Bryce Moore's Blog, page 102
September 25, 2019
Words Have Power: On Speech Acts and Presidential Phone Calls
“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
If only. It’s a lovely sentiment to try to convey to kindergartners, but the true fact is that words have tremendous power in our society. We make promises and commitments. We tell lies that hurt other people. In many ways, we define our reality through the words we use to describe it. We label others, and the label we apply to them changes them in our eyes and the eyes of others.
Linguists describe some phrases as “speech acts.” Actions that happen because of certain words that are spoken by certain individuals. I can go up to a couple of people and say, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” and those words lack any power. I have no authority to do that. But give me that authority and the right ceremony, and suddenly those words pack a punch that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Some speech acts are direct. I can ask my son to take out the trash. I can promise to pay you back for lunch. In these cases, it’s obvious to all what’s being discussed and what actions those words are intended to effect. True, I can break my promise, or my son can decide not to take out the trash, but that’s a separate issue.
Some speech acts are indirect. When my son is walking by, I can say, “The trash sure is getting full.” If he’s paying attention, he’ll likely understand that statement is an indirect request for him to take the trash out. I might even follow it up with a statement like, “It sure would be nice if someone took this trash out.” In a like manner, if I meet up with some friends, and one of them has an order of french fries they’re munching on, I could say, “Wow, those sure do look good.” Maybe I’d add, “I sure am hungry.” At no point in time will I have come right out and said, “Please give me some of your fries,” but the implication is there for anyone to see, plain as day.
It’s true, sometimes indirect speech acts fall on deaf ears. My wife might make an observation about how dirty the kitchen is. She might have meant I should mop the floor. Maybe I understand she thinks I should declutter it. Indirect speech acts are only as effective as the understanding between the people communicating. But make no mistake: they’re just as powerful and intentional as direct speech acts, under the right circumstances.
Of course, indirect speech acts also open the door for plausible deniability. The person saying those things can say he was kidding. He can say it was a misunderstanding. He can say he meant something else. If, for example, a candidate for office were to stand up and publicly say, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” then the implication is clear to all who hear that. “Russia, hack into whatever servers you need to and find those emails.” But there’s enough space between the person making the request and the intended audience that you can argue it wasn’t a serious request. He never thought they’d actually pay attention.
Remove that amount of space, and the room for misinterpretation plummets. Have a phone call with the new Ukrainian President, for example, and say, “The United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I would like you to do us a favor. I would like you to find out what happened with Crowdstrike and the DNC hack. That whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.” What are you left with?
When someone in authority reminds someone who’s been receiving help from them that they’ve been receiving a lot of help, and then immediately asks that person for “a favor,” what’s really happening? Asking for a favor is a direct speech act. The threat (that they’ll stop getting help if they turn down the favor) is an indirect speech act, but very present nonetheless. The effect that favor had on its audience is quite clear from the conversation.
Does this matter? You’ll have Republicans tell you it’s immaterial. You’ll have Democrats tell you it’s treasonous. But what you’ve got on your hands is a person who keeps pushing the boundaries further and further into territory no politician should be anywhere near, regardless of their affiliation. I would be just as upset if Hilary Clinton did this. I wish people on both sides of the aisle would agree.
Trump has a very casual relationship with words. They mean one thing when he wants them to, and the same exact statement means something else when he wants it to, despite the fact it was given at the same time and place. That might work as a businessman. It doesn’t work as President of the United States, and it’s time he’s reminded of that fact.
Will this give the Republicans the fodder they need to reelect Trump? I don’t know. I’d like to think it will disgust the rest of the country to the point that no one but die hard Republicans will vote for the man. Make a group more and more narrow, and suddenly it matters a whole lot less what that group thinks, when it’s time for elections. But we won’t really know what kind of an effect that’s had until next November. I highly doubt any Republican controlled Senate will boot Trump from office, no matter the circumstances.
But for today, I’m just thinking about speech acts and the power of words.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 24, 2019
Book Review: Fall, or Dodge in Hell
I always look forward to a new Neal Stephenson book. I love how he takes ideas and builds around them. His books make me think in ways few other books can and Fall is no different. Except . . .
The book’s first half was completely solid. Stephenson explores a whole slew of different concepts. What “identity” really means, and what it might be like to have your consciousness uploaded to the cloud. It’s a near-future science fiction book that ultimately asks the question: “What would it be like to live inside a simulation,” and the natural follow up: “Are we living inside a simulation right now?”
That’s a concept I’ve already devoted some thoughts to, so it was great to be able to read Stephenson’s take on things. (As far as my own personal thoughts, I find it fascinating that computing is getting to the point now that it’s not an entirely huge stretch to extrapolate a system where we all could live permanently without ever needing to leave. A sort of Matrix-esque lifestyle, without the nefarious machine overlords. There’s a whole slew of religious overlaps this could have implications on, but I’m not going to go into those in the middle of a book review.)
The big problem for me with this book happens once it goes into its second act and begins to explore an example simulation more fully. I don’t want to give any more spoilers about that content, but I will say my central complaint is the rules and restrictions of this new world are so vague that I never had a real idea of how the central obstacles could be overcome. Instead, there’s a series of problems that pop up one after the other that make the central objective feel very arbitrary, as if it’s all being made up as it goes along.
That’s a problem in a novel. You don’t want to get to the point where it feels like the author’s just stringing things along to stretch the conflict out. Any story can be short. “Frodo took the ring to Mount Doom and threw it in.” The end. What makes a story interesting and captivating (for me, at least) is when I understand ahead of time what the obstacles are between Frodo and Mount Doom. Why it’s so difficult. Once that’s set, then I’ll happily go along for the ride to see how it all goes down.
Imagine, however, what it would have been like if you don’t hear anything about what’s between Frodo and Mount Doom or even how far away it is, and instead you get a series of “and then a bunch of . . . goblins showed up! Yeah. Goblins!” And you didn’t even know goblins existed, let alone that they might be a problem for Frodo. It would all just start to feel like padding.
That’s what the second half of this book felt like to me, and that was deeply disappointing. Not to the point that I’d give it 1 star or anything. I still enjoyed the work overall. But the second half had none of Stephenson’s strengths, which was a shame, especially since at that point, the ending was fairly clear, and so it was just a matter of getting to the point where it could finally finish.
Overall, a great first half and a meh second half that together just ends up with “mid to good.” 6/10 stars. If you’re a fan of Stephenson or the concept, I’d still check it out. Otherwise . . . might not be worth the long read.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 23, 2019
Movie Review: They Shall Not Grow Old
When I heard Peter Jackson was working on a WWI film, I was highly intrigued. The pitch sounded great: in order to show present day audiences what the first World War was really like, he had taken original footage and digitally enhanced it so that it looks more comparable to the kind of film we see today. You know the difficulty with old newsreels. The motion is jerky (due to variance of frame rates and other nuances). The lighting is often so poor that it’s hard to tell what’s happening in the black and white scale. The focus isn’t quite there. So it all looks more than a little Keystone Kops.
Peter Jackson wanted to fix that and show modern audiences what exactly that war was like, taking real life accounts from veterans of the war and placing it over the footage. Denisa and I watched it (it’s on HBO at the moment), and I have to say Jackson did a remarkable job. (There’s a reason the film has a perfect 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)
He tied the footage and the stories into an overarching whole. It begins with unedited film, as veterans describe how they found out about the war and how they signed up to go fight in it. As the film progresses, the footage is enhanced bit by bit until you get to the war itself. Suddenly, it’s all so good that you think it must have been a recreation. Once you study it a bit more, you see the details that show you it’s all a bit off. The faces and the hands look too digitized. But it’s worth it. The colors are amazing. Seeing it all through this new lens makes it so much more visceral. Jackson doesn’t flinch back from showing all of it: the wounded soldiers. The dead. The hellacious battlefields. All of it real and deeply moving.
It proceeds to follow the troops into the trenches, adding enemy fire, and eventually going with them as they crossed No Man’s Land to attack the opposite side. Then it looks at the aftermath and finishes with showing what the soldiers came home to.
I’ve always been interested in World War II. Fascinated by the stories that came out of it and the way the war progressed and was fought. World War I was always just a bit too far back in history, it seemed. But after watching this, I think it might have been more that the footage was just not real enough. It seemed more like a story than an event. Even the films I watched that tried to recreate it never managed to connect with me the same way movies like Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers did.
This is the first film that bridged the gap, and I’m very grateful for Jackson’s efforts and skill in creating it. Is it perfect? Not completely. It does the best it can with what it has to work with, but in the end it’s a series of audio tracks over a series of old footage. As a documentary, it’s not quite the level of Ken Burns, but it works anyway. I gave it an 8.5, and I highly recommend anyone and everyone watch it. (I’d suggest people be at least in high school, and I’d warn anyone that there are very gruesome scenes. But at the same time, I get so frustrated watching movies like this, where grown men in politics essentially ship off boys to go fight a war none of the boys understand or really care about. I don’t see a way to avoid wars like that if no one’s willing to look at what it actually consists of. The veterans of WWI talked about how excited they were to go to war, and how clueless they were about what it would be like. How (even worse) no one cared to hear about what they’d experienced when they came home. How they couldn’t really talk about it with anyone. That should change.
In any case, if you have a chance to see it, check it out.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 19, 2019
Does Reading Speed Affect Enjoyment?
I was going to write a post about superstitions today. I had it all blocked out in my head and ready to go. Then I did a search through my blog and realized I already wrote that exact post five years ago. One of the downsides of having a blog that’s so old at that point is that sometimes I retread ground I’ve trod before.
So I’m bringing you something new today. A thought I’ve been wondering for the last while. I read fairly quickly, but not nearly as fast as some people. My agents can burn through a book in a couple of hours. It takes me much longer than that. I’d say I’m about three times as slow as they are. 6 hours for an average book, or maybe a bit shorter than that. Still much faster than some, but there are times that I wonder if I really want to read any faster than I already do.
On the one hand, yay for reading faster. That would mean I’d get to read more books, which would be a definitely plus. I love reading, so why not do more of it? But on the other hand, I worry that reading faster would be like watching movies in fast forward. I love movies, but I don’t think they’d have the same impact if all the people were speaking in chipmunk voices the whole time.
I can’t imagine that’s what actually happens for people who read fast. I mean, when I try to read slowly, it just doesn’t work. It’s boring and why would I want to do that to myself? But isn’t reading just consuming a story through a different mechanism? If a storyteller told their story twice as fast, that wouldn’t be as impactful . . .
Hence my question to you all. If you’re a fast reader, does it feel like everything’s happening super fast in the story to you? Why or why not?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 18, 2019
An Evening with Steve Martin and Martin Short
About two weeks ago, I realized Steve Martin and Martin Short were coming to Bangor on tour. At first, I debated whether or not I wanted to attend. It’s already a busy time of year. Did I really want to drive an hour and a half and have a late night for them? Then I thought back over all the movies and media I’ve enjoyed with them in it (particularly Steve Martin). The Three Amigos, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Saturday Night Live, The Jerk, Father of the Bride, Little Shop of Horrors . . .
I changed my mind. Especially when I heard the show also featured Martin on banjo and a bluegrass performance. So Denisa and I got tickets, and we headed up to Bangor Saturday evening. (Despite the fact that I’d be heading back to Bangor the next morning to speak in church.)
The show was a lot of fun. I’d spent a bit more on tickets (okay . . . a lot more), but I’d decided that as long as I was going, I wanted to actually be able to see the people I was going to see, instead of just being in the same air space with them and watching them on a big screen. Martin and Short were both engaging and funny, and the bluegrass band they’d brought with them was absolutely incredible. My string playing kids would have loved to see it.
The show was quite clean, all things considered. It had a lot of Martin and Short poking fun at each other, and I really enjoyed being able to see them in person. I don’t know why the “in person” thing should matter, but it did in a way I wasn’t quite expecting. Maybe it’s just the sensation of seeing these people in real life that I’ve only ever seen on a screen.
I will note that the the Cross Center in Bangor has perhaps one of the most hellacious entrances I’ve ever had to suffer through. It’s right off the freeway, but it’s a left hand turn right off the freeway. Multiple lanes collapse into one, and you’ve got everyone and their brother trying to go the same direction. It took twenty minutes to move about a hundred feet. The center really ought to look into getting some traffic cops going at those intersections to move things along. It was bad enough that it made me seriously reconsider ever going back to the venue for a big event.
But, that aside, it was a wonderful evening, and I consider it money well spent. Good times.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 17, 2019
Tragedy on a Smaller Scale
If you were following my Facebook or Twitter feeds yesterday, then you know that yesterday morning, my small town was shocked when an entire building exploded due to a propane leak. The blast was so strong that it could be heard 30 miles away. Staff at the building had arrived to a smell of propane. They called the fire department, which arrived when the building had already been evacuated thanks to the efforts of the building’s maintenance manager, Larry Lord. When first responders entered the building, the entire place exploded, killing Capt. Michael Bell and injuring Chief Terry Bell; Capt. Timothy Hardy; Capt. Scott Baxter; his father, Theodore Baxter; Joseph Hastings, Deputy Fire Chief Clyde Ross, and Larry Lord.
I was on campus when it happened, about a mile away from the explosion. The lights flickered, but I’d been blowdrying my hands when it happened, so I didn’t hear anything unusual. Then my son texted to say the high school was locked down. At the same time, a whole ton of sirens started pealing out across town, heading away from the town center where I work and off toward the direction of the high school.
Tomas assured me nothing huge seemed to be happening there, though. There’d been a large explosion that had rattled the roof, and they’d been put in lock down. I started asking friends and checking on Facebook, and that’s where I first heard others had heard the explosion as well. Some guessed it was a propane facility down the road. I heard of plumes of smoke billowing.
I went outside the library to see if I could just find out what was happening. It looked like it was a snow flurry. Tiny tufts of white floating to the ground. I picked one up. It was insulation. (I take back every snide remark I’ve ever made about people in crisis situations not turning and running away, but instead picking up unidentifiable so they can look at them better. (Chernobyl, I’m looking at you.) When you’re in the middle of something like that, you just want to know what’s happening. You’re not thinking of anything else.)
Soon after that, we began to find out the details, even as more and more sirens headed to the site. Pictures and video came out, along with the word that a firefighter had lost his life. The whole day was just sort of derailed for everyone around me, though it feels trivial to say it in the face of how much this cost others. The blast blew doors and walls off homes around it, smashing in windows and destroying property. I realized I’d met the man who’d died on multiple occasions, and I discovered this morning the wife of the injured maintenance manager is a friend from work. Farmington’s a small town of only around 8,000 people. If you don’t know someone, you certainly know a lot of the same people as that person.
This morning the slain firefighter’s body was brought back to town from the medical examiner’s office in Augusta. The streets were lined with people who’d come out to pay their respects. It’s all still surreal.
The closest thing I can compare it to is my experience with 9/11. Not knowing details and finding them out as they trickled in. The feeling of shock as it all becomes clear. This wasn’t any terrorist act. It was an accident, they believe, but it still feels like a gut punch. There’s still so much that’s unknown. 11 families lost their homes. What are they going to do? Larry Lord is at Massachusetts General Hospital with burns over half his body, broken bones, and trauma. It’s estimated he’ll be there for 4 months to recover. (You can donate to a fundraiser for him here. Please do.) Pets have gone missing from the area. Did they die, or will they be found? What will happen to LEAP, the organization that owned the building that exploded? They help local people with disabilities, and they hire or have hired a number of people I know or am friends with. What will happen to those jobs, and to the people they were serving?
It seems like there are a hundred small tragedies tied into the larger one. MC had been looking forward to going to the Farmington Fair all week. She was set to go with her class at school to see the animals, and then with us in the evening to ride the rides. The fair closed for the day, and she was in tears when both trips fell through.
Each one of these impacts is significant to the person impacted, though it feels sometimes like some deserve much more attention than others. Why should I feel that bad about what happened to my daughter when my friend’s husband is in such bad shape, and when someone died and others lost their houses? But sorrow isn’t a competition. Everyone should grieve and move forward together. It was wonderful to see so many people attend the processional for Captain Bell. To see the community come together like that. It gives me hope we’ll continue to come together to support each other as we pick up whatever pieces may have fallen to the ground, be they big or small.
September 16, 2019
Sheep, The Gospel, and You
For our topic this month, the stake presidency asked us to use Elder Gerrit W. Gong’s general conference address, Good Shepherd, Lamb of God. It’s a wonderful speech, all about the many ways our Savior provides for us. He says, “At this Easter season, we celebrate the Good Shepherd, who is also the Lamb of God. Of all His divine titles, no others are more tender or telling. We learn much from our Savior’s references to Himself as the Good Shepherd and from prophetic testimonies of Him as the Lamb of God. These roles and symbols are powerfully complementary—who better to succor each precious lamb than the Good Shepherd, and who better to be our Good Shepherd than the Lamb of God?”
We’re almost always given topics in this manner. We’ve got a whole talk to draw on, and we’re let loose to present the message as we see fit. Usually when I approach writing my talk each month, I read over the talk and jot down ideas and passages that stand out to me. Almost always, when I get to the end of the talk, all I have to do is look back over what I noted, and I’ve already got the makings of what I want to say.
Not this time.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the talk. As I said, it’s wonderful, and I definitely recommend you give it another read through when you can. It’s just that so much of what Elder Gong said seemed like I couldn’t bring anything of myself to the topic. Not that I didn’t agree with it, but rather that if I were to really base my talk on his, I would end up doing the dreaded “He said it better than I could, so I’m going to read the whole thing to you” approach. I don’t think that’s my role as a high councilor. If the goal was to recreate the talk as best as we could, then there’s this lovely thing called the internet, where his talk is available to watch even as I speak. It would be a simple enough matter just to throw it up on a projector so we could all watch it once more together.
So quoting extensively from the talk doesn’t really feel right to me. When I get stumped, I pray about what to focus on. This time, that prayer gave me one word. Sheep. So here we go, brothers and sisters. Twenty minutes, all about sheep. Wish me luck.
I know the typical image that comes to mind when we talk about sheep in the Gospel. The Lord’s flock. The Good Shepherd. I don’t know why, but it wasn’t until I was writing this talk that I realized the disconnect between the way I think about sheep in Gospel terms and the way I observe them in reality.
Growing up, my family had a cabin in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. We would go up there each summer and go hiking, fishing, and swimming. The area has many things in its favor. Cool evenings even in the summer, beautiful vistas, and fresh air. But it also has plenty of sheep. Sheep that left dung all over the fields. Sheep that milled about in the road, confused by the simplest of things. The sheep I have met in real life are not animals I really want that much to do with. Mary can keep her little lamb. I’m more of a dog person, myself. In geek culture, if you want to disparage someone, you say they’re a sheep, willing to do what anyone else tells them to do.
Let’s face it. These days, if someone’s running a PR campaign for sheep, they’re doing a pretty miserable job. If someone says “sheep,” I think “obstinate, stupid, and easily confused.” Unless someone says “sheep” in church, in which case my mind translates that as “follower of God.” Which some in the world might argue means essentially the same thing.
But that contrast between definitions is a disconnect, and one of the things I love doing most, academically speaking, is exploring areas like that. Places where things don’t quite match up. So how does the idyllic Gospel view of sheep line up with my modern day experiences?
The time I hear us discuss sheep the most in church is when they get lost. Helping lost sheep back into the fold is an analogy that’s used frequently. The other day, we were discussing the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Elder’s Quorum class. And as we discussed the ways in which we can look out for our neighbors, one question kept coming back to me: how should we handle a neighbor who doesn’t want to be looked out for? What do you do for a lost sheep who likes the pasture it ends up in, even if it’s not the pasture you feel would be best for it?
Having held various leadership callings in the church over the years, I know we all spend a lot of our time worrying about what we can do for those who are less active, or those who are new members in the church. I have spent hours in discussions about how to help people who haven’t necessarily ever expressed a desire for help. I’ve also spent hours trying to come up with ways to help people who ignored help when it was first offered, then only came back for help when the situation became more than they could handle, due mainly to the fact that they ignored the initial help and advice. How do those cases relate to the story of the lost sheep? How can we best meet others’ needs in these sorts of situations?
As I’ve thought about it, it feels like each of these situations call for different approaches. Ideally, we should be sure everyone knows they’re welcome at church. Knows that we’re here waiting for them, ready to accept them and help them. People who have left the church or are less active should know where and how to come back, but we should never get to the point where our obsession over them returning becomes an obstacle to that return. Where we just won’t leave them alone. Some sheep just want to jump flocks. They don’t need us there to constantly remind them we think they’re making the wrong choice. That’s not going to do anyone any good at all.
For those people who ignore earlier help and advice, only to turn around and come back for help later on when the situation is even worse, I try to view it from my interactions with patrons as an academic librarian. Each semester, I give instruction to many students about how to efficiently find information through our catalog and databases. I go through the intricacies of where to find books in Maine, and the differences between a keyword and a subject search. But perhaps the biggest point I try to emphasize is how important it is that they give themselves plenty of time when they’re doing research. To end up with the best paper possible, you need to give yourself access to the best research you can get your hands on. Often that research isn’t available in our library at the click of a mouse. You have to request it from somewhere else, and it takes time, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, for that information to arrive, depending on where it originates and in what form. There is no possible way for me to make a book in California get mailed to Maine any power. Yes, I’m the library director, but my powers stop well before the US Postal Service.
I emphasize the need to give yourself plenty of time because I have seen the other side of that equation all too often. The student who rushes into the library, frantic because their paper is due in a few days (or, once, a few hours) and they still haven’t started their research. At that time, there is little I can do. I can show them full-text databases. I can point out the books that are in our building, but they have limited their options by their own choices, and there’s nothing I can do to bring some of those options back.
When a person makes decisions, those decisions have consequences we can’t shield them from. Sometimes that results in very hard feelings. I’ve stood through more than a few instances of students telling me just what they thought of my library and my services. I understand that things can get emotional in the heat of the moment, but I’ve never let those interactions change the overall mission of the library. It’s a simple matter for me to separate those individual instances from the overall direction our services are heading.
That’s not always as easy to distinguish when eternal salvation is at stake. At those times, I think of the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25:
1 aThen shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten bvirgins, which took their clamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:
4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all aslumbered and bslept.
6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the abridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their alamps.
8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps aare gone out.
9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were aready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was bshut.
11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
12 But he answered and said, aVerily I say unto you, I bknow you not.
13 aWatch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
Using this as our guiding star, it would be an easy enough matter to dust our hands off and ignore any and all wandering sheep. They should have thought of that before they started wandering, right? It’s important, however, not to set all your belief in any one of these parables. For one thing, Christ gave a series of them one after the other, saying in each “the kingdom of heaven is like.” Like ten virgins. Like a man giving out talents. Like a field of wheat and tares. Like a mustard seed. Like a beautiful pearl. The kingdom of heaven is only like each of these, because it is greater than each of them. It the sum of them all gathered together, with each parable describing only a part of that sum.
When I was in elementary school, my class did a skit of the story of the Blind Men and the elephant. A group of blind men go up to an elephant, an animal none of them have ever encountered before. Each feels a different part of the beast. Its ear. Its tusk. Its leg. Its tail. And afterward, they argue about what an elephant is like. Thin and ropy. Smooth and straight. Flat and flappy. Never realizing that they each only had experienced a piece of the elephant.
Do we ever get so bogged down in trying to debate what the Gospel is and isn’t, when what we fail to understand is that it’s possible the entirety of the Gospel is just beyond our understanding? I think there’s a reason Christ spoke in parables. Not because he had a penchant for the poetic, but because it really was the only way to try to get his audience of mortal minds to understand even some of what he was trying to convey to them
So aren’t I doing the same thing as I try to pick apart what exactly a lost sheep is and how best to handle it? Yes and no. It would be a mistake to casually dismiss a person because of their past. To give them a Gospel equivalent of an “I told you so” when they try to sincerely repent. But at the same time, the more I come to understand my role in the Gospel and my role as a parent, the more I see how important it is that we each learn from consequences, because often that’s the only way we can have hope of really understanding a principle.
I came from a pretty cushy upbringing. Whenever I had a problem, I had parents willing to bail me out of most of them, despite the fact that I don’t think I fully appreciated just what they were doing for me. When I moved to college, however, some of that changed. I was living in Deseret Towers at BYU, and this was back in the days of modems that chirped and whistled whenever you wanted to go online. I’d just set up my new computer (bought by my parents) and plugged the modem into the wall jack in my room. When I went to connect, however, it whistled and chirped for a moment, and then it went dead. No amount of futzing with the computer or modem could bring it back to life. Those noises were annoying and all, but speaking from experience, annoying chirpy noises were much better than no noises at all
I went to campus IT, and I discovered the system in my dorm needed an adapter for modems to work. If you hooked it up to the wall without an adapter, it would fry the modem after just a few seconds. A new modem was fifty dollars. No problem. I called my mom up and explained the problem to her, detailing just how unjust it was that no one had told me about this modem adaptor thing ahead of time, and how much it was going to cost to buy a new modem.
“That’s terrible,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
What she didn’t say, however, was “I’ll buy a new modem and send it to you right away.” I remember being taken aback by the lack of an offer to help. In that one moment, I suddenly realized how much she’d been covering for me before, and how it would be a fair bit different without that parental insurance program in the future. Now, let me be clear. It’s not that she suddenly stopped helping me. In fact, my parents continued to help me for decades to come and still stand ready to pitch in during tough times. But there was a definite shift in approach with that modem purchase. They were forcing me to become more independent, and it was impactful enough that I still remember the lesson, almost 23 years later to the day.
When I first started learning math, the teacher didn’t hold me accountable for calculus. When I go to a middle school orchestra performance, I don’t expect to hear the same caliber of musician as I do when I go to a performance in New York City. In the same fashion, we can’t expect every lost sheep to have the same wherewithal to recognize it’s lost and in need of help that we might have in the same situation. But I ask myself, what would I want someone to do if I were lost, or if my children were lost? Where would I want them to draw the line between being too pushy and not helping enough?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m not sure what the answer is, honestly. In some situations, one approach might be too much. In others, that same approach might not be enough. I don’t think it’s a dilemma that can be easily answered with a “What would Jesus do?” response, either. I believe many people have an ideal answer in their head when that comes up, and Jesus, naturally, would always choose the ideal. Wouldn’t He? Each response would be the perfect one.
But sometimes, Jesus wasn’t all hugs and forgiveness. Sometimes He was scourging money changers in the temple and overturning tables. We have a very limited knowledge of Christ’s actual life, all of it consisting primarily of four accounts of his three year ministry. I’m not trying to dismiss the Bible at all, but we have almost no record of what Christ was like during the first thirty years of his life. How He behaved at parties. How He handled friendships. What happened when He got sick. What I mean is that in the vast majority of instances where people like to trot out the “What would Jesus do?” question, I’m not entirely sure what the right answer is.
Consequences are an integral part of our experience here on earth. If you touch a hot pan, there is no one who can take that pain away from you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be helped. Someone can bandage the wound. Someone could tell you not to touch the pan ahead of time. But I think we can all agree that the person who comes up to you just after you’ve experienced a traumatic event and says, “See? That’s why you don’t touch hot pans” doesn’t suddenly rocket up to the top of your Favorite Person in the World list. “I told you so” doesn’t become any more helpful days, months, or years after the fact.
In the Parable of the Ten Virgins, the wise virgins don’t take time to tell the others what they ought to have done. “We’ve been telling you since noon you need to get oil for your lamps. This is why you always need to be keeping your lamps ready.” Instead, they offered them advice on where they might go to get oil and left it at that. In his book, Faith Precedes the Miracle, President Kimball wrote, “Attendance at sacrament meetings adds oil to our lamps, drop by drop over the years. Fasting, family prayer, home teaching, control of bodily appetites, preaching the gospel, studying the scriptures—each act of dedication and obedience is a drop added to our store. Deeds of kindness, payment of offerings and tithes, chaste thoughts and actions, marriage in the covenant for eternity—these, too, contribute importantly to the oil with which we can at midnight refuel our exhausted lamps.”
So how does that tie into the Good Shepherd and His lost sheep? Well, for one thing, I cannot make the decision for how someone else needs to follow the Gospel. We each have our own lamp, and it can only be filled by our own actions. I can fast for someone else, but I can’t fast instead of someone else, if that makes sense. I can pay tithing for me, but I can’t pay tithing for you. In the same vein, the mistakes you think I’m making might not be mistakes at all. I’m not saying I live a perfect life, but I know there have been multiple times over the years when someone has told me (or told someone behind my back) that they think the choices I have made have fallen short of Gospel standards.
To them, I was a lost sheep in need of saving. So let me say from experience that not all those who wander are lost. When people came to tell me they thought I was wrong, it didn’t matter how well-intentioned those thoughts were. Often, they came across as judgmental and short-sighted. How many of the people that we discuss how to help would be upset to know we thought they needed help in the first place? Should we be helping those who don’t want that help?
In some cases, the answer is no. In others, the answer is yes. Case in point. Often when someone comes and asks us if we need help, we automatically will say no, even if we’re desperately in need of help. Why is that? Linguistically, it’s because we know most of those offers of help aren’t real offers. They’re phrases of speech we use to move through our day. In America, we’ll regularly ask someone how they’re doing, when all we mean is “hello.” In Germany, if you ask someone how they’re doing, they’ll look at you funny, and then, if they’re feeling chatty, they’ll proceed to tell you exactly how their doing, right down to their last sniffle.
If you ever want to make for an awkward interaction, take someone up on one of their offers of help they give right before they’re leaving a party, for example. We’ve all been there. You’re seeing people out the door, and someone says, “Are you sure you don’t need any help cleaning up?” The response we’re trained to give in this interaction is, “No. We’re fine. Thanks for coming.” If you were instead to say, “Now that you mention it, the bathroom really could use a good scouring,” I almost guarantee you’ll get some funny looks, followed by a “Gee, look at the time” before they duck out the door. That’s not because they’re uncaring or ungenuine. It’s because the offer of help wasn’t intended as a real offer. It was just a social nicety.
When you see someone in need, they’ll typically decline any help you verbally offer, especially if you say something like “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.” That’s not going to be interpreted by most people as a sincere offer. If you really want to know if they need help, you might spend some time thinking of ways you could help them, and offer that, instead. “I’d love to make you a meal,” you could say. “What day would be best for me to bring it over?” Of course, the problem with offers like these is that they can sometimes be interpreted as insults. If you offer to help clean someone’s house, they might interpret that as you telling them their house is too messy. It’s the verbal equivalent of going up to a woman and asking when the baby’s due. Pro tip: don’t do that.
A different approach might be to be as honest and open with them as possible. “I can tell you’ve got a lot on your plate,” you might say. “I’d love to do what I can to help, and I’ve got some time next week. What can I do?” By breaking out of the typical linguistic mold of “is there anything you need?”, you can engage in a real discussion.
Fact. I’m about as far removed from shepherding as you’re likely to get. True, I suppose you could find some people in a large city who’ve only read about sheep and never actually seen one, but I’m not that far from that point. If I’m able to use my limited sheep knowledge to realize that sheep are sometimes obstinate and sometimes downright idiotic, I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to think Christ would have been aware of those same traits back when He was walking the roads of the Holy Land.
But as I’ve thought it through now, I don’t think there was a disconnect for Him when He first made the comparison. That’s only developed after the fact, as more and more people consume His words separately from their day to day meanings. In other words, when He said His followers were like sheep, might He have meant that we too could sometimes be obstinate and sometimes downright idiotic? That we are often too easily led astray and wind up in the brambles somewhere, bleating for help?
At some point in time, all of us are lost. In fact, all of us are lost at this moment. We’re constantly sinning and falling short of the commandments of God. May we keep that in mind as we try to answer the call of the Good Shepherd and help those around us do the same. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
September 13, 2019
The Middle School Conundrum: The Land Before Time
We have another kid who just entered middle school, which means this is now my third time through it. (Once as a middle schooler myself, and now twice as a parent.) It never seems to get any easier, sadly, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
Here’s a theory I came up with last night, and an analogy I came up with just now. A lot of the difficult comes down to Three Horns and Long Necks. In The Land Before Time, the animated movie I watched far too much of as a child, a group of dinosaur children have to team up to try to get to the Lost Valley, a place where dinosaurs will be safe from the destruction around them. One of the lines that we always repeated when I was a kid was “Three horns never play with long necks.”
And of course part of the point of the movie is the dinosaur kids (a triceratops, a stegosaurus, an apatosaurus, a saurolophus, and a pteranodon) learn to overcome their differences and all get along. It’s a great sentiment.
But what if one of the dinos had been a tyrannosaurus? A straight up meat eating hunter who would one day grow up to want to eat all his friends? (I guess that’s sort of in the vein of Disney’s Fox and the Hound, just much bloodier . . .)
When you’re in elementary school, no one really knows who they’re going to be yet. Yes, there are mean kids and nice kids, but a lot of the dynamics come down to who you were already friends with. When you reach middle school, that’s when people actually start figuring out who they want to be. What sort of a person they are. And unfortunately, sometimes the people you’re already friends with turn out not to be the people the person you want to be wants to be friends with. Or maybe it’s not a matter of want. Maybe it’s a matter of compatibility.
Now, I don’t mean by this that some people are born predators or prey or anything like that. Maybe the dinosaur analogy is the wrong thing to use for that reason. But when you’ve always tried your best to be a good friend, and then suddenly the people you’re friends with aren’t the people you thought they were, it’s a jarring feeling.
But people change and friendships morph all the time. As an adult, you recognize that, and you’ve dealt with it often enough to be able to handle it. I’ve had various very close friends over the years, some of whom I’m still close with today, and some I’m not. In some cases, we drifted apart. In some cases, life got in the way. But middle school is the time when suddenly it’s happening all around you, and you’re changing at the same time. No wonder it’s all bewildering.
I think it helps to have dealt with it before as a parent now. Denisa and I have experience handling it. But that doesn’t make it any easier on the kid in question. What can I say? Maybe sometimes, three horns really shouldn’t play with long necks . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 12, 2019
Movie Review: Murder Mystery
A bit ago, Netflix released a new movie starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. I’d heard from somewhere or other that it was pretty good. Finding ourselves in a bit of a lull, Denisa and I decided to try it out.
“Pretty good” was being quite generous, in retrospect. I’m still not sure where I picked up the assessment, as when I’m looking at reviews in hindsight, “pretty meh” would seem to be more accurate. (45% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6 on IMDB, 38 on Metacritic.) But the movie wasn’t completely without merit. It was diverting enough, and was all in all more interesting than doing nothing, and not painful to watch.
How’s that for a recommendation for you?
The things I disliked about the movie were mainly its efforts at humor, and Adam Sandler. He plays a doofus, and the character didn’t go over well with me at all. It just kept feeling to me like Adam Sandler playing the role of someone who’s a doofus. And the humor . . . was pretty much non-existent. There were some mildly amusing things, but other than that, most of the humor seemed to want to rest on Adam Sandler being a doofus. I have liked many Adam Sandler movies in the past, so it’s not as if I’m predisposed to dislike him. But here . . . no.
Jennifer Aniston seemed a bit lost opposite him. Like she was trying to feed off the energy of his performance, with the result of being like a vampire trying to feed off the energy of a three week old corpse. “Chemistry” wouldn’t accurately describe the connection between Aniston and Sandler. “2nd Grade Science Experiment” is closer to it.
So what did I actually like about the film? For one thing, it was to murder mysteries what Scream was to horror movies. Aniston’s character is a big nut for the genre, and so when she finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery in Europe, she’s very excited. (Oh. That’s the premise. Did you care?) She goes about commenting about who it could be and who it couldn’t, and that was somewhat diverting.
The scenery was beautiful, and no expense had been spared on the main action sequence of the movie.
I don’t know. For a movie that’s Netflix’s “Biggest Movie Premier Ever” (which is one of the main things that caught my interest in the first place), it left a lot to be desired. If this is the best Netflix can mange for movies, maybe it’s time to stick to television series.
So . . . if you’ve heard “good things” about this movie, do yourself a favor and avoid it anyway. Unless you have nothing better to do for around two hours. I mean, if you’re stuck on a plane and it’s either watch this or listen to the man next to you snore for the next while, go get some headphones and enjoy.
3/10.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 11, 2019
Do Unto Yourself as You Do Unto Others
I don’t have a ton of time today. It’s still the beginning of the semester, and even my lunch breaks seem to be slipping through my fingers. But I did want to get on here to give a snippet of a thought I had this morning as I was opening the library. Twice a week, I go around and turn on the lights, make sure the building’s in order, check for open windows or leaks. That sort of thing. This morning, my mind was a thousand different places, and I forgot to turn on one bank of lights as I was making my rounds. It wasn’t a big deal. I just had to backtrack all of fifty feet to go do it. But I’ve been stressed, and I caught myself talking to myself as I headed back.
“You’re such an idiot. You’re so stupid.” That was the exact quote I told myself, as I recall. And as the words left my mouth and I realized what I’d said, I also realized how out of character that was for me. I would never–ever–say that to someone else. Not even if I thought the person was a grade A dunce. I wouldn’t even say that about a person when they weren’t in the room. And yet there I was, telling that to myself over and over, not because I’d done some major error, but because I’d made a ten second mistake.
So the thought is this. Maybe I should go easier on myself. Maybe I should treat myself the way I treat other people. Be more understanding. Be more sympathetic. Recognize when times are rough and I need to ease off a bit.
I’ve long noticed that people often treat their family members worse than they treat friends or strangers. That you’ll say something to your sibling or parent that you’d never say to anyone else. There’s a variety of reasons for that, but it’s been a point of mine to at least try to do better. To treat my family with the same respect I treat friends and strangers. But it wasn’t until this morning that I realized I should probably extend that umbrella of protection to include myself.
I do think words matter. Even words you mutter under your breath while you’re opening the library. If I’m saying those things, then you can count on me thinking things that are even worse. That kind of thinking does nothing productive. It doesn’t inspire me to improve. It doesn’t help me focus. It’s just negativity for negativity’s sake.
It’s time for me to try to stop that. If you’re doing it to yourself, maybe you should think about following suit. Just a thought.
Happy Wednesday, everyone!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
