before we finally get it right.
Even if it's not tonight dear hero of my heart.


text: Debbie is a lifelong Lutheran who previously served as St. Andrew's Office Assistant and in a variety of church volunteer and leadership positions over the years. Her experience as Office Manager for a busy medical practice prepared her well for her current role as St. Andrew's Director of Administration. Debbie enjoys the opportunity to be in close communication with our church family as she manages the daily needs of the congregation and the community we serve!


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ALA students can earn a maximum of five credits through webinars, though students are welcome to view as many as they choose.
This webinar originally aired on May 18th, 2017Films are increasingly useful tools for changing people's opinions. One of the most important skills required for successful film-making is post-production. How to make your organization's media product, be it a campaign video or a documentary, on par with standard Hollywood level production? How to catch up with the rest of the entertainment and creative industries? How to make film-making as an effective tool in achieving your organizational success? Join Hawk Jensen, Thursday May 18, founder of Smock Media and an experienced producer with Disney, Warner Brothers and ReasonTV to learn about the theory and practice of post movie production and how to be a mindful editor.
Hawk began his career on commercial sets and high end Hollywood productions with Disney and Warner Brothers. He then ventured into television writing and sold a one-hour dramatic pilot and won a DGA and WGA writing competition award for a 30-minute comedy pilot. Seeking more meaningful opportunities, Hawk joined ReasonTV as an award-winning documentary producer, director and journalist, making dozens of films advancing freedom and human rights. Since leaving Reason, Hawk has produced and directed projects all over the world. In 2012, he finished his first feature film documentary "Honor Flight" as co-producer and lead editor. He founded Smock Media that same year and is currently working with Moving Picture Institute (MPI) and Victims of Communism foundation (VOC) to tell the stories of individuals that resist oppression.


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It was discussed in this thread awhile back.http://forum.retrode.org/index.php/topic,12.msg56.html#msg56
I will be back as soon as I can track down a copy of Star Ocean.
thanks MoP. not sure why i couldnt find that post.
thank you for pulling my strings thank you for twisting my mind and smashing my dreams Blinded by you, I can't see a thing I am calling your name 'cause you'll hear me scream
i am not sure if the extra 16 pins are connected or not. i am thinking not, but matthias would have to reply since i can't seem to find the post that mentions if they are or are not connected.


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Saturday, May 8, 2010
Haiti Tops Nashville in Disaster Derby
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a survey of 200 Hollywood and media figures conducted after last week's White House Correspondent's Dinner, Haiti topped Nashville as "Coolest Disaster" 59% to 19% with 2% undecided. A CBS reporter, who asked not to be named, said Nashville fell into a narrative gap. "I don't know. Nashville. Who cares? But Memphis would be a different story because of the Graceland angle." Justin Bieber's accountant was more direct, "Nashville lacks Third World Charm. They don't have anything sexy like voodoo or zombies, just country music." The remaining votes were split among runner-ups Venezuela, Mexico, and The Green Zone.
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KNICKERBOCKER, TEXAS. Knickerbocker is at the junction of Farm roads 2335 and 584, six miles from the Irion county line and eighteen miles west of San Angelo in southwestern Tom Green County. It was named for Diedrich Knickerbocker, narrator of Washington Irving's History of New York, by two early settlers who were related to the author. The pioneer farmers and sheepmen who resided there in its heyday made Knickerbocker second only to San Angelo in size and political influence in the county. In 1875 the brothers Polk, Pete, and Tom Baze put in the Baze ditch to grow hay, vegetables, and melons to sell at Fort Concho. They donated land for a church, a school, and a cemetery on the northwest side of Dove Creek. Joseph Tweedy, E. Morgan Grinnell, Lawrence Leslie Grinnell, and J. Barlow Reynolds in 1877 drove Mexican sheep into the valley from their sheep camp near Fort Clark. They established the Knickerbocker ranch headquarters and a store on the southeast side of Dove Creek. A post office was opened in 1881. The town had twenty-five residents in 1884 and fifty in 1890. In the 1880s oats, millet, wheat, and corn were traded and sold at the Tweedy Mercantile Company in Knickerbocker. Sheep ranching was the area's other main source of income until the collapse in wool prices forced the major sheep ranching firm out of business. Of the original owners only Tweedy remained in control of some of the land. He platted a townsite, built a home, and set up San Jose Irrigation and Power Company to water farms along Dove Creek. In 1887 Stephen Dexter Arthur brought cottonseed as feed from Falls County, planted it as an experiment, and raised the first bale of cotton in these parts. Remains of his water-driven gin can be seen near the bridge over Dove Creek. In 1889 Knickerbocker was moved around the hill to a new site with better water. Arthur built a Methodist church with lumber brought from Round Rock on land donated by Joseph and Elizabeth Tweedy. In the late 1890s Knickerbocker had two cotton gins, two saloons, two blacksmith shops, an undertaker, two general stores, two hotels, stage line stables, a sanatorium, and a population of 250. The adobe store and post office, built in 1896 and operated for many years by J. B. and Holly Etheridge, stood until 1936. The Immaculate Conception mission of Sacred Heart Parish, built in 1902, was still in existence in 1986. Knickerbocker got its first schoolhouse, a plank structure, in 1889. A school for Mexican children was built in 1895. The brick schoolhouse, which was built in 1926, served until 1956, after which all Knickerbocker children went by bus to Christoval. Knickerbocker declined with the coming of the automobile and all-weather roads. In 1990 it had a post office, a general store, Catholic and Protestant churches, and a population of fifty. The population remained the same in 2000.
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Call for Papers: Texas Center for Working-Class Studies
Events, Symposia, and Workshops
Hi all! You may be interested in this call for papers I received from the Texas Center for Working-Class Studies at Collin College...
Katy Jennings' Ride
Scholarly Research Request
I'm doing research on Catherine Jennings Lockwood, specifically the incident known as "Katy Jennings' Ride." Her father was Gordon C. Jennings, the oldest man to die at the Alamo...
Texas Constitution of 1836 Co-Author- Elisha Pease?
Ask a Historian
The TSHA profile of Elisha Marshall Pease states that he wrote part of the Texas Constitution although he was only a 24 year-old assistant secretary (not elected). I cannot find any other mention of this authorship work by Pease in other credible research about the credited Constution authors...


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Microsoft Excel : Get All You Need To Know And Do!
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Order of Women's Murder Club Books
The Women's Murder Club is a fictional group of characters created by author James Patterson. It is his second most famous series of characters behind the Alex Cross series of books. The Women's Murder Club, which had a one-season TV show based on the books, feature four characters (including a police inspector and medical examiner) working together to solve crimes. The main character is Lindsay Boxer, a 34 year-old divorced inspector with the San Francisco Police.
The Women's Murder Club books have all had co-authors, except the very first one. 2nd Chance & 3rd Degree were written with Andrew Gross, and the rest were written with Maxine Paetro:
Publication Order of Women's Murder Club Books
Chronological Order of Women's Murder Club Books
The current chronological order of the Women's Murder Club series is exactly the same as the publication order.
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Solar Power Projects
RETechnology Power and Water Engineering's associates have notable experience in both Photo-voltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) power plant engineering and construction.
Solar power is a main source of renewable energy. Solar power projects require permits and approvals from the Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management (in the United States). We work together with the different government agencies concerned in order to provide an efficient process for the client.
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This article is part of our DraftKings PGA series.
Purse: $6M
Winner's Share: 1.080M
FedEx Cup Points: 500 to the Winner
Location: Silvis, Ill.
Course: TPC Deere Run
Yardage: 7,268
Par: 71
2018 champion: Michael Kim
Tournament Preview
The John Deere Classic is often the butt of golf jokes, the subject of so many "this field sucks" wisecracks. But this year, suddenly, even with its worst field perhaps ever (in terms of world rankings), the Deere is a highly anticipated tournament this year. Why? Three words: Class of '19. The recent wave of college golfers who just became pros has turned the PGA Tour on its ear. For weeks, when you clicked on the Deere's website the first thing you saw were pictures of Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff (Oklahoma State), Collin Morikawa (Cal) and Justin Suh (USC). Now, in what can only be described as perfect timing, the quartet is coming to the Quad Cities just days after Wolff outdueled Morikawa to win a thrilling 3M Open.
Hovland has notched top-15s in three of his past four starts beginning with the U.S. Open and, even though he doesn't have a win or a runner-up like Wolff and Morikawa do, he incredibly is the top guy on the DraftKings board after just three tournaments as a professional. Then comes Morikawa and Wolff and, after them, another college-age golfer who joined the Tour last year, Joaquin Niemann. All are playing great golf. Suh has not found his footing yet, though he turned in his best showing as a pro last week at Minneapolis with a tie for 58th.
It's a good thing these kids are here, because nobody else is. Exactly zero golfers in the top-50 in the world rankings are entered. We can chalk that up to Zach Johnson's decline, Steve Stricker turning 50 and playing on the Champions Tour and No. 34-ranked Kevin Na withdrawing after the field was announced. That leaves No. 55 Charles Howell III and No. 56 Kyle Stanley as the top-ranked golfers in the field. Imagine if the Class of '19 weren't here? Golf Channel could preempt the Deere and no one would even notice. But people will take notice this year, and the area's golf fans deserve it. You'd be hard-pressed to find a community more devoted to its golf tournament than the Quad Cities is to the Deere. There aren't many sporting events in this area of Illinois/Iowa, certainly not before college football season starts.
Even though the field is weak, OWGR-wise, there are about a dozen golfers who are scheduled to hop on a charter flight on Sunday night to compete in next week's Open Championship. One more could be joining them in Northern Ireland, as a spot in the 156-man field is available for a top-five finisher not already exempt into Royal Portrush.
The tournament originated in 1971 and moved in 2000 to TPC Deere Run, site of one of a handful of 59s in PGA Tour annals. Paul Goydos turned the trick in the first round in 2010. Unfortunately for Goydos, Stricker was right behind that day with a 60, en route to a tourney-record 26-under-par. That perfectly illustrates the annual track meet that is the John Deere Classic. The winning score is generally north of 20-under so this is the quintessential birdie-fest. The golfers will need to zero in with their approach shots and make plenty of putts. We'll get into more specifics in the key stats and Champion's Profile below. Deere Run was the sixth easiest track among the 51 on Tour last year. The most exciting hole is the drivable 358-yard 14th, playing downhill to a tiny green. The hardest most years, including last year, is the par-4, 476-yard 18th.
Weather-wise, there's a chance of thunderstorms on Wednesday night, which could affect Thursday's play, but no rain is forecast over the four days of the tournament. It will be hot, around 90, with minimal wind.
Fun Deere fact No. 1: Organizers tried to attract attention when 15-year-old Michelle Wie was given a sponsor's exemption two years in a row. She was inside the cut line in 2005 until late double bogey/bogey did her in. The following year, far outside the cut line, Wie withdrew, citing the excessive heat.
Fun Deere fact No. 2: Roger Maltbie won the tournament in 1975, when it known as, of all things, the Ed McMahon-Jaycees Quad Cities Open.
Key Stats to Winning at TPC Deere Run (in order of importance)
Note - The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key stats" follow in importance.
• Putting average/strokes gained putting
• Proximity to the hole
• Greens in regulation/strokes gained approach
• Birdie or better percentage (BOB)/bogey avoidance
Past Champions
2018 - Michael Kim
2017 - Bryson DeChambeau
2016 - Ryan Moore
2015 - Jordan Spieth
2014 - Brian Harman
2013 - Jordan Spieth
2012 - Zach Johnson
2011 - Steve Stricker
2010 - Steve Stricker
2009 - Steve Stricker
Champion's Profile
Looking back over the last nine editions, the winner here has been in the top 10 in putting eight times, with only Harman (31st) missing out. Some very good putters have won this tournament, and even Harman is one of them. Interestingly, only three of the nine winners finished top-10 in greens in regulation, and Harman was again one of those. Proximity to the hole is a good indicator, and eight of the nine champs were in the top 16. The only one who missed is the last name you'd come up with – Spieth. So all these good putters have also put themselves in good position to make said putts. Last year, Kim came out of nowhere for his maiden Tour win, leading the first in scrambling, proximity and strokes gained: putting, while ranking third in greens in regulation.
DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS (Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap)
Tier 1 Values
Joaquin Niemann - $10,200 (Winning odds at golfodds.com: 20-1)
Niemann is the No. 4 guy on the DK board. Hovland is first at $10,900 and he's also the betting favorite. But he's only 18-1, illustrating how wide-open this tournament truly. We had a hard time picking any five-figure guy, but we'll go with the 20-year-old Chilean, who might be feeling a bit overlooked opposite the Class of '19. Niemann had a terrific arrival on Tour himself a year ago, then took a big step back in his second season, which is not uncommon. But of late, he's found great form. Since missing the cut at the PGA, he's gone 6-for-6 with two top-5s and another top-25 last week at the 3M. Putting his been his Kryptonite, but last week was better as he was 54th in the field in strokes gained: putting. Niemann tied for 23rd last year in his Deere debut. He's also eighth on Tour in proximity to the hole.
Sungjae Im - $9,700 (20-1)
The 21-year-old from Korea is another college-age sensation, the top rookie all season until this new wave came along. Im plays more than anyone else, but so far it hasn't hurt him. He's made 21 cuts in 28 starts and 13 of them have been top-25s, with six of them doubling as top-10s. His last four starts have been top-25, including T15 last week.
Brian Harman - $9,400 (25-1)
The 2014 Deere champion and former top-20 OWGR had been having a brutal season – until lately. He has missed 12 of 25 cuts with only four top-25s, but two of them have come in his past three starts, including T7 last week at the 3M. Normally a great putter, Harman has been languishing in the middle of the pack this season. But in Minneapolis, he ranked 19th in the field in strokes gained: putting and was also tied for 25th in green in regulation. Harman skipped the Deere last year but tied for 10th in 2017.
Tier 2 Values
Wyndham Clark - $9,000 (40-1)
We're back with Clark for a third straight week and he has delivered for us the first two times, first with a top-20 in Detroit and then a career-best T5 last week at the 3M. Clark played the Deere once before, missing the cut in 2017. Of course, that is a lifetime ago. Clark is top-10 on Tour in both driving distance (fourth) and strokes gained: putting (seventh), plus also 39th in strokes gained: around the green.
Bud Cauley - $8,700 (40-1)
Cauley has made the cut in 4-of-5 Deere visits, including top-12s his past two times in 2016-17. He's missed a lot of cuts and there are some deficiencies in his game, but Cauley leads the entire Tour in strokes gained: around the green. He's also ranked 45th in birdie or better.
Joel Dahmen - $8,400 (50-1)
Dahmen has seven top-25s on the season in his 18 made cuts. He's missed six cuts, but they've mostly come in tougher fields, including the U.S. Open last month. Dahmen was the tri-runner-up at the Deere a year ago. He is ranked just outside the top-50 in proximity.
Scott Brown - $8,300 (60-1)
Brown has played this tournament seven times and has cashed top-25 in six of them, including a tie for 12th last year. It has not been a great season for Brown, though he's made three of his past four cuts, including T15 last week at the 3M.
Tier 3 Values
Mackenzie Hughes - $7,900 (60-1)
For the season, Hughes has missed nine cuts in 22 starts. But lately he's been hot, making five in a row, with three of them being top-25s. Hughes tied for 16th in his maiden visit to the Deere last year.
Bronson Burgoon - $7,800 (60-1)
Burgoon is fighting to get inside the top-125 to keep his card. Right now, he's at No. 132 and he's moved up by making three cuts in a row for the first time all season. This week could put him over the top, as he was one of the runners-up here a year ago. He is tied for 31st on Tour in proximity.
Cameron Tringale - $7,700 (80-1)
Tringale has missed only four cuts all season in 18 starts with six top-25s. He has three top-25s in his past five starts. Tringale is ranked 20th in greens in regulation and 40th in birdie or better percentage.
Denny McCarthy - $7,500 (60-1)
McCarthy has missed 10 cuts in 23 starts, but he also has six top-25s, including his past two starts. McCarthy tied for 34th last year, but his elite short game this year could carry him to a higher (high?) finish – he leads the Tour in strokes gained: putting and is ranked eighth in scrambling.
Beau Hossler - $7,300 (80-1)
Hossler is another guy who needs to make a move to get inside the top-125. Right now, he's 135th. He's missed nine cuts this season, but only two in his past eight starts. Hossler's problem is no high finishes during that stretch. That could change this week in his first visit to the Deere. Hossler is ranked 10th on Tour in strokes gained: putting.
Long-Shot Values
Johnson Wagner - $7,200 (80-1)
This may be Wagner's best tournament. He tied for 16th last year and strung together three straight top-10s from 2014-16. He does well at the Deere because he's an excellent putter, ranked 23rd in strokes gained: putting right now. He's also seventh in greens in regulation, making it hard to figure how he's 152nd in the FedEx point standings.
Roger Sloan - $67,100 (100-1)
Sloan is another guy among our picks who has missed almost as many cuts as he's made. But he's made five of his past six, including top-25s the past two weeks at Detroit (T21) and Minneapolis (T15). Sloan played the Deere only once before, when he was a rookie in 2015 and tied for 18th. It was his lone top-25 that season. He is ranked just outside the top-50 in proximity.
Seamus Power - $6,800 (150-1)
Well, now we've come to a golfer who has missed more cuts this season than he's made. Yet still, Power in on the cusp of the top-125 at 129th. The strength of his play is his short game. Power is 68th in strokes gained: around the green and 77th in strokes gained: putting, though traditionally he has been a far better putter. Power tied for 16th at the Deere last year and for 25th two years ago.
Dominic Bozzelli - $6,700 (Field, 5-1)
Bozzelli has finished top-25 in his two trips to the Deere the past two years, no doubt because he's a great putter. He's ranked ninth on Tour in strokes gained: putting. Bozzelli shot three rounds in the 60s two weeks ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic but a third-round 75 relegated him to a tie for 59th.


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2007 Tenute Loacker – Ysac – Alto Adige DOC
Frequent readers of this blog now that I'm a fan of Tenute Loacker. If you're not familiar with this winery I recommend you to read this article which gives you a quick overview. Ysac is a white wine from Tenute Loacker's Schwarhof estate in South Tyrol. I found this rather old bottle in my cellar


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Published 1 October 1990 in Volume 14 No. 4.
Cite as: Tiffin, Helen. 'Alrene Sykes.' Australian Literary Studies, vol. 14, no. 4, 1990, doi: 10.20314/als.ad361ddd17.


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New upgrades:
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The Riemann Integral: Part 1
By Paramanand Singh Monday, July 30, 2012
Functions of Bounded Variation: Part 2
Continuity and Bounded VariationIn the last post we saw that continuity is not essential to the property of being a function of bounded variation. However monotonicity is absolutely essential in the sense that every function of bounded variation can be expressed as a sum or difference of monotone functions. But does that mean that continuity is not at all required? Can we have a function which is discontinuous everywhere and still be of bounded variation? The answer is NO! As an example the function $ f(x) = 0$ when $ x$ is irrational and $ f(x) = 1$ when $ x$ is rational is not of bounded variation. We can choose a partition to consists of equal number of rational and irrational points lying alternately and then the variation can be seen as a linear function of the number of points of subdivision so that the variation is not bounded.
By Paramanand Singh Monday, July 16, 2012
Functions of Bounded Variation: Part 1
IntroductionIn the last two posts we studied monotone functions which vary in the same direction in a given interval. Here we will study functions which do not vary too much. In a sense continuous functions also don't vary too much (for example they are bounded on closed intervals). But here we need to discuss variation in a different sense. More technically we try to measure variation in smaller parts of an interval and then add up these variations to form total variation. We formalize these concepts now.
By Paramanand Singh Sunday, July 15, 2012
Monotone Functions: Part 2
In the last post we established certain conditions for the monotonicity of a function in an interval. In this post we will establish the same results via a different approach. This is based on the standard theorems of differential calculus, namely the Rolle's Theorem and the Langrange's Mean Value Theorem. We first need to establish these theorems.
By Paramanand Singh Sunday, July 8, 2012
Monotone Functions: Part 1
IntroductionFew posts ago we discussed continuous functions and their properties. In this series of posts we discuss another class of functions namely the monotone functions and their extensions. The word monotone crudely suggests that these functions should have a single tone which translates properly to "variation in a single direction". In other words such functions either increase all the time or decrease all the time.
By Paramanand Singh
Logarithms using Square Roots
IntroductionIn the last post we discussed that a proper theory of logarithmic function can not be developed without using the analytical approach (or methods of calculus in simpler language). Here we discuss more about the common logarithms (i.e. logarithms to the base 10) which are normally introduced to students in secondary classes without using any calculus. The basic idea is simple enough: if $ y = 10^{x}$ then we write $ x = \log_{10}y$ and say that $ x$ is the common logarithm of $ y$. The difficulty with this approach is that the meaning of $ 10^{x}$ cannot be explained properly without using calculus if $ x$ is irrational. However in the examples and exercises given the exponent is either a symbol (like $ a, b, c, x$) or is a rational number so there is no confusion when the concept of logarithm is presented via this approach. And the student is able to learn the fundamental properties of logarithms and their practical usage in computation with relative ease.
By Paramanand Singh Monday, July 2, 2012
Labels: Algebra
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Anand Jayakaran - Research & Projects
Evaluating human and climatic impacts on streamflow and sediment transport in coastal South Carolina
Agriculture and commercial development in coastal South Carolina is very dependent upon the effective management of storm runoff and shallow groundwater conditions typical of the region. The prevention of flooding in urban areas and ensuring arable soils in agricultural areas govern most aspects of stormwater runoff control here, typically in the form of stormwater ponds and channelized ditches. These two stormwater management practices tend to circumvent more resilient and assimilative ecosystem services otherwise offered by streams and wetlands in undisturbed landscapes. The loss of ecosystems services in these modified drainage systems is an area of much needed research. Additionally, current stormwater runoff management does not accommodate for daily and seasonal climatic variability, both under current climate conditions and those projected by climate change scenarios. The proliferation of ponds and ditches in the region has come at a mounting ecological cost to the state with preliminary work suggesting that traditional water management strategies can increase sediment loads and short-circuit the movement of pollutants from landscape to ocean. My research focusses on extending our understanding of how the two big stressors on coastal hydrologic processes – population increase and climate change, affect the movement of sediment and water from landscape to ocean. Ultimately, the research hopes to develop strategies to ensure the sustainable management of water resources in coastal South Carolina, essential to the safety and well-being of her water-bound citizens.
Hobcaw Environmental Sensor Project
This project is part of a wider study that aims to examine hydrologic, biogeochemical, and forest productivity processes along a hydroperiod and salinity gradient. The site chosen for this work is a tidally influenced coastal swamp called Strawberry Swamp. The study would not only provide critical information regarding ecosystem processes in a region sensitive to climate change, but also establish a foundation for an environmental sensor network using technological innovations pioneered at Clemson University.
Crabtree Canal Restoration Initiative
This project aims to provide local county agencies with the tools to carry out effective channel restoration to improve the fluvial functioning and stability of a channelized stream. The stream under study is Crabtree Canal and its tributaries that serve as the primary arteries for stormwater flow in the City of Conway, SC. The project is a collaborative project with Coastal Carolina University, the City of Conway and Horry County Stormwater Management.
Pee Dee Minimum Instream Flows Project
This project aims to quantify what the minimum allowable flows necessary to maintain basic ecosystem functioning in the Pee Dee River basin in South Carolina are. Using a combination of field sampling, and statistical modeling we hope to arrive at a better understanding of how minimum instream flow requirements can be met. The study was conducted over a five year period beginning in June 2009. Funding was obtained from the PeeDee Endowment Fund. This project is a collaborative project with scientists from Clemson University, the United States Geological Survey, and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Clemson scientists involved with the project are Dr. Dara Park and Dr. Daniel Hitchcock.
Green Infrastructure Design for Stormwater Management
This project funded by SC Sea Grant Consortium and in collaboration with Dr. D. R. Hitchcock seeks to determine the efficiencies of bioretention cells in coastal landscapes in the management of stormwater. System specific monitoring include rainfall, surface storage water level, water table position, inflows and outflows, and soil moisture. Stormwater samples are collected periodically (event-based and seasonally) for surface and groundwater nutrient and bacterial analyses. Reference wells in the proximity of each system are being monitored and sampled.
For more information and graduate research opportunities, contact Dr. Jayakaran.


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Dow Jones and S&P 500 End the Month in Record Territory
Weekly Wrap Up
The Dow Jones and S&P 500 both ended the month in record territory. The S&P 500 ended with record highs multiple days this past week, but was joined by the Dow on Friday. Despite ending the day down, Nasdaq posted a gain for the month of May. For the first time in nearly a year U.S. consumers cut back on spending. Consumer spending unexpectedly fell 0.1% in April after big jumps in the previous months. This slight setback is unlikely to derail the economic recovery that is expected in the coming months.
A bidding war for Hillshire Brands (HSH) began this week.
Economic News
Consumer Spending Drops For First Time In A Year
U.S. consumers cut back on spending in April for the first time in a year, taking an unexpected pause after a big jump during the previous month. (Source: USA Today) Click here to read the full article
Fed's George Wants Rate Hikes Soon, And Not Too Gradual
Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said Thursday she is open to leaving the U.S. central bank's balance sheet big even as it withdraws accommodation, a comment that reveals the extent of uncertainty at the Fed over future policy. (Source: Yahoo News) Click here to read the full article
Business News
Shares of Pfizer Inc. (PFE) were up +0.21 or +0.71 percent to $29.70 per share in pre-market trading this morning. The company announced yesterday that it was abandoning its $118 billion bid for UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (AZN). (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Shares of Chicago, IL, based Hillshire Brands Company (HSH) soared on Tuesday on a buyout bid from Pilgrim's Pride (PPC). The stock was up $8.17 per share, or 22.07%, to close at $45.19, on volume of 41,656,963 shares. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Shares of Annie's Inc. (BNNY) were off -5.63 or -16.14 percent to $29.25 per share in pre-market trading on Friday, after the company announced earnings yesterday after the close. While earnings per share were better than expected, the company's full year guidance disappointed analysts. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Technology Focus
Shares of the Boeing Company (BA) closed up +0.88, or +0.67 percent to $131.84 per share in moderately active trading on Thursday, while the general market gained moderately. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Why Apple Needs Samsung
Every snob needs an inferior. And thanks to the late Steve Jobs, no company has more deeply integrated snobbery into its brand than Apple. (Source: USA Today) Click here to read the full article
Your Money
Does "Good" Debit Still Exist?
Having experienced the Great Recession earlier this decade, we're all familiar with the dangers of over-extended consumers maxed out on debt with little savings to speak of. (Source: Yahoo Finance) Click here to read the full article
12 Sites to Help You Save and Make Money By Sharing
The sharing economy has exploded. There are nearly 5,000 sharing companies, organizations and programs, according to the Mesh Labs Global Sharing Economy Index. (Source: Kiplinger) Click here to read the full article
Published on May 30, 2014By InvestorGuide Staff
Posted in ...Market Commentary Weekly Market Recap


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